Last Saturday the WFRG held a so-called Club Diploma Day. It is a standardized trial with dummies. Obtaining a diploma gives you access to club working tests and is a good way to start bringing young dogs to trials to test how they deal with such a situation.

The c-diploma consists of following parts:

-heeling on and off the leash while walking a set course

– casting the dog blindly 60 m and recalling the dog upon notice of judge

– a marked land retrieve (short distance)

– a marked water retrieve

– down position out of sight of handler during 2 minutes

B-diploma is all of the above parts plus:

– a sharp mark on land (no deviation allowed above 1 m)

– a cast over water and free search for a blind

– free search in woods

A-diploma is all of the above plus:

– directing dog to a set point in the field, when approved by judge one may cast the dog sideways to retrieve a blind

– a drag which begins at the other side of the waterway.

This Saturday it was Flatastic Apricot Fulfilment “Shelby” who brought home a C diploma after having fulfilled his first official trial.

Congratulations with your first diploma Marja and Shelby!

Shelby is a very talented youngster from our Aura litter. He learns very quickly and he lives to retrieve so to say. Of all within the dozen he resembles his mother Rumi the most: highly motivated-a mind of his own and an extrovert character. We are looking forward to see what the future brings for Marja and Shelby.

Today Lotte and Kaspar had their first official gun dog competition in the Netherlands on dummies.

It was at the same time a test for me to see if I am capable of administering 2 in 1 day. Well, let’s say I cannot recommend anyone to do this at home unless you suffer from a severe energy surplus. It is a rather exhausting task I must admit.

Nevertheless I am very proud to announce that both dogs managed to achieve an official diploma:

Lotte B club diploma on dummy 69 points

Kaspar C club diploma on dummy 45 points

Of course we have a lot to improve on execution within the test – but mostly it will be a matter of them getting used to all the distractions in a competition setting.

I am very proud of them and very pleased with the outcome. Now they are officially qualified for breeding according to the guidelines of the Dutch Flatcoated Retriever Club. That is to me as a breeder a kind of cool, however I still want to accomplish much more for them to prove their talents before we start making serious plans..

Storm Eunice is smiling as she takes off from our shores leaving the Netherlands with broken roofs and trees torn down. At 5 am me and the 3 black musketeers are sailing the highway.. brave Miss Ford is smiling back at Eunice and shortly past 7 we arrive safely in Friesland welcomed by a shower of rain.

My host Lieuwe is on his way to the field with his fellow hunters and I am late due to bad weather, so it will be a quick pitt stop and off to the field.

“You’ll find coffee at the table and be careful Gurbe is outside and will greet you passionately..”

I take Rumi out of the car when the first goose finds her way in the water.. a deep waterway and Rumi looks like a weightlifter on a day after a night out claiming a workout anyway. I just love her spirit to work – not even the stiffness of a 2 hour car drive stops her from working wholeheartedly.

On my way to our hiding place in the reed, a big Grey goose is hit but does not fall down immediately and lands rather far on a plowed field. Rumi does not seem to have noticed that it has landed. With pheasants and ducks Rumi spots an injuired bird immediately and will start running on its way down. With geese I can can tell she has not learned to tell the difference on a long distance yet. The goose lands somewhere 150 meters. In thick mud. So we give it a go as a blind. She runs about 80 meters and deviates to the left – then to the right. Of course..she wants to work on the wind.. I want to maintain her obedience on the cast. Finally she accepts the straight line and I feel very content. Then a hare comes out of hiding and runs across the field just in front of Rumi. Ships. A quick “no” from my side and she continues on the cast. Wauw that was some accomplishment for us. After another 30 meters I see her deviating to the left.. I decide to say nothing as her body language says it all. The goose has been found. It takes a fair amount of time for her to galop back to me in the sticky soil – I think she must have been further away than my estimated distance.. and the goose is rather lively when I pick it up. I must admit – a flatcoated retriever has the perfect size to retrieve these big birds and Rumi knows exactly how to get a perfect hold now. Wauw what a great retrieve.

