Does it need to be a pup? A friend of mine died about 10 days ago, and he had a string of field trial dogs. Don't know what will be happening to them

So, this happened... It’s been a bit of a journey finding a new pup but it was worth every second.

Great looking pup. What's his background?

I got two of the pictures upright anyway. Her parents were both working bird dogs, we bought her from a Mennonite couple is Eastern Ohio. Her temperament is fantastic already at 9 weeks. She has no interest in people food, sits on command and walks along side us with no leash.

For a companion dog, "Heel" is good, "Whoa" is great. "Kennel" is icing on the cake. The earlier the better. My two springers have been gone for years, but I think of them every day.

In the Springer game the stop command is "Hup" It is a contraction of "Bird's up". A well trained Springer, after finding and flushing the bird, is supposed to stop and wait for the retrieve command. An inside gag in Springer field trials is "Don't run out of Hups"

Hup - is correct for flushing spaniels, and the name of a very good book by James Spencer on training Springers.