Abby has come a long way since I first took her chukar hunting at six-months old (her first hunt). Now, two years later and heading into her 3rd full hunting season she is showing real signs of greatness. This year Abby is getting a lot of birds by working with me as a hunting guide at a pheasant hunting preserve. She is holding her points well and is steady to shot about 60% if the time. She is learning to run down winged and wounded birds and is getting better at finding dead birds that she didn’t mark when multiple birds go down.

One thing that she does well is retrieving. Abby has a soft mouth and loves to bring birds back. She seems to know who shot the bird and often delivers the bird to the hunter who made the kill. Abby is quite agressive for a female and will try to steel a retrieve from another dog that beats her to the downed bird. We are working on this.

I’ve been reading this great dog training book by seasoned bird-man Ben O. Williams. He lives in the heart of upland game hunting heaven in Montana and has logged more days in the field than I can even dream of. He’s also a Brittany dog breeder and famous gun dog trainer. Google has an electronic version of the book online for free – check it out. If your like me you’ll find that it’s a worthy addition to your book collection and swing over to amazon.com and order the real deal. Better yet, you can mail a check to Ben at P.O. Box 628 Livingston, MT 59047 and he’ll send you an autographed copy of “Bird Dog”. He has authored several other great titles about bird hunting and brittany dogs that I can’t wait to check out in the near future. Ben also writes some great articles for the good folks at “The Pointing Journal” if you subscribe to that great magazine.