On Edge

[trekmoor]

Late this morning I was sitting reading and became aware that the lab pup had come in from the garden with something in her mouth. She came to me with it and gave me it. The object was a small, rough stone. I praised her then left her alone until this afternoon before trying a proper retrieve using a large cloth ball.

This was done out on the road of my cul de sac and she did two pretty good but not fast retrieves then dropped the third one beside me. I stopped at that then tried again about 10 minutes ago. Again she did two fairly good retrieves but dropped the third one beside me.

Her noise making is, if anything , getting worse but she is now retrieving.

I did a few retrieves with Edge out in the road too because that was about as far as I could manage to walk. Edge promptly ran in and would not stop until he had the ball. We "had words !"
He tried to run in again and this time I managed to stop him about 12 feet away from me.

I was doing short distance, 25 yards, double marks with him and the dummies were as close as 15 feet apart a couple of times but Edge always went for the one I indicated. I have a feeling he is cheating. I think he is thinking along the lines of....." It was that one last time so it will be the other one this time !"

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Livvy Pond - 8.45 a.m. - Drizzle and a good bit colder than it has been recently. Light winds.

Dogs - Edge

I hunted him for about 100 yards over a mixture of rough grass and spike grass liberally speckled with nettles. He was hunting pretty hard but with an odd pattern that had me using the whistle far too much. I'd made a very stupid mistake, it's time I woke up. I had taken it for granted he would be hunting into the wind for that is the winds usual direction there but as we returned to the car I realised he'd been doing his best to hunt on what had been a tail wind while I did my best to interfere !

His turns to whistle were reasonably good but his stops to whistle were very slipshod. He was turning to face me when I blew stop and then taking two steps back towards me and then stopping in a sort of half-way-sit position. I let this go because I was not sure if he was among nettles.

We found nothing in the field but as soon as we were back to the car I saw 5 rabbits out on the grass verge of the road. Very frustrating.

From there we went to the footie pitches and I left him in the car while I launched 3 tennis balls halfway up the pitch using the baitapult. Then I got Edge out and let him see a fourth tennis ball being launched in the same direction to the same area.

I've been having trouble getting him to understand blind retrieves using my usual method of memory retrieves followed by blind seek-backs followed by "proper" blinds. He easily does the memories and the seek-backs but the next step up into blind retrieves is a no-go area in his head.
I'm now trying to train blinds by using several tennis balls all launched into the same area of which he only gets to see one being launched........the others are all treated as blinds.

He is doing this very well out on the bare grass of the footie field but changing this onto rougher grass where he cannot see there are other balls in the area may prove to be difficult.

The lab pup spent another night in our living room and did no chewing and made no noise and made no mess...............my wife likes this pup ! The pup is considerably more responsive to my wife than she is to me. I took her outside the garden for a walk a short while ago and she walked with me O.K. but maybe it was Edge she was really walking with ? The two of them play constantly.

When we returned to the house Edge and I went back in the gate but the pup would not come with me or even with Edge. She wanted to do more walking . I called her, I whistled for her to come and I signalled for her to come and she responded by having a sit down strike out in the middle of the road.

She was still sitting there with me now down on my knees to encourage her in when my wife called on her from the house in that high pitched, sickly sweet voice that I cannot imitate and Kelly at once got up and ran right past me to get to my wife. Bloody wummin's dug as my auld grandpappy used to say !
It occurs to me that I may have trouble persuading my wife to hand this pup back over in order to train another one.

Wullie

[MDP]

Do all black lab pups not look the same? Swap it out when she's out shopping!

[trekmoor]

I might try that Mike . This pup is doing my heid in !

I've just had her out in the cul de sac again. This time with a thick sock tightly rolled up and straight off my feet. She liked that and did 3 retrieves with it. Then she did two with a rabbit skin covered dummy. The sock was held onto as I praised her but only for second or two before she dropped it.
The rabbit skin dummy was also retrieved three times but she dropped it near me instead of delivering it.
I stopped at that and tried to get her back inside the garden so she did another sit strike in the middle of the road and wouldn't budge until she saw me toss the sock down the garden path, then she went to get it and lay down to chew it.

