I posted this on GDF a few weeks back, so some of you might've seen it. Just thought I'd share our amateur dog training adventures. Denise
Well, I'm always a little hesitant to put up training footage, as I'm not sure how well we qualify as trainers.  We are still working on our first pointing dog Roxi, and probably not as far as a lot of folks with a 2 year old dog. But we are enjoying the ride, and I guess taking our time, trying to get things as right as possible the first time. Thank goodness for NAVHDA and all my training day friends.
I apologize that I don't have the audio to go with the footage, but it didn't upload for some reason. So I'll give a little narrative here. The first video clip is of doing some pigeon pole work. With the help of my chapter, we started doing this exercise in April, after a pretty bad experience with poor cover and poor flying (sometimes nonflying) walking birds at a few hunt tests. The first time we did p.p., my husband had a tight grip on both collar and flank, as Roxi just couldn't resist lunging at every bird swung her way. We've only done it a few times since then, but she's coming along nicely.....and improved greatly since this video was taken.
The next clip is of a launcher exercise. Roxi is fairly reliably steady to wing, and gunbroke, so we were seeing where we would be at with incorporating gunfire. The guys take her downwind along a fenceline and she locks up nicely. She locked up much farther out than any of the previous dogs, and I think that combined with her lack of intensity after the point, made them doubt her. So she was heeled off point, tapped on the shoulder to relocate, and locked up again. I am curious what others would do in that situation. Do you leave the dog and show her that her nose was right.....and build confidence and intensity on the farther out points? or Do you relocate for a more definitive confident point? I am thinking they should have left her on her first point (hindsight). So my husband walks out and kicks around the launcher, while our friend picks up the checkcord. My husband turns to the other members standing behind me, to let them know he's going to fire a blank, since he was the first to do so in the field that day. Bird is launched and Roxi breaks at the shot. She pops a little on the cc and settles. As an update to the video, we started doing yardwork with this a couple days ago, with a whoa, dead pheasant toss, with firing a blank. She did really well. When I had her on whoa and tossed, she lunged a little at the gunfire. When my husband held her at whoa, and did the same, she was pretty solid. Conversely, she had a better hold and retrieve for me. Can you tell who has done more of each kind of work with her? 
There are a few photos of her duck search that day and then we did our first blood track with her. This is not part of NAVHDA testing, but we have several that test in the german system within our club, and usually do some tracks on training days. My husband is also an avid archery deer hunter, and he's been chomping at the bit to give this a try. Roxi did really well and I only wish you could hear his excited "good girl" talk with her at the end.
VIDEO LINK BELOW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56clfRxXt3U |