"Know ye that the Lord, he is God; it is he who hath made us, and not ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise; be thankful unto him and bless his name." PSALMS 100:3-4

Well hunting season is over and there's only SIX months to go before it begins again. In the meantime we'll do some training, run some pups, make a few changes and gear up for next hunting season.
Also we'll attend a few trials and make a few trips here and there just running dogs and enjoying ourselves.

Friday April 11, 2008 Got out for a while with LUKE yesterday and a pup I call MOSES. The melting snow is going fast and our swamps are filling with water big time. LUKE had another good day and handling the terrain was quite a challenge. With slush and water, ice and caving snow the young dog did really good. However the puppy had a tough day as he didn't like the cold deep water, the caving in snow and the breaking ice. He isn't started yet but will follow the other dog around until he gets to meet up with a large section of water. He'd cry like a baby at first when he got left behind but eventually he figured out how to get around a lot better than he did at first. We'll be glad when bare ground gets here so the pups I have can get going.

Today I took 2 female pups out, one is started and the other isn't. "HOPE" the started pup did pretty good at times but the ever changing surface gave her some problems. Soft slush, then a patch of bare ground, then water, then ice, etc. etc. Her litter sister "CHARITY" moved around well and got a sight chase and opened on it but didn't take scent. She's not far away from getting going. Hope hunts really well and as soon as we get more bare ground we expect her to progress well.

Tuesday April 8, 2008 It was beautiful out today and just a perfect day to be in the woods. I had made arrangements to help John Waldron fix fence at the Beagle club in the morning and we were joined by Bob Orr and Adam Morse. We need to button up our fencing prior to stocking rabbits for our licensed trial which is just a month away. John and I planned to run dogs together after our work was done. So after three hours of working the fence we went to the store for a break. We headed back to the Club to run two littermates my LUKE and John's male REBEL. As it turned out Adam had a dog in there too and we got a nice two hour run and the young dogs did pretty good. I was real happy with LUKES performance as he continues to show a lot of promise. The snow was soft slushy and scenting was tough but the hare was kept moving.

Last weekend we traveled to THORTON B.C. to pick up a dog we just acquired who runs real well I'm told. He's supposedly a slow running dog that will suit me well for running with pups. We brought RUTH along to give the club an entry while we were there and she didn't do too much in first series and was picked up.
We watched the little males run as the dog I was taking home was entered in the class. There was a small entry with only 8 starters so they went right into a winners pack. They got a cottontail jumped right off and ran fairly well but had some breakdowns due to a couple dogs running in a reckless fashion. The judges picked the worst one up after a while and the running got appreciably better. The first two minutes of the running of this class was a lot more running than what we got at the trial I attended a few weeks ago. Crazy running, over competetive, reckless, swinging, over running dogs are unfortunately quite common these days.
The class was run down to three dogs but the judges didn't watch much of the trio at all and I suspect they had their minds made up before the trio had much of a chance to perform. Matt Glidden from Maine won the class and Roscoe Higgins got second and third. I took home the third place dog who will fit well in my training program with pups.