Nick and Ted head for the water
Age 63 months
Nick Ridley has some watersports planned to get Ted back to field fitness, as he dives in at the deep end with Percy in a working test
At long last we are getting back to some kind of normality. The easing of the lockdown meant that I was able to take a longawaited trip to Cumbria.
The trip was both for work and pleasure. I needed to get some images for Fran Ardley’s gundog training articles in Sporting Gun, but I was also keen to get a few pointers for young Percy, as I had a looming working test. I took both Ted and the young dog, and I realised how quickly Ted’s fitness had tailed off since the end of what shooting season we had. It is really hard to keep the dogs fit during the off season and though I am keen for them, especially Ted, to have a bit of a rest, with the new season on the horizon, I need to begin to think about getting them field fit again.
Hydrotherapy
Now, with me being in my sixth decade, riding a bike with the dogs running alongside is not something that I am keen to explore, and to make matters more challenging, the roads in and around my village have more holes in them than a piece of Swiss cheese. But all is not lost. I have been speaking to a friend who runs a hydrotherapy pool for dogs and has just had a water treadmill installed, and we have been talking about creating a fitness programme for Ted. We have a meeting scheduled and I will let you know how things progress on this front.
Most of my time recently has been dedicated to getting Percy ready for his first working test, including entering an online virtual test, which I found most frustrating. Basically, you had to video your dog, without the handler in the frame, and the test consisted of a short hunt, a stop to whistle or a shot, a short retrieve and then carry-on hunting. The video couldn’t be any longer than two minutes. Regular readers will know I video my dogs a lot – I even wrote a feature on the subject in the May issue of Sporting Gun – but I found this most frustrating. I hazard that I was looking for the perfect scenario and after each bit of filming I was over-analysing Percy’s performance. In the end, I made the decision to stop and send the footage in to the judge as I could see I would never be satisfied. As it turned out, he ended up getting third place in the novice competition, in which I understand there were more than 50 entries, so I was really pleased. All my fretting had been worth it.
The real test (literally) came at the end of the month. I entered Percy in the London Working Spaniel Society working test and I wasn’t sure that he would get a run as I am not a member of the club and I suspected the test would be oversubscribed. To my surprise, however, I was drawn number 20 out of 25 entries. The test was being run in the grounds of Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, and was perfect for Percy. It is rushy sedge reed in woodland; the cover isn’t too thick, but it’s heavy enough to hold him back and, as readers will know, he is a hard-going little dog that can really get a wiggle on. I have to admit that I was really nervous, and the pressure of the day increased significantly as numerous people came up to me and commented that they had been following Percy’s progress in Sporting Gun and on my YouTube channel. But as I have always said, if you pop your head above the parapet, you must be prepared to be ‘shot’ at.
New experience
Anyway, for those who don’t know, a spaniel working test consists of two judges, normally an A-panel and a non-panel. You run separately under both judges and you hunt the dog and there will be a seen retrieve to shot; you then hunt on and there is a blind retrieve behind you, again to shot. You also run alongside another dog (at a slight distance) and your dog must be steady while the other dog is performing its retrieves. Up to 80% of your marks are for hunting
and the remainder are for the two retrieves. We had a long wait for our first run, nearly an hour and a half, and Percy was getting really worked up; he had never been around so many dogs and I decided to keep my distance from the main block of handlers in an effort to take the edge off him. Eventually we were called up and I was concerned that he would boil over as soon as I took off his lead, but to my surprise, as soon as we stood next to the first judge, he got his ‘game head’ on and calmed down.
Another new experience for him was the fact that as well as the judge there were another four people around. It was a big learning curve for him, but I need not have worried. As I clicked him off, he quickly got into his hunting pattern. I breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t disappeared over the horizon and he was turning nicely and keeping tight. Both of his retrieves were nigh on perfect and I came out of that first run really happy and somewhat relieved. We had another long wait for our second run and again Percy got quite worked up; the trouble was apart from all the other dogs, he could also see and hear what was going on with the dogs running their tests. It has been a part of his training that I have not been able to practice, so it was simply a case of his lack of experience. Things didn’t quite go to plan on his second run. As I cast him off, he immediately pulled towards the other dog and my heart sank. I had a bit of a job to get him back but once he decided to join me again, we quickly got things back on track. Again, I was happy with his hunting and both of his retrieves were clean, though I had to give him a little redirection on his blind.
I was relieved when it was all over and, to my surprise, Percy was awarded a Certificate of Merit. Had he not gone slightly AWOL on that second run he may well have been a little bit higher up in the awards, but it was a good experience for him and I know what I need to work on for his next test. I must also say that as I am usually the photographer, it is rare to get pictures of me with the dogs, so I am very grateful to Ray Hood of Country Trail Images for taking some great shots of Percy and me and our first competition together.
“Percy was getting really worked up; he had never been around so many dogs”