On Saturday Moidart made her debut on the shooting field with a trip to the Godinton shoot. She didn’t mind being crammed into the shoot trailer along with ten people and their assorted dogs and took no notice of the jolting journey to the first drive. I sat her up off the lead alongside Shona and Riska and I’m pleased to say that she was totally calm and steady even when the others were working. She didn’t have a retrieve during the drive because I like to train my dogs to be rock steady, so I prefer to send a young dog after the drive, and I always make certain that I know exactly where the bird is to ensure that the youngster finds the retrieve easily.
Yesterday we went to Turner’s Hill for the Irish Water Spaniel AV working test.
Moidart entered the test for puppies aged 12 to 18 months old and behaved like a grown up gundog all day, producing some good heelwork in the walk up, as well as sitting quietly through the mock drive, so I felt that her third place was well deserved.
Riska entered the open test and completed her retrieves at full throttle as always. She ran well, so I knew we were in with a chance for an award, and we were called for the dreaded run-off because we had the same score as another competitor. The decider was a long blind without shot and she got the distance easily, but was off to the right, so I had to stop her and ask her to run left, which she did nicely. We were slightly better than our rival so we gained third place. There was also a run-off for first place, so the leading dogs were very close together.
