Charlies Chatter - Mk.2

[trekmoor]

that trick with the miniature is surely treachery worthy of the English!!

Yes, I've got my suspicions about Robert's ancestry .... in fact I've called him a b-tard several times !

Wullie

[Polmaise]

Awww normal service is resumed...

Rascal

Gawd help us !
Edinburgh council Care in the community programme is now on standby ,for more overtime!

[Everything's Rosie]

so here's me worrying about ye, and you're off moonlighting.

[Rapido]

Glad your back.

[trekmoor]

I am now pondering on which - if any - of my mutts to run in tests this year. Billy retrieves dummies honestly but with little enthusiasm. Charlie is a bit too "cute" for tests . He takes one look at the set up , knows what happens next and just diddles about in front of me waiting for his turn to be sent for a dummy. Dax is a wee bit better but he too is a bit too genned up on the sequence of events and if there is water present then Dax would be into it whether a retrieve fell in it or not ! Three cockers and not a decent test dog among the lot of 'em.

Looks like I'm left with "Dizzy Lizzie " alias Dixie, my whirlygig specialist. All of the dogs with the exception of Dixie have had a lot of picking up work and a lot of "sweeping" to do at least once per week during the shooting season. One things for sure .... the judges wouldn't be able to call my dogs boot polishers ! I'd better make a start very soon to reining them in a bit.

Maybe I could call Rosie a spaniel and run her ....... she at least doesn't go horizon hunting !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Forth Estates - 1 P.M. - Sunny but windy and cold.

Dogs - Rosie and Dixie

This was a hunting trip for the remainder of the seasons birds. I thought the birds would be in the game crop but about a 1/4 of a miles worth of trampling through it hunting Dixie was enough to prove otherwise. I never saw a thing. As soon as I left the car behind Rosie, who'd been left in it, let her feelings be known ........ what a bloody noise ! I could still hear her nearly 200 yards away !

Dixie was hunting very hard but far too wide . I noticed that where the field bordered a wood Dixie did not tackle the brambles until I told her to. When the game crop ended I took her into the wood and hunted her there among fallen branches and a good number of rhodie bushes. It was in these bushes that Dixie began to find pheasants . A wee bit to my surprise Dixie stopped to whistle after flushing them. I'd thought she would chase them since her only experience of pheasants has been the ones she's seen while picking up. Dixie is a pretty easy bitch to keep control of ..... usually. I think she found about 6 birds and saw about another 6 which didn't hang around for her to flush them. She also flushed a roe deer which got up just 30 feet from me but on the other side of a bush from Dixie. She didn't see it.

She'd hunted for about 1/2 a mile and her tongue was hanging out so I took her down to the river. The bank was high and steep but she was very thirsty and went in . She drank as she waded and swam about.

When I'd put Dixie back in the car and set off with Rosie to hunt yet more game crop it looked to begin with like I was going to get another hunt like the one she did almost a week ago during which she could have been beaten as a hunter by an arthritic snail with a bunion ! It took her about 80 yards and two poos and a piddle before she began to shift her ass but when she did she shifted it just a bit too well. She was hunting through a root field of thigh high game crop and she was well over 80 yards out at times ...... too far out for that kind of cover. She pointed near to the crest of the hill above me but was 60 yards from me. Long before I could get near to her she'd broken her point and moved in on the bird . I saw the bird fly but couldn't see Rosie as she was now over the crest of the hill and in any case all I would have seen of her might have been her tail waving just above the crop.

I suspected Rosie was now chasing the bird she'd flushed and I was correct for 2 more birds flew back over the hillcrest and towards me fortunately bringing Rosie galloping back underneath them. From there I went into another game crop which was some sort of cereal mixed with turnips. We were going downhill by now and I could see well ahead ..... even if I couldn't see Rosie ! It is a bit disconcerting to look out over a sea of turnips and wonder where the f-ck your dog is. Rosie kindheartedly let me know her position by chucking birds into the air from time to time ! She was hunting at more than 100 yards out from me which is about 3 times more than I wanted among that sort of thickly planted crop. I got her back and tried again , she found more birds but didn't point any of them for long enough for me to reach her.

By now I'd walked about another half mile and done most of it through turnips which, if you haven't tried it, is utterly knackering ! Rosie still looked as fresh as a daisy , not even a hint of her tongue hanging out even though she must have ran several miles to my half mile walk. I needed a rest even if she didn't so I took her for a drink at a nearby duck pond.

Rosie wasn't even thirsty , she took 2 or 3 quick slurps then resumed her hunt mode around the pond ending up almost directly opposite me. I blew recall expecting her to retrace her steps. Instead of doing that she took the direct route back swimming strongly across the pond. Rosie is just about the most inconsistent working dog I've ever trained. Very few HPR's swim if they don't have to but it seems that Rosie will ..... if she takes a notion to do it. Her hunting can be pretty good but is all too often pretty damned awful.

I'm going to put it down to her being a "wummin" ....... and you know what they are like !

