Home Is Where The Hearth Is

July 4, 2016

[at home]

Birds Of A Feather Flock Together

March 22, 2014

Sandy Creek Park, GA

From left to right: Tessa, Dewi, Greta, Rhys. Tessa and the Setters run together every weekend and sometimes in-between, and hunt together over the winter. Greta was visiting from Michigan.

Happy Valentine's Day!

February 14, 2014

Athens, GA

It was back to work for me today, catching up on everything that got messed up by the storm that is now but a distant memory. At 10:20 p.m. though, nature had another surprise in store for us: a 4.1 earthquake struck Edgefield, SC, and we could feel it rumble here in Athens. A little bit unsettling, even though earthquakes in the southeast so far have been pretty benign.

Warm Winter Hunt

February 8, 2014

Jersey, GA

Great day at the plantation today. Weather, grounds and birds were perfect. There was a twist though: this time, we let the Setters hunt, with Tessa coming in late. Very late. There was only one bird unaccounted for, and she found it in those 30 acres. How do these dogs do that? #thenoseknows

With temperatures around 60 F, we were able to make up for the lack of birds with a couple of swims. I think she was pleased with the outing.

 She marked these feathers, twice.

The Sharpshooter

January 19, 2014

Jersey, GA

Thanks to my generous friends, there has been yet another hunt, and today, all three dogs pulled their weight and did well from beginning to end. As always, it was a joy to watch them work the fields together and honor each other's points. No struggles whatsoever. Happy.

The Hunter

January 8, 2012

Athens, GA

Dock Diving!

May 21, 2011
Jersey, GA

That was some training day today. The bird work didn't go all that well. First off, I helped my friend train his puppy, and the plan was to then take Tessa and follow the advanced teams to work on backing/steadiness. That was cut short when a friend's dog suffered a snake bite and I rushed them off to a nearby vet. Back at the plantation, we caught the tail end of field work before everyone proceeded to the water, as it was getting hot.

There was too much serious duck work going on at the duck search pond, so I took Tessa to the puppy pond where she had a blast jumping off the dock on the far end. She's done it before, but not as much as that day - she absolutely loved it. Once she got to shore, she raced up to the dock, ready to jump again, just like a kid at a pool.

We are planning on entering in a dock diving competition in July but there are two things we need to work on: jumping into a pool (blue water instead of muddy lake water) and running into the jump, rather than stopping at the edge of the dock for push-off. Access to blue water is a problem for us - the Canine Ranch, a training facility near Canton, GA, is a 2-hour drive away.

Walking on water? No problem!

Soon, Tessa was joined by a bunch of Vizslas that got all excited about watching Tessa jump, and Tessa actually managed to talk some of them into following suit!

Bird Dog Cemetery

April 19, 2011

Waynesboro, GA

On our way back home, we stopped near Waynesboro to check out this bird dog cemetery. The cemetery is located on the 8,100 acre Di-Lane Plantation created by New York industrialist and Eagle Pencil Co. heir Henry Berol, who had as many as 60 bird dogs at one time, and bought land mainly to be used during hunting season. With Berol's backing the Georgia Field Trials - which have been held at Di-Lane for decades - rose to its national level of prominence and gave Burke County its reputation as the ''Bird Dog Capital of the World" which is proudly displayed on signs and water towers around town.

The cemetery was established soon after the Berols created the plantation, and some of the stones were relocated from the family's home in New York. It now contains approximately 70 graves, mostly of Berol's bird dogs but also of Tootsie the cat and two field trial horses.

1976

April 17, 2011

Plains, GA

Next stop was Plains, GA, home of former President Jimmy Carter. Here is Tessa in front of the old depot, which was used as a campaign headquarters in 1976. During the campaign, a stray dog showed up here and hung around. He became known as J-Who the depot dog. When J-Who died in 1986, he was buried across the depot on the town green.

Training With Mo

April 9, 2011

Piedmont, SC

Today we drove 90 miles to Piedmont, SC to train with Maurice "Mo" Lindley and watch him train other dogs. It was a long 89 F day but it was wonderful. Mo worked quite a few dogs and while we visitors/handlers chatted between runs, he was busy catching pigeons and planting them for the next team. Mo is incredibly generous with his time, land, birds and advice, sharing it with anyone who makes the drive (or flight in one case) to his place on Saturdays.

Here is Mo working with Tessa, practicing the Stand Still command - non-verbally - while another client of his works a Brittany out in the field. This way we can teach Tessa to stand still when another dog goes on point (called backing or honoring) and to stand still through flush and shot (we were using blank pistols and homing pigeons).

I also followed Mo when he was working with other dogs, and there is much to be learned from watching him, like timing of corrections and praise.