At the moment she does 2 or at a push 3 retrieves at a fairly good speed and maybe delivers them after that she is bored. I like dogs that always want to retrieve especially if the dog is a Labrador .....it has no other purpose.

Wullie

[Alice]

Do all black lab pups not look the same? Swap it out when she's out shopping!

beat me to it!

[trekmoor]

Me and the lab pup were back out on the road this morning for more retrieve training. This time I used a very light ,small, soft dummy made from an ancient sheepskin coat and a 1/2 lb canvas dummy covered in rabbit fur.

I tried the sheepskin dummy first and she really wanted it (because it is whitish in colour?) . She whizzed out and then whizzed back to me again with it. Out of curiousity I then tossed out the "proper" dummy and she faffed about with it then lay down to chew it 20-25 feet away from me.

Nothing I threw or did after that would persuade her to do as she'd done with that very first dummy. Maybe her teeth are troubling her making a very soft, light dummy the best option ?

She goes back to her owner on Monday so it doesn't really matter I suppose , it's just that I don't like giving in too easily.

Wullie

[Judy]

Maybe she has past history of being bollocked when she has a canvas dummy in her mouth?

[trekmoor]

Don't think so Judy. Almost all of her human contact has been with 3 women, all soppy types ! She has no fear of men but prefers women by a long way. My wife is out tonight and the pup has, for the first time, peed in the house. No doubt I will be ballocked for that when the Memsab returns.
She has also had a bit of a chew on my wifes sleeveless cardigan thingy. Maybe the memsab won't notice, it is a sort of crochet type thing anyway with holes all over it.
.......................................................................................................

Livvy Pond - 4 p.m. - Cloudy and a few spots of rain. Light winds.

Dogs - Edge

We were hunting up the field of rough grass, spike grass and plentiful nettles again. Edge was hunting mainly on a cheek wind and to my eyes was going very well and not pulling out as much as he has recently. Maybe he knows I'm more on the ball now than I've been for the last several weeks.

If that is the case it wasn't enough to stop him running in when I threw a tennis ball off to one side as he hunted. He instantly went after it ignoring the whistle and my annoyed yell. After that I became even more on the ball and there were no more run ins.

My hopes of getting him to understand blind retrieves came to nothing this afternoon. All he did was hunt his way out for a few yards and keep on hunting 30 yards short of the tennis ball. He stopped fairly well to whistle but when given the "back" command he just resumed hunting.

There is a little grassy slope that takes me back to my car. As I neared it's top with Edge back on the lead, I saw a fully grown rabbit run off into some very thick and nasty brambles. Edge hadn't seen it but he winded it at once so I let him off lead again to try for it.

He went apeshit ! He tried various bramble patches and then went into an 8 feet wide by 12 feet long one. Out ran two adult rabbits and just behind them came Edge. He cannot have actually seen those two rabbits for if he had I don't think he'd have stopped or returned this side of Perth !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Livvy Pond - 5.20 a.m. - Cloudy, misty and very light winds.

Dogs - Edge

I couldn't sleep and was bored with just lying there so I took Edge out for a hunt. As I parked my car I could see half a dozen rabbits out on the footie fields but past experience has taught me that they are no use for training purposes as they run for the woods before I get anywhere near them.

I got Edge out of the car, put him on the lead and began to walk towards the rabbits anyway since I had to go that way to reach my intended hunting area. Then the rabbits all ran off , they'd seen a lady with two dogs walking towards them from the far end of the footie field. What the hell is a wummin doing wandering about through woodlands at that time in the morning ? She gave me a funny look as we passed en route to our destinations....... maybe she was wondering what a bloke was doing out there so early in the morning ? Either that or she fancied me !

