Reading from Annie's Training Diary ("Annie, Get Your Gun" 11/20/18), it's good to remember that in working with young gun dogs, especially precocious ones with an extra dollop of relentless predator drive, our job is to forever honor the process.  Young dogs that develop quickly are easily overexposed, meaning because they were showing so much talent and raw athleticism, sometimes we catch ourselves skipping steps in our training.  We don't do the rudimentary, grunt work yard training that is the cornerstone of any long-term hunting partnership with a pointing dog.

The great Delmar Smith, through his Boswell, Bill Tarrant, built his training around the notion that, "Once that dog's got it...stay too more weeks."  Maybe that's the recall.  Walking at heel.  Stopping to flush, stopping to "Whoa."  Once they've got it...stay too more weeks.

It's like we're rock climbing, moving up the face of some sheer wall, painstakingly making progress by setting one piton at a time, making certain of its purchase, then looking for the next likely spot to go.  In our pointing dog training, for us, that first piton is establishing a relationship with a young dog, "bonding" in the popular vernacular.  We're making a connection that will only get stronger as shape positive behavior into commands, commands into signals, signals into the kind of incredible mind meld that marked Eric's relationship with Awbonnies Bull.  It was uncanny what the two of them could do in rough country, Bull constantly to the front and to the edge, as Eric might say, with "the bit in his teeth," pushing, pushing, pushing.

But after so many days in so many mountain coverts, Bull and Eric could keep track of each other almost by some weird sort of intuitive feel.  Eric knew the country, and he knew his dog.  Bull knew his business.  Blessed be the ties that bind, ties that make memories of out-on-a-limb finds that marks the true Grouse Dog and separates the truly great from the merely good.

But what happens on the days when there's ice on that rock wall?  Where there just doesn't seem to be a logical next place to notch another piton.  Days when we're there's just no feel for how to move forward?  In Annie's training diary, the passage for one certain day was, "I fear Annie has ADHD!" followed from three laughing emojis.  That was a day when nothing clicked, when Annie spit the bit.  

We read in the old time training books about breed stereotypes, many of which are simply convenient, ignorant excuses for not learning how to get through to a dog.  But one generalization that pops up over a course of several of the early 20th century training books is the notion that setters are tough enough to go the distance, but too soft to hold up under the pressure that the rough and tumble trainers from the "dog breaking" school of training.  Setters, they said, sulked.  Quit.  Folded when the buck once and for all had to stop right here and right now.  Setters required more thought.  More nuance.  Better timing.  More time...and in the cookie cutter, time-is-money dog breaker game, that just wouldn't do.  That dog's either gettin' better, or he's eatin' into the overhead.

But that's not our world.  We're in it for the long haul, and we don't mind the time spent because we like spending time with our dog...especially if he's a handsome silky devil with an old-schooled chiseled head and feathers down his legs like guidons.  We watch him blow across the fields as effortlessly as we wish that we could, then feel our hearts rise in our throats when that long-haired beauty freezes on scent with a sold-out/all-in stop that looks as if he might catch fire.  If you're a setter man or woman, you just are, and that's that.

Look.  Some days, that dog's head just isn't in the right place.  More likely, ours isn't, if we are honest about the times when the wheels wobble if they don't come off entirely.  Those days, we need to be philosophers, or maybe more like professional card sharps who know when to fold 'em.  Some days, we're better served to put the dog up and go split wood; better, we find a way to spend some time with that young dog without pressure, without always asking for something, even if it's just sitting with him for a long pet or grooming, memorizing every freckle, every spot on that beautiful coat.  

Back to the basics of building a bond we go, re-setting that first piton for a solid start the next day when we make time again for the privilege, the joy, of getting with that young dog and movin' the mission forward.