reflections and redirections

[trekmoor]

I warn you now that this episode is not for those of a squeamish disposition .....
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The shooting season ended and, since she had now won a trial, I mated Tess to a local F.T.Ch. later that spring and I intended keeping a pup myself for I'd found that picking-up was better done with 2 dogs. That shooting season I had slowly come to my senses and had realised that the best place for potential trial dogs to be at big driven shoots while picking-up was a long way back from the guns. More often than not I still go picking-up as a back marker. Back marking provides more quality birds to retrieve, close marking to the guns provides quantity but doesn't teach the dogs a hell of a lot......not of anything you'd want them to learn anyway !

While back-marking I discovered I still had a problem with runners. Tessa found some but not others and very often the "others" were the easy birds, the ones where I could see her work. Not until her litter was born and grew to be about 11-12 weeks old did it finally dawn on me where I had been going wrong ......more about that later.

My training came to an abrupt stop soon after the season had ended , I was walking from my house to a bus stop when I almost collapsed and did scream in pain. I went home and then walked to the doctors where he at once did his nut at me for walking about and cast aspersions on my sanity. I had never heard of it but I had something called a "torte teste." Apparently this is very dangerous as the blood supply to your wotsits gets cut off as the teste spins on it's cord. You then get gangrene .....not pleasant if you have any further use for your marriage tackle or maybe your life.

I was whisked off to hospital in an ambulance straight from the doctors surgery and was given only enough time to briefly inform my wife of where I would be. Once at the hospital it was a bit like the army....hurry up and wait there ! I was seen by a doctor quickly but then had to wait in a ward for my turn on the chopping block or operating table.

While waiting I discovered I was now in desperate need of a widdle and was provided with a flask thingy. No matter how I tried I could not "go" into that thing while sitting on top of a sort of miniature life belt in the bed. I asked for a screen to be put around the bed to let me try to "go" while sitting on the edge of the bed or maybe standing up ......those things did not work either and my efforts to "go" had made me even worse.

A doctor arrived who told me I would be taken to the toilet in a wheelchair by two nurses who would assist me to stand once in the toilet . He added that if I could not "go" while standing with a screen around me beside the bed then I had no chance of performing with a nurse on either side as spectators. Somehow I didn't think I would mind that.

On arrival in the toilet I was assisted out of the wheelchair and very firmly held on to by the nurses. They had a grip on each of my arms that did not allow me to reach the neccessary appendage. With no further ado one of those kind ladies did the holding for me and I tinkled away merrily for ages and ages !

I think I must have been too well potty trained as a small child to widdle in a bed or anywhere near one for I certainly managed fine once well away from it .....nurses are wonderful things . I must admit I have a thing about wummin in uniforms !

Just a short while later I'd had the pre-op injection and was floating away nicely while gibbering non-stop. As I was wheeled out of the ward up came a nurse who asked me if I had any valuables that needed looked after ..... ! I can't remember much about it but I was told later I'd replied , "Yes, the buggers are aboot to operate on them !" I can remember the laughter in the ward from the other poor men in their beds.

The following day or it might have been the day after that a very young and rather lovely nurse arrived at my bed. She told me she'd been instructed to put a truss on me and she wheeled me off to a side room to do it. I looked at the truss she produced and was highly dubious about it's size but nursie knows best so I said nothing. I had been going to put it on myself but she said she'd been instructed that she must do that .

The lassie did her best and blushed furiously while trying to put my wobbly bits into the pouch. After a while I suggested I have a try at it but she still would not let me.
This continued for a couple of minutes more and by now I was feeling very sorry for her and a bit sore myself .....you try sticking your bits into a wee truss while the stitches are in and see how you feel ! I again offered to help her out and this time she reluctantly accepted. I don't think she wanted the other nurses to know she could not manage to do this.