I began to hunt Edge along the rough strip of spike grass that borders one end of the footie field and which separates the field from the woods. I saw 5 rabbits leave that strip ahead of us but Edge never saw a thing. He was going like the clappers and I had to whistle turn him a few times. Then he chose to ignore the whistle and it took 2 repeats blown more loudly to get him back again from about 40 yards out............we had a little discussion about the probability of my boot meeting his arse before I hunted him on again.

We were now inside the woods and he flushed a rabbit but it was not an "off the nose flush" and he didn't see it so he stopped readily enough when I blew the whistle.

By now I was out of puff so I did some marked retrieves with him. They were not a great success. He was short marking by a good 10 yards due to the situation. A small, tumbledown wall was in the way and he could not see the dummies all the way down to ground level. Apart from that the woods seemed to be full of rabbit scent which pulled him this way and that .

Out of curiousity I threw a dummy as far as I could from the woods edge well out into a field of high, rough grass and nettles. When I sent him for that dummy he went straight onto it.

To get some easier walking for myself I returned to the car by going along one side of the pond. Dogs aren't allowed in there as it is a fishing pond and I am a long-time member with a hatred of Joe Publics habit of letting their dogs into the water. Edge jumped in .

He had seen a "covey" of ducklings flee from the waters edge out into the pond and duck was on his menu I think. What worried me was that he'd jumped in from the side of the vertically sided stone wall of the dam into 12-14 feet of water and getting him back up the side of the dam would mean me lying flat on it's edge and reaching down to scruff him out.

Edge must have found some sort of underwater projection on the dam wall for much to my relief he hauled himself back out just as I was trying to lie flat. He was back out before I could get to my feet, thought this was a great new game and danced all over me gushing scummy pond water as he did so.

There was one short uphill walk to do to get back onto the path leading to the footie fields and Edge got to the top of the rise 20 feet in front of me ...........saw a rabbit out in the open and chased it back into the woods before I even realised what was happening. He quickly lost sight of the rabbit among the thick cover of the woods edge so he battered the hell out of the cover and then returned to me with long strands of sticky plants hanging all over him plus one bramble trailer.
His tongue was bleeding and so was his nose and bramble prickles studded his face but he was very happy looking.

I went home . I'm ready for my bed now I think but I have other things that need doing.
Not for the first time in recent years, I wondered as I drove home if I shouldn't have taken my mates advice and got myself a nice, calm , little Labrador bitch !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

I took Edge out just for a walk at about 8.45 this morning. I saw no rabbits but the ground had lots of rabbit droppings so I gave him a quick hunt and all went well apart from him trying to pull out a couple of times. Then a young lad of about 18 -20 turned up with a young lurcher on a lead.

He came straight to me and asked if there were rabbits in that area and if I could tell him where to go for rabbits. He must have been blind. There were rabbit droppings all around him and rabbit runs showing plainly on the ground and going into the gorse bushes nearby.

I told him bog-all. He will have to get up a bit earlier in the morning if he wants to see rabbits and he will need to be able to recognise rabbit areas by looking for "rabbit sign." I usually try to help folk, especially youngsters but folk with lurchers and folk with ferrets are my enemies around here. They want to kill the rabbits that I need to train my dogs on.

It really surprised me that he didn't seem to notice or recognise the rabbit droppings. I grew up right in the middle of Edinburgh on the top flat of a 4 storey tenement. Surely if I could recognise rabbit droppings before I was a teenager this lad should have recognised them long before he was pushing 20 years old ?

It seems he is another example of someone who thinks the world owes him a living. He has got the dog and now wants other people to show him where the rabbits are.
I see quite a lot of that same attitude from beginners with gundogs. They've got the dog but expect to use other peoples game supply !

Edge is bored. Libby is in kennels so he can't play with her and the lab pup is no longer here either. Charlie and Billy are quite happy to have him lick their faces but they won't play with him. He'll soon have his litter brother to play with ......thank god for that........he is driving me nuts.

Wullie