Training in the back yard

As every good bird dog owner I spend a great deal of my free time training with Yellow Lab Dakota. I guess you could say it's the old saying, "practice makes perfect". I think that it does apply in this case for both the dog handler and the dog. Although my dog is no rookie practice is important because it help me reinforce having Dakota train on being steady. When Dakota was a pup he used to break on the gun. I think one time I actually had him catch a duck before it hit the water. I thought in its self was an impressive feat. This is dakota fourth season coming up so my lab should be starting to his his prime. Incidently, my champion lab is more steady now than he was during his younger years.

To the on-looker the training in the yard probably looks monotonous and boring but it does serve two purposes; first it keeps the dog fresh so when hunting season arrives every fall he is thinking about hunting and retrieving; two, it gives Mrs Goon something to entertain herself as I will explain shortly.

Have tree will hold your rake, shovel and hoe.

This after noon I was throwing the dead fowl training dummy so Dakota could retrieve it when one of my throws went off line and end up in the tree in the back yard. So I attempted to get my retrieving dummy out of the tree in the back yard by throwing up a shovel, that got stuck, then I threw the garden hoe into the tree and that got lodged in the three as well. Perplexed I took out the yard rack. That landed with the same result as the other two tools; stuck in the tree. Next think I know I had my most of the tools from my garage hanging in the tree in the back yard. I went to the garage and got my ladder, my wife looking on in amazement as I retrieved the yard tools from my tree while