So Tuesday we attended the Waterloo Amateur Retriever Club’s training day. They had maybe 20 plus dogs there. They set up a triple that they ran left to right “around the horn”. The line was up on an embankment, it was a walk-up. The left hand bird was maybe 20 yards away, and it was thrown right to left. The middle bird was thrown left to right, a live flier, maybe 100 plus yards back through some heavy cover. Then there was a right hand bird maybe 45-50 yards off also thrown left to right. Most people took them outside, outside, middle. When they went for the middle bird, the long flier, a lot of dogs got hung up in the cover and hunted their way back to the right hand bird... i.e., a big switch.

We did our walk up and they started to shoot off each throw, and on our last bird down, the honor dog broke. In my view, that was a great thing. Rocket Dog had started creeping and I let her do it. DUH! We went back a couple of dogs and I reminded myself that it was a TRAINING day. So when our next turn came, I kept my eye on her had told her to SIT. Whether it was that, or the fact that she had been deprived of her chance to get the birds the first time around... she was much steadier.

The outside birds were easy. I just made sure to give her a quiet send. But on the long flier, I really tried to push her with my voice. She punched through the cover and got to the area of the fall for the middle bird. She had a long hunt... but that’s probably par for the course for a flier.

There was a double blind. One was off the toe of the left hand mark. The second one was under the arc of the left hand mark. (Odd.). But, she did both pretty well. She did start to break down in the cover when she went under the arc. I gave her a loud straight up right hand back and she pretty much lined it after that.

If that is the level of difficulty for the Master we’re running this weekend, I think we’re maybe a little over prepared. But to tell you the truth, there will be more than one series and probably a lot more challenge to face. So we shall see what happens.