Glencuan Pointers

Saturday 28th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:58:17 +0000

Co Tyrone.
6ºc. Dull starting dry but by lunch we had persistent rain. Wet (sort of obvious) rain from about 12:00 to at least 18:00.
This group of shooters is falling like nine pins. One gun plus me was all that took the field today to produce a final bag of three pheasants. Two hens and a Colgate. Chris and Tam both wanted to retrieve this bird and its guts ended up out its back-end. The breasts are all right though.
The four-legged brigade were Buck, Chris and Tam. I’ll accept that there may be in some minds an uncertainty of what a Teckel’s job is in the shooting field but in my team he’s a flushing dog. The short version is that every time Chris pointed he produced and every time Tam snuffled he produced and every time Buck took a line he produced.
I’ll be honest and tell you that till today I sort of had a niggling doubt that when Buck produced a pheasant it was a fluke. Well when walking to get into position with Chris and Tam on the lead Buck took a line from the path into the whins to produce a pheasant not one two or three times but four times. As the cousins would say “That ain’t no fluke.”
I would say that Chris pointed in excess of ten times to produce the same number of pheasants and Tam a similar number. Both are out on their feet tonight. They were in fine form at 15:30 but neither are pups and the day’s exertions took their toll. I had to lift Chris down when we got home he was that stiff and sore he didn’t want to jump. He’ll be ok tonight though as he and Buck are in the new kennel and the temperature was 17ºc when I checked earlier on.
There is an adage in sport in general that by the time you have experience it is all you have. Chris and Tam brought their fair share of that commodity to today’s enterprise but they also brought balls the size of water melons to stick at their job the whole day.
I don’t like flowery language but in my time I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with some great dogs. I have a feeling though that for their consistency Tam and Chris top the lot. I just hope that Ross gets an opportunity to see this pair in serious action. It will probably have to be next season as good as they are they can’t last for ever.

Wednesday 25th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:03:57 +0000

The Signal Centre.
S. 7ºc.
Today didn’t start well as I wanted some pigeons but couldn’t get any into the loft. The only way I seem to be able to get them in is to not feed them for a couple of days. Then feed them when it is dark with the loft illuminated by one of the garage lights. Then when I switch the light off I can pick them up by hand, but not today.
I decided that rather than do nothing I would take Van to The Signal Centre and run him on a short line to test how well he is getting the grasp of dropping to wing. He pointed three times. The first and third times I was able to get to him and pick up the line but he failed to produce. The second find was a snipe. Pretty much where I expected it to be. He held his point well and until I had just got hold of the line. The bird flushed and I blew the whistle but in fairness to Van he had already dropped. I wanted to get right to him to praise him and stroke him up and since he was already down I let the line go. Big mistake. There was in fact a snipe just behind him as well and I walked it up in going to him. Whereas he had been steady to the bird he pointed he took a wee chase after this one. Maybe ten yards, which didn’t concern me unduly.
Obviously my dropping to wing training is not yet complete but there is no doubt that the work I’ve done recently is beginning to pay off in overall control.
Gave him another run in an adjoining paddock but while he pointed long enough for me to get to the line a couple of time he didn’t produce any more birds. Nice and free when roading in which is surprising as dogs have a tendency to stick when there’s nothing there and they think they have made a mistake. Of course maybe he doesn’t realise he’s made a mistake.
I went home and then took Al to The Practice for a bit of dropping training. I started off with him on a rope lead and he dropped quite well but when it came to running free that was another matter. I then tried a trick I had used before. I let the dog off and encouraged him to run past me a good few times, standing tall all the time. Then when he was a good bit off me I called him but this time I hunkered down. This hunkering down is useful when a dog won’t come to you. By making yourself small you are less intimidating and the dog is more likely to come to you. This however wasn’t why I was hunkering down for Al. I waited till he was no more than five yards off me, still going like the clappers. I then stood up, raised my hand and blew the whistle. The dog is faced with this huge impediment that he thinks he’s likely to run into at full tilt and throwing himself to the ground is his only way out. After a few goes at this followed by lavish praise this becomes good fun. It is good progress but the aim is to be able to drop him when he’s going away at pace, not approaching.

