A Secret Mission

Cisco Attempts the WC

I entered Cisco in PVGRC’s Spring WC test knowing that we weren’t going to make it to any training days this year before the test. But I figured I might as well give it a try — after watching last fall’s test, I had regretted not entering him as I was pretty sure he could have passed. 

The WC was run after the WCX so it was around 11 before we got started. I was there uncharacteristically early that morning, so there was plenty of time to relax. Cisco however started whining as soon as we pulled into the property and every time he was able to see me from his crate. 

My two biggest concerns for the test were the use of birds (he had not seen a pheasant before) and the distance to the marks on land — specifically with the memory bird on land as we hadn’t done memory birds as very long marks and I was afraid he’d give up before he reached the mark. Turns out neither of these was of any concern. I did have a problem introducing him to chuckars last year as it took about 10 throws and lots of convincing to get him to pick one up. Fortunately right before we went to the holding blind we had the chance to introduce him to a pheasant. It was thrown about 5 feet from him and he immediately went and got it and picked it up and brought it back. Pheasants were not going to be an issue.

The marks were not nearly as far away as I had expected. I’m horrible at judging distances and from reading through the rules the day before, I thought the marks were going to be a lot further away than what we had practiced in the back yard. Turns out they were pretty comparable. 

Cisco did pretty well on the double. He went out and eventually brought back both birds. He did try and get a bird from the bag first before getting the one that was thrown for him (it’s a lot less work to find the bag that the thrown bird), but he did for both birds go and find them. Once he picked up the first bird he did start heading more towards the second bird than back to me, but a “here” from me put him back on course bringing the bird to me. I sent him to the second bird and did have to resend as he started to go, but then stopped. After a brief hunt he did bring that one back too. Not as clean as I would have liked, but good enough to get called back for water.

We didn’t get to water until after 2. The water work for the WC is relatively easy. It’s two singles, one on the water with a splash and one barely on land on the other side of the water. The first bird was the one with the splash and Cisco enthusiastically jumped in the water with a very nice splash. He swam out to get the bird and once he had a hold of it, I called “here” and he briefly turned toward me and then decided it would be easier to get out on the other bank. I’ve never had him leave water before so I’m thinking he was probably cold. He took that bird out on the opposite bank, dropped it to shake, but was a very good boy and picked it back up. He desperately tried to find another route to me that didn’t involve getting back in the water. I was laughing, the judges were chuckling, and I was pretty sure he was going to be the first dog to cheat as he discovered the bridge to come back to this side of the land. Fortunately, he stumbled or tripped on the bridge and turned around and went back the other way. (If he had brought the bird back via land, he still would have passed.) After he turned around, he did eventually get back in the water and swim the bird back. He did put it down once he got back to land (fortunately that’s the only requirement for the WC is getting the bird back to land, not delivering to hand — now if only that was the case for the JH). 

He saw the second bird go down, but didn’t want to get back in the water to get it. I’m not sure if this was because the water was cold, or because of a lack of confidence. In most of the training scenarios he had seen last year, he had seen birds fall across water on land, so the concept shouldn’t have been too foreign to him. However, it has been a while. Anyways, he didn’t get that last bird and therefore didn’t pass the WC.

We certainly came away with things to work on:

- Looking for birds in the bag, needs to be corrected

- More work on doubles to gain confidence

- More water work

Overall, not bad, and he had fun.