Freddy retrieving a chukar after a nice workout and bird find. He was very happy to see bare ground, and boy does he love birds! (Pictured both above and below retreiving)
The picture below is Elvis, Freddy and Daisy's dad. Elvis is very exciting to watch. He is extremely strong and classy on the ground. Oh yeah, he looks great on birds too!
Below, Woody being worked on a bird. He is coming along quite nice. The hills gave him a good workout after watching it snow for the last couple of weeks.
Since the winter weather has continued to hold strong through the first of March, Dave TerHaar and I decided to pack up the dogs and head south. Last weekend (March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) we headed down near Lexington, Kentucky. We were
very grateful to be able to get the dogs on the ground, as they needed to get worked before our trip to Rhode Island towards the end of March for the Grand National Grouse Invitational. We left Friday during the middle of the night and were working dogs early Saturday morning. What a releif to get out of Michigan, as we saw bluebird skies the entire time, with temperatures in the 60's, reaching 73 when we left Monday afternoon. We took quail and chukar with us not expect
ing to find many wild birds, but to our surprise, we got into very workable numbers of grouse and woodcock. During the entire trip, I think we only went birdless on two braces, and one of them just had pups down. The terrain was very hilly with good grouse habitat throughout. This ended up working out quite well for conditioning the dogs burning
up and down hills all weekend. I also felt the burn by the last day. The best part of the trip was sitting on the tailgate the last evening as it was still probably about 60 out, and watching the woodcock do their dance in the skylight, listening to them zip through the air. It almost seemed like spring, only to have reality hit the next night when we arrived home to 23 and snowbanks. We ended up using the liberated birds for the puppies. They did a nice job, and we shot them after the flush, as they looked proud as a peacock retreiving to hand. All in all it was a fun trip that was very productive for only being a long weekend. I also picked up my new pup. Her name is Daisy. She is a little tank with tons of energy. We are very excited about her.
very grateful to be able to get the dogs on the ground, as they needed to get worked before our trip to Rhode Island towards the end of March for the Grand National Grouse Invitational. We left Friday during the middle of the night and were working dogs early Saturday morning. What a releif to get out of Michigan, as we saw bluebird skies the entire time, with temperatures in the 60's, reaching 73 when we left Monday afternoon. We took quail and chukar with us not expect
ing to find many wild birds, but to our surprise, we got into very workable numbers of grouse and woodcock. During the entire trip, I think we only went birdless on two braces, and one of them just had pups down. The terrain was very hilly with good grouse habitat throughout. This ended up working out quite well for conditioning the dogs burning up and down hills all weekend. I also felt the burn by the last day. The best part of the trip was sitting on the tailgate the last evening as it was still probably about 60 out, and watching the woodcock do their dance in the skylight, listening to them zip through the air. It almost seemed like spring, only to have reality hit the next night when we arrived home to 23 and snowbanks. We ended up using the liberated birds for the puppies. They did a nice job, and we shot them after the flush, as they looked proud as a peacock retreiving to hand. All in all it was a fun trip that was very productive for only being a long weekend. I also picked up my new pup. Her name is Daisy. She is a little tank with tons of energy. We are very excited about her.
Puppies are cute and have a mind of their own with an attention span of approximately 0.5 seconds. Daisy goes from a sock, to a backpack, to a rug, to a shoe in a matter of 30 seconds. She is just full of it, but is very loving so far. Thanks for reading! 
2 comments:
Looks like you guys had a great trip. I guess anything is better then 20 F and snow... Good luck this spring. I'm sure I'll see you up there.
Hey! Your puppy is really cute. I hope you can train her well to get lots of birds! :) We are going out tomorrow...I will give you a call....unless you think your toooo cool!
-Lauren
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