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Hello!
Maud wrote her message yesterday but could not send
it since our router has once again committed suicide, I do not know why they
fail every 3 months? Now I have by-passed it and connect this
computer directly to the broad band.
Yes, Larka is quite a handful of dog. She is
nothing near Sunnie in mentality but reminds a lot of a young Briz - and as Maud
said, they share the bloodlines to some extent. In fact she has already deserved
the nick name Calamity Larka, as I called Briz "Calamity Briz" for a couple of
years.
To start with we noticed that she is shy of loud
noise like lawn movers, power saws and such. It took her a long time to become
comfortable in my new pick up that has a diesel engine (Nissan diesels sound
like stone breakers and unless you knew better you might think they are faulty
from the factory....as they as a matter of fact are but that's another
story).
Having said that, I must continue by saying
that we also to our great surprise noticed that she showed no fear at all
to gunfire. We planned to break her softly to gunfire but there was nothing to
break! She started to participate to our clay shooting sessions very early and
take no notice at all of the noise. Then there was this navy manoeuvre on the
channel right outside our house. The military boats fired either small calibre
automatic guns or large calibre machine guns, I cant tell for sure. However the
noise was impressive, at least to say, and when they fired simultaneously with 3
guns and the noise echoed back from the other side of the 400 - 500 meter wide
channel it felt like a religious experience - at least to me who am a gun
nut!
During all this mayhem Larka was in the kennel
calmly chewing a bone and did only occasionally look at the military boats. Long
ago at the Swedish dog training centre they told us to separate gun shyness from
any other mental characteristic and having seen Larka during the military
manoeuvre I am tempted to agree!
Otherwise she is a "small" dog with a lot of will.
She do not dare to start with but her "will to dare" is very strong and hence
she in the end overcomes her fear most often. Except this fear for the lawn
mover...
She chases anything from fly to fox and has started
to disobey the call in command. Therefore I have used the GPS collar to keep
track of her and at least once it has saved her life. She neglected me totally
one day and pulled away into the deep forest. I could follow her in the hand
held unit. The she turned, went south and started to approach a road with a
lot of traffic. I had to hurry to the road in order to warn the cars if she
should come out of the forest. I walked back and forth on the
road according to the info I got from the hand unit so that I would be as
close to her as possible if she should come out. Finally I saw on the map that
she was circling around and around and I concluded that she must be lost.
Then I went in to try to find her. She was in some very rocky terrain,
imagine a miniature Rocky Mountain terrain and you have it. When I saw in the
hand unit that she was only 25 meters from me, first then did I see her. She was
exhausted and upset but happy to find me. I did not have to tell her to
walk behind me when we went back to the car...... she did it
anyway.
After that (all this happened during the last few
weeks) we did some thorough experiments several days in a row, to make sure that
she indeed understands the "come here" command, both verbal and with the
whistle. She does, and knowing that we found the old e-collar and charged its
batteries. Today she comes when called, even if the distance is very long. I
guess that we can soon put the collar back in its hide again.
So Larka is the opposite pole to Sunnie. Sunnie had
an explicit will to cooperate. Larka has an explicit will to do things by her
own. As for the fetch training I do not dare to use the force method but have
done some training with the "demand method" on our website. She can now, 7
months old and after months of training, hold and carry a dummy.....and that's
all so far :- ))
Otherwise she is very social towards both humans
and other dogs and that is of course a natural thing for a setter to
be.
Although I love Larka I cant refrain from longing
for a sister to Sunnie, that we might get this coming autumn or
winter.
Torsti
Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 6:59 PM
Subject: [working-gundog] Dead again - testing
OK, Torsti.
You've been holding out on us.
Tell us
about that new setter pup.
Jere
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