Horses need attention too...

With Field Trial season winding down, our horses are getting more time to lounge around the barn doing pretty much nothing but turning perfectly good hay into manure.  We've also been very busy at work the past couple of weeks, so evenings have been short and the horses haven't gotten much other than basic attention.  Add to that inclement weather and turnouts have been intermittent as well.

For most of the horses, they don't mind being lazy.  We do have one though, that gets easily bored.  He's younger and very playful - which is one of the endearing qualities. 

This is Cocoa, aka "Little Man".  He is allegedly a 7 year old Kentucky Mountain Horse.  He acts much more like a 4 year old.

Around here, animals get more nicknames as time goes by.  This week, Little man earned another nickname.

Maintenance and Improvements are constant around a country property.  We had finally gotten around to building rolling barn doors for the South Side of the barn last fall to help keep driving Southerly rainstorms from soaking the interior of the barn, including all the stored Hay.    Anyone who has built doors from scratch knows it takes a bit of time to do.  As you can see, Cocoa's boredom got exercised on the door...

Can you guess what Little Man's new nickname is?

No, it's not sh**head, though that might be appropriate too!

The horses enjoyed a lot of turnout time this weekend, and have been getting more attention - one little horse in particular.

Friends - Part one of many!

So we've decided to brag about our Friends.  This will be a first installment, so if you're  not mentioned yet - don't worry!  It's in no order of importance - likely more order of who we can scrape up pictures of! 

We've had dogs for decades, and have many old friends and many new friends since we've gotten into Vizslas.  I think we'll try to mix it up a bit!  So here goes!

Rodney and Joanie Michaelson - you're spotlighted!

I pinched this photo from Rod's blog.  You have no idea how many pictures of Bailey, Chloe and Rod I had to go through to finally find one of Rod and Joanie!  Now in Rod's defense, he does say it's a Vizsla blog at the top...

Rod's blog can be found at http://www.redbirddog.blogspot.com/

Janet and I first met Rod and Joanie a little over a year ago at the Kistler Ranch Vizsla Horseback trial put on by the Vizsla Club of Northern California.  We have a lot in common and got to know each other more when we all showed up in Portland at the same time for the TEVCO trial.  Since then, we have become fast friends and anyone who knows either Rod or Joanie knows what wonderful people they are!

We had Rod up for his first real pheasant hunt this past season on ours and neighboring farms.  That involves walking a lot, joking with friends and not shooting any birds!

Rod is much more eloquent in his blog's description of the day!

http://redbirddog.blogspot.com/2009/11/pheasant-hunt-opening-day.html


  Rod - I promise this year we'll do better about getting some hunts in - ones where we get birds (not Bailey catching them for us!)

Thanks Rod and Joanie for being our friends!

Exercising Vizslas can be FUN!

There's a sport called "bikejoring". It involves :

• A Bike




• A "tugline" (note my tugline here is a leash wrapped around the post on the bike, then bungees to absorb shock to the harness) Poor man's way to bikejor...
• 
  A harness

• A dog that likes to pull in harness

Scarlet is getting much better at pulling - Tessa is ready for the ididarod - except it would have to be dry and about 60 degrees Farenheit.

This is a very fun way to run your dogs - they get full running, pulling weight, but not too much. It's great conditioning for their "wind" when trialing and it always makes me smile doing it. I would suggest gloves, a helmet and a face shield, because they tend to pepper you with debris! Good luck and have fun!

Sometimes A "Hail Mary" Connects...

Saturday Morning found Hank and I at Hastings Island Hunting Preserve for the German Wirehaired Pointer Walking Field trial. Hank has run these grounds several time before, and to say this place is his nemesis is somewhat of an understatement. The grounds are basically grass fields with no objectives, no edge, small and heavy cover this time of year. Hank has a history of blowing out of the one field that the comittee will run the stake in and cover two or three, putting him out of contention. He's much more suited to large grounds and horseback trials. So why were we there?


It's pretty much the last trial of the season and Hank has yet to blue in a puppy or derby stake. Getting a first in a derby opens up the possibility to run in the limited stakes as a broke dog. In the West, pretty much all the Open or Am Gun dog stakes are retreive, and the limited stakes are often non-retrieve. We agree that a fully trained dog should retrieve, but anyone who has handled "green broke" dogs will agree that it's awful nice to get some "seasoning" on a young dog in the broke stakes and then finish them out with the retrieving stakes. Plus, carrying derby points certainly doesn't hurt!


At any rate, they ran the Amateur walking Derby on Saturday and although we didn't see a lot of Hank because of high cover, it was in the right places and often enough. We found him standing a nice find so he got his bird and he finished to the front. Finally, of all the places he's run, he blued the AWD at his nemesis grounds!



He returned Sunday even more supercharged and tore through the course with two solid finds - the second locating him several hundred yards to the front standing his bird after missing for several minutes. This was a nice sized derby - 16 entries. As he was in the first brace, it was a long wait, but finally we got the word - He won the blue again!!


It's been a long road with my Buddy Hank to get to this point. I couldn't be happier with him. Now I look forward to working together with him to move on to the next level. Wish us luck!

Public Hunting grounds in South Dakota

clik on map to enlarge


One of the real attractions for us in buying a place in South Dakota obvious to any pheasant hunter, is that it is known as the mecca for Pheasant hunting in the United States.


The state has a program that offers landowners a stipend for opening private lands to the public for hunting. It's known as the public hunting walk in areas. Every year the South Dakota Dept. of Fish and Game puts out an atlas that indicates the different hunting areas. This is one section around our house in Firesteel.

From Firesteel to Isabel is about 10 miles. By my rough calculations, within a ten minute drive from our house in Firesteel we have public walk in access to around 50 square miles of hunting ground! And that's not counting buying a license to hunt the reservations...

Yearning for South Dakota

We were fortunate enough to cross paths with a lovely woman named Barbara Teare. Barbara and her husband Ron have summer dog camped in the Firesteel, South Dakota area for 30 years. Unfortunately, Ron's health the last few years has deteriorated to the point they weren't using their summer camp and decided to offer it up for sale. Long story short, we became good friends and ended up buying their place in Firesteel. It's interesting how many new "hunting buddies" I'm getting all of a sudden. :-) (Truth is, I'm practically giddy about the thought of sharing it with friends and family)

We're sure it needs some fixes, but it's furnished and has new roof and exterior doors in 2007. There's not much we can't fix, we've renovated hundred year old farmhouses and built the house we currently live in ourselves. Plus we'll probably only be able to spend a week or two a year there until we retire - and even after that probably two to three months a year running dogs on wild birds in the praries. We're pretty stoked!

And then there's the new powdercoated steel kennels!


We don't have enough dogs to fill these ourselves! Glad we've got friends to help!!! Whatya think Rodney? Late October pheasant hunting for a week in South Dakota with Bailey?

Wish we were heading out now loaded up with dogs & horses. Sigh... but alas retirement is still a ways off - but we're gearing up for it!