Meanwhile the Boy continues to shine....

#TeamGunner eagerly awaiting their afternoon 'run'

 No matter that he wasn't feeling very bright, there was no way The Bestest Gundog was going to be left behind when #TeamGunner set off on their fourth flurry into the world of Working Gundog Tests.
After incessant rain all day Saturday, Sunday morning "dawned" damp and misty.We set off early for The Bulwick Estate, Northants in the certain expectation of having at least some rain during the day. Better for the dogs though than the heatwave which we had enjoyed on Friday.
Unlike the previous events we have been to, this one was organised in conjunction with tests for retrievers ---

There is a lot of waiting to be done.....

and there were an awful lot of them (90+). By the time the chauffeurs and handlers for them and the 30+ spaniels, not to mention all the helpers for the day, had turned up the car parking area was very large indeed. The venue was an iconic piece of the best the British countryside has to offer - a panorama of rolling green hills and meadows for the Retriever tests and dense woodland providing excellent spaniel hunting 'ground'. How could a dog not go well under such conditions. Jaunty was drawn 16 and Bugler 25 of the 31 dogs, which included 10 'Open' competitors. The format for the tests was the same as previously except that the Open dogs had their first run before the Novices and 2nd runs for both followed on in the same order after an excellent cooked lunch catered at the bottom of the valley. The way the weather turned out it meant that all the dogs had a run in the cool with some scent as well as one under warm, virtually scentfree conditions. But it was a long day for 'man' and dog alike.

Little bits of paper that make it all worthwhile

First of  TeamGunner to go, Jaunty gave a (to me) dazzling display of spaniel hunting. Nobody would have guessed how 'hard' he is to handle. His retrieving was equally fast and accurate if a little too enthusiastic on the first dummy.If his handler had been more on the ball she might have been able to stop him running in! Nonetheless I was thrilled to bits with his performance. We can work on the error. Unfortunately that cost us any hope of a placing.
No such errors from Gunner's boy Bugler though.  His hunting was a little less exuberant than Jaunty's (particularly when alongside the gallery in the morning) but his retrieving was spot on, needing only one redirection from me in the whole day. With the competition being much tougher than on the previous occasions I was overjoyed, and just a weensy bit tearful, that he was awarded another piece of paper during the presentations.
Gunner, even allowing for being slightly below par, was not at all impressed with the day but I can't help feeling he would be as proud as I am of his son if he understood what the piece of paper represented.
There was a fair bit of snarling & growling from the youngsters when they jumped back in the car for the homeward journey; hardly surprising since they'd been running on tension & adrenalin all day. The BestestGundog decided he'd prefer the company of humans even though he wasn't really comfortable on the back seat! By then it may have occured to him that it might have been preferable after all to have stayed at home for the day!

C'est la Vie

 My perky pal hasn't been so perky of late. At first I put his quiet manner down to the fact that he was tired at the end of the shooting season. But he stayed quite tired.
So I attributed it to the youngsters: since my attention and time is now shared amongst the three of them, Gunner is only getting a third of what used to be all his.
But that didn't explain why he stopped eating his morning and evening treats. For the past 8 years he's keenly looked forward to half a dozen bickies at either end of the day.

But not any more.
Not a good sign. He's always had a proper appetite - never greedy but always ready for his food.
Maybe it was the change to raw feed?
But the youngsters are absolutely full of energy on the same diet.
Eventually I took him to the vet.
"He's just not right" I said.
Then tried to explain all the subtle changes.
When I got to the biscuit bit the vet's eyes lit up. Anyway, he took his temperature. "Nothing unusual there" . So he did a rectal exam. And that explained everything.
"He has benign prostrate hyperplasia" said the man. "You can google it". I did.

Not good. The vet gave him a hormone injection and prescribed steroids and within 24 hours Gunner was back to his old self!
And then went downhill rapidly when the injection and the steroids wore off.
We went back to the vet who took some bloods: the results were all over the place.
Only one thing for it.
The jewels will be removed on Wednesday next and I'm keeping everything crossed that the problem will then be sorted, blood will return to normal and my old mate, when he gets over the shock, will get the smile back on his face...
Fingers crossed..............