Today was a bit milder than recently, low 70s all morning. So first I worked solo, running Lightning on step 6 of the double T. Then I picked up two assistants and we ran both dogs on two doubles setups.

I might mention the wonderful field I’ve found for this work. It’s literally across the road from my house, and has of course been there ever since I’ve been training dogs in various sports. I’ve often thought driven or walked by and thought what a nice field it would be for dog training. But for some reason no one ever puts up a sign that says, “If you’d like to use this field for dog training, call this number to discuss.” It’s hard to tell where a rural field’s owner lives.

Finally, the other day I saw a guy on a tractor cutting the hay on the field and went to talk to him. He said he wouldn’t mind us training there but he wasn’t the right person to ask. He just had an arrangement with the owner for the hay. He pointed out the house where the owner lives, and said she was out on the porch right then.

As I began walking toward the house, he called out, ”You know this road that runs for a couple of miles in both directions from here, W- Road? Well, that’s Mrs. W-.”

Mrs. W- turns out to be a delightful woman who listened politely to my request and instantly agreed to let me train my dogs there. “What’s the point of owning land of you can’t do what you want to with it?” she demanded with a twinkle in her eye.

And indeed she was the latest member of the family to own that land. The only family. That land, and a lot more, was granted to the first Mr. W- by the King of England in Colonial times.

As for Mrs. W-, she’s a tiny woman who happens to have a PhD in mathematics and for many years was a professor of calculus and differential equations in schools as far flung as northwestern Michigan and later, Geneva, Switzerland. Her late husband built that house for her with his own hands after WWII. She lives there with a calico cat named Miss Agnes. Miss Agnes is 16yo. Mrs W- will be celebrating her 90th birthday later this month.

Mrs. W- just loves Laddie and Lightning and gives them dog cookies in the morning. Sometimes she sits on a bench with one of the dogs lying beside her, watching while Liza and I train the other dog.

As for Lightning’s yard work this morning, we worked on step 6 of the double T. This step is called the full T. It uses the full 100y baseline plus one pile on either side, forming a plus sign.

With Lightning, I ran into a problem Mike Lardy mentions on the TRT video but says with most dogs it doesn’t come up, namely, the dog being sent to the long pile but bending over to one of the side piles instead. I could solve it by moving up, as Mike suggests, but as soon as I moved too far back it would happen again.

I suppose various solutions are possible, but here’s what I did: First, I moved the side piles to a distance of 40y from the baseline, rather than the 20y suggested by the narrator on the video. And second, I ran only freebies, eight in all. I’ll see how Lightning does in our next session. We may run only freebies again.

By the way, the ground is a bit hillier than Mike’s field in the video, and the grass is a bit longer. Therefore I’m using lining poles at the side piles as well as the long pile.  That may increase the difficulty of the drill a bit, but it seemed like the best available location for us to run the double T when we started a few days ago. We’re pretty far along using it for the double T by now.

When I brought back my two assistants, first I set up a big double across the rolling hills and had Laddie run it. I had both guns throw Mallard Dokkens. Laddie did a nice job, and using Dokkens rather than bumpers seemed to make it more fun for both of us.

I ran Lightning on the same setup, but as singles. He needed a big hunt on the first mark, I believe because new Dokkens have no familiar scent and the dog is forced into a mostly visual hunt rather than being able to hunt by nose.

For our second double, I moved us to a 90 degree orientation from the previous one and used one long mark and one short one. The long gun threw a duck Dokken while the short one threw a pheasant Dokken, which includes a long plastic tail. I was afraid Lightning might have some trouble dealing with the pheasant but it turns out he didn’t.

Laddie, running first, needed a longish hunt for the long mark as the memory bird but otherwise did a nice job with his usual enthusiasm.

I was torn whether to run Lightning on singles again or to try a double, and decided on the unusual tactic of running it as a double with the long mallard mark as the go-bird. He nailed it, great job. He needed a long hunt for the short pheasant, but stayed in the area of the fall, so I didn’t call for help.

Mrs. W- was at church this morning so she didn’t get to watch the dogs run their doubles. But I’m pretty sure they’ll get to see each other again tomorrow.