Flashback

On 12 September 2007 Gunner, at the age of 6 months, went for his first assessment with Rory-the-trainer. It was noted in the blog at the time that he could walk to heel, on and off the lead, sit, stay, wait, go find (chew sticks) and come to voice or whistle.
(Smarty pants)
Rory-the-trainer noted that he was almost too steady for a young dog! Visions of winning Gundog trials across the country wafted cross my subconscious. (Ignorance was such bliss!)

Last Thursday, 3rd October, at the age of almost 6 months, his son Bugler followed in his footsteps and went for his first assessment with Rory-the-trainer. It was noted (by me) that he was fond of water, could retrieve a ball, enjoyed hunting and would come to call - and that he was very much his own 'person'.
It was noted by Rory-the-trainer that he was a good deal sharper than his father - and already far too independent!
It's all a matter of perspective!
Gunner's first lesson was over an hour of varied activities to test his aptitude. I thought he passed with flying colours but we came away with
(now familiar) instructions to sharpen him up in all respects and return in a month or so.

In contrast, Bugler's first lesson was just short of half an hour. He demonstrated his independence by happily hunting further and further away from me and choosing when he wished to obey the return whistle or call. His retrieving was keen enough but he does have the habit of dropping the ball either at, or just short of, my feet. Rory frowned! And demonstrated both how to get a sharper response from the pup and how to encourage him to hold the ball till asked to 'give'. It looked soooo easy when he did it; proved so very difficult when I had to do the same! There is a reason why he is the trainer.
For the next few weeks my task is to continue playing with the pup to keep him happy but only to give him the ball to retrieve as a reward - either for coming straight back to the whistle or giving it back to my hand instead of my feet.
Easy then.
We shall see.
"Come back for another half hour in a month or so" said the trainer as we were leaving. What he meant was clear: 'come back when you've got these two things sorted'........

Father & son

So cosy snuggling up with my dad....

Eek.. didn't realise his head was so heavy - daren't move though

We don't know whether or not dogs have a sense of family. It is possible, I suppose, that where a pup is retained in the same family as the bitch that whelped it, a mother/child relationship is conceivable. However, where the pup goes to the family of the sire there is no such obvious link. Why should the sire relate to the pup? The pup to the sire? The pup moves away from its mother to a strange pack. End of story.
But here with Gunner and Bugler we see instances where a possible emotional/familial father/son link might exist.
There are other options for the pup to bond with pack members - Jaunty and Bugler, for instance, frequently play rough and tumble together. They are great pals. It would be natural for the two to snuggle up together. But they very rarely do. On the contrary, Bugler will often put the (older) Jaunty in his place. Bugler and Gunner never play together - except in those instances where the pup is trying to play and the older dog 'puts up' with it. But when it comes to snuggling up, Bugler and Gunner are an item. Bugler and Jaunty, or Gunner and Jaunty are never seen snuggled together. As for Pilot in any of those combinations - forget it....
So, does this prove a familial consciousness between dogs? Who knows. Certainly there appears to be a greater degree of ease or relaxation between Bugler (son) and Gunner (father). Who knows what dogs perceive or feel but surely this shows some bond may exist between father and son? It will be interesting to see how it develops as the pup grows up ...........................

....Contentment

The epitomy of contentment..........................
Every afternoon around 3pm Rocco is on full alert. As soon as he hears the sound of the little tractor and trailer he is there...... it's not the tractor, of course, that draws him.... it's what's in the trailer...... and he makes sure he gets his fill. We fetch the vegetables for the pigs of course but he's convinced we get them just for him - he doesn't care what's there - brocolli, cauliflower, cabbage, green leaves, globe artichokes..... he just eats them all. In the time it takes to feed 60 or so pigs he follows the wagon and probably eats 2 or 3 kilo....... if not directly from the trugs then from leaning over the fencing & pinching some off the pigs.... Cheek.
"5 A day?"  Well, he probably would eat 5 Kg if we let him!

