Karma’s brother Gauge is happy about his mouthful of feathers!
What a beautiful St. Patrick’s Day we were blessed with this year! The weather man said it would be in the 70’s today, so we made plans to take advantage of the unseasonably warm day and get in some bird work. Today we were joined by Tim with Stoli, Gavi, and Caymus, and by Zach and Clare with Gauge.
Karma and Gauge got in the most work since they are still working towards titles. Today we worked Gauge on his steadiness during the point and flush so that he can try and finish his Junior Hunter title this Spring. He and Zach did really well. Gauge is even starting to get good about bringing the bird all the way in to hand (won’t need this skill at the Junior level, but never to early to practice.) It was super cool to watch them work as a team. Tim also figured out that if Clare stands behind Zach, Gauge brings the bird straight in — we have a Mama’s boy on our hands! As it should be 🙂
Karm did really well today. Her points, retrieves, and honor are all solid. Steadiness is lacking…that’s what pheasant season will do for you! She picked up all kinds of bad habits! Made us miss Liz — she always commented every Spring that she keeps promising herself she wouldn’t let unfinished gun dogs go hunting…it takes tons of training to break all the bad habits picked up during pheasant season. But every year, she would still let everyone go 🙂 We have too much other stuff going on with Karm this Spring (Agility & Conformation) to worry about her Senior hunt title, but now that she is so solid on almost everything, it seems like it might be a possibility. We’ll see, we hadn’t really planned on training much.
Gavi, Caymus, Indy, and Stoli each had their share of hunting too. We also let them go for a dip in the lake — Caymus’s favorite activity 🙂 Afterwards, we headed into town and had a little lunch together.
To finish off our day, we met up with Tim for dinner. It’s hard to believe Liz has been gone for two years (yesterday), but we shared some fun memories over our meal.
Below are some pictures from today — Karma, Schmavitz, Gavi, and Indy!