To read more about Maurice Lindley and the West/Gibbons method, click here.

Then There Was Light ...

February 13, 2010
Athens, GA (Clarke County)

The next morning we woke up to our 6 inches of snow and a brilliant blue sky. We walked back over to Lake Herrick and I could not believe that we were the only ones out - do people really not care? Well, their loss!

Winter Wonderland:

A Visit To The Iron Horse

February 7, 2010
Greene County, GA

I took Tessa to see the Iron Horse today, for a little lesson in art and UGA trivia.

The infamous 12-foot-tall Iron Horse is an abstract sculpture that was created by Abbott Pattison at UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art and placed in front of Reed Hall in 1954. Back then, art, and metal sculpture in particular, was new to southern universities and the horse was not well received. Just hours after its placement, students gathered around the iron creature, placed straw in its mouth and in front of it, manure at its back, and painted the word "front" on its neck. Balloons were tied underneath the rear legs, and attempts were made to set the horse on fire. When the fire department arrived, the students refused to back away until eventually the fire hoses were turned on the students.

The day after the incident, the university moved the sculpture to a secret hiding place; R.I. Brittain, a university official. said it was unfortunate that students ''on the college level'' had minds on the level of ''grammar school or nursery children'' and ''react violently to anything new, with which they have not had previous experience.'' In 1959, the Iron Horse was moved to its current location on a farm in Greene County, where it now sits in the middle of a corn field, facing south and away from UGA, visible from GA 15 only in the winter. Jack Curtis, owner of the farm, says they are now judging the corn crops on whether or not they can see the horse.

There have been several attempts to bring the Iron Horse back to campus but they all failed.

JH: 0-1

October 18, 2009
ZZ Farm, Baldwin County (GA)

Tessa ran her first Junior Hunter today. The Junior Hunter (JH) is the first of three AKC hunting test, and a most basic one. Pointing breeds are judged in four categories:

Hunting Ability: Dog is scored from '0' to'10' on the basis of whether or not it evidences a keen desire to hunt, boldness and independence, and a fast, yet useful pattern of running.

Bird Finding Ability: Dogs are scored from '0' to '10' based upon demonstration of intelligence in seeking objectives, use of the wind, and the ability to find birds. To pass the test, the dog must find and point birds.

Pointing: Dog is scored from '0' to'10' in this category on the basis of the intensity of its point, as well as its ability to locate (pinpoint) birds under difficult scenting conditions and/or confusing scent patterns.

Trainability: Dog is scored from '0' to '10' in this category on the basis of its willingness to be handled, its reasonable obedience to commands and its gun response. If the handler is within reasonable gun range of a bird which has been flushed after a point, a blank pistol must be fired.

To pass the test and earn a leg towards the title, the scores must average out to 7, with a minimum of a score of 5 in each category. To obtain the JH title, the dog must pass the test four times. Tessa received a score of 8-6-4-7 respectively - not enough to qualify for her first leg. But while I was disappointed that she didn't show one of her nice points, I was very pleased with her performance, especially her nice cooperation.

Being new to all this, I was quite nervous. I decided to walk along with the first brace (dogs are run in twos) to see how things worked and wow, those dogs were mighty, mighty close to the horses. The field was very overgrown, making it difficult to see the dogs and what they are doing. So I was getting a little more nervous. It didn't help that the little Vizsla didn't find a single bird. Apparently, they had been very stingy with the birds, planting about two per brace.

Tessa was braced with Dexter, a 2-year old GSP who is really already at the SH level but was run through the JH anyway. He passed both Saturday and Sunday with pretty good scores. Dexter is an all-business dog that I had met before and I was very relieved to learn that they would run together, as I thought they have a similar work ethic and I was pretty sure they would not run out there trying to play with each other, which will result in a fail if it carries on for too long.

Dangerous Poindexter "Dexter"

We were brace No. 3 and started our 5-minute walk down the trail to the bird field; when we asked to release the dogs they were off like two rockets - what a sight! Both Tessa and Dexter hunt wide, and they covered quite a bit of ground in no time. Now the trick is not to over-handle your dog, because each time you ask it to do something, non-compliance will affect the trainability score. So my plan was to just let Tessa do the hunting and keep quiet. My luck had it that within two minutes Tessa was sidetracked on the wrong trail and the judge asked me to call her back. Uh-oh! Will she come back to me? Please come back to me! And please don't mess with the horses (Dexter's bracemate from the previous day was disqualified because he wouldn't stop bothering the horses; and this was Tessa's first real exposure to horses in the field). I whistled and to my delight she came running at 100 mph, skirted right between the two horses without so much as a glance at them, straight as an arrow, completely unfazed. I started to relax.

