September 26, 2009Jersey, GA
We arrived at 7 a.m. and I took Tessa for a warm-up run through corn and sorghum fields followed by 3 planted quail and one fly-away, followed by a walk through the woods to hunt up the fly-away and some of its friends. Her first few points were not very impressive, but they were there, and they got a little better with each bird. I kept her on the check cord to stop the bird chasing.
I don't take the camera into the field with me needing to concentrate on what the dog is doing, and it was no different today. My heart stopped when she slammed into a beautiful point in the woods, and no witnesses or way to record it. Well, it made me very happy nonetheless until I flushed the bird and held Tessa in place with the check cord.
Upon returning to the car I decided to grab the camera and walk back to the woods to see if she can reproduce, and she sure did! This time I was ready. She held the point for at least one minute, plenty of time for me to grab some shots before I stepped on the check cord and flushed the bird. These points made my day...
As folks started to proceed to the ponds, I let her run all the fields again, looking for leftovers and flyaways, and we practiced whoa, recalls, whistle commands, turning, etc. which all went very well.
We ended up spending 7 hours out here today. We watched a very impressive albeit unsuccessful live duck search, then Tessa bungled the dead duck retrieve which was mostly my bad. She did make up though by retrieving a sinking quail out of the water by diving for it. She never saw it but smelled it while swimming by. I had no idea they can do that although I had my suspicions, because Tessa tends to get sidetracked on the water sometimes, sniffing the water surface and searching under the surface.
Overall this was a productive training day - much better than last month's.
I don't take the camera into the field with me needing to concentrate on what the dog is doing, and it was no different today. My heart stopped when she slammed into a beautiful point in the woods, and no witnesses or way to record it. Well, it made me very happy nonetheless until I flushed the bird and held Tessa in place with the check cord.
Upon returning to the car I decided to grab the camera and walk back to the woods to see if she can reproduce, and she sure did! This time I was ready. She held the point for at least one minute, plenty of time for me to grab some shots before I stepped on the check cord and flushed the bird. These points made my day...
As folks started to proceed to the ponds, I let her run all the fields again, looking for leftovers and flyaways, and we practiced whoa, recalls, whistle commands, turning, etc. which all went very well.
We ended up spending 7 hours out here today. We watched a very impressive albeit unsuccessful live duck search, then Tessa bungled the dead duck retrieve which was mostly my bad. She did make up though by retrieving a sinking quail out of the water by diving for it. She never saw it but smelled it while swimming by. I had no idea they can do that although I had my suspicions, because Tessa tends to get sidetracked on the water sometimes, sniffing the water surface and searching under the surface.
Overall this was a productive training day - much better than last month's.
