Wylanbriar Labradors

Thomas, my boy, you are dead RIGHT. *Things* ARE indeed afoot. Things which would of happened anyway, but needs must and they need to happen…like, NOW.

Thomas, between now (Sept 5th) and October 23rd, you have to become a whizz bang picking up dog. You have to stand at heel with the lady with the walkie talkie (IE….me!) and you have to give a good impression of both the Wylanbriar young entry AND chocolate labradors in general. You have to act like an old hand, whilst never having seen a feather in your 17 months of life. You have to be a natural and yet, bottle your enthusiasm till I give the word. You have big shoes to fill my boy! You have Jade the runner queen, Deeds the steady as a rock specialist, Mallie the *enthusiasm kid*…… and your mother who hunts till her legs fall off, to follow.

So no pressure. Don’t panic. Its just the whole of the Newhouse Farm Shoot AND supporters of the colour chocolate, in general, are depending on you and will be watching….

Thomas, We are NOT at home to Mr Cock up! 😉 😉

Now you may be wondering how this suddenly rise to fame for the man known as Mr Twoshoes, has *occured*. Well, now, you might be aware that in the course of the last twelve months we have lost our Jade way before her time. Deeds has also left us to live elsewhere. Those very sad events we have known for MONTHS. Therefore, on our shoot, which is not hugely taxing, a hundred birds a day or so between 4 of us usually, picking up, Mallie and Shiney would be quite sufficient, with Fish and Bondy carefully *stage managed* in the background on certain days.

Newhouse is a wonderful shoot. We adore it. Love the people. Love the pub. Love the good natured enthusiasm for anything that even VAGUELY resembles a decent retrieve even if it would of been *hometime before they had even left your side*, in a trial. But its a shoot, like very very many others, who want the birds picked, and that includes DURING the drive if there is the slightest doubt the bird may not be dead. There is also a LOT of running water on our shoot so if the DEAD bird falls even vaguely in the direction of the many brooks and streams, the dog needs sending. Its fantastic fun for getting lots of work in. There is never that much sweeping afterwards to do because its mostly been picked in the drive (I know!!…. I know!!…. I feel many of my trial pals wringing their hands and sobbing into their newly opened Partridge season hip flasks at the thought…..)

However, as you can possibly imagine, its not *that great* for a wannabe trial dog. ESPECIALLY a young, new to it, wannbe trial dog! You can picture it can’t you…. one week every time a bird hits the ground a gun is frantically signalling you to send your dog, over and over, even for dead birds…….. the NEXT (in a trial) you can’t even tell it to ‘wait’ as something hits the ground and runs right infront of it! Tricky one, Mr Mannering…..

So therefore, Allan and I need what we call ‘throw around dogs’. Deeds and Jade were the ultimate throw around dogs. Shiney, never taking much to tests and suchlike, is the perfect ‘throwaround’ dog. Retired trial dogs are made for the game as you CAN throw them around, but also then bollock them for being unsteady 😉 Because they genunely know ‘both ways’. But you can’t ask that of a youngster, not to understand the difference, not initally anyway. Allans picking up dog this year is Shiney, ablely and quietly assisted in a minor way by Mr Fish.

Our retired trial dog here is Mallie. Enthusiastic beyond belief, but somehow, and GOD knows how, quiet and basically steady enough to trial, despite being raised, of a winter, the *Newhouse* way! However Mallie made me old. You never quite knew with Mallie, at a trial, what would happen. She could be fantastic! She could be awful! She could make the final round with flying colours making it look pretty easy in the main. She could run in on the first bird (thank god only happened once but I shall never stop sweating about it!). She always shook so hard sitting on a drive that her teeth would chatter. So would mine (and you can ask countless people who usually had to remind me to breathe as I stared at Mallie with such concentration I turned some very odd colours!)……. so basically, Mallie, I love you, you have been a revelation to me, but by GOD you tested my ticker and made me have to start dying my grey hairs at thirty!

