Well April has been a somewhat busy month and none of us have had much sleep and that's mainly due to a new arrival... Hazen, Otto's half sister.

​We were automatically drawn to Hazen as she was the most striking of bitches in the litter and definitely the most adventurous!! Thanks to some lovely friends and with lots of discussion with her breeder (Robina Alman-Wilson - Disglairhill) we were very happy to have the pick of the litter and Hazen was the one!

Born in February, Hazen came to us at 8 weeks and is now 11 weeks old.  Training at home has been going well with only a couple of "accidents" and we are all looking forward to the nippy / teething phase to pass.  Otto has taken quite well to his sister and is starting to enjoy playing with her, if not sharing toys and bones!

Keep in touch with the blog and the social media pages to keep up with how Hazen is progressing as she joins Otto on the journey of becoming a dual purpose German Shorthaired Pointer, enjoying showing and working in the field.

At Christmas I was lucky enough to get a dummy launcher to help with training and last Sunday I got to use it for the first time at my brilliant new training location.

It’s going to be really useful for Otto’s training for two reasons, firstly it makes a big bang so simulates a shotgun and secondly and most importantly it will help me further with his steadiness training.  The plan will be to launch about 4 dummies and only let him retrieve one.

​Here's a couple of videos...

Following my earlier blog here's the second part of my photo highlights from 2017....

Not sure why but I failed to post many photos taken in 2017 here on my website, it seems that I've been busy posting on my social media accounts but not so good on keeping the website up to date.  Therefore here is part one of a few highlights from 2017...

At the end of 2017 a HPR trainer moved to our area - Matthew Ball of Dorntanza Gundog Training.  Having read Matt's impressive CV (see his website) I decided I'd like to pursue some one to one training with him, with the aim of improving Otto's steadiness, hunting and possibly his game retrieving. 

We've had two sessions thus far, both really useful giving me idea and things to work on.  Matt's training is really clear and he also sends really helpful written documents to confirm what you've been working on and tips for home training.

​Below are a series of videos of Otto and I (self filmed on my GoPro) training last week, here I'm working ​on getting him to wait for me to send him for retrieves, sometimes picking up the dummies myself and other times letting Otto pick them up.  I'm also mixing up between seen, blinds, memory and spilt retrieves.

He managed three Novice working tests, scoring well in the first two to finish in the top half of the competitors and then right at the end of the summer we managed a 3rd place which was a really nice surprise as the various injuries meant we hadn't trained as much as we hoped to.

The training we did manage to do was mainly with a new group set up by Brenda Moss and Larry Wilks of Arany Gundogs at the Commonleys Clay Shoot.  Brenda put on an excellent Natural Ability Test which included hunting and pointing partridge, a pigeon retrieve over a jump and another from water, a track of a rabbit off the leash and a gun sensitivity assessment.  Otto performed beautifully all day scoring really well, particularly with the pointing and tracking.

When the shooting season started we were stopped in our tracks again with Otto getting injured for a third time, so we missed out on a shot over training day for newbies.  However once Otto was better Brenda & Larry invited us on a rough shooting day which was very educational and fun, I learnt a lot and realised I need to do a lot more training with Otto. 

Frustratingly Otto has started to not retrieve game properly, fussing with it rather than bringing them straight back.  Frustrating as his retrieving has always been his strongest part of the Hunt, Point, Retrieve.  Best advice for now is to take a break and revisit game next year to see if he grows out of this...  I really hope so!!

On the 8th October 8 more beautiful Golden Retriever puppies were born into the Eveninghill lines, carefully bred by Linda Harding from her stunning bitch Grace (Pandreft Grace Kelly for Eveninghill).

Following the success of our last two photo shoots with Linda's previous litter I was very excited to be booked for another two photo shoots. So off I went on Saturday and met these beautiful 2 week old puppies.

If you love dogs I seriously recommend finding a breeder who will let you meet young puppies, as watching them with their mum, feeding and interacting with their brothers and sisters is fascinating!

Here's a few photos for you to take a look at...

On Saturday I was very lucky to be invited to meet and photograph three gorgeous Gordon Setter puppies, bred by Sonia Upton-Lovett - Kennel name ROYDACK.

The puppies are about 7-8 weeks old and 2 of them will soon be departing to new homes - one lucky lady is being allowed to stay.

It was a bit of a damp and grey day so combined with a shaded garden it proved to be less than ideal conditions. However I'm really pleased with the photos I took. Here are just a few to take a look at...