Outdoor education.

At 51 days old, Layne started her outdoor education with Professor Grady. Things went well, especially for a rainy day. I know this might be boring for some of you, but several people want to watch Layne’s progress, and this blog makes it easier than sending the videos to each person individually. Besides, it’s a lot of fun and a great reason to be in our great outdoors. The first video is Layne seeing her first point by Grady. It’s hard to figure out what he’s doing with this rain bugging her. There ended up being a chukar pair, but like every point today, she never saw or heard them.

The second video is pretty much the same, with the rain still bothering Layne’s concentration as well as everything else on the hill. But she’s still interested in what the big guy is doing.

Number three is her third encounter. About the same as the first two, but I paused at one point of the video to show how smart Layne is. If you look really hard, I think you can see that she is lifting her right leg and looking at me as if she’s asking, “Is this how you do it?

There’s nothing wrong with dreaming a little. The last video is what Layne is like when Grady suddenly disappears. Sometimes when she would get lost, I would call her name and say come. She was always happy to hear my voice and come my way. Hopefully a beginning to learning the word come. Once again, maybe dreaming, but it sure helps.

This is what we’ll be doing for the next month or so, and going to places her short legs can carry her. At home, we’ll work on whoa, come, heal, and with Layne, I’m going to teach her how to sit. I know it’s one of the easiest commands to train, but I’ve never seen the use for it when it comes to upland bird hunting. I’ve just been embarrassed over the last 40 years when some stranger tries to give my dog a treat and tells him to sit. When he didn’t, they looked at me like “what kind of trained dog is this?”

My next step will be, once Layne can maneuver without tripping over all the hazards of upland hunting, introducing her to wild birds. Quail are very abundant and stay in larger groups longer, so I’ll let Grady show her the excitement of wild birds. That’s when the real fun begins.

Just a point of interest. We found 7 pairs of chukars today. Four of the pair, I could see, running off. They all split up before taking off and flew in different directions. I know that wild animals can very easily get back together. I just wonder if splitting up is just a way of confusing predators. In about four weeks, they’ll start nesting.