C'mon and meet Tinker...

Three and one-half months in, she is getting moments of being more serious about things.

Her retrieving is excellent to date, although it will take real time work to test it truly. She's less anxious in the car, and after two trips in the fishing boat, almost completely at ease on the water. I haven't gone near any of the geese as yet, so absolute control remains to be seen. Haven't taken her out in the square stern canoe (Golden Hawk) as yet. I fully anticipate an adventure. By the end of the second boat trip, she jumped up on the dock, then back in the boat and then back to the dock...just messing around, in comfort.

Crops are in in the former pastures, so we'll wait for them to mature a bit before walking the crik again. The ducks can rest easy for a bit.


She's reached the "annoying" stage of tennis ball retrieval. :(

But a sweetheart, still.

We got time.
 
Looks like just a little love will set things right. My current dog is a rescue that I got at nine months, but no prior hardship nor hunting. He became a good huntin' dog first season at one year and has been dandy since.
 
Four months in...

We're working on long retrieve and sustained "whoa" commands, with some hidden wing searches from time to time.

She's still a doll, and typical GWP personality and character. Been out in the fishing boat and the canoe a few times and, while she'd like to move around a bit more, she's been very good at settling down and just riding along. The Springer, Mick, goes from side-to-side much more, but then, he's looking for wild birds to ... well, I don't know exactly what he thinks he's going to do, because they're always flying or swimming far away from us, but he's all over the boat if not corrected.

New-ish pocket camera pix, which won't load because of "500 Error," whatever that is. (Tried three times, same error message, but pictures loaded on another forum with no problem. ?Dunno?)

The dog bounces and jumps like a Jack Russell Terrier.
 
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Tried Photobucket, which has its own problems for my computer, but let's see:





At times, I believe the dog is airborne more than terrestrial.

A sweetheart, and, we got time. :thumbsup:
 
And then...ta daa!!!

And so, on the third trip out of the regular hunting season in Wisconsin, Tinker joined the ranks of successful bird dogs, successfully tracking, pointing, and then when the bird was flushed, seeking out and retrieving her very first pheasant!



Dear god it was a long afternoon. I started out old, and became ancient as the hours progressed. Light winds, temps in high 60's. Gradual slopes going out became mountain slopes going back up. We moved about five pheasants, altogether.



But, as I kept repeating to myself, she is learning with each step in the fields, each scent caught and lost, and each bit of brush, grass, and various foliage she traversed. THIS is how a hunting dog learns, not through the silly natterings of the human it's stuck with. The hunt, the experience, the living of the acts bring the puppy from a reactive being to a DNA-driven hunter of birds, with predatory intent. Her DNA woke up. :D







ta-daa.
 
That's the look of pride! Good girl Tink, I'm sure your hunting partner is as proud of that bird as you are.:cheers:
 
Nice looking dog! "Tinker" a good name and popular dog name in my family for generations. Have a great first season together.
 
Thanks, guys...I appreciate the encouragement.

I just realized I have to re-learn how to shoot at pheasants.

I've been hunting five out of six days with Tinker, and only once with Mick.

With Tink, I'm only shooting a bird I flush after she has pointed it. Well, I should amend that, I'm only shooting AT a bird after she has pointed it.

And I've missed two of the three with the single shot 12 gauge when that happy occasion arises. :(

When I took Mick out, I hit both birds he flushed.

I've had Mick, a Springer, for six years. It has been that long since I've hunted over a pointing dog.

I'm thinking too much with the pointer, I believe. With Mick, the bird flushes, I mount the gun, and track and fire. Instinctive shooting, I think it is called.

With Tink, I have time to wait, position myself a little bit, and tell myself to take time, because it is so important to shoot the pheasant over the puppy-in-training. I think my head gets in the way. Then I miss. :eek:

I'll take the double out or, I can practice some trap shooting at the house, but I shoot very differently with the two distinct types of bird dogs.

Odd, but even after all these years, it never occurred to me before.