Old Lady Overhead Mask

(Me, at 36 after trialling Mallie for some years….)

So therefore….. NEVER again will a dog have grey areas on whether drives mean retrieving! The trial dogs do not retrieve during the drive. The throw around dogs do 😉 I don’t think I would survive another five years like that with Bondy on a knife edge….. I think I would, literally, have heart failure! 😉

BUT, Mallie, poor Mallie, started limping last season. She’s never quite thrown it off, and hard work inbetween made it really ignite. Rest, Metacam, supplements etc etc were all useless, so this week, with her on three legs (but happy as a lark I have to say!) she went in for Xrays. Not great news. Real serious arthritic bony changes in her left shoulder. Elbow, knee and fetlock joints clean as a whistle. Whilst we can manage this, day to day, with painkillers and a bioflow magnetic collar, and cortisone injections, she is never really going to be sound again. Not ‘sound-sound’. Not sound enough to take picking up and not CONSTANTLY have to excuse why you have a heavily limping dog with you (‘Honestly Sir, she broke the door down when she saw me pick up my Game Carrier and boots! I couldn’t leave her – she threatened to set the house on fire if I did…….!!’) 😉

But, there is no doubt, she can’t come (whispers…..) and will have to stay home. And therefore enter THOMAS stage LEFT… (Trumpets!) Dahhh dahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………………….!

My next throw around dog! 😉

Now thats a TERRIBLE label really that they don’t deserve. Thomas is a lovely worker. He is my perfect picking up dog. Fast as lightening. Not the brightest tool around so will lean when he needs to (and probably not before…sigh….. however hard I beg….!) BUT he hasn’t had the work put into him that say, Bondy has, by any means, and so is raw, with everything in there, just nothing polished or hugely reliable…. IE he has a fantastic accelerator, slightly dodgy brakes and only very minimal steering! However he has a nose like a hawks eye and energy that would make the Durcell Bunny feel tired, so I feel he is DEFINATELY the man for the job.

Thomas has been a man in the shadow of his yellow and black brothers. I’m not sure HOW it happened as such, just when ‘Mr Showbiz Meercat’ showed such promise, time and training started pouring into him, and whilst I don’t regret a second of that, Thomas got a bit left behind. Well no more! No longer! Thomas now has a coat peg with his little four way plus fours and pheasant tie on, and he is NOT afraid to use them!!! 😉

Now usually I would of taken him out this season, carefully, slowly, for half days, with Mallie doing all the work and him learning doing NO work is what is expected of him and ANY work is a treat. Sadly that is not going to be and of 23rd October, Thomas will be sat up at drive one….probably ‘The Farm Drive’, probably on the gorgeous rolling field that overlooks the farm and servicing three guns. And whilst we have ENDLESS extra training ahead, and he is going to have to cram what would have been put in over the next 14 months into the next 6 WEEKS…….. he is going to LOVE IT! 😉 😉

(What Bondy is going to make of it however remains to be seen. If Thomas survives the jealous repercussions it will be fairly suprising – spolit little yellow sod! I know, I know, I have created my own monster! HUGE grin……)

Wooo hoooo! – Says Tom…. 😉

The bit written with a lump in the throat first…. For all the brave words, we have decided to sell Holden. I suppose you could say we aren’t your average *kennel*. Each of our dogs gets a lot of individual attention, some might say *too* much. I have spent weeks torn up about whether I, at this really crutial stage of training Bondy for competition, and Tom for picking up, assisting in Fish’s training, keeping Shiney ticking over…. and trying to have some semblence of a *normal* and *working* life too, if TWO puppies of the same age is entirely sensible. The simple answer is… its not. Ther is sadly no contest who has to be found a lovely wonderful home – Mia we really look forward to following behind her mum as the next Wylanbriar ‘mum’ one day…. so suddenly there *is* no reason good enough to keep Holden… and although i’m in no hurry at all, the home has to be right. Its the only sensible thing to do. Sigh. Keeping numbers as low as possible has to be a priority rather than as high as possible…. 😉 I could be making a huge mistake…. but I kind of don’t think so. So now we sit back and wait for Mr and Mrs *right*. Sob.

