More puppy pictures taken over the past few weeks. It’s hard to take pictures and release the birds when they need to be released, so the pictures suffer.
Tur Bo
Tur Bo
Annie
Annie
Tur Bo
Jack pointing a hidden pigeon by smell.
Jack
Jack
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I want to say a few things about buying a bird dog puppy. The books all say to pick the best parents – so what did I do? – went out and got a rescued setter. I wouldn’t trade my Molly for anything but the books are correct: picking the parents is the best chance you have of getting a top notch bird dog. I need to add that the breeder also makes a difference. There are lots of breeders out there that talk a good game and charge top dollar for their pups. I’m very fortune to know and live close to Rob Jones. He’s about as far from a high volume breeder as you can get but he cares about his pups and it shows. I’m the proud owner of Emma from Rob’s Windy Point’s Baby Doll and Shadow Oak Bo. Rob encouraged me to handle that puppy every day from the time it was born until it came home at 10 weeks. He played gunfire/music tapes for those dogs at mealtime and put pigeons out at the five week point to indoctrinate the puppies to birds.
The reason for going into all that Rob does to prepare those puppies for their bird dog career is as follows: Emma at 5 ½ months of age is pointing and retrieving pheasants quail and chukar. She is holding point and honoring my older dog, Molly just about all the time now. She is doing this all naturally. The only thing I have contributed is to introduce Emma to released pigeons in my back yard to work on her steadiness on point. She has had a 16 gauge will full loads fired over her many times and is an aggressive retriever. We’re still working on delivery to hand but we are talking full sized pheasants here. I realize that Emma is at a very young age but I do not hesitate to put her out to run with the “big dogs” on wild or released birds.
Thanks Rob for Emma and your help with raising a first class setter puppy!