Ribbons and Titles

So far, she has competed in the CBSRC events twice more in the Sr. Puppy class and the Novice class. She has earned two additional Sr. Puppy Completion ribbons, but she did not pass either time in the Novice level. Again, that is mostly due to my training being insufficient.

The last trial had a flock of duck decoys in the middle of the first water retrieve. ZZ had only seen large goose decoys before on land. The small duck decoys in the water confused her and she did not complete the first water retrieve.

The HRC hunt tests have been fun and more productive. ZZ has been progressing well in them. She did earn a pass at her first HRC attempt at the Started class in September at an Old South HRC event in Omaha Georgia.

But the very next day, she started dropping ducks just before delivering them to me. That turned out to be my fault as a trainer more than her ability to do the work.

I learned that force fetch training would help. So, we stopped going to hunt tests and tried it. It helped a lot! ZZ earned two passes at a Middle Georgia HRC event in Dublin Georgia in November.

We had missed a few tests that were close by while we did about a month of force fetch training. So we traveled to Florida in December to attempt to get her last Started pass. She passed on the first day and got her Started Hunting Retriever (SHR) title in Montverde Florida as we hoped. She was just 10 months old at the time. Notice the decoys. ZZ will be getting familiar with them once we get back to water retrieves.

These are her ribbons so far.

This spring, we plan to travel to AKC events and attempt to get her Junior Hunting Retriever title. She has not been ready for that since delivery to hand has been lacking, especially with a duck. So, I have been requiring all retrieves to end with hand delivery.

We are going to an AKC training day in Lincolnton Georgia tomorrow. I hope to learn how to get her better prepared before we start the spring season.