The Vizsla Newzsletter (Oct/Nov 97) |
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The weather was not bird dog weather. Rain showers, chilled by unfriendly
gusts of wind from the northwest. Not the golden clearness of a crisp
November day. The Grizzled One had put off venturing forth from the motorhome
as long as he could that morning. His pack leader bitch, Penny, watched out
the window at the other hunters walking from the parking lot into the
adjoining fields and woods to begin their days hunt for pheasant at
Illinois Chain O' Lakes State Park. One of the states parks which becomes
a controlled Pheasant hunting area during the fall months. The Grizzled One
always waited for a half hour or so after shooting time began to take his
dogs out into the field. He had no desire to be in close proximity to keyed
up hunters, as you had at starting time. And also he wanted the pheasants
to be pushed around so that his dogs would have to work for their birds.
Better experience for them. After the Grizzled One had finished his 2nd cup
of coffee, Penny turned her gaze towards him and her docked tail began a
hopeful tick-tock. Penny's two sons, the swashbuckling giant King Conan and
the clown prince Rowdy Roy, lie dozing in their crates. Penny's
granddaughter, Tanner lie in her crate exuding an almost inaudible whine.
She wanted to go hunting. Bad!. Photo: We have to admit that Flight does not always sleep elegantly!!
The Grizzled One decided that enough time had elapsed since the mob of hunters had started their hunt so he and his Penny left the motorhome and began their day in the field. In a short time Penny was doing that which is the centre of her being. Working objectives that might contain game. Just to watch her was a joy to behold. Wasting no movement, the Vizsla glided from objective to objective, always to the front and within easy sight. During the course of an hour, Penny had located and pointed several pheasants; all of which were downed by dogless hunters who had the good luck to be within hailing distance when Penny "locked up" on her birds. A genial invite by the Grizzled One to come over to where Penny was standing on point and shoot, while he handled Penny and flushed the game. This had been a good morning so far, none of the invited hunters had missed their shots.
Photo: but he does cuddle up VERY nicely 
The Grizzled One's hunting pleasure came from watching his dogs perform
rather than filling his gamebag. Because the Grizzled One did all of his own
training, he was out in the field almost year round. Between participating in
field trials, hunting tests and the training that this required, his
"hunting" year was virtually l2 months. As a good deal of this training was
bird work, the Grizzled One kept training birds on hand year round. A quail
pen, a pheasant and Chukar pen, and of course the good old reliable Homing
Pigeons. When he put his dogs through some intensive training he always liked
to end the session with shooting a bird or two over the dogs. As a result, he
was shooting game much of the year. So when hunting season rolled around, the
Grizzled One saw this as training. That is, most of his hunting , especially
on state managed pheasant hunting areas, was really handling his dogs for the
hunters who had no dogs to shoot over. For the Grizzled One it was a good
deal. His dogs were given experiences of being shot over by strangers (most
of the people who are gunners at field trials and hunt tests are strangers to
the dogs entered) and it was a good deal for the hunters who went home with
game instead of empty hands.The showers had gradually changed to a light but insistent rain. The temperature seemed to have dropped a bit too. The gray morning had become a chilly, wet morning. The Grizzled One decided that Penny's aging bones had had enough and it was time to head her back to the motorhome with its warmth and hot coffee. As he and Penny cut through some timber, the Grizzled One heard a voice up ahead and it was not a happy voice. The Grizzled One listened more intently. It was a hunter berating his dog for some reason. Penny ran to the Grizzled One, stood looking at him with a "Well, what are we going to do?" look on her face. She knew an angry voice when she heard one. Upon a "heel" command, Penny dutifully fell in on the grizzled One's left side as they walked towards the sounds. They came up on a young fellow whose German Shorthair pup was attempting to get between the hunter's feet out of the cold wet. The pup was obviously wet , cold, and by now frightened by the increasingly strident commands of its owner to "find bird-find bird!". The puppy's hunting day, if it knew what hunting was, was over. One look at the puppy's owner's face told the whole story. There was that taut, grim look that is characteristic of the hunter who knows little or