Re: Water Picnic Caddie showing off her awards this morning! ;D It was a very good competition with 23 runners in the novice and 18 in the open. Very tricky retrieves, marked and blind all with the distraction of a Canada Goose and her brood of teenage goslings in very close proximity on the lake. That proved too much of a temptation to one or two dogs, which resulted in a couple of wild goose chases, quite literally. I was so proud of Caddie. She was pretty amazing.
Re: Water Picnic Thank you Pippa and all of you guys. Pippa, one of the two judges was a Gundog Club instructor, James Reavil. Very nice chap.
Re: Water Picnic Well done Caddie and you of course! All that hard work paying off Her face is still saying "what shall I do next mum?" such focus on you, it's brilliant ;D
Re: Water Picnic Thanks everyone! I am absolutely over the moon with her performance yesterday. To be honest some of the exercises were the hardest I have ever had to do in a test and it is impossible to train for every scenario the judges might set on a day. One of the retrieves in her open run was particularly hard. The dummy had landed just short of a sandy open bank the dummy thrower had aimed for and had dropped in a patch of thick reed at the water's edge instead. It was about thirty yards across the lake with a second distraction dummy in the water. She swam straight for the patch of reed ignoring the dummy in the water as I had asked her to. But when she reached the drop area I realised that there was a problem because she kept diving into the water with her little bum in the air. The dummy had lodged itself underneath the very steep bank and it took her a couple of minutes to dislodge it. But my determined little springer never left the spot for a moment until she finally appeared triumphantly dummy in mouth draped in reeds ;D Those few minutes seemed like an eternity! ;D
Re: Water Picnic What a wonderful, determined girl ;D justifiably proud!! I find leaving Riley to work one of the hardest things ever!
Re: Water Picnic I know, Barbara. It is something I had to learn myself. I am very aware of every command I give when I am running in a test. I try to keep commands to a bare minimum. Every time you blow that whistle you drop points.
Re: Water Picnic Wow,what a fantastic achievement ,there must be no feeling like it ,what a level of expertise you have reached,you should be so proud of your dogs and yourself,I think you are brilliant ;D x
Re: Water Picnic [quote author=heidrun link=topic=1985.msg16898#msg16898 date=1373890106] Every time you blow that whistle you drop points. [/quote] Just so in awe...am trying not chatter and call Charlie all the time - tomorrow we'll play at being Heidrun and Caddie as we negotiate the stream on Wimbledon Common!
Re: Water Picnic Congratulations on an outstanding result! Caddie looks very modest (but quietly pleased) next to her prizes. I am interested because this is a dog activity I don't know a lot about - what are the rules of the competition? What are the dogs required to do? I know they have to retrieve in water, but that's about all I know
Re: Water Picnic Fantastic, Heidrun and well done, Caddie! The whole thing about trusting a dog to do the work is an amazing point in our relationships with our dogs, isn't it? I had a couple of moments before I left that I realized I was not giving Simba enough credit for knowing something, that I allowed myself to relax and trust that he would know what's expected. And he did!!! I'm sure those moments are doubly satisfying in these competition scenarios!
Re: Water Picnic Rachael, a spaniel water test is pretty much the same as a retriever water test. A few days before the test the club will have a draw to establish the running order of all the entrants. When you arrive at the venue you will be given an armband with your start number. The water test on Sunday had a lot of runners, 23 in the novice and 18 in the open. Only dogs who have not got field trial awards or a first in a working test are allowed to run in the novice class, anyone confident enough can enter the open class. The age of the dog does not matter. There are two judges and the runners are split into two groups, odd and even numbers. The odd numbers will run under one judge and the even numbers under the other judge. Once everyone had their first run under one judge the groups switch and the second run starts under the other judge. On Sunday the two judges had set up exercises at either end of the lake. Like I said before you are never quite sure what the judges ask for on the day and what the exact scenario is going to be like. Sunday's test was probably the hardest water test I have ever been to and there wasn't a huge difference between the novice and the open class, the open was just slightly more difficult including a complete blind retrieve. So I'll just describe that one exercise which will give you an idea of what happened. You are standing next to the judge and a chap with a shot gun on one side of the lake and there is a dummy thrower on the other side of the lake about 40 yards away. The dog is sitting off the lead, a shot is fired and the dummy is thrown not in the water but up a bank on a path. When the judge tells you to send your dog you give the command for the retrieve. Once the dog had returned with the dummy you had to do a second retrieve which was the blind. The dummy was on an island in the middle of the lake that is all the information the handler was given. So it was a case of sending the dog in the direction of the island handling her on to the island and letting her hunt it out for the dummy. All deliveries have to be to hand, if the dog drops the dummy or puts it down to have a shake you will drop a huge amount of points. A lot of dogs struggled with the very steep banks on Sunday. Especially the smaller spaniels found it very tough climbing out of the water with a dummy in their mouth. But the judges made allowances for that and gave permission to the handlers to give a helping hand when needed. Some of the little cockers had a particularly hard time. So there you go, that's a water test. It is all good fun and very sociable, people had brought food and drink and there was a BBQ hence the name Water Picnic.
Re: Water Picnic Thanks, Heidrun, that is great info - really paints a picture I have only done retrieving work in an obedience context, and that is much more straightforward as everything is close and visible to the dog and handler. Doing it 'in the field' would be a lot more exciting and challenging. It sounds like brilliant fun.
Re: Water Picnic Caddie and me in action on Sunday. Can you spot the geese in the left hand side of the picture. They never left the lake all day long. A very good test for the dogs. [
Re: Water Picnic Heidrun, out of all the training you do I find it fascinating that you can get your dogs to do this, geese too , it's a wonderful thing to see. Beautiful picture. Helen x
