Post by Cheryl on Sept 24, 2007 21:51:13 GMT 1
Boris turned 9 months old Sept 21st and he is learning to hunt without my older weims to guide him now. We still take Bully with us as he just turned 2 last August and he's training, too. Bully searches very well with confidence but Boris is much more at ease and confident with the gunshot noises. The 22 was nothing and Saturday we hiked a draw in the Snake River valley (no snakes, too cold, just a wriggly river) looking for ptarmigan. There was no game there at all, very surprising!
Bully became a bit anxious with the 5-6th 12 gauge shots fired but Boris was not bothered at all, just excited and ready, alert. Boris has not learned to search yet in front of me as much as Bully does but he's begun venturing as of the weekend of the 13-14th and with the louder 12 gauge and my encouragement stayed too close this past weekend. This week and next weekend I'll encourage him to venture out again.
Both have excellent retrieve to hand but will not honor each other's retrieve, if out together. They will need more work on this, they are very competitive in trying to get the retrieve to hand quickly. So far they are strong minded enough there is not a tug a war, but rather they accompany each other to deliver to hand so obedience work to allow one to deliver at a time is needed along with separate times out.
I was very happy to see Boris fearless, and Bully only needs to see the game after the shot and I am hoping his small bit of nervousness will disappear. I think the moose before the bird work helped and hindered both but I really hate to exclude them on any hunting.
There are so many hunters here that leave their dogs home while going for the moose, even asking me to watch their dog when they could easily get the experience and behave, too.
It helped Boris to be fearless of the sound, death, raw meat, but he's just now learning to detach himself from me to search for small game. It helped him with eyes and nose, too, be sharpened from the out of sequence training. More to work on, but very encouraging:)
I think I'll bring the frozen (last year) ptarmigan into the field this week (evenings) to desensitize Bully to the bit of nervous he had by having him retrieve the frozen carcass to hand and it should "click" with both Boris and Bully since I can toss after the shot as in our previous training.
Bully became a bit anxious with the 5-6th 12 gauge shots fired but Boris was not bothered at all, just excited and ready, alert. Boris has not learned to search yet in front of me as much as Bully does but he's begun venturing as of the weekend of the 13-14th and with the louder 12 gauge and my encouragement stayed too close this past weekend. This week and next weekend I'll encourage him to venture out again.
Both have excellent retrieve to hand but will not honor each other's retrieve, if out together. They will need more work on this, they are very competitive in trying to get the retrieve to hand quickly. So far they are strong minded enough there is not a tug a war, but rather they accompany each other to deliver to hand so obedience work to allow one to deliver at a time is needed along with separate times out.
I was very happy to see Boris fearless, and Bully only needs to see the game after the shot and I am hoping his small bit of nervousness will disappear. I think the moose before the bird work helped and hindered both but I really hate to exclude them on any hunting.
There are so many hunters here that leave their dogs home while going for the moose, even asking me to watch their dog when they could easily get the experience and behave, too.
It helped Boris to be fearless of the sound, death, raw meat, but he's just now learning to detach himself from me to search for small game. It helped him with eyes and nose, too, be sharpened from the out of sequence training. More to work on, but very encouraging:)
I think I'll bring the frozen (last year) ptarmigan into the field this week (evenings) to desensitize Bully to the bit of nervous he had by having him retrieve the frozen carcass to hand and it should "click" with both Boris and Bully since I can toss after the shot as in our previous training.