Sunday 22nd January 2012

glencuanpointers — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:39:43 +0000

It is a really rough morning here. There’s light rain whipped to a frenzy by the wind and it is cold. Just as good a morning as there could be to compare temperatures both inside and outside the G Box. The ambient external temperature was 6ºc and the internal temperature was 19ºc. To put that into perspective the minimum temperature guideline for an administrative office is 16ºc and the RSPCA will advise you that if you own Gordon Setters the air conditioning in your truck should come on at 18ºc. To me that means toasty pointers inside the box and last night there were only two dogs in the box and it is designed for three!
Don’t know what I’m going to do today. I overfed the pigeons yesterday and they stayed away. That and the sparrowhawk on patrol mean I’ll be birdless. I suppose dropping practice with Van and Al and maybe take the rat for a walk.

Later.
The rat didn’t get his walk but Al got a bit of dropping practice and I tried to take some video footage of him and gat about an inch.

Saturday 21st January 2012.

glencuanpointers — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:03:28 +0000

Beechfield.
I was so pleasantly surprised by the temperature inside the “G Box” (insulated kennel) this morning that I have bought a couple of thermometers to be able to give you a meaningful comparison.
The Signal Centre.
I took Van and three pigeons, would have sworn there were four last night, to the centre to work a bit on his general dropping and dropping to wing in particular. I would place the launcher in rushes so that he couldn’t see it, either before or after the flush, and walk him down wind to the launcher. This exercise is all about sight and not about scent. I was able to walk him on a grass verge to take him up wind of the pigeon and I would drop him several times while walking. Dogs can never do too much dropping practice in my book. For now I am blowing the whistle as well as releasing the bird but I hope that in a short time he will drop to the flushed pigeon without additional instruction.
Black Mountain.
7°c. NW > WSW< NW. 10.6 mph gusting 20+mph.
With that wind it was nearly a waste of time but having made the effort I took the dogs out anyway.
Basso performed just as I expected. He had great pace, good lines and handled easily. He did however check a lot of scent but maybe with the high wind he was wary of making a mistake. I seemed to spend an awful lot of time picking up my cap which kept being blown off and during one such episode Basso appeared to bump or at least failed to point the one snipe I saw.
Al really enjoyed himself and it is as well he did for it is the last time he’ll see the mountain for a spell. He can run for fun and is actually hunting but his chasing of a lark or two today suggested that it’s time to teach him some manners and manners and the open hill are mutually exclusive. Early on I released him to see if he would back Basso. So happens he showed little inclination to back but when Basso started to run Al ran with him. I know, I know Basso was hunting and Al only chasing but Basso is very quick in my book and Al is only nine months old. The though of having all that power under control is exciting but the thought of not having it under control is frightening.

Thursday 19th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:11:44 +0000

Glenarm.
The Lachan Gun Club’s annual sortie and I took Tam to pick up for Ross. This was a very enjoyable day notwithstanding a down pour that lasted the best part of three quarters of an hour in the mid morning. I’m lucky in that I have a Belgian Army combat jacket that has a button in Goretex Liner and I was dry although with wet clothing on there is always the chance of feeling cold if you are standing about.
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that every time a gun was fired a bird fell. In fact as a group that don’t shoot even mini drives very often it was the easier birds that were more likely to escape unscathed but the majority of the very tall hard flying birds were downed in some style. Just like my hero Lt. Col.Peter Harker I would rather a man missed in good style than killed everything by poking. I can’t say much about everybody’s shooting as we were split into two teams but we were quite often in sight of John Gibson and he killed some screamers. However, for obvious reasons, the shot of the day for me was Ross’ first (ever) woodcock. We were standing on the edge of a river looking at an expanse of grass that turned into a steep, wooded bank maybe a hundred feet high with tall mature trees all over it and especially at the top. The woodcock came out of the trees starting off slightly to the right and flying at an angle to take it over his left shoulder. His first barrel made it jink and the second barrel had it dead in the air still over a hundred feet up.
The bird fell very close to the edge of the river but I had it miss-marked and I had actually called for assistance before Tam picked it right at the water’s edge fifteen yards nearer than I had thought.
Final tally thirty two pheasants, nine woodcock and a snipe.
Tam did what Tam usually does. He hunted with gusto the whole day. made several pointless retrieves and a few really good ones but he is pushing the window a bit on acceptable distance this year though he never goes that far and comes back within range readily enough.

Friday 2oth.
Morning.
The new kennel got the ultimate endorsement. It is a wet and windy morning here at Beechfield but usually the dogs come out to see what’s going on when I leave Buck out before breakfast. Not Van and Basso this morning though. Van stuck his nose out for a quick look before withdrawing it. Both obviously happier in the kennel than out of it.

