Bluestem Kennels

Well the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  I was going to blog this weekend before the puppies started going home.  I managed to get their pictures and video on Sunday, but here I am blogging in between puppies going to their new homes.  Oh well, better late than never.  Saturday morning Charles and Conrad took our 3 1/2 month old pup, Fire, out with a few quail; just to plant them and let her point and flush them.  Then the whole family went and picked up some more quail for training this spring on Saturday from one of our game bird breeders down by Lincoln, so that was a road trip.  Then Sunday we took our weekly dog exercise hike.

So here are the last shots of the “H” Litter 2014 from Sam and Mae before going home.  Everyone goes home today except for one going over the weekend.  Mae will be spayed at the end of the week, then head up to her retirement home with my brother in Valentine, Nebraska mid-June.

Herbert is staying in Omaha (not with us!)

Harold goes to North Dakota

Harriet goes to South Dakota

Hez will live in Maine

Hope is headed to Wyoming

The video this week is a little random and slightly controversial in dog training circles.  Playing with the dead quail in such an uncontrolled environment should be very limited.  Here I am doing it in the litter setting just to activate prey drive.  Notice how they want to fight over it and hard-mouth it.  That is why it is limited and I don’t recommend doing this at home with your new pup.  Once you have your pup home, you want to work on retrieving with toys and dummies.  Once they have that down, then you can graduate to retrieving a carcass.  But don’t let them get rough with it like they do here.  The second portion of the video has Charles playing with the pups with a wing.  Once again, something that should be very limited if you do it at all.  Ideally you’re looking for the pup to point the wing, but these guys are in their play yard and not in a training environment, so they just want to chase it.  These pups are great pointers, but not the best on-call actors.  If you look at the pics of Herbert and Harold, they are pointing the clicking of my camera. .

If you want a step-by-step “gun dog puppy training for dummies”, you can’t beat Richard Wolter’s Gun Dog.  Here is a review I wrote of the book a few years back, you can pick up a copy on Amazon: https://bluestemkennels.com/2010/07/22/book-review-gun-dog-by-richard-a-wolters/

Here is the aforementioned YouTube puppy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsQRVSpAsCA&feature=youtu.be

Tomorrow is the last day of school for the kids, so I’m looking forward to a puppy-free (with the exception of our Fire, of course) summer.  Really working on getting into shape with September 1st on the brain and already excited to get back out in the hunting fields and swamps.  I’ll post the homegoing pictures after the last pup goes home over the weekend.  I hope that everyone enjoys their Memorial Day holiday and remembers those who gave their lives so that we can enjoy the awesomeness that is America.