When Peat was 7-months-old, we took him hunting with Angus to a place where his day of hunting lasted exactly 15 seconds. Upon arriving to our hunting destination, we let both dogs out of the pickup and before we knew what was happening we saw Peat streaking a 200-yard beeline to a covey of Huns that were hunkered down in the sage. Standing next to the pickup, we watched in horror as he flushed them before we could get there and then he proceeded to chase them for another 200 yards. Bob was furious and immediately banished him to the pickup and into his crate of shame for the remainder of the hunt. He sat there, staring out through the metal grates wondering what he’d done wrong.
Yesterday, I took our old Jeep out for a long drive with the dogs on dusty, washboard, gravel back roads near that place with them bouncing around in the back and thought of Peat and his rough start into the world of hunting his first season. If you’ve been following this blog since we got Peat, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The following video is a tribute to the dogs. Most of us wouldn’t be doing this compelling sport if it wasn’t for them.
I’ve had moments like Bob with my dogs. But in the end I wonder why they don’t sometimes like me in the truck.
We had a series of incidents before this happened, it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Most dogs are forgiving, a trait that I wished more humans including myself had. Thanks for reading and commenting. Leslie
Crate of shame for pointing his first wild birds? Bob Bob BOOOOOOOOB. Not you.
The day before this hunt, Peat had stole a retrieved bird from Angus’s mouth and ran off and ate it. We almost didn’t take him that day. Looking back, it was actually quite humorous to watch young Peat hunt with such recklessness. We always have fun, Bob just overreacted…as usual. He’s quite intense, just like Peat.
I enjoyed your video, Leslie! Yes, dogs are incredibly forgiving of our human nature that expects the dog to know what we want it to know and yield to our wishes. I recommend the new dog owners watching this site be elated with a 7-month old who chases birds and loves doing it. I recommend getting lessons from an expert dog trainer–as much for the owner as the dog–to train the breed-refined traits to work for us. I’m an amateur dog trainer; began with books written by Delmar Smith. More recently have occasionally used a pro trainer–well worth the money, not as much as expected.
Bird dogs that have a super high prey instinct are hard to control if you don’t know what you’re doing. We aren’t good at training…I admit. We read plenty of dog training books and worked with Peat when he was a puppy. Because of where we live, the convenience of hiring a trainer was more difficult but I’d recommend it to anyone even though we haven’t experienced it first hand. Peat is four now, he’s figured out what we want, it took time. From the video you can see that he’s turned into an excellent hunting dog and has adapted to our hunting style. We won’t win any hunting style points but have fun out there and find plenty of birds.
Very well done Leslie. Only 71 days to go.
Thank you Sam. Be sure to tell your buddy Peat how many days to go when you see him next. 🙂