The one less than satisfactory outcome yesterday came in the shape of a first for me. Sinusitis runs in my family. My particular version presents in the form of a persistent lingering cough that I have for maybe two or three months after a cold. Well it now transpires that the sinusitus was masking another problem. The quacks aren’t quite sure what it is but for the moment I am being treated for asthma on the basis that if the treatment works it’s asthma I have. Like anybody who has pushed themselves physically there are times that I have had to stop and take a rest. Well going up a steep climb yesterday I had to stop because I couldn’t get air. You stop because you are nearly choking. You try to clear it but can’t swallow. If you clear it on the second go it isn’t too bad but if by the tenth you are still failing you are starting to wonder will it ever clear. The irony of all this is that sinusitis or whatever I had in the past this inability to get air has only started in the week that the teatment for asthma commenced. Thought provoking!

Wednesday 18th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:30:11 +0000

Black Mountain
NW <> SW 6 mph. 7°c. Bright and at times sunny but always feeling colder than 7°c.
Just me and Van.
When the wind is from the west it’s a problem. For a start you have to run across the paddock which restricts the length of any individual run but the majority of the snipey places lie on the east side of the paddock. The ideal situation with a young dog is to hit the birdy places towards the end of your run but today we were starting off in the birdy spots. Nothing to do but get on with it.
This dog is pleasing me no end at the moment. There are things to attend to but nothing I’m really worried about. Well for now anyway.
The good stuff.
His running is very fluid and powerful for one so young. I put this down to his desire to hunt. It is better to have a dog that wants to hunt early on as necessity is the mother of invention and I’m sure the ability to run comes from the desire to hunt and not the other way round. He is a natural quarterer. You couldn’t accuse him of being even, either his beat or his bite but he moves across the wind and turns forward most of the time. When, like just now, I haven’t got complete control of Van I expect him to end up down wind of me from time to time and this can lead to the odd turn back, as opposed to back cast. In fact it means he is actually turning to get back to me and comes straight in irrespective of wind direction or his position in relation to it. Of course if he paid more attention to my commands he wouldn’t end up out of position but as I establish firmer control the whole thing will improve.
The sun was low but I reckon there were four snipe today. The first one he appeared to miss completely. Van was relatively close to and down wind of it and yet he didn’t point it, or chase it either, and I’m at a loss to explain why. I walked up another one that he missed due to faulty ground work but the other two he pointed. He is quite staunch and already seems to know his distance as neither of these birds were more than five yards in front. He didn’t get to produce either of these snipe as I probably put them to flight in my efforts to get close to him but he gave them a wee chase. He seemed more interested in getting back to the haunt and didn’t go more than twenty yards either time.
The bad stuff.
If Van has been excited by a flush of a chase I might as well put my whistle where the sun won’t get at it. The plan is to lead him to multiple flushes from the launcher. That’s why I feed my pigeons all year round and it is time or them to earn their keep. He will be dropping to flushes in his sleep. A short trailing line would also be of help. I have one but with the cages out of the truck it was at home. There’s nothing that plenty of work won’t sort out.
The new kennel is installed. Needless to say within a minute Van showed me the weakness in the design but it didn’t take more than ten minutes to fit a couple of short lenghts of angle iron. They can chew away at that for all they are worth.

Sunday 15th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:22:20 +0000

Black Mountain. 6°c SSE 3.2 < 5?
Blight enough but little sun.
Ross and I took Al, Basso, Chris & Van for a gallop on the hill.