nothing about hunting dogs. Who has bought a hunting dog (puppy) that is going-to-by-God hunt even if the puppy is cold, wet, exhausted, frightened, and had probably been given little or no field training. The Grizzled One knew that confronting the dog owner with the facts of his ignorance would not turn the situation around: The happy, productive hunting companion the hunter had likely envisioned when he acquired the pup. No! Confrontation would almost certainly worsen the situation. Far better to try to turn it around in some way to a more positive conclusion in which both man and dog would be in a happier state of mind than they were now. This was very likely the young hunter's first time out in the field with his puppy and it was obviously not the kind of first time experience the Grizzled One felt a guy should have with his new hunting dog. The Grizzled One decided to break the ice by asking questions of the type that hunting dog people who are strangers ask. Was any game put up? Isn't the weather terrible? How old is the puppy? Etc. During the chit chat, the Grizzled One took some capsules out of a pocket of his battered, but favourite, hunting coat and offered them to Penny who had been standing quietly on a "stay" command. Penny eagerly gulped the capsules down. The pup's owner asked if the capsules were medicine. "No" replied the Grizzled One. He went to explain that filled capsule containers with a combination of honey, fructose sugar, and a commercially prepared high energy food paste for working dogs under stress. "Dogs need energy pick-ups just like people do," he explained. "I have found, in my experience, that the concoction that I put into these capsules works just find. Everything in them is easily processed by the dog and there is no "sugar high and then crash" effect you can get with plain sugar. You know a dog's metabolism is just as tricky as human metabolism. There is a condition us laymen sometimes call the "hunting dog syndrome". The physical stress of hunting can cause blood sugar to suddenly drop to a unacceptable low and the dog will actually have seizures until that sugar level goes up. Quit often such seizures are mistaken for epileptic seizures and the dog is put on a medication regiment that is not warranted. Usually a simple change in diet and a supply of fructose sugar will take care of the situation. The Grizzled One asked if he could give the pup one of the energy capsules. The young hunter consented and the Grizzled One opened a capsule and squirted the contents on a fingertip which he slowly extended to the pup shivering between his master's legs. The pup, cautiously at first and then with gusto cleaned the fingertip. A good sign the Grizzled One thought. "Kids and puppies. Thank God He made them both so resilient." "Hey! I'm heading back to my motorhome to put Penny here up and have a cup of something hot. You and your pup are welcome to join me. It really wouldn't hurt to get the pup into a warm, dry spot for a while." The pup's owner somewhat reluctantly accepted the offer as the rain was still steady and it had not become any warmer. The offer made sense. As the two hunters exchanged names, the Grizzled One snapped a lead on Penny's collar and the quartet headed for the parking area where the motorhome was located.
Photo: My trip down to the nationals in Wellington also allowed me to do
some visiting.
"You say you bring four dogs when you go hunting? How do you keep them from tearing up your motorhome? Benji here is a real alligator, chews up things when he is left alone." "That's easy." replied the Grizzled One. "My dogs eat, sleep, and travel in crates. Whenever they are left alone at home, they are crated. My wife and I start our dogs on crating when they are taken from the litter. They quickly learn that their crate is a refuge, a sanctuary, a warm place where they are at peace with the world. The crate is never used for punishment. It is a place of confinement but you have to understand that confinement is a human concept not a dogs. To those people who say crating a dog is cruel, I say coming home to a trashed house and getting angry at one's dog and verbally and physically punishing the dog for its transgressions is cruel because there a much better alternative. Isn't it infinitely better to come home (to a untrashed house) and let the dog out of its crate and be able to say "good boy" or "good girl" and play with the dog and just thoroughly enjoy the relationship. As far as travelling is concerned, think of it this way. Would you let a three year old child travel in a car without restraints? The same law of physics applies to the body mass of a dog that applies to the body mass of a child when the vehicle that they are riding in abruptly stops. In both cases their bodies become missiles and terrible things happen to them."