This is my third time in the same field..it is crazy to observe how much damage on the grassland is being created by geese. The following photos are from the second last time showing what geese do to the soil and grass:

After the long cast I reach our hiding place.. despite the cold and the hailstorm I regret wearing thermo undergarments at this point. Walking in the mud is a fairly good workout especially with a heavy goose in the bag. But no time to rest because suddenly Rumi disappears without any notice for a retrieve on water that I missed completely. Not so good for the obedience but perfect for the retrieve. Later the hunter explained how the goose had fallen into a tree in between the reed and how he and Rumi had collaborated in getting the bird out of the tree in the water and then out of the water again. For these kind of situations I am very thankful for Rumi’s perseverance and tough cookieness because a gun dog who is softer and less motivated would have not gone to the extreme needed in these waters.

It was a morning full of impressions..Nature in her power, strong winds, rain as if in a waterfall, hail and warm sunlight caressing our cheek. Lovely company – good retrieves, some frustrating ones and a funny one (after a long search in reed Rumi came out with a ammunition shell in her mouth). But most of all a lovely day in the field with pleasant company-enjoying working with Rumi and Nature in her February power.

Our day was very retrieving rich – the “guns” (slang for hunters) were skilled and Rumi and I had a tough time getting it all done. Time to start hunting with multiple dogs, so we must speed up the youngsters’ education. Thank you to my host Lieuwe and his fellow hunters and thank you beautiful Friesland for your endless raw beauty. Looking forward to preparing the big lads awaiting our dinner table.

At 4.30 am my alarm sounds – out of bed, into my hunting gear and with a hot cup of chai I drive to Friesland again. Me and Rumi. I love to be away with my great girl – hunting with her is such a pleasure. This time she has the responsibility of showing her son “Gurbe” how to retrieve goose.

Because of the low temperature and harsch winds – I took a minute to put both dogs in their warming vests as Lieuwe walked up to his hiding spot. As I came out of the car the first goose fell in the plowed soil. I was not sure if it was a perfect shot but Rumi had not had the time to mark it well. I had to direct her to the right spot and so we got the goose back quickly. It was perfect for Gurbe to see his mother work and he started to become very eager. The second goose was a good job for me to handle as it was still alive and while I was receiving the goose from Rumi Gurbe was looking and learning. Dogs learn much faster from watching other dogs than when we have to teach them alone. This phenomenon is called social learning.

I have written before about how I enjoy bringing meat to our table, about how the craftsmanship of hunting is a part of flora and fauna preservation. The less attractive part of this proces is that we take a life in order to do so and at the same time have love for the beauty of the animal and enjoy them alive. This is very dual and sometimes difficult to hold that I can be both in the same person. I always look into the eye of the animal before I release its life. I want to maintain the feeling of it – the difficulty of it. When I prepare the meat – every little piece carries that value and respect. I proces the animal as much as I can. The wings are being dried and given to bee keepers or used as training for puppies, the feet used to distract glucosamine and the bones for broth.

Another part of flora and fauna problem has unfortunately become human trashing. Apart from the plastic soup also general littering of food leftovers keeps the numbers of Jackdaws high. These birds predate on song birds’ nests and due to their numbers they interrupt balance of species.

This above bird was a bit of a humerus thing. Lieuwe and I had just done a drive in a field. He and Rumi held post and walked up to a duck pool. Ducks flew up including a couple of males, they flew around and Lieuwe called the ducks. He had a perfect shot and I saw Rumi jump into the water and she came running back to me with a nice big male duck.

During mating season many female ducks drown because they are more or less raped by several male ducks – so keeping the numbers down is the wise thing to do in order to preserve a balance.

