On a hot and sunny day, Sam finished 4th of 24 Novices at the Hungarian Vizsla Working Test. The journey back via Hail Weston where I picked up a copy of the latest Eynesbury election leaflet from John Roscoe who had been working on it all day.
Daiman Hill won the British Grand Prix today, an emotional achievement in view of the fete of his late racing driver father.
Several Tory M.P.'s have been trapped into accepting bribes to put down parliamentary questions and this has put John Major's party into even greater realms of unpopularity.
A break from spending time and trouble on electioneering as I took Sam out for the day and ran him in the annual working test of the Hungarian Vizsla Society at Newport Pagnell.
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It was another very hot and sunny day and, with no cover and shade for us out in the open all day, it was quite tiring. Up a little early despite my recent late nights and a short walk with Sam before loading him up with all of the training aids and refreshments for the day and setting off.
The journey to Little Linford, near Newport Pagnell was quite straightforward and it was nice to have an event fairly close to home for a change. There was not very much organisation to be seen on arrival, but I found an area to exercise Sam and to try to settle him down a bit. There then followed a day that was fairly successful in terms of his work, but his behaviour was very bad. He was grumbling at other dogs and sniffing at the bitches such that I had great trouble avoiding conflicts.
Whether it was the great number of Vizslas around (whose red coats look like foxes, deer etc.) or because he was now amongst more adolescent dogs in the Novice Class or due his being attacked by other dogs recently, I do not know but I have to get on top of these tendencies or he will be unwelcome amongst shooting colleagues and their dogs.
There were four tests for him, two each side of lunch, and he performed them all without a failure but did not do any of them well so that I was left feeling that he had done well but not enough to win. Of the large field of 24, half of the other entrants were appalling, and I felt that he was above average for the remaining dogs.
In his hunting test, he quartered with more vigour than most of them but left certain ground un-covered in the opinion of the judge and scent-marked the ground in a couple of places which lost him marks but at least he was active and dropped to shot and fetched the thrown dummy well even if his delivery was fairly poor.
In the next test, a dummy launched over a bank as a marked but "blind" retrieve, he went out quite straight, passed the judge and launcher well and hunted successfully out of sight for the dummy and retrieved it well. After the long break for lunch in the hot sun, his next test was another blind dummy retrieve; this time along a fence and around a dogleg with the dummy placed in nettles and thistles downwind on the bank and a gamey margin by the upwind fence on the left.
Such was the topography that, once you had sent the dog away into this gully, he was out of sight at the point where you needed to stop him and send him off to the right. Instead of going forward (and directing him from shorter range and losing a couple of points) I left him struggling too long and then had to bring him back to go out on a better line, along the bank and downwind of the dummy position.
It was this test that I was marked down for most. The final tests were a water retrieve where the dummy was thrown from the left, whilst it was saluted with a shot from the right and the retrieve was started from some distance from the water's edge. Sam entered and swam well, collected the dummy but dropped it on regaining the land to go over nervously to the black Labrador sitting five metres upwind.
It was unfortunate that they had to have a black dog there after Sam's recent trouble. When the results were collated and announced, they called out "Norfolk Widgeon" and we stepped forward to collect a rosette and certificate for 4th prize amongst the 24 Novices present. Considering that Sam was the 6th youngest, this was no mean achievement and were satisfied with our day out.
The journey back via Hail Weston where I picked up a copy of the latest Eynesbury election leaflet from John Roscoe who had been working on it with Wiggly all day. Once home and having had tea, I first called Jimmy for a long chat about the dog event and then Wiggly and she came over to collect my 4/86 computer to use whilst I was away and to be briefed on what to do.
To bed much earlier than of late on another hot and close night. Daiman Hill won the British Grand Prix today, an emotional achievement in view of his late racing driver father, Graham Hill, having not managed to achieve this in his career before dying in a flying accident. He wears the same London Rowing Club colours on his helmet for every race. The crowd, as they say, went wild on what he described as the best day of his life.
Several Tory M.P.'s have been trapped into accepting bribes to put down parliamentary questions and this has put John Major's party into even greater realms of unpopularity.