Tracker update

Tomorrow Tracker goes in for his first heart worm treatment, so he will have to be kept calm for a few weeks. That should be a fun experiment, this boy comes bounding out of his crate full of energy and ready to play. He and my 15 month old V puppy Jake have been playing tug-of-war for days, so much for all the stuffed animals we had collected. Tracker can also catch a frisbee in the air and LOVES to chase lizards. He does great with all other dogs, has been to the dog park and has tail wags for everyone. He and Jake fell asleep on the couch last night all tangled up in each other snuggling, I tried to get a picture, but in typical vizsla fashion, they jumped up to follow me when I went to get the camera.

He's extremely affectionate and sweet, loves any and all attention, is scared of nothing and is going to make somebody a great pet.

I'll also be posting another dog to the "Available Dogs" page too. He's about 2 years old, but he needs to go to a hunting home, he's a hunting dog through and through. He'd prefer hunting to snuggling on the couch, but in the right home he can make a great dog and hunting companion. I'll post more information as it comes in!

Busy, busy, busy!

Jake has been doing well, he got a blue ribbon in Open Puppy at the Central Florida GSP Field Trial on Nov. 4, and last weekend he almost placed in Open Derby with 15 dogs, only 4 were V's, and there were some top 10 Derby dogs in there. Jake only got bumped out of the placements by the lone dog in the last brace, I always thought there should be a 5th place. ;) It was his first time being handled off horseback and it was also his 7 month birthday.

Lady has been doing well too, Mark is right on the verge of entering her in Senior Hunter, I think he will in the Spring.

We've been out hunting every weekend, Jake has a hunt test this weekend.

Last night we went and played with a recent 5 month old V rescue we placed, Jake and Lady had lots of fun with Sally, especially Jake! They wrestled for hours, they play so well together. Thanks for inviting us over Alisa!

Oh and Lady started her Agility class, we go on Thursdays, just basics for now but I know she's going to love it!

Just a reminder--get your entries in for our upcoming Field Trial, deadline is November 26!

Oh and some JH legs!

How did I forget to mention that Jake went 2 for 2 on his JH legs last weekend? Only 2 more to go, good job little man!

Trick or Treat!

This was Jake's first Halloween, so of course I had to dress him up! Mark says that manly hunting dogs don't wear Halloween costumes, but I think that maybe they do, when they're 6 months old at least! This will most likely be the last year Mark lets me dress Jake up, so I enjoyed it while I could.

Jake was so great for the trick or treaters. Lady was made to stay in the living room because she gets way too excited, she is butt wiggles and kisses for the kids, and some of the little ones are overwhelmed by her. Jake--was the perfect gentleman. The doorbell would ring and he would walk with me to the door, where he would stand politely and quietly in his costume and hat while I handed out all the candy. I didn't have to hold him back at all. Most of the time the kids would want to pet him, so I would tell him to come forward and he would just stand there and politely tail wag while all the kids kissed and hugged and pet him. What a good boy! He's a CGC shoe-in. Even the kids couldn't believe how calm he was.

On an un-related note, Jake has outgrown the soccer fields. We've been running him in several soccer fields in a row (I think 4 or 5) near our house to teach him independence, but he's been running all the way out of the soccer fields the second we set out with him. He'll turn in a second if we call him, but the idea is that we don't want to call him back, we want him to go out. So now we'll be searching for another extremely large open field where we can teach him range, that shouldn't be hard in Sarasota right? *sigh*

Right now we also need to be working on ranging when he can't see us. So far that's been a much bigger challenge, but I'm sure that will come with age too. He hunts so hard when he's in the field, the judges comment to us on how serious he is about his job.

Lady is doing great, Mark got his Citori White Lightning and has been shooting over her with it. She's much more consistently steady when he is holding a gun, so he's going to buy a fake gun to bring out to SH with him.