Lieuwe and I were talking about the great retrieve of Rumi and we re-entered a bicycling path and just around the corner was a woman walking straight at us. She was very spontaneous and asked kindly if we had been lucky to harvest anything for the dinner table. I had the duck in my hand so I showed her the bird and enjoyed the talk. Meeting people with understanding of hunting is becoming a rare phenomenon and I hope that future generations will take this trend to a turn. While continuing our walk back to the car I talked to Lieuwe about the importance of maintaining the practice of retrieving less attractive birds such as crows for our young dogs. Then the black and white Jackdaw flew in circles above us. Lieuwe looked at me, got the bird and Rumi retrieved it. We both had to laugh a little about this coincidence.

Before driving back home I got to enjoy a cup of coffee and a traditional beandish at Lieuwe’s place. Giving me plenty of time to hug Gurbe, Rumi’s son. I am very pleased with how he has developed- a very charming young male with a lovely character, a good portion of flatcoated tweekyness and great hunting drive. Oh I almost forgot to mention – after watching his mother in the morning, he retrieved 2 big geese himself. I think he will become the goose specialist of the dozen. Thank you again Lieuwe for the lovely day in the field and your hospitality.

A warm and affectionate greeting into the New Year 2022. However we are all still struggling with lockdown affects – we hope that the new year will bring health and well-being to all of our friends – 2 and 4 legged – in all possible ways one can have the above. As dog training is difficult due to the current government restrictions (max 2 people together outside) we felt it was time to come up with a new challenge for the Aura litter to keep the youngster busy and engaged. The new year challenge is:

– train your youngster to run to his leash laying on the ground with 1 cue

– let him take place, laying on the leash in down position until you give a release cue.

– add distance to the cast and duration of the waiting laying down.

– the winning team has the best execution in terms of duration, distance of cast, most relaxed emotion/body language of dog and amount of pleasure being displayed.

Are you curious to hear who wins the challenge? Monday 10th of January we will reveal the winning video on the Flatastic Facebook site. Good luck everybody!

With warm greetings from us to you – both our two and four legged friends. We wish you a merry Christmas with you loved ones. 🎄

Hunting can be a sensitive subject in our modern society. In the Netherlands many hunters are confronted with demonstrators and disturbance of wildlife by people who have strong feeling against the old craftsmanship of hunting. I deliberately use the word craftsmanship as it is not a sport. First of all one must have a great deal of knowledge (through study and field time) of Nature and her inhabitants. Furthermore one must be able to handle the technical parts of owning a gun and ammunition – as well as the permits and police checks that a huntsman complies with. On top of that – a hunter must invest in a gun dog with the right inheritance and train his dog(s) weekly to assure that he can use the dog to retrieve any game on land and water. No taken life must be wasted. Then he must know his area well, he is connected to this area all year round – supporting the farmers too. The hunting is just a small part of flora and fauna conservation that takes place in nature by men and women who have their hearts in the outdoors.

Another aspect that I find fascinating is how we as humans can eat other living beings, meaning that all animal products that we consume – have to be taken by somebody’s hands. Wether it is killing a cow for beef or a chicken for a Gordon bleu. Or taking the cow’s milk from the kalf for our daily cheese. Somewhere between the range of living on these products and acknowledging that it is on their “cost” that we consume – is how we humans feel about doing this. We have created a society where we do not have to feel this ourselves. We just go to the supermarket and pay for what we want. So there is no emotional regulation in our consuming other than our hunger/greed and financial limitations. He who has taken the life of an animal himself in order to live and provide for himself and his family develops a whole different sense of the value that the specific animal has. It works a bit the same with having your own vegetable garden – you realize how much effort and hard work it takes to grow food.

So back to dog stuff – I was invited to join a group of hunters in the North of Holland: Friesland. A driven hunt. Normally these groups consist of hunters and helpers to drive with our without dogs. Today we were short of helpers due to the covid situation and the foreman hunter decided to continue with a smaller group, meaning a narrower chance of bringing home meat for the Holidays.