Between us we managed to stuff the now throbbing damned things into the truss and I was wheeled back to my bed. I was in pain and the pain got worse, I went to the toilet and removed the truss after an hour or two. When I did so the skin covering my sac came away with the truss or was left hanging in ribbons from my wobbly bits. The blood supply had been cut off by the truss.

The doctor and the ward sister went ape-shit but the damage had been done. It seems the older nurses had played a little joke on the young nurse. No doctor had ordered that truss put on me. As you can imagine red raw knackers take a while to heal. I was not able to walk about much for a couple of weeks between having the stitches still in and having red raw goolagongs.

My dog training came to an end for a wee while as I grew some more skin. I could probably have sued that hospital but I had no intentions of getting that little dolly bird nurse into any trouble so I did nothing about it.
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to be continued
Wullie

[Alice]

fantastic, can't wait for more!

edited to add: we were typing at the same time there Wullie, my 'fantastic' refered to the previous post not your poor injured crown jewels!

[Martinp]

did the young fit nurse get a bollocking?

[trekmoor]

Not from me she didn't , mine's were too sore to swing 'em !

Wullie

[Martinp]

Not from me she didn't , mine's were too sore to swing 'em !

Wullie

ha ha ill bet

[trekmoor]

Following that seasons trials my gundog club moved me up a little bit in "rank" to training the dogs and the handlers doing more advanced retrieving. I enjoyed that even more for things like heelwork and sits and stays rather bored me. They still do.

Tessa was doing well in Open tests and won a couple and got placed in a couple more. She got mated and that went well too.
She was a great favourite of my mothers but my mother knew nowt about dogs. She asked me just after she was mated what had happened at the mating so I told her the truth. The big male lab had come into the courtyard from his kennel, took one sniff and then jumped on board the "Skylark." That was it ....job done.

My mother was horrified and said , " What ? !!! Didn't he even look at her face ? " I rolled about laughing in an armchair while my mother, who liked her offspring to be well behaved, set about reminding me not to laugh at my mother . She banged me about the head and shoulders , she was a firm believer in aversive training ! That made me laugh all the more so I got walloped all the more by that tiny but very determined woman.

Tessa's pups arrived and I chose one of the bitches and called her Sally. I made just about the worst mistake I have ever made with any dog while training that pup and it was completely avoidable and was caused by utter stupidity and the inability to see what was right in front of my face. More about that later for before I ballocked up her training she showed me why I was also ballocking up her dam's work on following runners.

Sally was about 11 weeks old when I was forced to take her with me partridge shooting on the seasons opening day. Sally was a world class chewer and at that time I did not have a kennel to put her safely away in . My wife was going out to the shops ....as usual .... so Sally went with her dam and my mate's spaniel in the back of his little white van. I left Sally in the van and went out over the stubbles in search of partridges.

We returned to the van with no partridges , we hadn't seen any. Tess and the spaniel were put back inside the van but no sooner had that been done than my mate saw a covey of partridge flying by, closed his gun and fired. A bird dropped from the covey but I hardly even looked at it, I was turning to see if my pup looked scared by this very close to gun shot.

She was no longer in the van, she was galloping as fast as he could manage towards the partridge about 40 yards away. She had seen it fall and she had at once escaped from the van and ran in . I didn't think she had a chance in hell of finding it so I left her alone with the idea in mind to get her back without me chasing off after her once she'd got fed up looking for it.

My mate meanwhile, was busy apologising for having fired those shots, he'd forgotten the pup was so nearby. We sat on the back of the van to wait for Sally to return before sending one of the other dogs for the partridge. My mate then said , "The little bugger is right on top of the bird." But the bird was no longer there. It had ran off down the slope of the field hidden from view by the plentiful ridges of waste crop stems lying in drifts all the way down the field.

Sally put her nose hard to the deck and followed the line. She was fascinating to watch and I left her to it still thinking that she'd never find the bird. She found it about another 40 yards out as it hid inside a drift of crop stems. She touched it and the bird jumped about a foot in the air before landing again. Sally backed off when it jumped but then went in to grab it. She got the body grip she wanted and came lolloping in her puppy way all the way back up the field to me where I received her bird as I sat on the floor of the van.

