Bluestem Kennels

The puppies have all gone home and Ruth and I miss them.  I am planning a litter for next spring, but I’m not looking to go gangbusters on taking interest right now since I have my daughter’s high school graduation in a few weeks.  So feel free to drop a note to bluestemkennels@gmail.com if you are thinking about a pup in 2020, but I won’t be ready to start doing interviews and taking deposits until mid-June.

I’m just going in the order that they went home:

Austin and his wife drove up from Waco, Texas and returned home to their one year old child with their first hunting puppy.

Philip went home to TX with Austin and his wife.

Alex drove over from Ohio to pick up his retirement hunting dog.

Pamela was on her way to Ohio with Alex

Sherry and Bert live just across town in Bellevue and also have a retirement hunting pup.

Phila Mae and Sherry headed just down the road a few miles.

Marty and his wife run a vineyard in Wisconsin and they have a new mascot who will also chase birds.

Paul was already in love with his new owners and ready for Wisconsin.

Vicky and her family are getting their second Bluestem pup and will be just across the city in Omaha.

Vicky and her daughter with Patience

Rob and his family are also on their second Bluestem pup and are from Omaha!

Penelope is still a Husker too!

Derek and his family have been looking for a Griff puppy for quite awhile and were excited for my surprise litter.  She’ll get to chase birds down in Kansas.

Derek took Peter down south to Kansas

Peggy flew out to Dan in California.  This was my last air cargo shipment due to the increasing restrictions related to the weather in every city that they depart/layover/arrive.  We have no control over the weather and I’m not going to have pups bumped off of flights because of it.  She made it safely to California with only a slight delay in Minneapolis.

Peggy checked into air cargo

Peggy leaving the airport

Zoro’s Natural Ability Test

We learned a lot from Zoro’s NAVHDA Natural Ability Test.  Charles has handled four NA dogs (three prize ones all 112 and one prize two) prior to this and two UT III dogs.  Two other co-owned dogs we’ve watched go to NA I 112.  So I think that we were a little overconfident.  I was tired from sending puppies home the days prior, so I didn’t go.

From what Charles tells me he had a few good points in the field and did great in the water, but instead of following the track during the tracking portion of the test, he did a search and flaked.  No pass.

So now we get to work on the UPT for either a late summer or early fall test.  We’ve been a bit lax on our last few dogs and have just put Natural Ability prizes on them and just wild bird hunted from there.  This will dial us back in to higher level training and we learned a big lesson about waiting until the age cutoff in the spring to Natural Ability Test.  Best to get it over with in the fall while they are young and be done with it.

Zoro has no idea that he didn’t pass and is still as happy-go-lucky as ever.  Charles laid a track the next day and he followed it and found the bird with no problem.  It’s just one day and one test.

Here are some shots from when we were working on getting ready:

Coming Soon

I finally have a camcorder again (I’ve been using the video function on my DSLR for the puppy videos and it is just not as good), so I’ll be recording a new grooming video soon, since that seems to be the most commonly searched for topic on my blog right now.  I’m sure I’ll get a chance to take some training videos over the summer too, so keep an eye out for that.  Good luck to everyone else out there with puppies and testing this spring.