1st Day of Spring Training!

Pictured below is 4 month old Scout who is training for his NA Test! 

Today was the first day of our spring training with Cleo! Jim and I were so excited the last few weeks waiting to start training with the group again. Last year we trained almost every weekend with several of Cleo's litter mates in order to prepare her for the NAVDHA (North American Versatile Dog Hunting Association) Natural Ability Test. All the pups did a great job and now we are moving forward and training them for the NAVDHA Utility Test. Cleo is also training for the AKC Senior Hunt test as well.   

The past few days the Northeast has been hammered by heavy rain and the day started off with a little mudding. Once we got situated though the fields weren't to bad.

Today we trained with Steve Fiasco who has a beautiful male named Bruin, Ed Niedzinski who also has a great looking male named Griz, and with Bob Corsaro who brought his DK dog Sadie. This is the usual group but we were missing Mike today due to the floods. He normally has Cleo's sister Brandy there to train as well.

Jim and I were really pleased with today's training which was lead by Bob Corsaro the owner of Nobelle's Kennel. We felt that after today we have a great sense of where Cleo is in her training and where she needs to be. We felt that Cleo did a great job today at things she does well like finding and pointing birds. We also felt she did a good job backing. On the other hand she did not do so well at certain things like staying steady on the shot and retrieving. We knew that these are things she needs allot of work on. It was great to watch Bob work Cleo. The way he leads the dogs into understanding what he needs them to do is outstanding.

Cleo being whoaed on a bird  

Bob working with Cleo

Cleo being force fetched

 We brought some dead birds home with us today so we can freeze them and use them to work Cleo this week. She definitely needs some practice on force fetch and retrieving. But Cleo did have some nice points today!

We also worked quite a bit on backing today. Below is a pic of Cleo on point with her brother Bruin backing her and also a pic of Bruin on point with Cleo backing him.

Here's a pic of Bruin in action. He seemed to do a much better job of retrieving today than Cleo.

Sadie also got a chance to go get out on some birds. She is a few months older than Cleo and her litter mates and further along in her training. Jim and I always love watching Sadie work a field. She is also a very sweet pup.

It was disappointing that I didn't get allot of pictures of Griz in the field today but I did get some pics of him before and after he came out. He's such a handsome fellow.

At the end of training we let the dogs run it out and have a little fun to burn off some energy. The only thing better than one GSP is four. :) 

Looking forward to next week already!