I hadn't blown a whistle and I hadn't said a word to her during this entire episode. Pure instinct had got that bird into her mouth and back to me. I now knew that what was wrong with her dam when sent for runners was me ! I'd been thinking I knew better than the dog did yet every dog is born knowing more about scent than I will know on the day I die. I'd been trying to handle Tess onto runners instead of just leaving her to sort it all out for herself.

That was why she'd been so poor on runners that fell on open ground. I'd handled her to where I thought the bird would have gone even when she knew better. The reason she'd been good on runners that fell in thick woodlands was that since I could not see her to handle her I'd been forced to leave her alone to get on with it ! It took an 11 weeks old pup to switch on my brain cell.

Since then I have done my very best to stick my whistle inside my jacket and to keep my mouth shut and my arms by my sides when sending dogs ....especially pups..... for retrieves. I do no "formal" tracking training whatsoever. My dogs do what comes naturally .... when dogs are given enough opportunities to practice their bred for art.

Sally was already walking to heel and sitting to voice and to whistle at about 11 weeks old and she was already steady to dummies .......I was to regret training her all of those things so early in just a few more months. I believed she would be a fiery sort of dog just like her dam . She came from a very "hot" dam mated to a F.T.Ch. so to my mind she would be even hotter and better than her dam, I was very wrong on the first of those things and was maybe wrong on the second one too. Sally was not her dam re-incarnated , she was a damn good dog in her own right and in her own way.
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To be continued
Wullie

[trekmoor]

Within a couple of weeks of Sally doing her first and I think, her last run in on freshly shot game I entered her for a little puppy test. She won it even though the judge , a very keen field trialer and "A" panel judge was trying to "help" me. She was easily the youngest pup competing but back then clubs made their own rules about tests with no K.C. interference.

Pups back then could be talked to as much as the handler wanted to as they were worked . They could be given repetitions of sit or stay or heel commands with no marks deducted. Sally didn't need any command repetitions but I talked to her throughout the 25 yards long walk to heel, about turn and 25 yards back again just to be sure ...to be sure ! The judge promptly knocked off half her points for that exercise saying that as I had now entered the ranks of the Open trial dogs his marking down of me would teach me to keep my mouth shut when it didn't need to be open ! It was "tough love" and like it or lump it back then ! I did protest a little about this saying that the rules allowed talking to pups and that the other pups competing had also been talked constantly to.

He countered this by asking me which of the other competitors were competing with their dogs at Open trial standards. The answer was none at all so I accepted his on the spot rule making and the loss of marks, she still won anyway. Her retrieving saw to that.

That shooting season Sally had been out picking up with me and her dam several times. Sally had retrieved dead birds and a few runners. She was rock steady but loved retrieving with a passion. One day the keeper asked me to accompany a walking gun as the beaters hunted a long strip of woodlands towards the line of guns waiting on the short grass field beyond the woods.

I happily complied for walking up practice with birds being shot was exactly what I wanted for Tessa and for Sally too. I walked along sending Tess for the few birds my walking gun got. Some birds fell out in the bare field we walked on , some fell into the thick woodlands which wasn't so good for the beaters dogs were just a tad inclined to run -in !

I made up my mind not to send Sally into those woods , I didn't want my pup to be beaten up and have her bird forcibly removed from her by any hairy assed beaters spaniel ! I'm talking about the spaniels asses here and not the beaters but it wouldn't surprise me at all if some beaters had asses as hairy as their dugs !

Tessa was already off looking for a bird in the woods that may or may not already have been pinched by a beaters dog when the gun hit another bird that again fell well inside the woods somewhere. The gun looked at me expectantly and I was being paid to pick up and not to train field trial dogs so I sent wee Sally. Off she went and I saw her no more until the very end of the drive and the wood.

