A new dog!

Last week I added another English Pointer to my kennel. Copper is a pleasant young dog with an impressive background. Her mother is a winner of several national championship grouse trials. So far she seems to be fitting in very well and is very well mannered for a young dog but it is always nerve wracking to add another dog to the team. At first I only let her out on a lead so that I could be certain that she would not run off; after a few days I switched to putting an electronic collar on her so that I could enforce my “come” command. One morning I let all three dogs out and walked down to get the newspaper. Copper and Woody my golden retriever were in the field across the street when I saw Copper turn on a dime with her nose in the air. I was sure she had made game of some sort but could not really see her in the tall grass. Soon though I could make out her tail straight up and knew she was on point. At that moment Woody also figured out that there were birds of some sort in the field and ran down into a large flock of turkeys that I could see fly up into the trees at the edge of the field.

Photo courtesy of the Sportsman's Cabinet

I called the dogs, at first quietly then more loudly. Soon Woody appeared but no Copper, I called a little more and then decided that Copper must have run off after the turkeys that chose to run rather than fly and that she was clearly not coming when I called. I kenneled the other two dogs and hopped in the car hoping to at least catch up with her. I stopped on the road only a short way from where the turkeys had been and listened. As I stood on the side of the road a few turkeys flew out of the trees overhead and in a minute or two a couple ran by. I figured that if there were turkeys still on the ground the dog must not have chased them very far. I started to walk down toward where I had last seen the dog and there she was hard on point marking the turkeys for me. Luckily I had not used the electronic collar on her because I did not know for sure that she was disobeying my come command. In fact she was doing just what I want although not on the exact type of bird I was hoping for. A pretty good place to start though!