Unfortunately, Maple was hot only in the sense that it was
blazing hot today. Not a cloud in the
sky and nearly dead calm. It was one of
those days when you guzzle a quart of ice water and still don’t need to urinate
because you’re sweating it out as fast as you drink it.
Started dogs had 3 land marks, all at 75 yards. Maple nailed the first. The second was thrown from under a tree to
the base of a stand of sagebrush. The
path to the bird was through some brush and sticks. Many of the dogs started hunting right after
they went through the brush. Maple kept
going to the area of fall, but then couldn’t find the bird. The judge thought
it was because the (very faint) breeze had completely died down and there was
nothing to carry the scent. But trying
to analyze why dogs have trouble with some birds is a lot like trying to guess
what they scent when they’re looking for an article. Who knows? She looked for a long time in the heat. I think she would have looked even longer if
it had been cooler.
Since it was a small NAHRA trial and NAHRA is much less
formal than AKC, the judges had the bird girl toss the second bird again so she
could find it. They also let Maple get her third bird. After the qualifying dogs had run their 2
water marks, they let the non-qualifiers run the water marks if we wanted
to. I most definitely wanted to, because
retrieving in water is a big reward for Maple.
She got both her water marks, despite a detour on the first bird to
check out the decoys. I’m a bad
trainer. I bought a bunch of decoys a
few weeks ago, but have twice forgotten to bring them when I’ve had a chance to
train in water. Maple ignores them when I put them on the ground, but water is
different. She needs to see more decoys in water in practice!
The decoy incident was interesting in another way. There were four decoys in a line parallel to
the shore. The dogs had to swim through the line. Maple swam to the first
decoy, quickly ascertained that it wasn’t a real duck, and swam down the rest
of the line to check out all of the decoys.
The judge behind me commented that she would now go for the real bird. “If
she still remembers where it is,” I said.
“I think she will,” he said.
Maple turned in the water and swam straight to where the duck was on
shore. I guess she did remember it, after all.
On the second duck, she totally ignored the decoys and went straight for
the duck.
Poor Maple was panting all day long. We went directly back to the hotel after the
water series. I turned the A/C so high I
had to get under the covers. Me and
Maple napped and snacked the rest of the afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment