Libby's Diary

[Kaiser]

Did they tell you to blow the recall whistle only once Wullie ! Gotta drill those basics in lol

Is Libby in the terrible teenage years period ?

[Bryn]

Think I can see a pattern developing, she seems to be perfect one time out then a complete PITA the next. Nice to get a little schadenfreude with the 'lecturers'

[trekmoor]

Is Libby in the terrible teenage years period ?

I have given her or she has taken, far too much freedom while picking - up. She is now very self confident and that causes problems. She always seems to know where I am even among very thick woodlands even if she is well over 100 yards from me.....but I often don't have a Scooby about where she is ! She believes she can always find me.... I noticed when she was still just 8-9 months old how good she was at finding me. She is self confident enough to believe she can find me whenever she wants to .....so why hurry to respond to whistle ?

I will have to train her more or less spaniel fashion among woodlands but at about 3 times maximum spaniel range until she learns to keep a bit closer to me when hunting woodlands. At present she is hunting at up to 200 yards out from me whether on open ground or woodlands. None of this is her fault, it is all down to the way in which I encourage HPR's to hunt. I like fast, far out and "furious" ....in Libby I got what I asked for ! My first two brittanies were the same and I didn't manage to sort out the woodland hunting distances of my first Brittany until she was almost two years old.

A great deal of her excessive ranging in woodlands is down to me letting her "sweep" the woods I customarily pick-up among at driven shoots. My cockers range out to a good 100 yards at times while sweeping but Libby will do double that ! Since I cannot see her most of the time I am not able to check her ranging distances.

There is, I hope, an "up-side" to this. Her present enthusiasm for game retrieves should carry over into dummy work enabling me to correct her without her "freezing" on me as Rosie the vizsla sometimes does. Rosie hears the stop whistle and thinks she could be doing something wrong so she stops. If I blow it too often when redirecting her she is inclined to "freeze" .... to refuse to try anymore. Libby hears the stop whistle but when she stops she is already thinking about "going" again !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

The Triangle - 12.30 p.m. - Very cloudy ,light winds.

Dogs - Libby

The Triangle is a large area of rough ground that is very scarce in game. It does have pheasants, woodcock, snipe, rabbits and deer but it is possible to hunt a dog there for several days in a row without finding any game at all. I took Libby there today more with the intentions of retraining the stop and recall whistles than to find game. I did far more walking than is good for me and never had any trouble at all from Libby !

She behaved differently right from the start and only occasionally went further out from me than 80 yards. In a place like The Triangle with all its rashes and reeds, thorn bushes, bramble bushes and gorse bushes even 80 yards is a bit too far ....but I had no trouble at all when I began to turn her at 40 yards. I had no trouble turning her or recalling her at 80 yards either and her stops to whistle were immediate at any range too.

After deciding that her good behaviour was due to the lack of game scent I hunted her on and had her only point of the afternoon. She pointed towards a large "splash" in the marsh bordered by high reeds. She was about 30-40 yards from me when she pointed and I lost sight of her as I made my way to her through reeds and little thorn bushes. By the time I got nearer to her she had moved into the splash itself and was standing on point in about 4-6 inches of water. I hoped to get her to flush from where I stood 15 feet back from her for that splash goes up to about a foot in depth and , as usual, I was wearing ankle length leather boots.
Before I could tell her to flush the bird , a single snipe flew off from 10 feet in front of Libby. It had "held" for her point but not for my very obvious and rather noisy approach. It was a good point. One tiny snipe among all that ground and she had found it. She made no attempt to chase and I did not tell her to sit since she was standing in water.

We hunted on and left the marsh for a slightly less waterlogged area where I sometimes encounter a pheasant. Libby hunted herself into some saplings growing among rashes and a roe deer ran past her . I saw the start of a chase and blew stop. She stopped immediately within just a couple of feet . Another deer then appeared out of the saplings and thorn bushes. It didn't see her at all and it was hurrying to catch up on the first deer. It passed by Libby with just a few feet to spare and she did not chase it ....but I repeated the stop whistle just in case !
I let her sit there for maybe half a minute and then recalled her with no trouble at all. This all happened at 60-80 yards from me so why would she not stop to whistle yesterday at about 1/3 of that distance ? I think it was because she was already in hot pursuit of yesterday's deer.

Those two deer and the snipe were all I saw for nearly 2 hours of hunting except for a large buzzard that kept on perching on tree branches near me. I think the damned thing was waiting for me to drop dead ! I was just about tired enough to by then !