Usually this is done in order of decreasing merit but there was so little in it today that we’ll go for alphabetical.
Al got a couple of runs on his own handled by Ross. It is hard to remember that Al is only nine months old when you see him taking on the hill. He still isn’t fully grown but he can still cover a lot of ground at pace. To me it looks as if he actually suffers from having such a long stride. There are times I feel he could make more progress if he shortened things a bit but he really can go. More importantly he is starting to handle after a fashion. You can get him to come back to you quite easily from more or less the middle of the beat and that is a pleasing facit of his game. A happy big dog and taking to Ross quite well.
Basso put in the best performance by far but then he to top dog at this time. To end up down wind of his snipe meant that he had to do all of his beat. Had he turned even five yards short he wouldn’t have had the find. His lines are immaculate and he is handling relatively easily. It was only fitting that he had the find since he did the best work but then it wasn’t anything other than what I expected of him.
Chris performed better than I expected in that he covered his ground at pace but his lines weren’t as neat as Basso. He started off backing Basso on the find but it ended up a joint find when he got the scent of the bird himself.
Van seemed the hardest work of the four but he still pleased me. I have mentioned many times that I make a point of picking up my dogs several times in a run just to be able to cast them off again and stop them from predicting the lead going on. I will obviously have to do this more often with Van as even when I call him back to me to straighten his line he slows away down as if thinking he’s going to be picked up. Van pointed on the lead when Basso and Chris found and when they were finished I let him off just to see if he could produce a bird but he couldn’t. In his second run he had two goes at snipe. The first one he actually missed but if he had handled correctly he would have at least had a chance at it. The second one he winded but he bumped it up while trying to pin it and gave it a chase.
All four dogs did well but the M.O.M. award goes to Al for performing well above expectation.
Ryan was at Beechfield yesterday to help Ross move into his house so I was able to press-gang the pair into helping me carry the new insulated kennel out to the run. The only down side was this I had to take the cage out of the truck to move furniture for Ross and it’ll take a while to put it all back again.
Watched Ulster take Leicester apart at Ravenhill on Friday night. They haven’t quite been the same team since Dean Richards left but it was still a job well done by the Ulstermen. It’s a great time to be an Irish Rugby fan. All four provinces, even Connaught, doing well in the Heineken. The main worry is that this new guy in charge of England seems to be at least starting off on the right foot. He certainly isn’t scared to drop a few old guys. There was a time when it was harder to get out of the England squad than it was to get into it.

Wednesday 11th January 2011.

glencuanpointers — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:04:05 +0000

Black Mountain.
This is a very big day for me in that assuming I don’t change jobs I won’t have to work another Wednesday…………….ever. Well I’ll only have to work four days a week and for now it is Wednesdays I’ll have off.
Ross and I took the four pointers to the hill. Al, Basso, Chris & Van. It turned into a game of two halves. First off Ross ran Al on the low ground (fog affected) and into the wind. It went very well. He was quartering and pretty much stayed with Ross other than for one sortie away over the hill on the left but that was to look at, and probably get scared by, a small group of bullocks. When I say quartering he was fairly flat across the wind and obviously running out both sides though there was no pattern to it but then he’s only nine months old. Al has a lot going for him. For a start off he’s a black and white dog and the black is very black and the white very white. There’s nothing grey about him. He runs with a nice head high gait and he’s easy to watch. He already is quite powerful but he is going to get even more so with age.
We then walked back down wind and I ran Van more or less over the same ground. This is another powerful and hard running dog. I have a bit more control over him though it is hard and noisy work but it works. It seems such a minor thing but he has a lovely out cast. Straight as a die across the wind.He also has a lovely powerful but fluid gait and he’s hunting and the reason he can hunt to hard is that he runs for fun. There’s got to be doubts about steadiness if he found but we can work on that. I didn’t run Van that long as I was well pleased with what I got in the dozen or so casts he did.
The wheels then fell off when we went to run Basso and Chris. Chris was in hunt mode and Basso was lame. He was obviously lame too. That obvious I’m surprised I didn’t notice it back home. So we packed up and went home.

Saturday 7th January 2012

glencuanpointers — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:03:33 +0000

