My First Stakes competition!

In three days, I will run my Pointing Lab Ben in a Springer Spaniel Stakes contest. This is where you pay an entry fee, and compete against other dogs and handlers in locating and prodicing a set number of game birds. Planted Pheasants in this case. If you are wondering what this has to with Drahthaars, here goes," Watching other dogs and handlers work, helps teach me as a trainer and handler." I am able to form a picture in my mind of what my dog should look like in the field and train towards that goal. In 20 plus years of dog training one thing that I have learned is that dogs, like people are all different, and training must be tailored to maximize results. Finally, I am not surprised that William Shattner did not attend George Takei's wedding, I just don't care.

A Nice Young DD

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of hunting with a nice young DD called Tucker. He is a half uncle of my bitch Chloe, and is about 16 months old. I watched him successfully complete his HZP ( a test for started hunting dogs) a couple of weeks ago. Although we did not locate a single bird in over 4 hours of hard hunting, he impressed me with his enthusiam for the task and his range. Following a couple of minutes of posturing, he got along well with my Pointing Lab, Ben and by the end of the morning, they were working well together to cover terrain in the search for game. Ben, as is his nature, works primarily within gun range and Tucker worked futher out. Even though we did not produce any game, it was a beautiful morning and the 8 miles or so of walking we did felt good. I look forward to hunting with Tucker and his partner Abe again in the future, hopefully with better results.

Why a Drahthaar

It would be easy to use this forum to bash the AKC and other for profit dog organizations. Instead I will use it to document the growth and development of my new Dog, Chloe. A Deutsch Drahthaar, which translates to, "German Wirehair". Using this translation to describe the breed to an afficiando of the Deutsch Drahthaar or "DD" as it is often referred to, will probably start an argument due to the loss of inate abilities among many of the AKC registered German Wirehaired Pointers. The same inate abilities that the breed was originally developed to display. More discussion on this later.