Today Libby's behaviour was of the " Butter-would-not-melt-in-my-mouth" variety, she did nothing even remotely "wrong" for the entire hunt.

Wullie

[Kaiser]

What's going on then Wullie ?

Is it that one on one difference that I find happens with my HPR.

Totally at their best under one gun and its handler

[trekmoor]

It could be that she feels she is in competition with my cockers to find game. Libby, as a young pup, followed the cockers but she rarely follows them now. She is what I call a "jealous" hunter and she tries to get away from any dog that might find game before she does. Quite often now it is my cockers that follow her.

She sees Rosie as being a pest when hunting over virtually gameless ground for Rosie does not hunt gameless ground at all well, she tries to get Libby to play with her instead of hunting and since Rosie can easily catch up to Libby she tends to interrupt Libby as she hunts ....Libby does not like that so I rarely hunt both dogs at the same time. Retrieving at shoots is a bit different, my dogs tend to work on the "starburst" system when cast off to sweep the woods for possible shot birds.....they leave me to hunt out to all points of the compass !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Forth Estates - 9.30 a.m. - heavy rain and a moderate wind.

Dogs - Billy, Charlie, Rosie and Libby.

With the exception of the second drive during which no birds fell anywhere near me I has a fairly busy day. As a backmarker I do not expect to get many birds but today I got far more than I expected during the very last drive where between them Charlie and Billy had 13 birds to find and retrieve. I had great difficulty carrying them all back to the game cart and ended up dragging my gamebag over the muddy grass for the last 40-50 yards. Today was the first time I have used that gamebag ....it doesn't look new any more !

I wasn't the only one that was knackered , Billy was too. He went down onto his side about 10 feet from my car and I had to lift him in. He is a big sized cocker and I cannot do too much of that kind of lifting. I think that may have been Billy's last shoot.

Charlie worked well all day as usual. Rosie excelled herself during one drive by finding 4 partridge runners and 3 pheasant runners.

Libby was her usual self meaning that sometimes I could have kissed her and at other times I could have killed her. I sent her for a cock pheasant I saw flying past in thick woodlands, it just looked "wrong" somehow. Libby thought so too and tore off in the general direction the bird was last seen flying. She was gone for at least 5 minutes before she returned with the bird from god knows how far back in the woods but the bird was now dead. I know this can just happen but this bird had damage done to it. I also know that birds hide in places that can be very difficult for a dog to extricate them from. This happens especially in woodlands where birds hide under log piles ,or under fallen trees or among exposed tree roots. I believe in giving a dog the benefit of the doubt when I have no idea of where it picked the bird from so although I gave Libby a thoughtful look I did not judge her.

During that same drive I sent her for the only dead bird she got to retrieve all day. I saw her returning with it and then she saw another likely runner fly past. She dropped her retrieve and went after the bird ....she got it too which gave her a reward for the "drop." I was very unhappy about that but was in no position to even try to do something about it. She completely ignored my command to stop as she went after that still flying bird . I have to give her due praise....she can certainly find runners !

One of the drives today was the one in which I stand all on my own inside the huge deer park with it's short grass and many oak trees. One gun was posted inside the park today and he was the estates owner. He seems to like that peg. It does not get many birds over it but I don't think he minds that...it leaves the better pegs for his guests. A week or two ago he made a point of congratulating me after Libby did one of her long range retrieves in the park.
Today Libby got all three birds that fell inside the park one of which neither that gun nor myself knew was down. All 3 birds were runners and Libby collected two of them from a long way back , right against the boundary wall of the park. The third one she collected as I walked back towards the cars . She was quartering her way back over the park just for the hell of it and she was doing about 200 yards per side at top speed. She swung in towards an oak tree, found a bird there and chased after it and brought it back.

Her retrieve had been seen by the estate owner. He wanted to know what kind of spaniel she was that hunted so hard at such long distances. Libby will soon be rivalling Charlie in both fame and infamy !

She ran in for one bird today even though she'd been sitting just feet from me. I will have to work hard once the season ends to ensure against that happening too often.

It rained for the first 4 drives today. I was wearing the same jacket I have worn for almost every shoot this season. I bought it in a fishing tackle shop because it was lightweight and was very cheap . It cost me £46 in a sale and it came with it's own removable inner fleece. This has been a very wet and windy shooting season but that jacket has not let in one drop of water. It's light weight makes it a pleasure to wear. I'd have liked it to have deeper pockets and a higher collar but that's just nit-picking. I have 3 jackets hanging on their pegs that haven't been worn this shooting season . Each one of those jackets cost more than £200 .... I won't be buying any more fancy, shooting brand names jackets. The cheap one is better !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Bannatyne's Bog - 1.30 p.m. - Very cloudy, moderate to strong wind and cold.

