Cove Mountain Kennels

 Tomorrow is Halloween. (I hope you remembered to buy some candy for the trick-or-treaters.) Before they start ringing the doorbell, think about the upcoming visitors and what’s best for your dog. Do you have a puppy that you are trying to socialize; you may want to have the dog with you on a leash when several groups come to the door. Along with the Halloween candy for the kids, you bring a dog treat and ask some of the kids (or parents) to give the puppy a biscuit, thereby providing the developing puppy a new experience with a positive outcome. (Concept: all novel experience are good! Build confidence in your pup!) Teach the pup that it is not ok to bark at people coming to the door. You are the one in charge of the house, not the pup. However, don’t overwhelm the puppy with too many visitors.

On the other hand, if you have an older dog, or one that is not comfortable having lots of people come to the door, in order to minimize stress, you may want to kennel the dog out of earshot of the door. Also, think about dogs outside in kennel runs. It may drive them crazy hearing myriads of people filtering by and them not getting to see what’s going on. Their most common response is non-stop to barking. Your yelling at them to “shut-up” every time only reinforces their barking. It may be best to put the dog in a kennel box in the house during the trick-or-treaters and work on their barking at visitors later when you have more control of the situation.  Happy Halloween!

This Saturday I had an invite to go duck hunting up north. I had a great time and saw some great dog work. Saturday was a warm blue-bird day and the ducks weren’t moving around too much. Despite the lack of birds flying, I was able to shoot six ducks; a mixed bag of gadwalls, and teal. My hunting partner even shot a wood duck, a fairly uncommon duck in the area. That kind of made the day. We tried our darndest, but couldn’t get the last few ducks to fill our limits. I guess that was ok though. That just means I don’t have to eat as many ducks!

One of the best things was the dog work. DJ, my hunting buddy has a well trained chocolate lab (Casador), that was a pleasure to hunt with and a lot of fun to watch. We had a wing-tipped duck that sailed several hundred yards off before going in. It was fun to watch DJ direct him into the area with hand signals then Casador worked the scent and retrieved the duck. Numerous other ducks tried the diving game, but Casador knew how that game was played and would wait patiently on the duck, then would dive under after them. We had a great day on the marsh. I look forward to our next duck hunt.

Sam & Travis were great help while training yesterday. We are working a young black lab (rescue dog) getting his first experience on birds. He did a great job and was really keyed up on game and would readily find the downed bird. My concern with the dog was his cooperation and willingness to bring the bird back. He’s pretty focused on looking out for himself. We’ll see if we can work him through this.

I read a great quote today: “If your dog is overweight, you need more exercise!”

Well, today we were totally skunked. We went blue grouse hunting and were humbled. The four blues we did finally see late in the day were diving out of Doug fir trees, 50′ up and going mach 5 through the trees. That is one of the toughest shots to make, over your head and diving straight down fast. The problem I had, was stopping my swing. I wasn’t following through and shot over them. On the up side, the weather was fantastic, I saw a porcupine in a tree (luckily for the dogs, not on the ground) and we did find a record book curl-leaf mahogany tree. For a shrub, this thing was huge. It was easily 4 feet in diameter and we estimated it at more than 1000 years old. No grouse, but one huge old tree. It was a great day!

We had a fun but strenuous chukar hunt today. We covered the country up and down and are tired and sore (the dogs and I). We only found two coveys in a lot of miles of rough hiking, but I was able to pull down three birds. One cool thing that happened today, though, was Josie a young (16 months) German shorthaired pointer I have in training had a great track and find on a wounded bird. Josie worked up a small covey of about 12 birds, which luckily flushed right past me and I was able to double. I thought both birds were dead in the air, but as often happens with chukars (Gamble’s quail are the same), one of them wasn’t.

Allie, my lab quickly found one of the downed birds and retrieved it. Then, we worked and worked, but couldn’t come up with the other bird. After about 15 minutes I found where I thought it came down, based on a string of feathers through the bush. The dogs got birdy there, but couldn’t come up with anything. After another 5 minutes of searching I decided to call it and we headed down the wash looking for the covey again. About 20 yards down the draw, Josie picked up scent and started tracking. She went 20 to 30 yards on the track then went on point. She had it! The bugger had run down the draw about 50 yards and crawled under a rock. I was just able to fit my arm up in and get the bird, which was in amazingly good shape. This event put a smile on my face, even after a lot of hard miles. It made for a memorable hunt.

I just saw another story on the news about a dog that was returned to its owner after a year of being gone because of its microchip implant. It was a neat story, and reiterated to me the importance of getting a dog chipped. It is so cheap to do, just $35 for the implant and a lifetime registration. If you haven’t done it yet, just go out and get it done. 

Of course the most important piece of safety equipment as far as getting your dog back is the id tag on the collar. All county shelters and most vets and sheriff’s deputies know about microchips and have scanners, but the person that finds your dog probably won’t. But, they can read your phone number off the ID plate. Keep it simple, just your name and phone number (not the dog’s name). Get this done today, it will be the best $2 you’ve ever spent.  (Lion Country Supply, Fosters and Smith, Scott’s Dog Supply, … .)

I took Aryia, a young brittany I have in training out chukar hunting late saturday afternoon. She is young and inexperienced, but once she got into birds, she really got charged up. In some regards, she wasn’t the most helpful, busting birds right and left, but it was really good for her to get into so many birds and fill her nose with hot scent and get so keyed up on them. I was lucky enough to pull down a limit for her.