The Ice Is Out!

The ice finally went out on our creek so we can start practicing our retrieving for next bird season. This is Abby.


And this is me.

I think I retrieve pretty good for a hound!

Airborne!!!

Hunting In The Swamp

I was out in the swamp looking for birds when this picture was taken.

Part Of The Pack

This is me and Argos with our cat, Digit. Sometimes I think Digit wishes he was a dog so he could be part of our pack. Actually, I think he IS part of the pack, anyway!

Swimming On A Cold Day

I have heard that some RR's don't like to swim, but I bet they don't know what they're missing.

I like swimming so much that I don't even wait for summertime- on this day I was swimming while there was still snow on the ground!

Argos

This is my RR brother, Argos. He is a Liver Nose, which means that his nose is brown instead of black. We play together all the time and have lots of fun. Argos plays rough, though, and cuts my neck up with his teeth. Argos has very intense eyes!

My Newest Handler

I have a new dog show handler!!!!! It is my big brother Matthew. Me and him are going to conformation handling classes together every week and soon we will enter a dog show together.
This is the most fun I have ever had dog showing!

Pearly Whites

I am showing Matthew my pearly white teeth!

Deep Snow

I think I need some doggie snowshoes!!

Winter Hike

Mommy and Daddy got a new digital camera and we all went for a hike around the farm so that we could try it out.

Here is a picture of me with my RR brothers, Argos and Tsavo:


This one is of all four of us dogs walking through the woods with Daddy:



This is my Black Lab sister, Abby:

And this is me, Tchaka, standing in the cattails near our dam:


I think the new camera is a keeper!

Best Of Breed

In January me and Mommy went dog showing at the Land O' Lakes Kennel Club show in Saint Paul. My good friend Debbie Lynn Davies dog showed with me in the Open Dog class. We won that and then we went back for the Breed class. We won Winners Dog and Best Of Breed, over three Specials! That was exciting. Then we had to wait for the Hound Group class, but it took so long that by the time they were ready for us my frend Debbie had to leave to drive back to Canada. She found a friend of hers to dog show with me in the Group class. My new friend is Karen and she was very nice to me. I liked showing with her, but we did not win any ribbons.

Mommy said we looked really great anyway, and she was still happy because I got 2 more points towards my Championship, bringing me to a total of 9 points. Now all I need is to get my Majors and I will have my first title.

Looking For Pheasants

Daddy and me out hunting for birds in the snow.

The Snow Plow Monster

Me and Argos were outside playing in the snow one day when all of a sudden I had to run for my life!

The giant Snow Plow Monster was right behind me and I was afraid it was gonna get me!

Then I found out it was just Daddy clearing snow from our driveway.

Agility Pause Tables

Daddy is building me some pause tables so that I can practice for Agility. Here I am supervising his work to make sure he gets them exactly right.

Daddy is an excellent carpenter and he built my tables perfectly, as you can see in the next picture:

Heavy Cover

Mommy said that some of my friends who read my blog might wonder why we don't get more pheasants if I am such a great hunting dog. She says I should tell a bit about the type of hunting we do and the cover we hunt in.

We don't hunt at a game preserve like a lot of pheasant hunters do, except that once in awhile we go to our neighbor's hunt club to scratch hunt, but not too often. Usually we hunt on our own farm, or on a friend or relative's farm which looks a lot like ours. Sometimes we get lucky and find birds in the pastures, or at the edge of a field or the woods, but most of the time they are in the swamp, or in thickets of willow and prickly ash that grow on the edges of the swamp. We don't have any nicely mowed fields to hunt in like at the hunt clubs. The cover is extremely heavy most of the time, and we have to work hard just to get through it. I always manage to find the birds, but sometimes they flush where Mommy and Daddy can't see them because of all the trees. Or, a lot of times, they fly straight across the swamp and land in the cattails.

Here is a picture of one of our covers, and you can see that the trees are even taller than any grownups. That makes it very difficult to get a shot at any flushing birds.

Here is one of our cattail covers- if you look really hard you can just see my orange hunting dog vest in the middle of the picture. That is some really heavy cover!

This picture was taken from the bridge overlooking the South end of the swamp. It is impossible to hunt here until the river freezes over so that we can walk on top of the ice. There are tons of birds in this part of the swamp, but even with the ice it is still hard to get at them because the cover is so heavy.

Hunting around here is definitely a challenge, and it is even more of a challenge when I hunt with Mommy because she can't hit the broadside of a barn with her shotgun! Luckily, Daddy goes with us sometimes and he is a much better shot with his shotgun, so we have gotten a few birds. Daddy says that Mommy needs to get a new shotgun that fits her better so that she can be a better shot.

Don't Fence Us In!!

Me and Argos went to the neighbor's house to scavange in their deer scrap pile. Mommy and Daddy were really mad at us and now Daddy is putting up a fence so we can't leave the yard by ourselves anymore. Mommy says we were really, really, really, BAD DOGS, but I was just following Argos and I got in trouble anyway.

Matthew's First Deer

I haven't been able to write any posts for a long time because my computer was broken. Now that it is fixed again I will catch up on everything that's been happening around here during the past few months.

Matthew went deer hunting this year for the very first time. He got a deer the third day of the season. Us dogs were very happy because we got to eat all the scraps and bones after the deer was processed. Matthew is a very good hunter and I wish he could hunt all year long so that we could eat deer bones all the time!