Wullie

[Megsdad]

I've done a bit of writing on a couple of U.S. fora recently..... F.F., Chain gangs and e-collars. My scatterbrained way of training dogs is pretty alien to them and I think I am now tolerated as "that crazy Scots git !"
I kinda like our cousins from across the pond , when not too flabbergasted by my witterings I get back a good class of insults and a few compliments.

Wullie

No idea what F.F. is. But there's an obvious export market here for the 'Scottish Dog Witterer' with lots of kilts, sporans and bagpipes.. The yanks love all that Braveheart stuff.

[trekmoor]

F.F. is short for "Force Fetch" a method of teaching the retrieve common on both the continent and in America and , I think, in S.Africa too. There are several ways and several degrees of pressure/pain used to teach this method . Although I can and have trained non-gundogs by using one of these methods I don't like any of them and would not use them now even if a dog would become a F.T.Ch. if I did train it in that way. My "excuse" ..... I cannot call it a reason for using this method more than 40 years ago was that I had a Cat and Dog home rescue dog back then that had a very strong chase instinct but no retrieve instinct that I could ever awaken even after several months of trying . I wanted to win in the Obedience arena and so I trained him F.F.. I didn't really know how this was done "properly" and so I did it my way ....... ear nipping and pushing in the dumbell to get the dog to take and to hold all in one fell swoop ! It took me probably less than one hour of concentrated work in the hallway of my house and at the end of that hour I was a mental wreck, the dog wasn't happy but he was retrieving.

If I remember correctly that was on the Wednesday afternoon and I'd entered him for his first ever Beginners and Novice obedience tests at Ingleston show grounds on the Saturday . I worked on him on both the Thursday and the Friday and even at the test ground itself "generalising" his retrieves to other articles and to outdoors. He won both Beginners and Novice that Saturday and then when after winning the Novice I was standing among a group of people boasting about how I'd accomplished this in just 3 days ........ the dog pissed right down my leg ! Good for him is what I think now but back then it certainly brought me down a peg or two in a big hurry !

F.F. does work very well if it is taught well but I don't like it and will not use it now. I no longer think wanting to win is a good enough reason to do that to a dog.
That particular dog was very, very "hard" both physically and mentally. A soft dog would have cracked up under the pressure I put him under. I did far too much, far too quickly all in that one hour in my hallway for any "normal" dog to cope with. I'm not proud of that now ....... every time I think of it I catch myself mentally apologising to that long dead dog.
The dog became a very good and believe it or not a very keen retriever. When he reached about 4-5 years old I needed a gundog and he became "it" with no trouble at all. He was keen, he was fast and he was an exceptionally good "handling" dog. He was also completely soft mouthed which surprised me rather a lot !

Wullie

[Ghilliegumdrop]

What happened Bill.....did you get a bit over excited watching Sparticus again? All those big bare boobs on bodies in the pool, I see they had an orgy last night and the ones that were naughty got their throats split, blood every where just like a shoot day it was.

[trekmoor]

Events close to home will mean I won't be going either far from home or for very long away from home this weekend..... a family thing.

I had been invited to "pick up" with one of two of my dogs as half a dozen blokes shot the hordes of woodpigeons that have descended upon a local estates fields. I was due there today but could not go. Same thing applies to the Cold Game Day I was to help out at tomorrow.
I took the dogs out for about an hour before heading home again today but that didn't work out too well either. My mind was not concentrating on the dogs.

Livvy Pond Woods - 12.15 p.m. - Very cloudy and a bit drizzly with moderate winds.

Dogs - Charlie, Billy, Dax and Dixie.

Things started off O.K. with Dixie doing a couple of nice marked retrieves into some thick woods with heavy undergrowth. Then I tried memory retrieves through the woodlands which all the dogs did fine except for Dixie. She just did not seem to memorize where the dummies were ..... and she had a choice of 4 all lying just a few yards apart. She was also the first dog sent back to get one which should have made things easy for her .... but didn't.

I headed back towards the car and let the dogs have a free run . 40 yards from me inside the woods I thought I heard a bird make an odd sort of noise but it wasn't a bird Dax came back with. He had a fully grown rabbit in his mouth and Billy was right beside him ....just in case he dropped it ! I didn't see it happen but I have a feeling that it was Billy that caught this rabbit and Dax then took it from him.

I took the rabbit from Dax and killed it to be used as a retrieve for Dixie, I don't think she's ever had a rabbit to retrieve. I tossed it just 10 yards and sent Dixie who picked it by an ear, started back, dropped it , picked it up again and retrieved it by holding it's rear haunch. I tossed the rabbit back into the wood as food for the foxes and walked off with the dogs at heel . Once back at the car I began getting the dogs back in but Dixie was 60-70 yards away bogging off back towards the woods and the rabbit. That rabbit was well over 100 yards away but that didn't cause Dixie any problems this time ! Her earlier memory retrieves had only been 30-40 yards and she had failed them miserably but she didn't fail on the rabbit. She reappeared from the woods within 30 -40 seconds with the rabbit and she was holding it properly too.
She returned to me at full pelt and did a very nice delivery of the rabbit ...... much to the horror of a young woman walking nearby who said I was cruel. With the mood I was in I only just restrained myself from telling her to bog-off and hug a tree somewhere.

Wullie