Supergirl is for sale 

Beautiful young pup that when full-grown should be between 32 and 38 pounds heavy moderately ticked tricolor female. Out of my two best grouse dogs. You can find more information on her parents on the available puppies page and by looking on our sires and dams page. She is very intelligent and likely will have a pointing style very similar to her half sister Ripple. Serious inquiries only please. We are looking for the best home meeting our criteria which you can find by filling out the puppy purchase application on our available puppies page. Email me if interested.

Pixel due in 20 days!

Here one of my favorite photos of Pixel. This was from back in 2013 in the UP. She is pointing a ruffed grouse, while 50 days pregnant, split bloodied tail from the aspen stand. This is a great shot of a great grouse dog in all her glory. We have a few reservations available still from this litter. Email us if interested.

pixpreg

 

THE CRITTERS LITTER IS ONE WEEK OLD TODAY!

critters

Here is The Critter Litter, Omiimii by Duncan. Born 2/18/17. Ready to go 4/15/17. Details on the AVAILABLE PUPPIES page. Top left, are the three belton boys. I think they will be orange beltons. Their ticking is just starting to come in on their faces. Top right, are the two boys with patch markings. One has an orange patch behind right eye. One has black patch on right eye. Unable to tell if black patch will be black and white or tri color yet. Bottom left, are the three girls. The best I can tell looks like two blue (black) beltons and a black (patch) and white. Bottom right, is Duncan top, Omiimii bottom.

Omiimii will be having her pups sometime this week!

We are very excited to have Omiimii pups on the way! She’s one of PRL’s very best. This is a repeat breeding out of Omi and Duncan. Here’s a photo of her from this morning when it was temperature taking time. This dog is as great of a hunter as she is cute! Also a video of her belly, where you can see some pups moving in there! Make sure to scroll down below photo to see the short video.

omiimii-belly

Ripple search work with Fetch

Make sure to read below this video for pointers and knowledge of what is going on in this training exercise.

Today was Ripple’s first day of working with having to actively search for the dummy rather than the straight up visual retrieve. I changed location from the backyard to the driveway and surrounding area. This video was taken about 3-5 minutes into the training session. I did several simple retrieves all down the driveway that she could see then held her in a Whoa for a few seconds tossing the dummy down to the same area. The delay in sending the dog often creates a nose work situation rather than solely a visual exercise. Now the hunting dog is hunting for the source via scent, which is what we want to promote in the search.

The exercise in this video was set up to force the dog to learn that she needs to expand her search area and in doing so she will be rewarded for her hard work by locating the retrieve dummy. We certainly hope that dog expands her search area without our help because otherwise the dog learns to depend on the handler. Creating learning environments of gradually increased difficulty for the dog will build its work ethic in both drive and focus, yet always getting rewarded with finding its desired source is a critical part of the exercise.

Ripple works this search beautifully and in classic fashion by first going to the area where I have been generally tossing the dummy on the handful of previous retrieves. Once she has thoroughly searched what she views as the primary search area, notice how she starts to go side to side more, and back up the driveway towards me. She has a couple of moments of stopping and thinking about— where it might, should she continue searching, and where hasn’t she looked yet. She then goes back and searches all areas she has already covered.  We had a gentle up hill breeze on this warm day. The wind carried the scent of the dummy far enough that once she stretched just a little further from her original search area straight ahead of me you’ll see she caught wind of it and works the scent cone starting at time 1:54 on this video.

This was a long first search for a pup. She did very well and I could not have asked for all variables to have played out better for a quailty learning experience. It’s experiences like this that make the dog feel it was totally worth it to work that hard for that long and she figured it all out by herself!

Did you notice that I didn’t speak a word to the dog between giving the Whoa command and until she actually grabbed the dummy? This is important because handlers think they are helping by vocally encouraging the dog but they are only distracting the dog and breaking its focus in a task that they are on the fence about giving up on or not. If the dog does give up and completely stops searching I will try to assist without the dog feeling like I am doing its work for it.

Ways that I will assist are: walking a little closer towards the dummy, which will promote the dog to advance further away from its already searched area.  Moving to one side or the other to get in front of the dummy. This will encourage the dog to work in front of you because that is where your young dog will always feel most confident and comfortable.

Additionally, if I have had several poor training set ups I’ll toss a dummy out there prior to bringing the dog out to the training area so when I toss a dummy out there while working with the dog it has a greater chance of locating a dummy and getting the satisfaction and motivation to try hard again based on its success.

Good job Ripple! This young dog hopefully will have her second season of many great retrieves to hand in the Northwoods pursuing the Ruffed Grouse!