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Lottie's first season
Lottie came on heat for
the first time shortly after my last post, so I am
wondering if this new experience may have been
partly responsible for the recent fall-off in her
performance.
I have avoided anything
too formal with Lottie for the last few days. We
have done some more exploring together, and some
marked retrieves in different types of terrain,
including quite long grass. The length of our marks
is restricted by the distance I can
confidently leave her on the stay (50-60 yards at
the moment) but next week it is half-term so I hope
to ‘rope in’ some ‘throwers’.
I
am now letting Lottie take turns to retrieve with
Bella. Lottie will sit quietly whilst Bella is
working, and the presence of another dog seems to
increase her drive a little. I am avoiding big
groups at the moment as the presence of several
other dogs makes Lottie slightly reluctant to bring
the dummy right in to me, and dampens her return.
Crossing Obstacles
I
have taken the opportunity of our increased marking
practice, to introduce the crossing of small
obstacles on the way to each retrieve. Our shoot
grounds are criss-crossed with little streams and
these are a useful training aid. I started with
short marks fairly close on the far bank and sending
Lottie from a position close to the stream. I am
gradually increasing the distance that she has to
travel on both the far bank, and on the near bank
before crossing the stream. After her recent
hesitation in returning down a very steep bank, I am
keeping to reasonably shallow slopes for the time
being.
Introduction to shot
During the last week we
have introduced Lottie to gunfire. To begin with
I asked my husband to fire a few shots from his 12
bore whilst I walked Lottie around at heel about 100
yards away from him. She looked in the direction of
the shots but showed no signs of fear or concern,
and over the next few days we bought the gun to
within 50 yards of her.
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