Co. Tyrone.
A shooting day.
Bright for most of the day and dry but we lost the light relatively early for these conditions. Definitely cool when you weren’t walking like while taking lunch in the calf byre. The ground was in a mess there having been so much rain of late that places even I could usually waltz over left you with one leg stuck in the ouse and quite often the other leg stuck in the ouse by the time you had the first one out. For all you urbanites the trick isn’t in just getting your foot out of the glar. It is getting your foot out of the glar with the Wellington boot still in situ.
The fun started no more than twenty miles from home. Ahead of me I saw red lights moving fast in a strange pattern. I had seen it once before as an Israeli Super Entard spun low over the Sinai Desert with its red wing tip lights moving like a Catherine Wheel. When I got to where the action was there was a car on its roof in the middle of the inside lane and looking very second-hand with the front door pillars down level with the bonnet. There were already people stopped and they wanted me out of the way so I drove on. Hope nobody was hurt but a futile wish I think.
Down in good time I had the non-combatants out for a gallop. Basso was in scintillating form though it was only as long as it took him to do a dump or two. Van and Al pleased me as well though they weren’t under control and Al obviously hadn’t worked out that fence posts mean fencing in between. He has now though.
Chris and Basso did all the work and they made a really good fist of it. At one stage Chris, having indicated game into heavy brambles a good three feet below him, and a good six feet high themselves threw ( no other expression comes near) himself down and into the tangle of thorns. He really is an old war horse when his dander is up.
I made one really bad blunder today. Only one? A bird, as far as I was concerned a hard hit bird, fell the other side of a fence in a grass field. A sort of a cross between a meadow and a paddy field. The grass was even but quite long. The ground was treacherous. Both dogs eventually made the fall in the field that I was already in. They both took a line. A fairly obvious runner with nowhere to go. Fat chance. Well when it comes to shared retrieves Tam and Chris are a tad competitive. Especially with each other so I lassoed Chris to prevent torn apart pheasant. The mistake was that the bird wasn’t that hard hit and in the soft ground when it made the effort to run and take off Tam just couldn’t nab it. Being both lighter and longer in the leg I’m convinced that Chris could have but them’s the breaks. The only other highlights, a nice retrieve of a rabbit, the only thing shot and bagged, by Tam and having my hat knocked off by a pheasant that flushed from the steep slope that I was climbing. It came out at head hight no more that three feet from me and only then of course did I see Chris on point behind the bush. It frightened the c*** out of me I can tell you.
The days are just that wee bit longer and we covered a lot of ground and not only was I tired at the end of the day I though that both dogs and in particular Chris looked beat. Now the dogs haven’t been doing that much and probably aren’t as fit as they would normally be at this stage of the season but it wasn’t until I got home that I found out just how hard a day it had been. Even on a day that I go to to gym I am four pounds heavier at bed time than I was when I got up that morning. Well today instead of being heavier I was about three pounds lighter so by my reckoning I shed about six pounds over the day. It’s hardly surprising I fell asleep in the bath.
Buck is in the bad books. He bit me. He didn’t break the skin, luckily for him, but that was more down to him being a wee dog than any half heartedness on his part. I wanted him in a run with Chris to be fed but he was in one of the kennel boxes with all the other dogs and when I put my hand in to pull him out he struck. I hadn’t even got hold of him. I could have forgiven him for that if I had grabbed him wrongly in the dark. No he hit before I even touched him. Not a good way to ensure your tenure at Beechfield.

2nd January 2012

glencuanpointers — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:02:16 +0000

The Signal Centre.
I really will have to get myself a thermometer for this was one of those day where I felt particularly cold even thought the visual conditions suggested otherwise. Low bright sun WSW 0 < 3.9 steady in direction.
I took Al to the splashes to look for snipe.
Maybe it is having been a banker but I like to measure things……accurately. One of the things I measure every day is my dogs’ food intake. It isn’t that I feel the need to note these things down but with food I like to be able to understand the relationship between a particular dog’s condition and his food intake. From the start of December I had altered the food intake of the dogs slightly in preparation for the horrible winter we were promised. When things settled down I put the older dogs back to their pre December rations as they were piling on the weight but the two pups Van and Al and Basso stayed on 125%. I have seen Al’ s granny, Newtown Lois at Godribb and I would describe her as a big spare bitch so when Al showed that he was going to be the male equivalent of his granny I wasn’t concerned that he was a spare dog as well. Then over Christmas I formed the impression that he wasn’t enjoying the cold weather and upped his grub to 150% of per December rations. You wouldn’t believe the way he has filled out in less than a fortnight. I noticed today that he has put on a bit more weight and I have to say this new sleeker Al looks good. The irony of this is that he has had more work in the last couple of weeks than he ever had.
Al seemed to enjoy himself today. The wind seemed a bit stronger than the reading suggested but he made a fair attempt to quarter and even if it wasn’t very neat it was at least across the wind. In the first paddock where the snipe usually are there were no birds but he did stop a time or two in a sort of a half hearted pointing stance but nothing was produced. Perhaps there was bird scent where he stopped but when we got to the splashes where I hoped the snipe would be there wasn’t just no snipe there was no sign of snipe either so perhaps they are gone for now.
The second paddock is drier and Al worked a bit harder at his running but there were other people about and I took him home before we got all enmeshed with each other.
Al is enjoying his runs out now more than before. It was interesting that today when another dog came over and barked that he actually got between me and the other dog. Nobody was getting at his Dad. Before today he would have been in behind me.

This morning I took Tam and Buck round The Round. It’s about a forty five minute walk in the dry and was about an hour today. Occasionally there is the odd pheasant to flush but there were none today.