By Chad Love

There are four dogs working the field in this picture; a pointer, two shorthairs and a setter. Can you spot them? Neither can I, and I'm the one that took the picture. You can lose sight of your dogs very quickly in even a waist-high CRP field, and some of the Kansas CRP tracts I hunted last week with Ted Gartner and Tom Bondurant (pictured) of Garmin International were literally taller than we were. In conditions like that it's very easy to lose sight of the sky, much less your dogs, unless of course they're wearing Garmin Astros.

By Chad Love

Do you have an interest in the history of international retriever field trials? Do you have $80,000 sitting around? Well then, here's a deal for you...

From this story on scotsman.com:
"Peter of Faskally", a Perthshire estate dog, was feted as one of Scotland's best-performing gundogs in trials at the turn of the 20th century. Owned by Archie Butter, the owner of Faskally Estate near Pitlochry and a well-known Labrador handler, Peter went on to father 32 field trial champions. The painting, which features another of Mr Butter's Labradors, Dungavel Jet, and is coming up for auction at Bonhams, is by Maud Earl, a British-American artist who was best-known for her paintings of well-known canines. Ms Earl, who famously counted Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra among her patrons, was born in London, but emigrated to New York in 1916 and died there in 1943.

By Chad Love

by Chad Love

To boot or not to boot, that is the question many upland hunters face when running their dogs in areas with high concentrations of vegetation that bites back. Some hunters swear by boots, while other hunters swear at them.

Cactus spines, thorns and burrs can drastically hinder a bird dog's ability to cover ground. On the other hand, it can be a real pain to spend twenty minutes booting up your dog, only to have them throw one in the middle of a hunt.

I'm pheasant and quail hunting the sandhills of southwestern Kansas this week with Ted Gartner, the director of corporate communications for Garmin International. When he's not working, Gartner is a hard-core bird hunter who regularly runs his string of dogs in the burr-infested sandhills of southwest Kansas. I posed the question of booting dogs to Gartner.

By Chad Love

Ask any dog trainer, whether they're strictly a hunter or a weekend hunt tester, amateur field trialer, a pro or some combination thereof, “What's the biggest training issue you face?” The answer will most likely be finding training grounds where they can get their dogs on real birds.

It's not a very gundog-friendly world out there and urban and suburban trainers are forced to get creative with where and how they train. I've been kicked off golf course water hazards, city park ponds, neighborhood green spaces, soccer fields, state parks, deserted shopping mall parking lots, open fields destined to become housing developments and wherever else I thought might work for a bit of training. If it's big enough to throw a bumper, I've probably been asked to vacate the premises. If you can manage it (and keep from getting hassled) all those places are fine for yard work—handling drills and the like—but eventually, you have to get your dog into the real thing. And that's where many trainers turn to pen-raised birds.

So when I saw this thread on the Upland Journal bulletin board discussing a story on proposed changes to Oregon's dog-training laws it got my attention.