They grow up quick.

[Phil C]

A puppy one day and a serious hunting dog the next.
Due to some personal issues I have been a little lacks at training my young dog Ollie over the last 6 months.
I had her quartering on a check cord, and had introduced her to pigeons in a release trap when I took a break from training. Not a good way to get a puppy off to a great start.
About 6 weeks ago I started taking Ollie to a local park early in the morning since it was a lot closer than our training ground and started back to getting the basics down.
Back to scratch quartering into the wind and turning on the whistle, whoaing increasing the time to several minutes longer each time out.
I had not shot any birds over her and had not worked on steady to wing and shot.
I traveled last week 250 mile round trip to buy 35 pigeons for training this week, only to have a bobcat get into the pen and kill every bird. ( cat is now resting in a freezer awaiting his transformation into a rug. Trying to make lemonade out of lemons.
Fortunately my hunting partner had a few young bobwhites. Rather small but already flying great and he let me have 4 quail.
Up early this morning and took Ollie and 3 of my older dogs out to our training area where I took them all for an hour run.
Once back at the truck I attempted to put a couple of birds into my bird bag so I could plant them into my electronic trap.
Luck would have it one of the quail escaped and flew off into the tall grass.
My buddy Dave was standing there when this happened and we decided what the heck let’s see if Ollie can find the bird ( it had flown around the truck so we were not sure where it had landed.)
I took Ollie on the check cord and made a wide quartering pattern up wind, darned if she did lock up at about 15 yards from the bird. Dave asked what do you want to do? Want to try shooting a bird over her? Sure why not. She has never had a bird shot for her so I was not sure how it would go. Ollie stood staunch and did not try to move while Dave retrieved his shotgun from the truck.
I put just a little bow in the check cord so I could snap her back to whoa if she bolted. Dave flushed the bird made a great shot, and Ollie never moved. A tweet on the whistle and off she went to find the bird. She found it in the tall grass picked it up but was not sure about retrieving it to me. That’s OK, a great piece of dog work.
I took another quail and loaded it into my trap and headed out leaving Dave to run his dogs.
Went and planted the bird and then back to the truck for Ollie. Decided to let her drag the check cord but let her quarter into the wind in the direction of the bird.
5 minutes later her demeanor changed and her cat walking with her head up signaled she had the scent. She was still 30 yards out and she slowed almost to a stop at 15 yards when I softly said Whoaaaa. Ollie locked up, tail and head high.
Her unwavering stare and rock solid stance convinced me it was OK not to pick up the check cord. I snapped a few pictures then I reached for my release controller, pushed the button and nothing.
The trap would not spring. Damn. I was now convinced this was not going to work out well.
I had to reach down and manually release the trap. Out the bird sprang, and I struggled to get a shot off actually two since I was shooting one of my Parker’s.
Never scratched a feather, as the quail flew away. Incredibly Ollie just stood there.
Wow I thought maybe the good lord decided to cut me some slack today.
I tweeted on the whistle and Ollie made a swing out towards the bird.
That’s when I remembered I had only grabbed the two shells that I had loaded into my gun. I called Ollie back towards me as I needed to retrieve some more shells.
That’s when she picked up the scent and locked up. I had no choice but to tell her Whoa and I walked back to the truck quickly and reloaded.
Ollie was waiting on me still holding. I moved in and flushed the quail this time dropping it. Again Ollie stood there until I released her. It took a few minutes for her to find the bird in the tall grass but she finally did. A few “fetch it here” and she brought me the bird.
I am so happy that despite some challenges in keeping up with her training and issues I had today.I could not have asked for a better training day with Ollie.
A good day today.