Had a good day training with a friend of mine who is working with a 6 month old german shorthair puppy. We planted several hens in some cover at the pheasant farm and just let the dogs work game. I was working with my Lizzy dog, a 7 month old female american brittany from Blueridge Brittany Kennels in Texas. Lizzy did a great job with the challenging cover (thick cat tails) in a marshy area. She dove right into the cover in true britt fashion and found a few birds. When the situations were just right we shot a couple of birds over her. We were careful of the distance between her and the gun fire. And we made sure she was intent on the bird before firing. She marked both birds very nicely and with a little encouragement retrieved them both to hand. The two dogs ended up busting a couple of rooster pheasants as well in some heavy cover.

Ace has been chasing clipped wing pigeons for a few days now and is bringing the birds back to me. He enjoys the chase and loves to carry the birds in his mouth. Today I tried a clipped wing hen pheasant with just a bit removed from her flight feathers. She was quite big and could fly about fifty yards only a foot or two off the ground. Ace had no problems with her size or strength and ran the bird down quickly. One more day of builiding prey drive and we will start flushing birds in front of him and begin learning about scent.

Maddy is a 12 week old shorthair that we are working with. I let her chase the hen pheasant when Ace was finished and she did great with it.