Macabre dog training

 The other day, on our morning walk, Eddie and I found a dead ptarmigan. It had apparently died violently, but apart from blood on its head and being a little eaten by some crows on one of the legs, it was in good shape. My first thought was "jackpot!". You might find this odd, but Ive been training my golden as a gun dog, and until now I had not had any real game of fowl to train him with. The closest thing I've had before was some pheasant and ptarmigan wings, and the plumage of a pheasant. So this was much better, this had the right weight and feel, since it actually was a real bird!

A pheasant wing I've used for training

 As I didn't know if the bird was full of parasites or not, I took the precaution of freezing it before starting to use it in dog training. To my great relief and joy, Eddie only slightly hesitated the first time I asked him to retrieve the frozen bird, and in most instances he has retrieved the bird without hesitation when we have practiced.

The plan for this summer is to train Eddie to do something that in Norwegian is called "blood tracking" and in Swedish it would translate to "game tracking". Basically what you do is create a trail of blood drops and you also drag a deer foot behind you. This trail is then followed by the dog. The practical purpose of this is to train dogs to find hurt animals, like deer that has been hit by a car or wounded but not killed during a hunt. Game tracking is also a sport however, and that is what I hope Eddie and I will be able to participate in before the year is over. So when Eddie isn't retrieving whole frozen ptarmigans, he gets to locate dried deer legs or drops of blood that I have hidden around the house. I can't wait for the snow to melt so that we can finally begin proper training outdoors!

My previous dog Link and I doing some tracking.

 I do realize that this isn't everybody's cup of tea, but for me it is as fun as it gets! Although the macabre part of it isn't lost on me...