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.

Had a great hunt yesterday with George and his son Chaz and his son-in-law. They were the first hunters of the season at Rooster Valley Pheasant Preserve where I am helping out as a guide. It was Chaz’s first time hunting pheasants and I think we got him hooked. They ended up with about 15 pheasants and they picked up a couple of dove along the way. George was hunting with his two labs “Blue” and “Sophie” and they did well together. I enjoyed putting the birds out and keeping an eye on their progress throughout the day.

My friend Chris and I got out a little late on the morning of the dove hunt opener. There were quite a few hunters around where we live so we tried to get away a bit and find some open space. We worked a canal that had a lot of wild sunflowers growing along the banks. The weather was beautiful although a bit windy as a cool-front was moving in from the north. Chris ended up shooting 2 dove and I ended up shooting at about 6 dove and never hit one. It was still a good time and fun to watch the dogs work. Chris’ lab goes crazy at the sound of a gun shot and is a retrieving machine. Abby, my shorthair was just glad to get out and run. We are anxiously awaiting the chukar season which has been moved back a few weeks here in Utah.

Another great litter of german shorthaired pointer puppies is available in Northern Utah. These are from strong german lines and are solid liver for those that really dig the solid liver puppies like me. This litter of puppies were whelped on September 13th and are currently 18 days old. Three females are currently available from this fine litter of GSP hunting dogs. If you are interested in learning more about this litter of pups you can contact Scott Jacob of Sweet River Valley kennels at (801) 330-3986.

This is another female littermate of Abbys named Gabby. I was told that Steve Reis trained her as a started dog, and sold her a month or so ago. I like Gabby’s coloring and nice tail set. It will be fun to try to keep in touch with the new owners and see how she ends up.

This week I got a very nice email from the breeders of my german shorthair dog Abby. They were kind enough to send along a picture of Abby’s good looking littermate Shelby. They own Abby’s Dam “Gambles Princess Belle” and decided to keep this dog Shelby to see if the breeding was everything they hoped for. It sounds like things are going well with Shelby’s training out in Colorado and Belle seems to be a great bird hunter as well. A big thanks to Travis and Alexis John for choosing to send Abby to us, we are glad to have her.

I was also pleased to hear what some of the other puppies in the litter turned out like. Any first time breeding should be watched carefully to see if the good trates were properly passed down to the offspring. As we plan to have a litter of puppies with Abby sometime in the future, we are very interested in hearing about the other littermates. We want to make sure that we are carrying on with a good thing and not having puppies just for fun. Abby is still young, but we are pleased with her natural abilities and bird dog training so far. The Chukar season begins this weekend which means we will be getting Abby behind a lot of wild birds.

Our friends at Rooster Valley Pheasants had a litter of healthy hunting puppies this past week. Max loves to sit right down and watch the puppies nurse. The momma pup named “Polly” was very good natured about the intrusion. Their were 3 males and 6 females in the litter and should be some dang good hunting dogs. They are all mostly white with liver heads and will have very light ticking like their father Duke. It will be fun to watch these puppies grow and develop. If all goes well, we will have a litter of our own next year at this time.