This might be the only test my dog actually passes.

Sounds like an interesting little test but at the moment my dog is just too good at her job in my opinion to play that kind of game. I have been hunting Missouri's early teal season the last couple of weeks religiously and Tar has been getting her share of retrieves. Well she would be getting more if I could shoot my new over and under better but thats another story. Last friday we got out well before shooting time and I had just set my folding chair up in some cattails and grabbed my decoy bag to go set them and I just happened to look at Tar. And there she was holding a duck in her mouth! Now I hadn't had her on heel and I had seen her take kind of a roundabout route to where I was setting up but she never gets too far so I just hadn't thought about it. So I reach down and take the bird and it is a blue wing teal still alive but apparently had gotten crippled by somebody the day before and Tar found it. So there I was 30 minutes before shooting time with 1/4 of my limit already and not a shot fired. I could care less how long it takes her to get her head out of a towel. LOL I'll take that dog any day! And of course I did the right thing and counted it as part of her daily limit and mine as well. :)

Good luck at the field trial Dave.Pritch looks great shiny coat,mouth large enough to carry birds,etc.!

You're right, I would not have risked my furniture by throwing a treat under it. Though, I would have thrown it between someone's legs and watched the antics. There should be extra credit for a dog that manages to get the towel on its head all by itself. Or are those demerits?

Good job Pritch! I'm so excited this weekend Charlie had his first retrieve. It was in the Colorado river the water was moving pretty fast, he swam out the first time and came back in with out the bird. But still following the bird downstream, he dove in again and went out and retrieved the bird,yhee. Charlie was so excited and so was I. Hope it is the first of many more to come.

You know its kinda funny how things turn out sometimes. I love to bird hunt (dove& quail) but I have two pitbulls. One of them, Brew, is half labrador but she hates water(no duck hunting), she hates playing fetch (no retrieving) and she doesn't like guns much. However my purebred pitbull puppy, Bella, swims like a fish, will drop a ball down the stairs and play fetch with herself and doesnt mind the noise of the shotgun. I never really put all that together until one day last fall. I'd decided to takes the girls with me because they'd been cooped up all week and I thought they would enjoy the excercise.
So I took the girls with me, not expecting them to help me hunt but just to come along for company. Boy was I surprised. I was hunting some railroad tracks. As I was walking along, I hadn't seen any birds yet, I noticed Bella was lagging behind by about 10-15 feet. I called her a couple times but she had her head stuck down in some low brush and wouldn't budge. I really didn't think anything of it but since she wasn't listening to me I started walking back towards her to see what she was up to. I got to within a few feet from her and suddenly 4-5 quail erupted from the grass and scattered in all directions. Needless to say I was startled quite a bit but managed a double. Bella was all over the birds without any prodding from me and I eventually, with some begging, had them in my vest.
So now I have a bird dog and am looking forward to another fall and great bird hunting with my little dog. I think she has a pretty high IQ and the birds to prove it.

Briley wasn`t happy that Kate was vacuming one day and pulled the plug out of the wall himself....three times! No IQ test needed!