Charlies Chatter - Mk.2

[Naj]

So is wine.

[Bryn]

its not too bad and you only take a couple of spoonfuls

[trekmoor]

It has now been about 5 months since I last posted into Charlie's Chatter. My cockers were at shoots but received almost no training during all of that time.

I was going to the nearest shop today to buy cigars when Charlie tried yet again to persuade me to take him out. It was pouring rain at the time but I thought I could maybe let him out for a minute in a local park so I took him with me all on his own. The poor wee sods delight at this knew no bounds. I think it must be more than two years since Charlie last got out on his own with me.

I made a spur of the moment decision to take him somewhere more interesting to him than the park. I went into the rough fields and woods close to Livvy Pond. It wasn't until I walked into the beginning of the wood that I realised my footwear wasn't up to the job. I was wearing 5-6 inches high leather ankle boots that are about 10 years old. The ground I was walking over had many marshy spots where the mud and water were higher than my boots. I contemplated turning back there and then but one look at Charlie persuaded me to walk on further into the wood.

That particular wood is about 40 yards wide and Charlie hunted it from side to side and tried to go even further out. I knew rabbits were around right away , Charlie goes up a gear or two when rabbit scent is strong. There wasn't even a hint of his usual mouse hunting behaviour today. I did not expect rabbits to still be out with that heavy rain pouring down ....but they were.

I saw four of them that he flushed from the large bramble patches and managed to sit him to whistle fairly easily but I am sure Charlie had flushed more rabbits than that ....and chased them ! He responded reasonably well to my turn whistles (which I had to use for almost every turn !) but sometimes when I blew turn or even recall he took quite while to return . I suspect he was hot on a rabbits backside when I had blown turn.

At the far end of the wooded strip I took him out into a rashy field in order to tail-wind hunt him back towards my car and his tail was just about all I ever saw of him. His "with the wind" outruns prior to hunting back towards me were taking him 30-40 yards out in front. The rashes were thick on the ground and this ground was even marshier than the wood had been and so , very soon, my feet and my trousers from my thighs downwards were soaking wet ..... and still the rain pelted down.

Even the rabbits had shown enough sense to get out of the rashes and into the slightly drier woods and Charlie wasn't getting the scent he wanted so he tried very hard to get back into the woods during every cast he made to that side. I struggled to control him when he did that and he had two or three little hunts back inside the wood before he responded to my recall whistle.

I didn't have it in me to correct him for this. It has been such a long time since he was last trained and he was enjoying his hour out alone with me so much. He was dancing and doing hind leg only pirouettes in front of me when I recalled him and had a look of unholy glee all over his face. He also had blood all over his face, he had cuts on his face, on his lips, on his tongue and on his nose. He had shredded himself among the brambles.

I was very wet when I got home but I think I enjoyed myself almost as much as Charlie had.

Wullie

[WGD]

It's great to see them having fun.

[Mike A]

Just read CC mk1& 2 , and although you say it was never meant to be instructional I feel I have learnt a lot ! Thanks Wullie
Oh and the Mrs really likes the look of Ned and says we should get one next which came as a surprise as she's still getting over the arrival of Wilf the Sprocker !

[trekmoor]

Thanks Mike, I read a little bit of C.C. myself last week just to remember how Charlie was when I first got him. Charlie will be 7 years old in less than a months time. When it is finally time to retire him from work he will not be an easy dog to replace.

You could do a lot worse than to get a clumber. The breed now has a couple of very good working lines, I'd be very careful where and from whom I bought one . I got very lucky with Ned who is one of the nicest dogs I have encountered in my entire life. Wish I'd had him from a small pup. Ned has converted me and a local head picker-up into clumber enthusiasts and neither of us were keen on the breed to begin with. We both thought they were just big, lumbering, rather stupid show dogs..... Ned made us think again.

I tried to get Ned back here again for some revision training a month or two ago .....mainly because my wife loved Ned to bits ,but so does his owner so I didn't get him back.

Wullie

[Mike A]

We have a shoot down here in the West Country that has a number of Clumbers working on it and I have heard good things about them although never seen them working .
I think a member of this forum works one locally also !
I think my current Ned an 8 year old deaf ESS will have to be retired before another dog arrives something to do with 2 kids under 3 yrs and too many dogs apparently

[trekmoor]

As long as you are not expecting a clumber to be exactly like a springer or cocker in it's style of work a clumber will suit you fine. Clumbers, the good ones that is, have their own style of working. Ned taught me to appreciate that style. It isn't as flashy as a really good springer or cocker's is but it is an effective style in it's own right.

I repeat however, make sure that if you buy a clumber pup, it comes from dogs that are worked and which have ,if possible, a few trial awards behind them. Do not just take a breeders word for it that their dog/bitch is a good worker.

