Little Stinker!

Well, all is well here. No real big news to report.

We spent the first weekend of May down on the Cape at Crane Wildlife Management Area. The Mayflower GSP club was holding their spring hunt test. I was actually scheduled to judge junior hunter on Sunday, but the entries were such that they decided to cancel half of the judges. It was fine with me, as I had been really sick for the past 2 weeks and actually looked forward to just running the dogs and recovering.

On Saturday Mike ran Rogue and I ran Kyler. Rogue ran well and passed her 2nd JH leg. Kyler was having a great run when she went on point in the back course. Unfortunately, her bracemate, who is obviously not ready for the Master Hunter scene, screwed her up. He came running up to her and basically ran circles around her, not honoring at all. Kyler moved and one of them bumped the bird, they both jumped at it. I called whoa to Kyler, who stopped instantly, but it was too late. We both got picked up. Kyler should have stayed steady, but I can't really blame her for moving...The other dog was just being an idiot.

On Sunday Mike and I changed roles and he ran Kyler and I ran Rogue. Rogue remembered the deal from Saturday and went off like a shot from the break-away. She hit the back tree edge and was barely a spot on my radar. Yikes, that is a field trial dog for you!

She came around nice and went into the bird field with one find on the back course. We were braced with Jen and Dennis' puppy, Raven, who made an excellent bracemate! Neither of them had any interest in playing and were obviously out to work. Rogue ran like a little nut-ball and was basically on the other side of the field from me most of the time. She hunted like a pro. The one thing she didn't do was pay any attention to me! She was out for herself and had not a care in the world that I was there. At one point she had a nice point on a quail, which was completely buried in the grass. When I went to flush it, it could only fly up about a foot due to the grass. Rogue was able to grab it and spend the next 5 minutes running around with it in her mouth. She would not bring it to me no matter what I said. She finally dropped it because she thought she had found another bird.

In the end we did pass with all 9's except for trainability (which we got a 7). I actually thought that the judges might give us a 5, which would just pass us. One of the judges came up to me after with some funny comments. She said that someoneelse would have failed us due to how everything went. She actually said that I should have yelled at Rogue when she wouldn't listen to me. I found that a bit funny because had I yelled at her, she still wouldn't have listened to me, and I think it would have looked worse.

Here she is with a really nice point, even if you can barely see her in the grass! All of these pictures are compliments of Jen, who was out on the brace with us.

Then, when we were done running the dogs, this guy showed up! He is well known in the area for coming to take away some of the game birds for his bird to eat. Jaida was quite facinated by Sarah the red tailed hawk. She was intimidating and kept flapping around, which was a bit scary for Jaida!

2 phenomenal weekends!!

I haven't had much chance to write lately, we have just been too busy! Some of you may have gotten some updates from Andrew's blog, the Regal Vizsla. He nicely has updated people for us when I am slacking on the blog front!

For starters Rogue spent last weekend competing in East Windsor, CT at the Nutmeg GSP club field trial. She placed 3rd both days, the second day being Open puppy. It was a horseback stake, but I walked the brace instead of riding.

While Rogue was running in the field trial, Kyler was entered up in Springfield for a 3 day show. Happily, on Friday, she took a 3 point major! This means that now she has 10 points towards her show championship. You need a total of 15 points with 2 majors (a win of 3-5 points, basically they have to win out of a certain number of dogs at once). So, she needs a major and a total of 5 points. She is being handled by Alessandra Folz, who is probably one of the top show handlers in the country. She does a great job and makes Kyler look amazing! (which I know she is, but it is nice for other people to see too) When I am able to get the picture scanned into the computer I will post it here!