So I drove to the beautiful North and had brought Rumi with the idea to do a bit of retrieving in case we were lucky to “harvest” some game like hare, pheasants and or ducks.

However due to the short amount of helpers and the large area to cover – I figured today would be a good day to see if Rumi could find her “HPR blood” and do some hunting like spaniels and pointing dogs. This is a bit tricky because Rumi is rather “hot” when working and I was reluctant at first. I was afraid of losing contact with her and unsure wether I could convince her to hunt sideways and not run forward towards the hunters. We have never trained this but I have always tried to get her to follow the direction of my body when walking her. So I did the exact same and called her back when the distance became to far. Guess what – flatcoated retrievers can work on a driven hunt. I was so amazed how easily she adapted to the situation and she just ran as if she has done so all of her life: on frozen soil, on grass land, on chopped off corn, in the forest, jumping small rivers and checking the covers for scent. It was pure pleasure to watch. Flatcoated retrievers have HPR (hunt-point-retrieve) blood in their vains from when the breed was build. But this has never been their purpose and they are today expected to only retrieve. On field trials one will be disqualified if she does a point. Well, Rumi pointed several woodcocks – she found several pheasants (no pointing here) and she retrieved 3 blind duck retrieves, one very difficult one in the water, or rather on ice under a tree just a meter offshore of an island on the wrong side of the wind. So there I had it all coming together: ability to work on her own – still following my directions – despite her sensitive shoulder ligament ploughing through ice. What an amazing girl she is. I felt so humbled of what she showed me and I felt utterly proud of what we were able to show of the breed.

After a cold day in tough terrain – I checked my iPhone: 19.639 steps – 13,6 km of walking in an average speed of 4,3 km/hour. I do not even dare to think how many k’s Rumi has run but today she is rather lazy.

Yesterday was not only a flatcoated party – I had the pleasure of enjoying two German long haired HPR’s one younger dog who had a great hare retrieve in a river – just sent Rumi in case he needed encouragement but he was sure of his case and Rumi respected his turn. Beautiful ending of the day. I was so filled with joy and thankfulness for this experience. In the evening I contemplated on all the efforts of the farmers (saw again grassland eaten to mud by geese), the hunters, the dogs and all the training, preparation and precautions.

I concluded – no man or woman would out of pure greed for game be able to sustain this amount of effort unless there is a held love for Nature. Thank you for this insight and appreciation. Thank you Lieuwe for inviting me to be a part of your little group of hunting friends for a day. And a special gratitude towards the Frisian land for her beauty.

Rumi and I have had the privilege of being invited for larger commercial hunts in Belgium during the last couple of years. This has been such a learning opportunity for me as a handler and it has brought out the best hunting skills in her. Having a high drive dog and combining hunting with competitions in the same season is not the easiest path to choose, but I enjoy this combination more than my ambition.

Our competition season ended a bit disappointing.. first we had to stop during a our first working test A. Rumi had hurt her paw while jumping a fence. Then I became ill and missed the FRC AT. Finally recovered and ready on time for the WFRG Trophy, then it got cancelled due to Covid-19. So not quite the end of a season we had in mind.

End of competition season means more time available to go hunting – therefore I gladly accepted an invitation to join a so called farmer’s hunt in the Northeast of Netherlands. A farmer’s hunt is a small hunt, in this region mostly focusing on regulating the enormous amount of farm land damage by geese. In the Netherlands we have geese in amounts that one can surely call it a plague for farmers and grass areas. They destroy large amounts of crop and fill the fields with excrements – causing high nitrogen release into the environment.

Hunting geese is not an easy task – they are extremely clever and communicate with each other. They spot you very easily in the field and wearing camouflage clothing and hiding well is necessary. Having a dog who is sitting quietly and holding position is essential. For Rumi who is used to retrieving a large amount of ducks on each drive, this is a bit challenging but luckily she is a quick learner. I enjoyed the cold morning – out in the field from sunrise, trying to differentiate the birds while passing. I have great respect for the hunters and their field knowledge and love for nature and care in their decision making. Today was also very special as one of the hunters was lucky to harvest (Dutch language use this term) her first goose. Rumi had the honor of retrieving the goose in a stream.