Dogs - Libby.

I began by hunting her where I hoped there would be rabbits today. It has been several months since I last saw what she would do if she saw a rabbit. Back in August and September she was completely steady to them even if I did not blow stop. Since then she has done a lot of "sweeping" completely out of my sight among thick woodlands . While doing that it is likely she encountered a rabbit or two or even a hare or two. I think it is unlikely that she would still be steady to fur.

She hunted the field of rough grasses, rashes, thorn bushes, bramble bushes and gorse bushes very hard and very fast but at a bit too much range for that sort of cover. Her forward bites into the wind were too big for that degree of cover too. There was a possibility that she missed game as she hunted.

When she did come onto point it was at the far end of the field near to the boundary of a very thick and overgrown hedge with a large ditch in it's centre. It was a good strong point so I sent her into the large bramble bush to try to produce some game. She failed to shove anything out on her first try but with no encouragement needed she re-entered the bush and gave it another hunt through. This time a rabbit ran out but unfortunately she did not see it. I still don't know if she would chase rabbits or not.

She was very easy to handle most of the time but I think she found another rabbit a few minutes later as she hunted into a strip of woodlands I could not get into or see her in. She took a repeat of the recall whistle to get her back out of there.





The white bit in the middle of the pic is Libby moving into the brambles.


Then I took her snipe hunting and it was "all change" as far as her range and pace were concerned. She went into "slink mode" at the first hint of snipe scent. It's not often I see her in slink mode , certainly not on pheasants anyway !

The edge of the bog where we began the hunt.


She found and produced just one snipe , it was the only one I saw today. Her point was positive , her flush was slow and steady and she made no attempt to chase the flushed bird. I did not tell her to sit to flush as she was standing in water at the time, so was I and my ankle boots weren't quite tall enough !



Wullie

[LJR]

Lovely to see her pointing the snipe.

It makes me chuckle when she behaves because you don't seem to expect it!

[trekmoor]

I had an almost completely wasted journey today when I took Libby a few miles away to try to find out if she is still steady to rabbits ....or not ! I took her to the same place where during the summer I often saw rabbits by the dozens out on one particular field.
While not expecting to see dozens today I did hope to see maybe half a dozen.

Just as I began to walk the path that runs alongside that field a bloke got in front of me with 6 dogs , three on the lead and three not. The dogs did not enter the field but the noise they made did. At least two of them were barking their heads off ! The man was one of them there " mercenary dog- walkers !"

I hung back from him hoping for some peace but one of the dogs , a snauscher or however you spell it kept on running back to me to bark at Libby and growl at me. I got p'd off with it and offered to shove it's teeth down it's throat. The man began to shout on the damned thing .... "Mindy, Mindy ..... come on back here and get a biscuit Mindy !" He repeated this over and over and Mindy couldn't have given a toss !
Eventually I gave it my best snarl which is not a pretty sight since I only have half a dozen teeth and it bogged off.

I sent Libby into the field but if a rabbit had been out there it wasn't there now. Libby only went 40 yards into the field, sniffed the wind then returned to me. Sometimes you just have to take the dogs word for it when it tells you there is no game nearby.
I was satisfied to take her word for it since that field was about as bare of cover as a dog's bone is of meat. I could see no little grey blobs out on the field.

In order not to have a completely wasted journey I took her along to the very thick and nasty cover at the far end of the field. My cocker Charlie loves that cover , he makes his own tunnels into the thick brambles, willowherb stalks, thorn bushes, dog-rose bushes etc. that grow there in profusion.

Libby will never equal Charlie's exacting cover hunting standards but she did damned well for an H.P.R. I encouraged her to enter the first lot of cover and after that she did it all by herself. She went right into it and came out the far end 30-40 feet away...she even got herself inside the bare grass field which has a supposedly dog proof fence between it and the cover.

I was satisfied that she'd have done her best to flush out any rabbits still above ground but that cover has lots of rabbit holes hidden among it.

Since I could still hear the dog walker shouting and his dogs barking away off in the distance I just returned to my car from there. Libby had responded well to my turn whistles and on the only stop whistle I had given her ,she had stopped dead in her tracks.

Libby trying to be a cocker spaniel.







Wullie