Then, this weekend we were planning to be in Belchertown at the Swift River Sportsman's Club for the Central New England Brittany Club hunt test. I was judging Sunday but entered both girls in tests. Kyler was to compete in her first Master Hunter test and Rogue in her first Junior Hunter test. I am happy to report that Kyler passed her very first MH with flying colors! We are so proud! Sadly, this is the best picture that I could get as it was cold and rainy, both of which Kyler hates! She hunted like a pro and had a somewhat decent honor, which is the most difficult part for her, I think. When she went on point in the bird field it took them a few minutes to set up for a proper shot just based on how the bird was located. Mike had to move around so that the bird wouldn't fly right over the trucks of the gunners and the gallery. They flushed the bird (or Mike did, as the dog has to stay steady) the bird flew and flew, probably a total of 6 shots were fired. Apparantly the bird finally went down at the far end of the bird field. When I say the far end of the field, I mean the complete opposite end of the bird field just about into the woods. The judges told Mike to send her to retrieve despite the distance. Kyler shot out on command to find the bird. She went most of the way to the bird and searched very hard for it. She started to come back after a minute of not finding it, Mike told her to go out, hoping she would travel a bit further. Kyler went back out and cast a bit further this time. She came across the scent and began to track the bird. She found it within a matter of seconds this time. The obstacle now was that it was injured and running in circles cackling. Kyler, being the phenomenal dog she is, eventually was able to grab the bird and shot back to Mike with lightning speed to put the bird directly into his hand!! She was the talk of the weekend between the spectators and the gunners. It has been called the "most amazing retrieve we have ever seen"! That's our girl!!

Rogue had a decent day as well. She passed her first Junior Hunter test, despite going missing for a full minute on the back course. (I think she was on a bird deep in the woods) She had several finds, probably about 10 from what I can gather. She had nice stylish points and held for an appropriate amount of time for a dog her age. Her lowest score was in trainability, since she completely ignored me for most of the brace! She got very good hunting, pointing and bird finding scores.

She isn't quite as miserable as her mother in this picture, but still not happy because of the rain.

On Easter Sunday I was scheduled to judge my first Junior Hunter tests. Rogue was entered in a field trial with Andrew handling her. It was her first time being handled from horseback. While she didn't place she was apparantly quite good considering her human was on top of a horse for the first time! Kyler did compete in another test on Sunday but due to a very tempting situation she broke on the shot of the other dogs bird. On her behalf, however, she honored on her own from extremely far away, which was a first for her! Mike hadn't made it up to her side yet when the other gun went off and she broke. Oh well! Can't be perfect all the time!

Next weekend we are off to Connecticut again for the Connecticut Valley Vizsla Club's field trial. We plan to spend the weekend camping and having fun with good friends!

Spring is finally here!

Spring finally appears to be arriving here at Forest King! Some of the snow is melting and we actually have large patches of grass/dirt showing in the yard. This, of course, also means that 4 months of accumulated dog poop needs to be picked up. Yuck...That was a fun project...

We have had several things going on over the past month...

At the beginning of the month Zealand's owners visited. Zea is Kyler's puppy and Rogue's sister. She was the "red" puppy from the last litter. It was great to see her and to meet her new owners, Kelly and Jason, since they picked up Zea from Widdershins in Maine, we hadn't actually met them yet.

Zea is a tiny bit bigger than Rogue, but almost not noticeable. She is slightly taller, but Rogue has a bit more bone than she does.

Here she is looking for her first bird!

And here she is after finding her first bird! Mike is just out of the picture holding the pigeon up. Can you tell she wants to get it!? It was great to see her figure it out and start to work our little field like a pro!

Then, last weekend our wonderful friend, Andrew, offered to take Rogue down to Virginia for the Conestoga Vizsla club field trial. It sadly rained all weekend (when it was sunny and 50 degrees here) and soaked Andrew to the bone. Despite the rain however, Rogue put in a great performance and placed third in Open puppy! This picture was taken shortly after her run, you can't quite tell how hard it had been raining. I was surprised to hear how well she ran, especially knowing how much she hates the rain. I guess her knowing that there might be birds involved made her not care.

We have a few events coming up in the next couple of months. The second weekend of April is both a hunt test as well as a field trial. I am supposed to be juding one day at the hunt test(which is in Belchertown at the Swift River Sportsmans Club), but not only have they not sent me any paperwork, but the premium isn't out yet. Seems a little close, since it is 3 weeks away. The same day of the test is also a field trial down at Flaherty field, put on by the TarTan Gordon Setter Club. I may enter Rogue in the puppy stakes there, as Andrew plans to go and has offered to run her. Then 2 weeks later is the CVVC field trial where Rogue and Kyler are both entered. We have been enjoying the field trial thing so far, it is still new, so we will see how it goes!

