Memorial Day’s hunt test was much more successful than the previous Saturday’s test. I remembered my lessons (don’t let the dog go before told to by the judge and don’t let your dog point a bird), and so Tooey earned her third and me my first orange hunt test ribbon.
Irish Water Spaniels with their ribbons
Patrice and Tooey with a Junior ribbon, Christine and Riki with a Master ribbon
The weather was awful. Not cold, but wet. Really wet. Pouring down rain wet. I was the bird shagger for the Master dogs, and those poor chukars were obviously soaked. After the Master and Senior dogs worked the field for their chukars, we Juniors waited a few moments for the pigeons.
I might add here that, at least in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t have those large tracts of private lands with game keepers and many hundreds of pheasants to hold spaniel hunt tests on, as Russ and I saw in the United Kingdom last October. Instead, hunt tests are often held on public lands, and the birds are imported and “planted” — placed in likely bird hiding spots in the tall grasses, bushes, and other cover.
So, the bird planters went out into the field, planted the pigeons, and then the 1st Junior team, judges, marshal, and bird shagger all went out into the field, closely followed by Tooey and me. (The first team may not need the entire course to flush and retrieve two birds, so the next team follows along behind so as to be handy to start wherever the first dog finishes.)
And indeed, that’s what happened. Tooey and I started in the middle of the course. She hunted in her usual up and back, over and back pattern, even sometimes hunting behind me. In short order, she found a bird and started to point at it. I interrupted her with a “get it!”, and she flushed the bird. It flew, the gunners shot it, and Tooey went out and retrieved it to hand.
After that, I don’t really remember what happened. (That’s the trouble with writing these blog posts a week later.) I do know that she retrieved another bird, and it may have been one that she trapped and delivered to me. (Trapped is when the dog just grabs the bird without flushing it first.) Those birds were so wet, I am amazed any of them flushed.
I thought maybe we passed the “upland” portion, even though I did have to encourage her to flush. I even texted Russ: “Maybe yes. Maybe no.” But Tooey showed me that she can do the work when she wants to. On the way back to the staging area, she pulled me off the path and into the cover. She doesn’t usually pull me this hard, so I just held on and allowed her to go where she wanted to go. Suddenly, she dove into a patch of Scotch broom, and came out with a blinking chukar firmly trapped in her mouth. With some reluctance, she let me have it, and I took it back to the bird steward, alive and unharmed.
After waiting through lunch again and then asking one of the judges if we’d passed, I found out that Tooey and I were indeed invited back to test on the water.
The “line” at the water test was about 8 feet back from the water’s edge. That’s where you wait for the bird thrower to throw a dead pigeon into the water and the gunner to shoot at it (you can sort of see where they are by the blaze orange in the trees at the left edge of the photo below). I had hoped for a line closer to the water’s edge.
photo by Christine Robertson
The rules say that when retrieving a bird, a Junior dog must bring the the bird to the close proximity of the handler. Around here, that’s interpreted to mean two large steps. Eight feet is longer than two steps for me, so if Tooey decided to drop the bird at the water’s edge (something we’ve been working on ever since we started her in hunting), then we’d be out.
Fortunately, Tooey did a beautiful, bold Water Spaniel entry, and that impressed the judges. We were off to a good start at the water.
photo by Christine Robertson
She marked the bird well, and swam straight out to it and straight back. And then she got to the water’s edge. In the following picture, you can see her start to lower her head.
photo by Christine Robertson
I told her to “Hold!” But she dropped the bird anyway, right at the water line. My heart dropped along with it. But I told her to “Fetch it up!” and “Here!” I could see the wheels turning in that head of hers, deciding whether or not to pick that icky, wet pigeon back up.
After a few eternal moments, she did indeed pick it up, so I just bent down and took it from her, not wanting to risk her dropping it again.
photo by Christine Robertson
And so we passed with an average of 8.1 points. (This is something I love about the Spaniel Hunt Tests — you can look at the judge’s book. In this case, I saw only one of the two.)
one judge’s scoring of Tooey’s performance
According to the rules, a dog must score at least an average of 7, with no score going below 5. So we did okay, but not great. Her “Water Categories” scores is what really saved us. Her “Water Entry” score (10) raised the average considerably, as did Tooey’s marking and going straight out to the bird in the water (“Bird Finding Ability”). The nice “Trained Abilities” score kind of surprised me — maybe they were looking at the fact that Tooey didn’t jump around or whine at the line, and that she delivered the bird upon command. Of course, the fact that she dropped the bird and had to be told to fetch it up probably explains the 8 on “Retrieving Abilities.”
And so Team Tooey passed this test. This is Tooey’s 3rd Junior pass — a dog needs 4 for a Junior Hunter Upland title. There are 6 more tests this year — 2 in August and 4 on the Labor Day weekend. If Tooey is not nursing puppies, we will be entered for sure.
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