A junior moment

Sunday featured Shoni's Sunny and my Larsen on the practice field at Circle W.

Larsen was steady to wing and shot for his first two pigeons.  The third bird was a chukar, and Larsen broke, pursued the chukar to the ends of the earth despite my chasing him down and correcting him from afar electronically.  He bounded in with the bird in his mouth, his eyes closed with rapturous happiness, and his nose snorting like a pig as he inhaled gamey chukar scent.  This is where I would have liked Cathy to be there to figure out what next.  What correction would have been appropriate?  Brain him or just take the bird?  I did the latter.  I quietly looped him up and took him to the car for a drink and kenneling.  No more birds in the field.

Shoni called the break Larsen's "junior moment," since he'd been pretty good that morning and in weekends before, and this time he acted as excited as any junior puppy.

On thinking about it, I concluded that I should have been more careful about re-introducing Larsen to chukar.  Larsen has been getting steady to wing & shot with pigeon, which we have practiced with for the last few weeks.  Evidently, he has not transferred that approach to chukar.  I can now see that this will be a particularly ticklish transfer because chukar flush just out of the reach of snapping jaws, and stay relatively low and enticingly close for the longest while.  I saw that in Larsen's break, where the bird seemed inches from his frothing mouth for the longest time.  Moreover, Larsen had gone through the entire junior and senior with chukar without being steady and now I am asking him to override those habits and be steady.

After his water work, I re-started the steady program.  I hupped Larsen and took a (dead) chukar and just tossed it about while he watched.  I interspersed this with a few hunt deads, just to give Larsen the chance to get his mouth on a bird.  We played the new games until we were both hot and then we sat under a tree to cool off.

I'm back to square 1 with the chukar and steadying Larsen.  I'll make sure I do some tosses to a steady dog, and I'll be doubly sure to have any chukar flushes under very controlled conditions.