Photo: Mark McGlashan's dog niko, 
At that point the hunters had reached the parking lot where the motorhome was
parked and as the key went into the lock of the vehicle, greeting-barking
came rolling out of the opening door. Penny jumped into the interior followed
by the Grizzled One. "Come on in Ed", invited the older hunter. He motioned
Ed towards a chair by the dinette and tossed him an old towel. "You can use
that to dry your pup off if you want, I am going to do the same for Penny.
You might even want to keep the pup wrapped for a bit. Helps to warm him up
faster." The Grizzled One disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared with a
plastic bottle in his hand. "This is eyewash. I always flush my dog's eyes
out when they come in from the field. Saves them from lots of eye problems."
He then took a steel feeding pan from a empty dog crate and poured some of
what looked like sugar into it. "I always give my dogs a spoonful of fructose
sugar after a hard workout. Penny here will sleep for a few hours now and her
blood sugar level will be normal when she wakes up and she will be fresh." He
opened up a thermos and poured some water in the pan and explained, "This is
warm water. I have found that often when you give cold water to a dog that
has had a strenuous workout they can develop stomach cramps and vomit. The
warm water doesn't seem to cause that." The Grizzled One poured a little bit
of the fructose into a cereal bowl and poured a bit of the warm water from
the thermos into the bowl and offered it to Ed. "See if the pup wants some.
Dip a finger into the bowl and put it under the pup's lip." Very quickly the
pup was lapping up the bowl's contents. Ed put the pup on the motorhome floor
where the puppy began to take in the new surroundings. The Grizzled One
noticed, with satisfaction, that the dog's tail, while not yet at l2 o'clock,
was up and was ticking. Anticipating that Ed was going to call the puppy to
him so that it would not be a nuisance, the Grizzled One said "There really
isn't much that he can get into trouble with here. The most that can happen
is that he will get barked at by the crated dogs." Which happened at the same
instant the words were spoken. The puppy had positioned itself in front of
Penny's crate and she immediately let the pup know that that was not too
cool. The pup's tail, for an instant, dropped but then snapped right back up
again. "Good dog" thought the Grizzled One.The Grizzled One poured two steaming cups of coffee, placed one in front of Ed, sat down in the dinette chair across from him and took an exploratory sip from the hot cup. Ed did the same. The Grizzled One sensed that the younger man was beginning to relax so he decided to broach that questions that are universal to consummate hunting dog people. "Who is the puppy out of? Who did you get it from?" In Chapter 2 of "The Starting Point", the Grizzled One will talk about picking out a puppy that will be a hunting buddy when grown. Until the next issue, remember, dogs and kids are not with us forever. Kids grow up and dogs grow old. Cherish them while you have them. |
The Grizzled One always made it a rule not to hunt his dogs with each
other. His feeling was that for his dogs, hunting was to be an act of pure
joy . No competition with siblings or parent, just lots of undivided
attention from the Grizzled One. His dogs were campaigned in field trials
and hunting tests from August to November. Which meant every weekend they
were competing someplace in the Midwest. During the week physical
conditioning and bird work was engaged in, as the dogs were being honed to
engage in optimum performance. Hunting season was R & R. Fun Time. A time
when the dogs could be silly , commit errors that cost them in competition
but now brought a chuckle from their Grizzled One. A well trained Gun Dog is
a hunting dog that has reached its optimum in potential. Hunters that look
upon field trial competition dogs as "mindless robots" miss the point. A well
trained gun dog (they are called broke dogs) that is not proficient as a
competition field trialer will almost always be a "dream dog" for the average
hunter. They are that good as compared to the average hunting dog, which has
never been trained to its optimum. Hunting season was the end of stress time
for the Grizzled One's dogs and they loved it.
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