Tess turned One year old on October 30. She also started her first heat cycle, thus the fancy pants. I was starting to wonder when she would go in cycle, and figured with my luck it would be the week before Indiana's put-n-take pheasant season. Looks like I was wrong. And thanks to my wonderful girlfriend, Tess has some new fancypants(sorry, I just like saying fancypants). She did the sewing and figuring out where the velcro should go and all that good stuff. Here's another pic, which makes it look like Tess isn't too impressed with her fancypants:
I must appologize for not keeping updated, no excuses...I've just been a little slacking.
I've been trying to get Tess ready for pheasants. My wonderful girlfriend got me the Perfect Start dvd for my birthday in June, Thanks Jenni! I was also able to catch a couple pigeons, but had to buy a bunch more. In the yard, Tess likes to run around the pigeon like it's a game(not good). But in the field, she shows a genuine interest in finding the bird and pointing. So to help her along I bought a few DT bird launchers. I got the manual launchers and am making my own receivers as shown on gundogforum.com . I'm just waiting for the final parts to get in and I can finish the assembly and put them to use. The one thing I'm confident about is Tess' ability to retrieve. She loves retrieving her bumper, and when I introduced her to a pigeon, she retrieved that pretty well. Another goodie Tess got was a training collar(maybe that was a goodie for me.LOL), and she has taken to it very well.
I am looking forward to December because Tess and I will be going to South Dakota. In August I took my annual trip to the Black Hills. On the way out, I stopped a couple days and helped a farmer in the middle of the state in exchange for hunting pheasants on his land. I am sooooo loking forward to hunting some wild pheasants. Ya see, in Indiana I only go to the put-n-take hunts where they release pen-raised birds. It's good hunting, but probably nothing like wild birds.
Heres a couple more shots I took last week when we had a cold snap. I hadn't gotten my new woodstove installed yet, so Tess made use of the blankie on the couch.
Amazingly, she would actually stay on the couch when I got up to take the pics. Any other time, the minute I move to get up, she is off the couch and right beside me.