Hopefully we will have more news soon with results of some of the events!

Finally time to post!

Thank you for all your patience in between this long off time from blogging! Things in life have been quite busy and I just haven't had time to sit down and type and download pictures!

We spent last weekend down in New Jersey with a great group of friends. We had driven down for the Eastern GSP club's walking field trial. Kyler was slated to run in Amateur Gun Dog, but she had come into season a week before and had to be pulled. Females in heat are not allowed to run in most field trials and hunt tests. They are technically not even supposed to be "on the grounds". Rogue was entered in 2 stakes, amateur and open puppy.

Here she is on the second day breaking away. You can tell by her leap that she was ready to go! Despite not really knowing what she was there for, she ran like a champ. She broke away and went to the end of the straight away right from the begining. She went to the edges of all the fields (which is what a field trial dog is supposed to do) She didn't find find any birds, but she sure looked like she knew what she was doing. All the pictures taken are courtesy of Andrew at Regal Vizsla. Luckily he has a sweet camera that takes amazing pictures! The first day was sunny and bright, day 2 we weren't so lucky. It had rained earlier in the day, then snowed, then rained again. Not long before we ran, which was close to 5pm, the rain stopped. It was cold and breezy, hence my cold weather gear! I looked a bit silly, but at least I was warm!

Here she is streaking through one of the fields towards the end of the course. The puppy stakes are only 15 minutes, so she still had plenty of energy left at the end of her run! She ran like this the entire brace, both days. The first day she had an insane GSP bird finding machine as her brace mate. I was actually glad about that, as he had no interest in her what so ever, and I was hoping that she wouldn't play with him. Being only 6 months old I was prepared for her to try and play. She didn't even think about it! On day 2 she had a young inexperienced pointer as a bracemate who continually tried to play with her. She stopped a few times and thought about it, but I told her to get on her way and she did with no problems. I was extremely proud, it was a difficult situation for a young puppy. The pointer was very sweet, but to a huge fault. He continually jumped on me, while I was on the course, which was extremely annoying to say the least. All I could do was to keep walking and when he jumped on me tell him off and keep walking. For obvious reasons you are not supposed to touch the other dog in the brace.Me catching her at the end of the brace. It has been helpful for me to have some yummy treats on hand to convince her that coming to me is a good thing! If you could zoom in very far you could see that her face is all contorted as she grabs the treats quickly, as she had not stopped moving yet! She had come zooming around the hedgerow behind me and ran 3 circles around me before slowing down. Her eyes were glazed over and she was clearly having the time of her life. I was happy that I got her to come to me at all! This was also her first experience with horses. Even though it was a "walking trial", the judges are still on horseback. After a close call on her first run on Saturday, she stayed away from them. (she ran a bit too close to one's front feet at the beginning of the brace, talk about a mini-heart attack on mommy's part!)

This is how Jaida followed the brace on the second day. She rallied just enough energy to come out and cheer on Rogue. Poor girl had been sick since early (like, 2am) Saturday morning. She spent the day resting in Mike's arms on Sunday.

While I don't have pictures of it, our friends Jen and Dennis came down with their 3 GSP's Sally, Tucker and Raven. Sally placed both days in her stakes as did Tucker in the puppy stakes! Nice work guys!