Mrs Merkel goes to Moses

 She's been indoors waiting for a couple of weeks - she got pretty fed up too cos she didn't know what she was indoors for. After leading Linda a merry dance down from the woods a while back, she just looked at us and rumbled and grumbled and patiently lay there looking at us.... we tried to explain to her that it was 'all in a good cause' and 'sooner or later' all would become clear. Mrs Merkel just believed us and lay in wait.................... We didn't mind; whilst she was in we got to know her better. We already knew she was a good looking sow and we knew she could be a good mum..... her first litter was possibly the healthiest, bonniest bunch we have had in 7 years.... she kept them indoors for almost 2 weeks - but when they were allowed out they soon made up for lost time ....  quickly becoming the top bosses of the three litters running around at the time........
When the call came that Moses needed a new wife we had little hesitation in suggesting Mrs Merkel....  He left us not long after he was weaned .... we remember him as a handsome, gentle ginger hog..... Apparently he is now a handsome, gentle, dark coloured boar...In need of a new lady. She and he will start a new dynasty.... Accordingly she will be renamed Ruth..... She's in pig to Black Banana at the moment, but after she's farrowed and weaned she will be introduced to her new beau.

They'll get on well and she'll have a good life in the not-too-wilds of Notts near Newark! We shall miss her but she's gone to a good place where she'll be very contented...... aaahhhhh.   She'll fel at home in no time at all....... supposing pigs think like that...... Moses and Ruth - what a lovely couple.....

Time flies

Feeding the family

Getting ready to go

Adventures completed, Andromeda's piglets run home for tea

Victoria's "Famous Five" back 'home'

Summer has been happening for several months. It's been a little strange because we'd all got used to the horrendous cold wet conditions which prevailed for months & months and I don't think we really believed good weather existed... so we kept expecting it to turn cold & wet again - but it didn't. So summer crept up on us and stayed. As I write, the farmers are completing their harvest in ideal conditions..... combining mostly done, bales carted in, hedges largely flailed and ploughs already hard at work.
Similarly the swallows; they suddenly arrived at the end of April and quickly started breeding and feeding madly. Their chittering cries and swooping antics as they taught the fledgelings to fly have provoked many of summer's smiles.....but now they're lining up to leave. Soon there'll be silence in the skies.... they'll all have flown...
It's always the youngsters who remind us how time fies. Andromeda's stripey brood have been faster off on their adventures than any other - within less than a week they were merrily out and about: "They're going to be trouble" announced Linda one evening - and she's probably right! They're 2 weeks old on Monday but are well ahead of themselves - boosted by the sunshine they've enjoyed since birth. They've been nibbling at Mum's feed more than a week ahead of time so at this rate we'll be weaning them at 6 weeks!
Speaking of weanlings, Victoria's have been indoors for two weeks and were getting itchy trotters so we put them back out again on Friday - and, lucky for them, they went back to the pen they'd been born in...... 'deja vu' they all said - 'weren't we here just a few hours ago?' Anyway, whether they thought like that or not, they loaded into and out of the trailer pretty quickly..... but when darkness came they were crying out pitifully - either were hungry or they wanted to come back in for the night. Whichever, they were ignored and this morning they'd settled down and were fast asleep at breakfast time...... they'd probably been awake reminiscing all night...... Well?

You never know....  
Meahwhile,  other young things growing fast are making us aware how time flies..... Gunner's son Bugler is now 17 weeks old and, at first glance, is almost as big as Jaunty......

That boy Bugler - he grow so fast

He's been here two months and firmly established his place in the pecking order - which is not at the bottom. There's no allowance for age when the two play together - it gets very raucous in the kitchen from time to time...... and it's definitely the older of the two who is the more gentle..... in fact, Jaunty is an out and out nice chap...... the  little one can learn a lot from him.....  As he can from his dad who, unbekownst to him, will soon be starting work in his 6th shooting season.............. and what will the little one learn from him then.......
Where does the time go?
Probably in little dogs' dreams......

Gunner dreaming of being hard at work.....