So onto happier stuff. Bondy and Fish ran in their KC Gundog Working Certificate last Thursday. It was a GREAT day run by Eileen Ayling, really enjoyed it. She did brilliantly well running the whole day as a simulated shoot, and seriously, it was authentic! We have drives, we beat through, we had walking guns, A keeper telling us to be quiet (grin), water, jumps, and altogether a good old all round test. They meanly made me work both boys together as I was running both, i had NO IDEA what to expect, and they both were very good indeed. Or tried to be. The odd bit of confusion nearly had me falling over them as Bondy figeted like the adrenaline fired whatnot he is…. whilst Fish laid not moving a muscle trying to be a good boy…. and it was sort of like conducting an orchestra of two halves….. the zebedee ‘bring it on! bring it on!’ Meercat, and the ‘Don’t want to get ANYTHING wrong, am I doing alright mum??!!!’ Fishmeiester. Two very different boys, both the same result… Passed 😉 Happy Days! Thanks Eileen, it was a credit to you. I would like to try a GWC again in the winter on game, in this new ‘single test day’ format they have conjoured up in the last few years (it used to be a two stage thing…) If anyone knows of one later on this year PLEASE let me know, its finding them thats the hard bit!

Saturday saw us all lounging around in the sun all day after some really enjoyable training on the edge of the Ashdown Forest with friends, early doors, before it got hot. Sunday saw Fish, Bond and me heading off to deepest Wiltshire for the URC Hants and SW Special Puppy test. Two nicely behaved Special puppies from Wylanbriar managed to end up in a field of 24, 4th and COM, with Fish kicking Bondys butt this time (by only by a mark so Bondy says its HARDLY a butt kicking when Fish is nearly 5 months older than him!) Fish allowed a little smugness to pass his, unusually handsome, face 😉 😉

To be fair, three tests, three cards for the Biscuit Meercat is a fairly impressive record, but there is much room for improvement, and with Fish being the long tall Sally that he is, the fact he has an Intermediate on Sunday gives me some hope that he might get the chance to ‘open up’ a bit in terms of distances again. Its a funny thing. I know many friends feel that working tests are a bit of a hindrence. I started the year completely disgareeing, but funny enough, you can see how you can make a dog a bit of a ‘working test’ specialist in training too much for working test senarios and forgetting the ultimate goal, which is, of course a shooting/trialling dog! It was when I spoke with one of my trainers and said ‘how do I stop Fish thinking every mark is in the next County?’ And he said ‘why….?’ and I muttered about him running in Special Puppy tests, and I KNOW he must have thought I was mental, worrying that the dog WANTED to be bold and get distance! And I was trying to think of ways to sort of temporarily train him out of it just for the odd Special Puppy test! When I looked at it like that I did feel a bit of a short sighted idiot its true! Stretch stretch and more stretch! But without stretching too far…. oh god! The worry of it all!!!! I need a lay down in a darkened room! 😉

Thank you boys, we are having such a blinding summer! And Tom, never you worry my boy, this winter is all about you and birds! Hopefully of both types! 😉

Oh my goodness I nearly forgot! Guess what? The green bloody Laguna has been written off! Not a crash, but the work needing doing was unbelieveably expensive so the stupid car signed its own death warrant! Right now I am carless, and its not easy juggling with Allan, begging and downright STEALING his motor regularly! But with some helpful neightbours with a spare car and the hope that in 3 weeks my lovely lovely boss is giving me another (sadly small and non doggy) car to take forward, the future may not be hugely bright on the motor front, but at least its not Green!!!!!