I next saw Sally sitting right beside one of the guns out in the field. I very thankfully went to collect her but she was perfectly happy sitting there with no lead on at the guns heel. He had a little pile of birds beside him too. The other nearby guns gathered around and informed me of Sally's "doings."

Apparently she had trotted out of the wood with a bird in her mouth some time before , she was looking a bit worried but trotted over to a gun and gave him the bird ....then sat by his side facing back towards the woods to await further orders ! She had remained there perfectly steady as birds fell all around . She was sent only for the runners by the gun and had retrieved them to him before again sitting patiently at heel to await further orders.

The guns had found this not only amusing but very impressive .....especially when they found out she was still well under a year old ! I had several offers made to buy her right on the spot. I refused to sell her , I had high hopes for her in trials.

It was about then that I ruined her. I had already done heelwork and steadiness lessons a bit too soon but not until I added some very advanced directional training to this did I really manage to muck her up. Poor wee Sally, I trained the "sting" right out of her. Her dam had taken it and asked for more but Sally was not Tessa , Sally was a soft and even sensitive pup that needed a more gentle and prolonged , in terms of months, training regime. I pushed her too hard and too much and too soon. She did everything asked of her but she lost her "pace."

I entered her for trials while she was still very young . She ran at just 3 trials and gained (I can't remember which) either 2 second places and one third place or two third places and one second place. I do remember the last trial I ran her in . She'd got through to the afternoon and she was to be sent for a bird, thought to have ran from the fall, that two previous dogs had failed to find.

She got out to the fall area in a straightline from where I stood in an unhurried manner. Down went her nose and she set off trit-trotting her way down the snowy wood. A few minutes later she trit-trotted her way back to me with the bird in her mouth.

My judge told me then ..."She's feckin good Bill but she isn't going to win. She looks like you've forgotten to bring your key with you to wind her up with !" The other judges must have agreed with his assessment for she was awarded another "Bridesmaid "position , she came in either second or third.

I wanted brides not bridesmaids and , back then, I went trial crazed for a while. I decided to ignore the fact that she was one of the best gamefinding yet completely steady and very easy to control labs I had ever seen ....or have ever seen since, I decided to "move her on." I was young and still wanted trialing recognition ....or even better trial fame. To this day I am thoroughly ashamed of my failure to recognise that Sally was not her dam and could not be trained in the same way if she was to remain fast. You never get the same dog twice .... NEVER !

I redeemed myself slightly by not looking for big money for Sally. I knew a few very wealthy guns who would have been delighted to buy her but I didn't know them well enough on a personal basis to trust selling Sally to any of them. I also knew a young man with a young family who had started to go shooting and who had never owned a dog in his life. He was a very big, powerfully built man of endless good humour and I was very happy to "sell" Sally to him. I didn't actually sell her, I swapped her for what he could afford which, since he was a welder to trade, was a 8 feet x 4 feet section of weldmesh for the kennel I was building out on my balcony on the top flat of my council house.

She went to him as the gundog bargain of the century but I have never regretted that he got her. She lived a long and very happy life with him as a gundog /pet with his young family. He informed me that she was so good as a gundog he'd entered her for and ran her in another Novice trial . She hadn't won, she had been placed yet again . He accepted that very readily and just said ...." Feck trials ! She can beat the lot of 'em hands down when it comes to real work !" If I had taken the same attitude I could have saved myself the heartache of "selling" my bridesmaid.

I don't regret my friend getting my dog , she could not have gone to a better home. I do regret the reason why I moved her on . I was still young, fame hungry and stupid. Nowadays I no longer qualify for those first two descriptions but the third description often still apllies rather well .
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To be continued
Wullie

[LJR]

Loving this thread - thank you for taking the time to keep us entertained!

[Merlin]

Loving this thread - thank you for taking the time to keep us entertained!

+1

[Martinp]

Loving this thread - thank you for taking the time to keep us entertained!

+1

+2