When we arrived at the bird field and the clock started ticking (15 minutes to find an point a bird), the first thing she did was stop to eat some horse manure. Then she took a dump herself; we were losing time while Dexter was out there hunting. I started watching her closely for a point. I walked, she ran, and sometimes I ran too to keep up with what she was doing; she figured out immediately where birds had been, and the judge suggested I take her somewhere fresh, these were old bird sites, so I did, and Tessa came along without any fuss. Close to the end she stopped, I could hear the birds chirping in the briars, and she worked all around them, but never went on a convincing point. I thought she may have pointed just enough, and when the birds flushed, I fired my pistol (blank). Hey, at least I got to fire! Then the judge said "15 more seconds". "Oh my" I thought, and "hunt 'em up Tessa", taking her the direction the quail had flown but nope - time up. With a score of 4 out of 10 for pointing, we failed the test but an 8 on hunting ability wasn't too bad, especially since hunting ability cannot be trained for.

The bird field

That was at 2 p.m. At 5 p.m. after the last brace, there was the free for all, and whoever was still there headed for the bird field. Not two minutes into it she pointed, and pointed, and pointed. Oh well!

I would have loved to bring some orange home tonight but I am actually okay with how it went, she was so much fun to watch. I don't know all the scores from today but I overheard a few other fails. One of the dogs in the first brace scored 0-0 on bird finding and pointing. It happens.

Horses 101

October 11, 2009

Clarke, Greene & Oconee Counties, GA

Tessa is going to run in her first JH next weekend and there are a few aspects of it that still make me nervous - the fact that she will be braced with another dog and that the judges will be following us on horseback. Tessa has not had much exposure to horses (my bad).

So today she got a crash course in horses. We drove around three counties stopping at various horse pastures. Overall, it went well. She no longer barks at them. Instead, she watches them, and if they come close enough, she is trying to get them to play. Does she really think these are supersized dogs that smell funny? Who knows.

The horse thing is still a little bit of a wild card but I feel better about it now.

Sawdust Memories

October 3, 2009
Sawdust Cemetery
Siloam, GA

Training Day [1]

September 26, 2009
Jersey, 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.

The Dock Jumpers

September 26, 2009
Jersey, GA

Gun dogs ARE fun dogs! Although they like to look all business in the field.

After another successful and very long training day the pups relax at the wayback pond. John started it all when he wouldn't let Smoke off the dock to get the duck, leaving it to him to either jump from the dock or forget about the duck. He jumped.

While Tessa is an enthusiastic swimmer, she has never jumped from a dock. This one was about 5 feet high, and I wasn't going to start her here, it seemed a little too high for a first-timer. I turned and walked towards the car to grab my camera when I heard a splash and by golly it was my Tessa who had just leaped into the water all on her own! Unfortunately I missed her first dock jump. I was ready for the second one though:

Dock jumping is now on our list of things to do. I believe there are some clubs with the proper setup in the Atlanta area.

The Party Crasher

August 15, 2009
Jersey, GA

Another training day, but not a successful one. I blame the both of us.

Not knowing how hot it would be that day, I had not ordered any birds for her, so except for a few runs through the empty fields, we watched others hunt up birds, with Tessa on the check cord, and that didn't sit well with her. I used the situation to practice "whoa" and heeling but it was tough. In the end I had to take her back to the car as she was over-exciting herself.

We proceeded to the pond. Things went well at first with just us and a few puppies at the pond, and Tessa fetched every dummy I threw. But then others showed up and Tessa turned out to be quite the party crasher, leaving her dummies afloat in the middle of the pond to swim over and grab the other dogs' bumpers, decoys, dead birds. Even those she would only bring halfway before she went after the next one - she wanted all of them! We were obviously disrupting the others' work so back on the check cord she went. I always end each training session on a positive note but today it was really hard to find one.

I like to think she still benefited from the 4-hour outing, getting some good exercise at least, and more exposure to gun shots, but overall, we were not where we should be and I was at a loss. So back to the yard work we go, obedience, controlled fetching exercises, more check cord work and no ponds for now.

Andrews' Geyser

May 31, 2009
Andrews' Geyser

The next morning we head out again and stop first at Andrews' Geyser near Old Fort, NC. It is both Tessa's and my first geyser, albeit an artificial one. It was built in 1885 near Mill Creek and during its heyday it shot 250 feet into the air every few minutes. In 1910 it was repaired and relocated to its current spot, then owned by the Southern Railway, who turned the Geyser and its land over to Old Fort in 1975, and was once more repaired. Today it shoots 80 feet into the air. I understand it is turned on every morning at 10 a.m.

Tessa's Geyser

May 31, 2009
Andrews' Geyser, NC

They Geyser's basin was drained, and Tessa claimed it to take a geyser shower.