I took a couple of new guys this fall. The one guy had his young dog with. The dog had his first chance to retrieve a goose and it was a cripple.
This is how the goose was retrieved
You can see it floating out in front of the boat.
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There's a peninsula just off the right of the picture. The goose swam up on the far side of that. He motored around and didn't see the goose. I told him to send his dog to look for it. Which he did. When the goose hopped in the water, the dog turned around and swam back to the boat
The goose swam right back towards the blind and I whacked it where it is floating.
I can't remember my dog's first cripple/diver, but man she lived for it. When the bird started swimming, she kicked it into a whole other gear. She was so excited, she would bark. No idea how to break her of that. Early on I didn't try because the last thing I wanted to do was break her drive for chasing cripples. Later on I didn't worry about it. After all we had just shot the shotguns so odds of it actually flaring birds was pretty slim. Even when she got old, chasing a cripple on the water, she'd still drive so hard and still bark
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