Happy Birthday Jaunty

We'd planned since he first entered the field  to breed a pup from The Bestest Gundog in all the World but for three years, and for various reasons, all his "wives" fell by the wayside. When Meg, his wife of last year, had a phantom pregnancy and no pups appeared, the decision was taken. An Understudy to The Bestest Gundog was needed. So one needed to be found. It's a huge world of gundog breeding out there. Where to start? So I decided we could do worse than go back to the place where Meg was bred - after all, I reasoned, if we liked a bitch chosen to be the mother, we might like another dog from the same home. The question was asked; As fortune would have it, a very well bred litter was due in August. I reserved a male pup. He was born a year ago today. Such excitement when the call came. Two weeks later I visited.

And there they all were ...... 4 liver and white and 4 black and white. After a further two visits and much umming and ahhing we chose one of the black & whites ... and the prettiest (I thought) of them. And brought him home. And he was an absolute joy from the start ... straight into his box... never fussed or whinged and house-trained really quickly too.
A year on, he's still a joy in the house - exuberant when happy and calm when asked to be..... content in his own company but really, really loves to be out and about and  running...... running

And that's been a bit of the problem. The Bestest Gundog at the same age was steady and moving forward in his schooling. However, to be fair, the BG started proper school at age 11 months whereas his Understudy started proper school at 6 months. In hindsight - too early. He's just beginning to understand the purpose of schooling..... finally  comprehending the point of listening to the whistle..... He's such an exuberant character when he's out ... all that space out there just needs to be invaded he thinks and his human's too slow..... well you can't blame a spaniel for wanting to run.... But he's coming to hand and, with help from Rory the trainer, he may - by this time next year - be shaping up to be a dog a chap can take to work for the season.

I certainly hope so.... he's such a lovely dog and really wants to please - if he can be persuaded there's a good reason...
"Gunner was easy to train" said Rory-the-trainer early on in our training-the-Understudy experience this spring.... "But if you can train this one then you'll have learned a lot". Thanks Rory. Well we've gone through the past five months of lessons and he's learned - a bit. He's very quick to learn and I think that's half the problem. He can easily do what I ask and the rest of the world out there looks so much more interesting. So, 'heel' and 'hunt' and 'fetch' and stuff - OK; but then, whooppee and he's off to explore. But finally, I think, he's beginning to understand...... and, after numerous telling-offs, he's gradually coming to learn that life is a lot more interesting if he listens to the whistle...... the more he listens the greater freedom he can enjoy.......

And freedom is his greatest pleasure.... so, hopefully by this time next year The Bestest Gundog in all the World will be looking forward to having the Understudy, aka Jaunty - aka Gaberlunzie Master at Arma - join him in the field for the 2014 season.........
Meanwhile, Many Happy Returns to a Happy spaniel........

Hot off the press

"I've told her to wait till Tuesday" said Linda as she went off for a couple of days....
"Sorry" said Andromeda.. "Really couldn't wait any longer... was about to burst". Thereby continuing the trend of sows farrowing on Linda's day off...
So ... Congratulations to Andromeda &The Black Banana - born this morning, after breakfast, 6 glorious swallowbelly piglets.
It was an experiment in a way to put Andromeda to Black Banana... really just to see if two swallowbellies would produce one or more swallowbellies..... and Andromeda has produced 6 - in 6 years this if the first completely swallowbelly litter we  have had....  it may not be exciting in the overall scheme of things but it IS exciting here....... what a clever girl...... what a clever chap
We've told the rest of the herd...
They'll all be round to check.....
Well done Annie.......  Well done Banana.....
Oh - and I almost forgot to mention that the Bestest Gundog in All the World was first to spot them again... when we were doing 'other things' he stopped dead in front of Andromeda's pen and 'looked' in that certain way that made me stop and have a look..... Such a clever dog..... And as if that

were not curious enough...... the hens, who have been sharing Andromeda's pen for weeks, moved into the ark to sort things out ... I suppose they are really just clearing up flies - nature's way of keeping stuff sorted ... or maybe they were bringing gifts?   Whatever: Annie didn't mind and they were there for the duration..... "Cluck, cluck, cluck.... wierd chicks... wierd chicks ..cluck, cluck,......" they were probably saying.....