Riska’s training has been going well and we have been picking up on three shoots with a variety of different ground including marshland, arable and woodland, as well as having several lessons in turnips with Graham, so we felt that Riska was ready to trial, even though she is still very young (she will be two years old in December).
I was pleased to be offered a run in the UGS novice field trial at Blackmore yesterday, but I did feel a tad nervous, as you are never quite how a dog will cope with the pressure of a trial. Riska kept calm and improved as the day went on, so I was relieved when she picked a pheasant off some very deep plough in the third round. My next retrieve should have been into the woodland, but there was no dog available to back me up, so I was taken to the other pair of judges because two dogs had failed on their retrieve from woodland out onto the headland. Riska went straight to the edge of the wood, where I stopped her, sent her right handed and told her to get over the ditch out of the woods, and at that moment I knew she had winded the bird and therefore eye-wiped my two fellow competitors. We went back to the gallery and soon heard the welcome words “trial over” so I was glad that we had completed all our retrieves.
After a welcome cup of tea and some goodies to eat beside the welcome warmth of the log burner in the shoot lodge the results were given out and much to my total and utter delight we were placed third.
