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.