Posts
My Spring time dog training starts 1-2 weeks after we put the guns away.It's nothing fancy just getting out with the dogs who seem to love it! I take 8 dogs with me and run 2 groups for an hour each loop. Because there is no guns involved the focus is totally on my Canine buddies and their bountiful energy.
Dogs are matched based on experience and in some cases tolerance, the later being which dogs will tolerate an 'eager" youngster. The actual training part consists of getting the dogs to handle ,re. calling them is when changing direction, honoring points and stop to flush on birds getting up after the initial point. The later happens a lot , the birds we are finding are paired up Scaled Quail from the 2 coveys that live in the area.sometimes we luck out find a Covey of Mearns.
The Country is cool , it is a Grassland Savannah with some brush lined washes that come off the Mountains .It is wide open and relatively flat , the dogs can get out and rip it up.
They really have to work hard to find the Blue Quail as they are notorious runners.More often than not we get bits and pieces of dog work , a dog goes on point others are called in for the "back" however the veteran birds runoff and what usually happens is they end up flushing wild or flushed by Tish the crazy lab .Sometimes we never see them ! If a pointer bumps or if the birds get up wild the dog(s) are worked on "stop to flush ".I am not really pressuring the dogs to do anything , I am reinforcing on what they have been trained or instinctively do .
The Sonoran Grasslands are excellent Blue Quail Habitat
Dogs that are having issues with manners are ran with check cords , most of the dogs are ran with Training /Locate Callers and in some cases tracking collars.
I try to get out with each group twice a week .Like the Dogs I also like and need the exercise ,the fresh air and seeing the birds .
No comments:
Post a Comment