Today, when we broke away the first pair of dogs it was 43 degrees. As I am writing this it still hasn't hit 70. It's not expected to reach 80 until sometime the middle of next week. It is still very dry in our covers and the birds are not in their usual places in the kind of numbers that we expect. That said, we still managed to find 10 woodcock this morning. All the dogs are making progress and getting into shape for the fall.
Bill Branham and his wife Julie are here from Michigan and staying with Tony and Marie Bly. Billy brought a couple of his young dogs over to the bird field for some planted quail after we ran on wild birds this morning. Mike (pictured here) will be a derby this fall and he had a really nice looking black and white male named Jack who also got some work. Tony ran his the "beast" and she uses her nose well and finds birds but is not standing then for very long yet.
Mariah who was almost staunch has reverted to flash pointing and then jumping in. Hopefully we can get her into some wild birds again soon. But she still needs more work on her handling although she is making progress each day. I think it's now three sessions that she's gone without having to be corrected. She pays attention to me and, like most of our dogs, wants to go to the front.
