Greta's Visit

Greta (Bella) vom Red Rock boarded with us for about a week, and what an adventurous few days it was! Greta has a sweet disposition and has a full load of hunting abilities to offer already. She is full of drive and energy and just needs it to be focused in the right direction. I was willing and able to work with her on basic in house obedience and so we did. We worked on teaching and enforcing to her commands like; bed, down, sit, stay,come. She has a way of being a stubborn,hard headed, independent pooch who wants to be the center of attention. But with some firm,assertive,repetitive and well timed correction,she was becoming a well mannered girl in no time. Now to focus her hunting drive.....

In preparation for the VJP, which is a natural ability test, the idea is to awaken the natural instincts that this breed already has. Not really training, more like exposure and lots of it. However, the pup is being trained or conditioned as to what hunting commands it should understand as well as transferring the at home obedience to the field. It makes a handler more at ease and the test tasks smoother if they both have a general idea of what to do.

So we headed out to a favorite training and hunting spot to run through some basics. We checked up on Greta's search,gunfire soundness,pointing and tracking. She is listening better in the field and cooperating with game she finds, so no issues there really. Her tracking is nice, she understands the command to track and shows huge desire and will to find. She just will not give up and if she gets too turned around,she comes back to where she last had it and continues to find and follow the scent. The bummer is she has not been on any live rabbits, so we were hoping to flush up some during her search but it never happened. Nonetheless she is doing well on drags and I will get her on a rabbit or two before the test! Her search is growing, no issues with gunfire,and she pointed some chukar and waited for me to approach her, so other than the live rabbit track issue she is on the right path. I have one more weekend to work with her and then after that I will be spending the weekend in Malta,Idaho watching and waiting for the results.