Once again Voodoo is amazing me! I did his first training session with a real bird today and he did fantastic! All the previous work we have done with take/hold/retrieve of other objects has paid off. And we progressed all the way to him holding the frozen bird by himself (and he also did an unplanned retrieve). He was introduced to wings as a baby when he was with the breeder and he sniffed and chewed on the beak of a real bird at the fun day hunt test, but this was his first hold of a real bird and I’m so proud of how he did!
We will progress with this training using the frozen bird (which thaws a bit as we work with it) and as the sessions get longer, the bird will thaw a bit more and more. And as he gets bigger, and this smaller bird gets a bit rank smelling, I’ll switch to the duck I have waiting in the freezer. I’m hoping that will last for enough training sessions to get him to his first hunt test for the intro level. https://vimeo.com/178739728
Raising a Genius Puppy 