Nearly there.......

Misty mornings. Windfalls. Tumbling leaves. It's that time of year again.
We're nearly there......The Bestest Gundog and I will soon be starting our 7th ''working' season. I have difficulty with the mathematics of that - after all the dog is only 7 and a half years old.  He 'entered' the field at just 18 months old so we find ourselves going into the 7th season just ahead of him turning 8.

Gunner's destiny was mapped out even before He arrived to live with us in June 2007.

Knowing that he came from "working stock" and from a respected 'dog man' up in Scotland, I was determined that if he showed the slightest inclination (i.e. did even one thing right) I would "train him up to be a working gundog". At the time I had little idea what being a 'working gundog' meant.  It sounded good though.
Nor had I the faintest notion what "training" would entail.
Up till that point, all our dogs had been 'trained' in the basics - 'coming' when called (sometimes), 'sitting' when told (usually), not running off most of the time (and, when they did, we didn't worry - they always came back sooner or later!). That was about it really. We had a lot of fun together and very little stress.
We laughed when Bugsy (our first dog) ran off to the woods for three hours (exactly) at a time; we shrugged in exasperation when Captain (our first spaniel) disappeared - frequently - in those same woods and we had to search for hours - there was the occasion when two old ladies accused us of maltreating him when they saw him covered in blood from a brambletorn tongue - and tried to take him away from us. So many more tales of Captain running off - he seemed incapable of returning to our calls! And Pilot - well, we'd frequently hear him barking 'miles' away as he dug up yet another rabbit burrow; we'd smile knowingly when we saw him charging across the fields towards the distant horizon - he'd be back in his own time: frequently with a fresh dinner! Then there was Lancer - our second Springer Spaniel who was undoubtedly the Best Dog in all the World and never did anything wrong. He probably could have been trained if we'd not been doing other things in our busy office phase. Oh - and not forgetting Trooper, the little black mongrel who only ever wanted to chase balls and carry the biggest possible branches. In all his 17 years he was never naughty.
Gunner came into our lives at a time and place where training a proper "working" spaniel seemed the natural thing to do. The first morning after we collected him from Danby, N. Yorkshire (his owner travelled with him down from Inverness to meet us there and hand over the pup) I took him to the vet for his second injection. Getting out of the car I popped him on the lead and he accepted it as if it was the most natural thing in the world despite never having seen one before.
That was it.
The One 'right' thing.
Clearly he was trainable.

I asked the vet to recommend a gundog trainer & the rest is history! Well - it is if you've been following this blog from the beginning.
The journey we embarked on to transform Gunner into Gundog is recorded in detail: every 'lesson' and every step, whether forward or backwards! It proved to be a steep learning curve for dog and master. And a pretty bumpy one too. Ignorance is bliss.  Had I known at the time how little I knew at the time and how hard it was going to be for the dog and I to learn what we needed to know, I might - as our Trainer has since pointed out to me - have stayed as a person with pets! Poor Dog. No wonder he still gives me that long-suffering look from time to time!!!!

Having never been involved with training a dog to actually 'do' something, I was totally over the moon with everything the dog learned to do, or did naturally. I had no vision of how the training would fit into 'everyday' work. Rather like designing a car without knowing what one looks like! The trainer kept commenting that he was "very steady" but I hadn't a clue what he meant by that.
Gunner continued to amaze and inspire me to carry on. In my eyes he was good enough to take to Field Trials but when I asked the trainer about it he simply commented that "he's not really fast enough for that". Having at that time not witnessed any Trials I didn't really understand what he meant. He suggested we do a couple of Working tests to see how we got on. One of the judges said he'd make an excellent bushbeating dog. I took that as a compliment.

With hindsight, I'm certain it wasn't!!!  I'd set my heart on bushbeating though so it was fine by me.
Seven years on, the BestestGundog having won admirers across numerous shoots, our trainer admits that he never thought the dog would amount to much!
"Why didn't  you tell me at the time?" I asked
"What would you have done if I had?" he replied
"I'd probably have given up" said I.
"Quite" he replied "and think of all the fun you would have missed!"
His favourite story is the one about Gunner running off after a hare.
"Up until then" he'll cheerfully say to whoever is listening "I never thought Gunner had any gears at all"!

 The past 6 years have flown by: the dog has worked tirelessly and steadfastly through every imaginable weather and across all terrains. We have had amazing days out in the field. All of them diarised! There'll be a book there one day when I'm old & grey.......
On the last day of this month we start our 7th season together. We will be working 35-40 days on 7 local shoots. Two are new to us and replace two that have 'ceased'.  If he knew it Gunner wouldn't be lying peacefully asleep under the table beside me.
 Plenty of time for him to find out ..... over the coming four months he'll be needing all his reserves and more.