We had decided that since we were traveling all the way to NJ to stay with Andrew and his clan for Sunday night. We made plans to head up to TMT preserve about an hour and a half from his place in the Bronx. What a beautiful place! It consists of 235 acres of varying types of fields and woods. We put down Kyler and Momo first to do some honoring training, as we are preparing them both for their Master hunter tests this spring. I have to say, the team of these 2 is awesome to watch! They work seamlessly together. In a very short period of time they had cleared the first 3 fields with a total of 8 finds! It was a good opportunity to get them out and working. There were actually 2 occasions where they had separate bird finds at the same time, causing each of them to have to hold point for several minutes each for both safety and training reasons. In this picture Kyler is on point and Momo is honoring her.The highlight of Mondays trip is this picture below. The closest dog is Rogue, who had her first "real" hunting trip and found several Chukar on her own. She had her first bird shot for her and ran around with it like a nut for a while. In the background of this picture is our super dog, Cedar. Cedar has been layed up after a terrible hunting accident earlier in the fall. We were not sure if he would ever want to hunt again, or if he would ever be able to hunt again. He was not to be underestimated! This shot was actually his 3rd or 4th bird that he had found. (yes, he found it, and then Rogue happened to stumble into the situation) He looked ecstatic as he swept the field looking for birds (I swear he was saying why haven't you let me do this in so long?!). He found the remaining Chukar in the field plus one bonus pheasant, left over from someone else's hunt. My eyes actually welled up when I saw him retrieving his first bird. He was a bit sore after all the exercise as we are still dealing with his initialy injury. His bones are healed, but he is nowhere near 100% and may never be. He is still 3 legged a bit at this point, it depends on the minute...Nevertheless, it made for an amazing end to a great weekend! We are lucky to have such good friends to hunt with and train with! Thanks a million!! Really looking forward to doing it again soon!

Ready, set, trial!

With field trial season coming up quickly I am mentally trying to prepare myself for having very few weekends available for much else.

Our first trial of the year is next weekend down in Medford, NJ. We have Rogue entered in 2 stakes, both Amateur and Open Puppy. In puppy stakes they often don't even put birds down for them to find. Personally, I am hoping that she can at least think that there are birds there, it will help her run much better! Kyler was entered as well in the Amateur Gun Dog stake, unfortunately, she came into heat this morning, so she will not be allowed to run. I am pretty sad about the whole thing, I was really hoping that she would wait another week and a half! Never the less, we will head down there just for the pure experience for Rogue!

Tonight we spent the last few minutes before dark letting her find a pigeon a few times. She had a blast! She holds her points so beautifully! The line on her not only prevents her from eating the bird (which is on a harness because they were not born here and will fly away without it-we will hopefully have some born here in the spring which we can have fly free) but also keeps her from running out of the field. The combination of the neighbors dogs and the snow have pushed it down in many places.

On the kiddo front:

Here is Jaida "walking through the forest" (her words exactly!) on a walk with the dogs last week. Funny, since we live in the woods...How cute!Here she is having a "girls night" with mommy and friends! We went to the fabulous Goten restaurant in Sunderland, MA. It is a Japanese place where they cook the food right in front of you. I could eat there every day. We had a blast!While writing out Valentines I had Jaida try to write her own name. I hadn't seen her do it before, apparantly she can do just fine!

It's so hard to be wittle...

This was a quote from Jaida when we were hiking/sledding/snowshoing last weekend with Kyler and Rogue. Kids really do say the funniest things sometimes...Just makes me want to pick her up an squeeze her!I have actually gotten to use my snowshoes several times this year. I have always loved to go for a walk with the doggers and be able to get some good exercise myself! I haven't used my snowshoes much in the last few years, it has just been too hard with Jaida walking with me. Now that she is in school for a couple hours 4 days a week I actually can get out for me time. I am off on Mondays and Fridays so I usually drop her off at school and go for a hike if it isn't too nasty out. The dogs enjoy it!

Here she is jumping off a rock on our hike. I just couldn't get the timing quite right to get her in the air...She isn't afraid of much!We went out to Fitchburg yesterday to go sledding with Mike's brother, Chris and his family. Their daughter, Rainie, is 5 years old. She is a great kid, she helped take care of Jaida and Jordan (Mike's sisters 2 1/2 year old). The girls had a fabulous time on the track that Chris made. A short walk throught the woods near their house is this perfect sledding hill. They have spent time over the last couple of years perfecting it and cleaning it up. The ice storm this year put a damper on it as it took quite a while to clear the path and the track itself of all the downed trees. It has become the neighborhood hangout spot. Kids and their families come to hang out for the day sledding and enjoying the fire pit and some frosty beverages!