AND...to reinforce the point, today (Monday afternoon) I took Mick out to stretch his legs and work out on the same grounds I've been hunting the last week.

Sure enough, he popped up three birds over the course of the hunt, two of which I tagged and brought down. The second was a far shot/lighter hit and it took him a while to track it down and bring it back, but back it came. :)

All with the single shot, all snap shots, all with no real advance warning that a bird was going up.

I gotta stop thinking.



We got time.
 
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Ahem...


If I ever wanted a puppy-in-training to show off and act like a professional guide's dog, Tinker would be able to pull that off for me, because she did it today. No. Really. She was like an astonishing, professional guide's dog*!

An old friend came down from Northern Wisconsin and we hunted for a few hours before the skies opened and torrents came. Tinker was better than I had any right to expect. She trailed, she air-scented, she paused, she retraced her steps to check on scent trails, she worked the ground between the two hunters like she'd signed a contract for equal time with each...and had never, ever, hunted with two guns before!


She pointed and held one point for MINUTES while we repositioned ourselves, and then, when both birds got shot, she retrieved as flawlessly as a training video.


She found and held four points, and was approaching 6 (one group of 3) other birds which flushed in the gusty, windy day, as she moved in on her stalk.

She was a fulfillment of my hopes and ambitions for the last seven months.



Really, really...satisfying.



(*ok, maybe not a professional guide's dog, but really, really good!)



(and, I had a witness.)
 
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Great photos Bill! Looks like a nice start to your season so far for you two and the dogs.

Love the game pouch too. lol

Nick
 
If you don't go to classes, all the book-reading is of little use. So I have to keep getting Tinker out to let her learn what DOING the hunt can teach her.

I'm very lucky, she's doing well.

Early days' training and experiences are so important to growing beings.

I'm old for all this trudging through fields and hills, and pay for each night, but the rewards, when they occur, are thrilling.

Tinker is a thing of beauty in the stalking up upon the bird, right before the point, when she locks up.

There is real suspense as each paw is lifted and placed eeevvveeerrr so slowly on approach. I can't take a picture of it, but I can replay it in my mind. It's like watch a large jungle cat on a Nature show in the midst of a stalk, each muscle so dynamically tense that it seems impossible for a creature to have such control as it approaches its prey.

So cool.

We got one pheasant of the two that were in the brush, and moved on deeper down the slope of the furthest back acreage of the State Park.
Tough going, and the weather had me in a T-shirt and light pants. so I was bleeding a bit, when Tinker began the stalk, canted her head a bit to the left and locked up.

I eased past her and she didn't move. One, then two steps up and the tall grasses exploded in front of me. One, two...gun up, tracking...tracking small brownish baseball-sized winged things going like bats out of....Quail! QUAIL?

There haven't been Quail out here in the last 15 years! What the heck?

Tinker hadn't jumped with the flush, she was still locked down, then two more rockets fly up and to our left and down the slope. This is Wisconsin, fer cryin' out loud, how did four Quail decide to sneak into a State Hunting area?

Tink was pumped. She went back and forth, forth and back....then headed out for the direction the birds had gone in. I called her back, praised her extravagantly, then praised her some more.

I explained that a single shot shotgun was an inefficient Quail gun, unless you wanted one Ritz cracker with Quail breast on it. (I didn't mention I probably would have missed.)

We moved on back up through multiflora rose, mature grape vines, and some other tangleroot vegetation and made to the high ground and the path back to the car.

The deal is, I bring her to the classroom, she learns the lesson.

It's a good deal for both of us.

 
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A great day for the hunter-in-training, Tinker !!! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

All of the small points of partnership I worked on with her during the last eight months are coming together, and she is learning VAST amounts on her own, as she works the cover, battles the winds we've been having, and gets the satisfaction that only she might be able to articulate because it's on a primal level.

I'm so pleased.




(Edit: Sorry for the first post, my computer keyboard went south and trying to find another for this old dial-up Dell was ...let's call it "problematic." :( )
 
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