Therapy dog

Take a minute to stop by Laurel Hunt's Bark Wag Love blog.

Laurel is training Baker the Welsh Springer Spaniel to become a therapy dog and give comfort to kids in a local hospital that are in a tough spot at a too-young age.

You remember Baker, don't you?

Baker was the six-year-old Welshie re-homed from Indiana to North Carolina. Aki and I picked Baker up around Cincinnati and delivered him to Laurel in Tennessee.

All in that wagon train agreed that Baker was a sweet boy, but needed some training fundamentals. He didn't really know how to walk on a lead!

And now Baker is a therapy dog apprentice. What a fine turn of events, Laruel and Baker.

Six inches

Larsen and I worked at Tim & Cathy's this morning. Tim had Masters candidate Moses and Junior candidate Rags working. Frank M and Deb brought Mr. Wiggles and one other, but I'm not sure who.

I ran Larsen in the box. What this means is that I quartered him (let him run from left to right and then right to left in front of me and the two gunners) in an area defined as an imaginary rectangle with two corners set by the two gunners and the other two corners set 20 yards straight out from the gunners. Any bird that is found and flushed in the box should be killable by reasonably competent gunner. You want your dog to find and flush a bird in the box because that gives you the best chance for a clean kill. When the dog gets outside of the box and flushes a bird, the chance of making a clean kill falls. A wounded or missed bird makes for a fly-away bird that the dog chases, loss of control, and overall mayhem.

In my exercises, I quartered Larsen without having a bird in the field. Instead, I held a live bird by its legs behind my back. At an opportune moment, when Larsen's back was to me and he had demonstrated some good quartering, I took a few quick steps forward, planted the bird in the grass, and retreated. On his backhaul, lo and behold, Larsen found and flushed a bird. The bird was right in front of me, his handler! The bird was shot, and Larsen retrieved.

Larsen's quartering was very good. He listened to the whistle, and hunted aggressively. His retrieve needs work. Larsen returned the shot bird, but set it down on the ground about six inches from me. Setting the bird on the ground is a DQ at the Senior level. So this is what we will work on next.

Frank suggested that I work on the last six inches by doing a basement/backyard drill with him with cold game. The idea is that I would set up a little retrieve of six or eight feet. I would sit on the ground, legs out, and let Larsen retrieve the bird right to my lap. The goal is to get the retrieve up close and personal. I can then stroke Larsen and soothe him as I ask for the bird. All very up close.

Larsen's retrieve has improved greatly. We need a little more team work to pull it all together.

As an aside, Larsen's hunt dead was very good. He went out the 50 yards or so and hunted around. I was ready with the whistle to help him, but he seemed to have a pretty good idea. He found the bird and brought it back to hand, with (admittedly) a little trick on my own part. I turned to my left, he trotted to my right, and I kept right on turning until I could reach the bird as he went by on my right. I'm not sure if that is exactly cricket.

Amping it up

With a Hunt Test in Wisconsin at the end of July, it's time to start amping up Larsen's training.

In his basement table drills, I've brought out a thawed bird. I place it on the floor, about 6 feet away, and have him fetch it up. During the first few days, he would nose the bird, pick it up, and start to trot away from me. I'd give him a command and bring him in.

I've repositioned the fetch so that his best strategy now is to take it right past me rather than away from me. I'm working on my own performance as well. When he comes up, I do not snatch the bird right away. I wait. Then I say give, and he drops the bird, to some quiet attaboys from me.

I let him heel with me around the basement perimeter with the bird in his mouth. Then I hupped him, stood in front of him about six feet away and called him in.

I'm trying to get my own muscle memory and trust factor going for letting him handle and deliver the bird. I hope it carries over into the field.

Rally 3

I signed Larsen up for Rally. He's now entering into Rally Excellent. The requirements include a bit more polish and also some advanced things like a moving halt. A moving halt begins with the dog walking at heel. You command "halt" while you maintain your pace. The dog stops and you keep walking.

Another more advanced item, which is a bit gimmacky, is walking backwards. I will teach that to Larsen since that is part of the requirements, but it is not high on our obedience list.

The main purpose for the additional rally classes is simply to keep the discipline of our training going during the hot summer months.

Big muddy

Larsen, not the river to the west of us. Aki's Memorial Day week drive from Atlanta to Chicago, and then on to Cleveland, was in a downpour of cold rain that turned the rich black topsoil of the Great Lakes area into quagmires of mud. Some of the older hardwoods (whose taproots admittedly were gone) had simply toppled over in the muck, producing gaping holes filled with milk-chocolate water.

Larsen loves the driving cold rain. He hit the swamp and immediately began tracking deer, whose tracks were three inches deep in the mud. On a run, he fell into a bole-hole- - completely disappearing under the muddy water before bobbing up and then scrambling out to resume his chase. Need I mention that the little dog had the time of his life?

Larsen looks toward to his next run at Bradley Park in Westlake, Ohio.

Frank appears to be having second thoughts about inviting a muddy spaniel into his Evanston apartment.