After the goose hunt, we walked a great deal of farmland with watersides in chance of ducks. Especially male wild ducks are in high numbers and make a good protein source in our diets. As these hunts are only successful if the hunter approaches very carefully I stayed on a distance. Therefore Rumi had 3 retrieves – all blind and by directing on water – I am so proud how well she followed directions and in cold and windy waters. The last retrieve was a duck with an unfortunate wingshot hiding in thick cover of water plants. “Go search” and then it is pure joy to see a flatcoated retriever doing what they master to perfection: working the scent of the wind in the waterside cover. Some turning tail action and I know that she has picked up the scent. Into the deep water, pulling the duck out through the cover and then tangled in water plants pushing herself out of the steep waterside with the duck. I am so proud of her for this beautiful retrieve. Tomorrow I will prepare the duck and enjoy it with my family. Thank you Lieuwe for this wonderful day in the field.

Last Friday Rumi and I finished the official SJP season by giving it a go at the SJP A. It was a long shot to expect that we could succeed in getting two SJP A diplomas in one season with the circumstances that we have had. We are very happy with the one A in the pocket so why share this post on not having completed our “goal”? Because there has been an important lesson in the whole proces for me, which I think might be worthwhile sharing. When you have a sport dog and you have high ambitions it is very easy to get drawn into all aspects to enhance the winning chances. Training with a high-end trainer, knowing the right people to have access to terrains etc., having chances to bring your dog to shoots, improving your own skills, training your dog as much as possible.

It can be a very addictive state of mind to be in and it can also take the joy out of being with you best friend in the field.

Due to Rumi’s permanent shoulder injury it is no longer possible to have a full training schedule for her. Therefore I loose mental training time and if I would have to compensate for that – getting control back would mean pushing harder and maybe in a way that is not close to my heart. So “the sand slips between my fingers” while I am looking at it. Looking from that perspective the glass is half empty.

The other side of things is that my beautiful girl has taught me to value every day without pain or worry. She has taught me another very valuable lesson: to be real and allow imperfections. Accept the place we are at. Accept her nature and work with it the best we can within the limitations. This also means taking a piece of the humble pie once and a while. Looking at it from this perspective the glass is half full.

The wonderful thing about accepting being right where we are at – is that it allows “flow”to appear. So I am very thankful for having Flow with my Flow-girl.

Maybe this personal note may serve as a little reminder for some of us in the dog-handling business. To step down once and a while from chasing goals and just checking if we can still drink from the joy of being in flow with our dog and the partnership. Thank you Rumi for this wise lesson!

While we are still continuing training – also with Rumi as much as possible – patience seems to be the key word with the two youngsters (or should I say monsters?). We are dreaming of flow in the future – for now it is mostly that they are having flatastic fun and I am trying to keep up and being at least half a step ahead. Again a major life lesson in staying in the moment and not getting caught up in result thinking.

But enough philosophical contemplation – another thing that took some patience was adding our youngsters to the Flatastic website with their own page. If you are curious – follow the link: https://flatastic.nl/dogs/ or look at the page dogs here and check out what we made of it. Would love to hear what you think.

3rd of October 2021 was the day of the Dutch flatcoated retriever club to have their yearly club show. The flatastic gang was present and we even won the offspring class – an unofficial class but it was great fun to participate. Frans de Vries had designed a flatastic logo to wear on our similar t-shirts:

It was a long day with rain pouring repeatedly – not the best way to get familiar with dog shows, but I must say I am really proud that we pulled through. In good company and with sufficient catering we managed to get through te long waiting hours. Thank you to all the owners for participating and Barbara and Caroline for helping out showing my two youngsters in the offspring class.