Jaida enjoyed going down the hill by herself, which from a mommy point of view was nerve wracking at first. Seeing her first born go flying down this hill and around the corners all by herself! After seeing how well she did the first time, however, it was clear that she was quite comfortable in her tube and the track is built for safety. After this picture was taken Chris and the other guys there finished adding more safety snow fence on the corners as extra protection from going over the sides.

And, finally, a Friday afternoon nap...Awhhhh!

Great weekend!

We had a really fun weekend here at Forest King! My truck has died twice due to random things, so it has been interesting trying to get around with my small car and the dogs. The first time, on Christmas eve it died at work. As it turns out a bunch of rodents had eaten the wires leading to my fuel pump and cut the power to it. I got that repaired and then Friday I went to park it in my driveway and it wouldn't shift into park...Something in the steering column broke. So now I have to have it towed again tomorrow morning to fix that. I had to put the emergency brake on because the truck is stuck in drive, so it tries to roll away with out it! Yikes...Oh well...

Friday I took the dogs for a short run (only 45 minutes or so). Cedar actually got to go! It was his first "real" outing since his accident, so I was a bit nervous about how things would go. I strapped on his orthotic to help protect his foot. We still have to adjust it a bit, I have to send it back to the manufacterer. There are 3 adjustments included in the first 3 months for free. (not including shipping, of course!) He isn't using it as much as I would like, he tends to walk on the back of the orthotic, as opposed to flat footed on the bottom. Other than that it seems to fit fairly well. For the run I tried to cover his toes, as the snow will pack into the foot portion of the orthotic, which I imagine could be uncomfortable. He looks a bit silly in the pictures as I wrapped his foot with vetwrap, but of course, the section I put on the toe portion fell off! The only benefit I see to allowing snow build up is that since he is running in the snow it could be helpful in preventing swelling, just like an ice pack.

His toes are still undergoing a lot of healing, and one of them is fairly swollen. I think he might be developing a seroma (fluid filled pocket, slight blood tinge to it) due to the foreign material in his foot. He had another small pocket developing in between 2 other toes and it was obviously bothering him. On Saturday I noticed that it was open and a little oozy...I looked at it closely and noticed something sticking out of a hole in the middle of the swelling. I pulled out a small bone fragment from the lump! It was originally part of one of his toes that were shattered. Hopefully at least that one spot will heal up quickly now that the piece of bone isn't irritating it anymore.

The very beginning of the video is a bit shaky, sorry, I was walking in the snow and it wasn't a flat trail!

On Sunday we got together with a group of people to run the dogs. The group consisted of us with Kyler and Rogue, Stephanie and Manny (who own Baron, Roxy and Benny), Sam and Frank (who own Timber and Muki) Dave Nelson (who owns Chya), and 2 groups of other friends that each had 2 dogs. It was quite the group of dogs running and playing. All with 10 people plus Jaida. The dogs really had a great time! We hiked for close to 2 hours and then hung out to have dinner and beers. You don't see Kyler and Rogue much in these pictures because they were both off hunting and were very far from the rest of the pack. They played initially, then decided that hunting was what they wanted to do.

So, a big thanks for Stephanie for inviting us for this great day! Thanks also to Dave for allowing us to warm up in his house and then to Sam and Frank for letting us all hang out in their living room, dogs included! Rogue is actually sleeping on the couch as I am writing this, which is a very difficult thing to accomplish!

Also, thanks to Stephanie for finding an interesting beer that I am looking forward to trying. As a Christmas present she gave me a bottle of beer named "Rogue", how fitting!

Then, I received a couple pictures of Kyler's puppies at the end of the week. Briar, and Zealand. They are so darn cute and it sounds like they and their families are very happy! The first 2 are of Briar and the 3rd is of Zealand, cuddling with her stuffed pheasant, how appropriate! Briar was the male that we had for an extra few weeks, who had a minor fracture of his leg. He is doing well other than being a bumbly male puppy. I am looking forward to meeting Zea's family, as she was the red puppy who Wendy sold for us, so I never met her owners. It seems that we have the same taste in beer, so I am sure it will be a great time when we do finally get to meet!