Always faithful

Kim Parkman of Pocataligo Kennels was featured in the November GunDog Magazine for her work training bomb-sniffing dogs that are deployed overseas in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

She trains field-bred labs for bomb certification. The labs are trained to respond to hand and whistle signals from afar, thereby protecting the serviceman sometimes with their very lives.

Kim's work contributed greatly to Larsen's success in the field, and she has turned some of her attention to this higher calling.

I'll link to the article when it becomes available on the GunDog website.

Cpl. Herb Hartfield and Susie in Afghanistan. Credit: GunDog Magazine and also Sgt. Jesse Stence.

November 12-13 Hunt Test

We've got 19 dogs confirmed. Three more will come from Wisconsin, at least one more from North Carolina, two from South Carolina, and three from northwest Georgia. That's 28 dogs expected.

The dogs are pretty evenly divided. We'll run the Juniors on one field and the Seniors/Masters on another, unless the numbers ultimately tip toward combining the Juniors and Seniors:

Juniors: 12 (5 signed up so far)

Seniors: 9 (8 so far)

Masters: 7 (6 so far)

Remembrances

Training at Circle W had that early fall feel to it. The air was cooler than it had been in forever. The sky low and gray, with no hint of summer. There were traces of color on a few trees in the hills that rimmed the farm. The fields had their fall cuts.

Bill T. and his gun were at about three o'clock to my right. I had my gun, too, and set Larsen to work.

Larsen was in front of me about 20 yards, and a bit to my right shoulder. Larsen's tail, when you can see it, provides a good signal of what is happening deep in the broom straw, but when he finds a a tough bird, his whole body is aquiver. Larsen went into the grass. The chukar was strong and went up, flapping loud and hard. The bird curved into a chandelle, climbing high over Bill, and arching back into a hard looping dive to my left. The bird leveled off, still flying hard. I turned to my left and shot it going away at twenty five yards or so. The bird went straight down. Larsen closed fast. He picked up the bird, and brought it straight back on a full run. He gave it to me and I him a squeeze.

Bill said that shooting a bird over your own dog and having him retrieve it to hand was what the sport was all about. I told him that even at that moment, I was trying to preserve the memory of that happy dog returning at top speed to show me what our little team had done.

Mixed bag in the field

Training this past weekend was a mixed bag.

We trained with chukar and quail, but the birds were only one part of the mix, with dogs and training technique adding the rest.

Larsen's first turn in the field was disastrous. That little dog paid me no more heed than if I were a scarecrow waving in the wind. He chased birds uncontrollably, but had no more success than a blind pig finding. Cathy, Bill, and I watched for a while. Cathy brought me to my senses by telling me to "put him up." I quietly walked Larsen to the car and kenneled him, saying nothing to him, and not looking at him.

We went about training Humphrey and Zelda. We took Humphrey back to ground zero and let him chase clip-wing chukar. The goal was to re-ignite the love of the game with that big clumber.

Larsen's second go was completely different. Bill T. said he could not believe this was the same dog. Larsen quartered perfectly. He found, flushed, and retrieved to hand. I had the undeniable pleasure of shooting one of the birds that he flushed and then receiving that bird to hand.

Larsen's third turn was a comedy of training errors. Larsen flushed a bird and came upon another upon the retrieve. He put down the first bird to flush the second, then forgot where he put it. He brought the second bird toward me, but put it down to play with, whereupon the bird took wing. A chase ensued. I cannot remember the rest of the sequence, but it involved various capers involving inadvertent flushes that basically undid all of the nice training that we had accomplished to that point.

Larsen's water retrieves were nice, as were his hunt deads. I pushed him along with the "back" command on the hunt dead to help him understand what back meant. Larsen made little snorting and grunting sounds in the blind water retrieve after having endured the humility of watching Zelda and Humphrey work.

The biggest training hurdle is that like many a scoundrel, even when he's bad, he's funny.

Procedure

No one likes a procedure, least of all a little spaniel.

Larsen went in for dental checkup and cleaning. I was very hopeful that he could have a drug-free experience, but evidently he "squiggled" a bit too much for the hygenist, and so I gave permission for a sedative. I understood that they did not knock him out, but instead simply made him a little less concerned about his lot in life.

Anesthesia is tough on any animal, and that includes mankind as well. Larsen had a beat up, far away look in his eyes on the drive home and he's spent some of the afternoon snoozing and looking out of the window.

About what you or I would do in the same circumstance.

Tomorrow is another day.

Early fall on Pine Mountain

The weather turned cool enough to dig out sweaters and wool socks, but the sun is warm in the afternoon.

We hiked Pine Mountain, right off I-75 in Cartersville, Georgia. It's a 4+ mile trail that goes up to the David G. Archer Overlook and then down into the Hurricane Valley. The way up has a number of switchbacks and we mentally computed the gradient as 10% (500 feet to just under a mile). If I'm not mistaken that is a gradient of 4.5 degrees. That does not sound like anything, does it?

The fall flowers are out, but trees maintain their dusty green from the dry summer.

Autumn flowers abloom at the David G. Archer overlook on Pine Mountain in Cartersville, Georgia.


Aki and Larsen take a breather atop Pine Mountain.

Larsen enjoys the clear view.