Nick & Ted
Age 74 months Nick Ridley tries to keep things on the level with the boys with regards to the mating game and some working tests
Ihave been writing articles for fieldsports magazines for well over 20 years and the biggest challenge is coming up with something new and interesting to write about every month. I’ve been sharing my trials and tribulations with my cockers, Ted and now Percy, for nearly six years and some months I really do struggle. Fortunately, this wasn’t one of them.
I’ll start from where I finished last month. Regular readers will have seen that our little orange-and-white bitch, Dott, had come in season and we were planning to mate her to Percy. It was part of the agreement with her breeder that he wanted a Percy puppy in part payment for Dott and we quite willingly agreed. I am also very keen on keeping a bitch back from any forthcoming litter.
Dott has proved to be a really nice little dog – affectionate and quite sensible. Also, towards the end of the shooting season she really showed she has a very good ‘go peddle’ and although you can never be sure what a mating will produce, the potential is exciting
We had decided to try the mating on day 10 of Dott’s season and, although she was standing for Percy and was flagging her tail – pushing it over to one side – every time he showed any real interest, she turned and snapped at him. It was quite amusing to watch his reaction as the normally ultra bold, in your face, ‘bring it on’ dog suddenly became very sensitive and unsure of himself.
Flirty
It was obvious that Dott wasn’t quite ready for his amorous advances, so we decided to try the following day. Twenty-four hours later and Dott was still being very flirty but giving Percy the run around, so we just decided to hold Dott and all of a sudden it was game on. I won’t go into specific details but let’s just say Percy suddenly found his inner man and performed perfectly and after a good 20-minute tie, Mrs R and I sat down for a much-needed G&T.
Forty-eight hours later we repeated the process and I packed my bags to head up to Cumbria to get Ted and Percy out of the way while Dott completed her season. We are now four weeks on and we are pretty sure Dott is cooking some pups, but are planning
to get her scanned at the end of the week so watch this space for an update next month.
I spent the week working with Fran Ardley, Sporting Gun’s gundog trainer, preparing Percy for upcoming working tests. I did a lot of hunting exercises in bracken as I don’t have any access to that kind of cover and one of the tests will be run in a wood covered in the stuff. To start with, he tended to bounce over the top but he soon got the idea.
“The normally ultra bold dog suddenly became very sensitive and unsure of himself”
Ted was having a bit of R&R as he had caught the little growth on his back ( April issue) a few times – as I suspected he would – and it was a bit sore. I didn’t want to make it any worse as he was due to go to the vet’s to have it removed when I returned home. He did and all went well and, other than a bald patch on his back and three small stitches, he is back to his normal self. The growth was benign and once he has the stitches out it shouldn’t cause any more problems. Our vet said had it been anywhere else on his body they wouldn’t have bothered removing it.
Tests
This time of the year I do try to enter a few working tests. I am the least bit competitive but it does help to focus my dog training. Ted is entered for a couple of tests next month and one of them is my favourite retrievingbased test. Over the years we have run off for the top placings each time we have entered. It is great fun running against the labradors and other retrieving breeds and a fun, relaxing day. It is also all for a good charitable cause and we will be practising hard over the next few weeks.
At the time of writing, I have run Percy in two tests and it would be fair to say it has been a game of two halves in both of them. I have received some very positive feedback and compliments from senior spaniel judges but we have failed to put two good runs together. I recently ran him in a test on some lovely ground – it was in laid bracken and was one of the reasons I had gone up to Cumbria to practise in that kind of cover.
Pulsating
Our first run was really nice, the little dog was literally burying himself in the cover and at times the clumps of bracken were pulsating as he hunted underneath it. At the end of the run the judge gave me some good advice: he said Percy was the best hunting cocker he had seen that day but his pattern needed tightening up. This has been an ongoing battle as he can be a little bit inconsistent and will pull me around, which can be a trait of a hard-hunting spaniel.
When it’s right it is so very exciting but when it’s wrong it can be so very frustrating, and our second run was exactly that – very frustrating. It wasn’t a total disaster, but I felt like I was trying to hold on to a kite in a gale and any moment the string was going to snap and the kite would disappear over the horizon. Thankfully, Percy didn’t quite do a vanishing act, but it was a close-run thing.
Needless to say, it is back to basics to reinforce his hunting pattern. However, he is such a bright dog I have a sneaking suspicion that he may have cottoned on to the fact that in a test environment I can’t actually do anything about him pulling me around because, during the previous week’s training, he was pretty well spot-on. Dogs truly are great levellers.