Check out our brag for Dart on the main page! Jake is so proud of his momma. :) She had an awesome time at Nationals, First place Field Trial Bitch, First place Open Standard Agility, and Award of Merit for the NA Field Trial, congratulations Dart! Now that's a Versatile Vizsla!

Good Job Dart!

Big Congratulations to Jake's mom, Dart!

This weekend she placed First at the Rothan Dual Challenge in Amateur Limited Gun Dog for the Miami Valley Vizsla Club in Ohio. She got 2 more of her retrieving points, and was honored as Dog with the Most Potential. Only 2 more retrieving points till her Amateur Field Championship!

Great Job Dart!!

Today was Labor Day and we had off, so we headed up to Lake Wales for training, crossing our fingers that they had birds. The only quail Jake has gotten to train on since he got home were at the Fun Day, other than that there have been none in the state. We got there at about 7 am and were happy to see Paul Hermes and Chris OBrien headed out with their shotguns, so Jake got to have his first training day.

Mark set out 4 birds for him on the first run. The morning was nice and breezy, about 75 degrees, but we knew it was heating up fast and we needed to run him early. The first bird he ran past and then turned on a dime, on a staunch point. Ear flipped of course. He held the point for about a full 5 minutes before he repositioned himself, only after about 10 minutes of pointing did he finally jump in on the bird. Mark joked that we should go get some breakfast and come back. Once he did flush the bird, it flew for the fence and hid in the bushes. When he got close, it jumped up to fly over the fence and hit a branch and fell right back into Jake's mouth. He happily ran it back to us, but he didn't want to give it up right away.

We continued on and he did well on all of his other finds. The third bird he couldn't find, and of course Mark couldn't remember exactly where he had put it, but it was getting hot so we continued our run. The birds were walking today, they had a lot of gusto for 97 degrees and 90% humidity.

We let Lady run on a checkcord afterward, she did well and found the bird Jake had missed, it had wandered about 100 yards to the east. By the time we brought her in it was just too hot for any more training, she healed the last stretch which she never does.

We also got to witness "birdapalooza" with Jen and Paul, the puppies were doing great on birds, what cuties!

Next weekend is NAVHDA and Mark wants to work Lady on some pheasant. Last NAVHDA training day Lady and Jake both worked on a duck, Jake was a little duck crazy. Jake will need to start learning to track the pheasant for his test in February.

It was a good weekend!

Jake is home

Jake is home, and I just love having a puppy in the house. That puppy smell of puppy breath is intoxicating. He and Lady are best friends already, it's really so heart warming to see them roll around together all day and then curl up to sleep. Lady is so gentle with him, she lets him have the upper hand. She needs to start correcting him more but hopefully that will come as he gets bigger! Here are just some random comments about him:

--He has to go outside much more often than Lady ever did, we have to take him out every 15-30 minutes or else he will pee in the house. Woody had to go out a lot too though, so maybe it's a male thing?

--He is definitely dominant over Lady, he humps her a lot, will go right up to her and take things out of her mouth, will race her to a ball, all things she would never do even now. I don't want him to grow up and completely dominate her, so I'm hoping for Lady to step it up. ;) We knew Lady would be gentle, but we thought she would be the dominant one.

--Wow, what a hungry little monster! Every time we go in the kitchen he yells for food. We thought we were going to have to keep Lady from eating his food, but it's the other way around, it's a race to finish and he tries to take hers. When we watched the puppies grow on Jan's website, we joked that we needed the pushiest eater so that he would be able to keep up with Lady. Not a problem with Jake!

--Speaking of yelling, Jake is very vocal. Not in a bad way, he goes in his crate fine at night. But he's always whimpering and whining and barking and making little growl sounds, it's so cute. He likes to tell us a story.

He still has a lot of growing to do (we can already see him getting bigger!), so we'll see what the future has in store for our little mongrel (Mark's nickname for him is food mongrel, if you don't know us well, we are the family of a million nicknames).

I'll keep adding pics and videos!