At our house training young master Marsh Fire is a mighty important part of our preseason preparation, so I may as well start including it here.
The latest development thereof has been the addition of Bieber, a young free-range domestic "flying mallard"/English caller hybrid drake a friend blessed us with. Our plan was just to hang onto him until Marsh was ready to work on search for cripples in water, which nothing can teach as well as a live wing-clipped duck and, especially, one accustomed to dealing with predators as Bieber is. But the plan took a bad turn when I added Bieber to my pigeon loft, and the homers reacted as if I'd tossed a Cooper's hawk in with them. That came as quite a surprise, as many of them had previously hosted two other callers, Bob and Dylan, for several months without discord. All I can figure is that even pigeons have sense enough to hate the Bieb.
Regardless, I'd decided he had to go back where he came from and planned to use him for a couple simple "intro to ducks" retrieves this morning before returning him to his home pond. The drill was straight forward as it could be: clipped wings, shackled legs and a short toss in shallow flooded second crop rice. And, aside from an unexpected break on young Marsh's part, the first retrieve went as planned:
The second retrieve went sideways. This time Marsh was steady, but Bieber was not:
"Where the heck did he go?"
"Psst! He's right there."
"Now he's behind you, fool!"
Alas, the pup's conditioning to sit on command for instruction and follow it is still far from strong enough to override his own determination at this point, and it took quite a while to gain the half-trained little dog's attention and compliance well enough to put him on the clever bird and bring it to hand:
Not the pup's fault things went as they did, was the chump who tied his bird's feet's. But it was a circus act we're not anxious to repeat when teal opens, so we'll be stepping up our training efforts, and the pigeons are just going to have to get used to rooming with Bieber, at least until we give it another go in a few weeks.