A Secret Mission

Field Dog?

Yesterday was the PVGRC’s first field training day of the year and I was taking Riot to see what it’s all about. I’ve adopted the mantra of what one gold dog is doing, the other might as well try. And decided I’d take Cisco to see if he had any interest in working in the field what-so-ever.

Cisco’s pedigree doesn’t really give any indication that he’d have any instinct for field work. If you go back 7-8 generations in his pedigree, you’ll see a few WCs or JHs, but not many.

When I started throwing bumpers for Riot, I started throwing them for Cisco. At first they weren’t nearly as exciting as tennis balls or flying squirrels, but over time they became more interesting.

Our first turn we showed him the duck and he had no issue picking it up and carrying it around. We did three singles with bumpers and he did really well on each one (I still don’t know all the terms), but the trainer said his drive out and return was really impressive for a seven year old that had never done this before.

For our second turn, I said I wanted to do two bumpers and then try a duck. The trainer suggested we do the duck first and see how he did with that. Well he had no problem with the duck. So we ended up doing three ducks. Our second was really far and Cisco still remembered where the first duck was so he was a little confused. We moved him closer and re-did it with no problems.

Cisco looked great out there and it seemed like he was really enjoying himself. So we’ll have to go back at least for Cisco.