Our Little Bird Dog

This weekend we headed down to the Shillapoo Wildlife Area and Vancouver Lake for Loki's first round of junior hunter hunts. Since he hasn't been out in the field for any real hunting exercises outside of training and the field trial he was in which there are no birds planted in the open puppy division, Saturday was his real opportunity to show his hunting abilities. This was my first attempt at running in a hunt test and handling him in a field without the help of Ben or Chris so we were not surprise that we didn’t get a pass since neither of us really knew what we were doing and the judges didn’t see his one and only point. Also since Loki’s brace mate was also a puppy and had caught a bird at the end of the test they both decided to play chase which didn’t help either.

Sunday we headed back out for another try at earning our first junior hunter leg. With some solid advice and guidance on how much to talk to Loki during test versus letting him run and work on his own we were off for our 15 minute run. During the test he came upon 2 different birds and was able to hold very nice points which allowed me time to call point, get an acknowledgement from the judge, get to him and flush the bird. Not to shabby for a young dog who isn’t broke yet. When the time expired and all was done we were pretty pleased with the run and headed in to see our scores.

To get a pass you have to have a minimum score of 7 on the 4 different areas that they are grading. Loki received scores of 9’s and 8’s across the board which means he earned his first hunt test ribbon and more importantly his first junior hunter leg. One down, three more to go till he has his JH title. Look’s like he’s turning out to be a good little bird dog after all!