Two weeks ago me and the dogs started our summer tour by visiting Yvonne Scheltens – a fellow flatcoated breeder (Tricksywood’s) and gundog trainer in the beautiful Drenthe region in the Netherlands. We shared some great training time with both our young dogs and their mothers in the challenging terrain Big thanks for your hospitality Yvonne and looking very much forward to our future plans…
From the north of NL me and the happy three dog campers travelled to Denmark to join a weekend of training with 60+ other flatcoated retrievers. I had prepared a small lecture on stress in working dogs for the Danes and on the photo underneath you see a very hot room with interested people sticking to it despite the conditions – after a long hot day of training (only cooling options for the dogs) sitting in a warm cabin taking in serious dog knowledge is only for die hards. My respect and thankfulness for your engagement in becoming a better owner/handler for your dogs!
Luckily I also had time to train my own dogs. Training three was a challenge – so I had asked Josine (owner of + Line) if she would like to handle Kaspar for me. I joined with Lotte and together we started at the beginners team but moved on to the open class team on Sunday afternoon led by Carsten Druekær (trainer and gundog judge). It was very enjoyable to be trained by Carsten – he is a complete training nerd – loves to go into detail with learning stuff and he has a huge heart and understanding of dogs’ beghavior and technical execution of an exercise. He will never let any of us become dull in training our dogs and he gave me a leap ahead in one afternoon. Carsten I will come back for more as soon as I am back in DK! Another joy of training abroad is the fact that there are different traditions to working your dogs. For us – practicing working in a manner where the dogs had to pass one another from close by and be passed by others too was new and very useful to practice.
Such a training weekend is very enjoyable- first of all it can really push you into a new impulse in your own training but secondly it is a great opportunity to meet other flatcoated handlers, breeders and trainers. Reminding me that we really need to work together to preserve our wonderful breed. This year Annette & Jørgen (to whom a big thank you for arranging) added tracking to the menu and due to lack of time – I asked Lene and Jan from kennel Whimbrel if we could visit later in the same week.
Jan was so very kind to make several red deer tracks to all of the dogs including half sister Ragne of Josine and Mathijs with whom we have been camping all week on Fyn. All of the dogs enjoyed the tracking and especially little Ragne gained huge amounts of self confidence when she discovered her tracking skills. Rumi was so powerful that Jan had to take over the line. I could simply not hold her.
Big thanks to kennel Whimbrel – Lene and Jan for having us and especially Jan for the great tracking experience.
Flatastic flatcoated retrievers 