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Mainly Dixie the springer ........... This has been continued from Libby's Diary where, after leaving Libby in kennels yesterday because she has come into season, I brought home with me an old favourite of mine " Dixie" who has been stuck in kennels for about a year and a half. Since I now only have spaniels here I will write about spaniels but mainly about Dixie because my own 3 cockers would get chucked off any self respecting beating line for bad behaviour ! I don't give them much real spaniel work , they are wild and woolly picking-up dogs.

........................................................................................................................................................
Livvy Pond and woods.- 10.30 a.m. - Cloudy , light to moderate winds.

Dogs - Dixie

There is about 40 yards to walk from where I park my car to the start of the woods and Dixie was hustling about as we walked towards them . In an absent minded moment during which I forgot she hasn't been taught heelwork for about 2 years I told her to "Heel." As soon as I said it I realised my mistake and ignored the fact that Dixie had ignored the command. Then Dixie after having scurried on for 10-15 feet following the command suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, looked a bit thoughtful, then moved into heel position and kept to heel the rest of the way to the wood.

She'd remembered the command word after all that time. Dixie is a long way from being a clever dog but if a lesson has been well taught in the first place she has the willingness and the memory to try her best to do as she was taught.

That wood is the first place Dixie was ever taken to by her owner to see what she'd think of hunting. I was there and Dixie at 4-5 months of age had lacked the confidence in herself and in her owner to try to do much hunting. The wood is too thick with far too much cover for a young puppy but it got a bit of a trashing from her this morning. She hunted very fast and hard yet was extremely easy to control at all times. I did see a few things I wasn't too keen on like her stopping to look at me from time to time as she hunted. A small wave of my hand was easily enough to start her again and I hope that as she regains her confidence in me she will cease to look to me for "directions" quite so much.

A few times during the hunt she began to exceed the 15 yards distance from me limit I had set in my mind for her hunt but she turned at once to the whistle. I stop whistled her only once as she hunted ....just to see if she would stop for those woods have a lot of rabbit scent and she stopped at once and went into a halfway down sort of sit among the brambles and broken branches. She is an absolute doddle to hunt, my best behaved cocker is Billy who once won a Novice trial but even he lacks Dixie's ease of handling as a hunter. In Billy's defence I will add that since I got him 4-5 years ago I have systematically ruined him for any future trials !

Dixie's owner had told me that he would be interested in trialing her if she was good enough so I did not wreck Dixie as I wrecked my own cockers for doing "real" spaniel work. I encouraged Dixie from 5 months onwards to always hunt fairly close to me and she doesn't seem to have forgotten those early lessons either. Her owner then became stuck with work and home commitments and poor Dixie ended up doing bog-all but lying about in kennels. I have told him repeatedly that she is just about a fully trained dog and that all she needs to become a trial dog is experience but she never did get that experience. She has been picking-up twice or so with me but has never been shot over........it's a damned shame .........shouldn't happen to a dog.

Anyway ...rant over, I shall continue with this mornings hunt. I saw one other thing I didn't much like during the hunt. She was not always going right into likely bits of cover under fallen trees . She could have missed rabbits or pheasants if any had been present. That wood is very thick in terms of undergrowth and I would have liked to see her make a more thorough job of hunting it.......... I suppose something had to have deteriorated during her period stuck in kennels. I will have to try to improve that. She was not in the least bit frightened of the cover , she hammered through the most of it , but if I was writing out a school report card about her it would have included the words ...." could do better !"

As she hunted I threw out a dummy and got an immediate sit to the cue of the dummy being in the air without having to touch my whistle but, just like yesterday, she made a pigs' ear of the actual retrieve. She lost her mark when she looked towards me and had to hunt for the dummy ....and it was less than 20 yards from her. I then tried her with a marked retrieve from the heel position but she short marked that retrieve and began to hunt where the previous dummy had fallen.

With some reluctance I had to stop and then try to handle her further out . She was willing to be handled but she never was terrific on directional arm signals and she has only got worse during her time in kennels. Eventually I stopped even trying to handle her and just let her hunt until she found the dummy. A lot of work will be needed to improve Dixie's direction taking ..... she just does not understand the arm signals.

The wood is about 200 yards long and she had hunted very hard through all of it but was now visibly "out of puff !" She is very unfit and it shows. On the way back to my car I gave her a very short (30 yards) memory retrieve over short grass and she did that well but dropped the dummy near my feet . Possibly because she was knackered ?

During this mornings 3 retrieves I did a little bit of work on her "possessiveness" of the dummy and had a small amount of success in combating it but that aspect of her retrieving needs more work too.

I'm off to do some dogging-in with her and Billy now ....both dogs are a bit fat and unfit so I hope to run some fat off them or to change the fat into muscle.

Wullie

[Alice]

would Dixie's owner sell her, or come to a 'loan' agreement with someone for her?

Its ridiculous for her to sit in the kennel doing nothing!!