Page's marking has also continued to improve. She's retrieving real ducks on marks. Today she had a hill to fight on a long mark, and she let it push her off her line. We repeated the mark to give her a second throw to help her learn to fight the factor. Amazingly, she didn't need the second throw. She fought the factor herself and took a straight line to the bumper.
Page's water marks are beautiful. She even did a mark high on the opposite bank with ease. On both land and water, she's working really hard to bring the duck into my side and sit. It's almost like you can see the wheels turning in her head as she comes in and she's saying to herself, "Must go to Mom's side and sit; must go to Mom's side and sit..." I'm glad to see her effort, because I know it will degrade a bit at a test.
Devon has had as many marks this week as drills. That concerned me until today. Before running set-ups, I did three land blinds in a completely new area. We had several whistles on the long, harder blind when she was distracted with other things out in the field. I didn't give her birds, which she found disappointing.
However, she handled like a dream on the other two blinds. This was the best blind session we've ever had. I threw marks for her to wipe out the blinds. Even so she ran them again to near perfection, even lining the longest one with a flock of birds taking off behind the blind to distract her.
Last weekend's test really took our game to a new, higher level. We're handling as a team now, and I'm thrilled with where we are. This weekend we're off to another hunt test, with Senior both days. The entry is very high, so I expect land to be tough and judging to be tight. They can't carry too many dogs to water, or we will run out of daylight. I'm not worried. We'll work these tests one duck at a time just like we did last weekend!
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