Still Waiting

Three Weeks Old

Three Weeks Old

There are still 4-5 weeks of waiting before we can bring Caza home.  In the last post, I made it sound like there is almost nothing to do but wait.  In reality, there are many important things that can  be done while waiting for a new puppy to arrive.   If one is a first time puppy owner or if it has been a long time since the last dog, then there is more to do to prepare for pup’s arrival.

I have not had a dog in 14 years.  ( Not entirely true, two of my kids have had dogs during that time.  My son had a chocolate lab and my daughter a golden retriever.  BUT, I (as in me) have not had a dog in 14 years!)  So, I have lots to do to get ready.

Here are several important things that need done, some general (but important), others specific to my situation.  As we wait for our puppies to arrive, we can be busy preparing to make pup’s transition to an new how an exciting time for all of us.

  • Finish the fence around the yard.
  • Build outside kennels.
  • Decide what to use for inside kennel and where to put it.
  • Get kennel for truck.
  • Interview veterinarians.
  • Make extra money.  (going to need lots of gas money for proper exposure to wild birds.)
  • Make sure entire family understands the ‘rules’ that both we and puppy have to follow.  ( I do believe that the whole family can help with training, but little ones can get exuberant and need monitored.)
  • Find extra training grounds (field, forest, and water.)
  • Make friends/contacts with other dog enthusiasts that can mentor/help train.  (Breeders, VDD, and NAVHDA are great sources.)
  • Determine a training plan. (based on experience, books,  and input from breeders and more experienced trainers.)
  • REMEMBER that like people puppies are individuals.  Any training/exposure schedule must be flexible to meet puppy’s needs.

 

 

Waiting

We have all heard Poor Richard’s old proverb: “A watched pot never boils.”

If Ole Ben Franklin had really wanted to get the point across he would have said something like: “A watched puppy will never grow up.”

And of course, we all are watching as we are waiting for our pups. They are too cute not to and we are too excited also.

Here is the latest picture of Caza and her littermates.

Puppy Pile

Puppy Pile

What does one do while waiting for his next hunting companion?

  • Spend more time thinking/talking about puppies than wife thinks prudent.
  • Read then read some more.
  • Look at puppy pictures.
  • Daydream.
  • Start buying “dog stuff.”
  • Daydream some more.
  • Watch other people’s pups train for and run in the VJP.
  • Start looking for more places to hunt with and train pup.
  • Start writing blogs, even when one is not a blogger.
  • Start hanging around shady characters that are in beard growing contests with their Ugly Dogs.
  • Search the internet for any and all information available about training future pup.
  • Wonder if pup will ever be born.
  • Look up old hunting buddies from years gone by.
  • After pup eventually is born (I am sure that took a lifetime or two to happen) wonder if pup will ever be old enough to come to new home.
  • Start all over at top of list.

 

 

My Puppy

As I stated in my post Ugly Dog my puppy was born on Easter Day, March 31, 2013. Unfortunately my breeder lives six hours north of us so I hadn’t had the opportunity to see the puppies yet.

Sometimes, however, things just have a way of working out….

My oldest daughter is a student at BYU-Idaho. BYUI just finished winter semester this weekend. As it worked out, the Malta VJP was also this weekend, and Malta is only an hour and a half from BYUI.

I arrived in Malta around Midnight Thursday. I spent the night in my truck out in the hills. I would like to say that I slept in the back of my truck, but anybody that was anywhere near Malta that night would know that I was lying. The wind was blowing so hard that I thought my truck was going to be blown back into Utah.

Friday was fun! I got to watch five pups and their handlers run the VJP. Everybody did great and had a lot of fun. My breeder was there and we were able to talk about the puppies, training, hunting…
(several more ran Sat & Sun but I wasn’t able to be there for it.)

Saturday morning I picked up my daughter and her friend and headed home.
It just so happens that our my breeder lives directly on the path home. We stopped and visited him and Bry and her puppies.

Here are a few pictures:

Shakira (my oldest) and puppy

Shakira (my oldest) and puppy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jenny (Shakira's friend) and another puppy.

Jenny (Shakira’s friend) and another puppy.

 

my puppy

my puppy

 

 

 

 

Cazadora vom Coldwater Canyon

Cazadora vom Coldwater Canyon

We all had fun! Just a few more weeks to wait.

What is a drahthaar?

A quick search of the internet will reveal several definitions of the deutsch-drahthaar.

“#1 versatile hunting dog in the world”
drahthaar.com

“The Drahthaar is a passionate hunting dog with industry and endurance, calm by nature, friendly in relations.”
vommoorehaus.com

“The Drahthaar is the epitome of the versatile hunting dog: a faithful companion with the nose and drive to put game in the bag, on land or in water.”
altmoor.com

“A Drahthaar is like a Mercedes Benz, a Lamborghini, a Tonka truck, A bad ass cage fighter, and a one of a kind piece of art all in one. A Mercedes because they are the ultimate versatile breed (and they are German) a Lamborghini because they go balls to the walls, a Tonka truck because they can get the shit beat out of them in the field and still do their job, and a bad ass fighter because, well, just keep your lab on a leash and everything will be fine, and last a piece of art because you can be sure that there is not another identical one in existence!”
hankvomeisbarteich

Verein Deutsch-Drahthaar Group North America describes the drahthaar and its origins

What is a drahthaar?
                        My next hunting buddy!

Ugly Dog

January 2013

I finally made the decision to purchase a pup, and not put it off for another year.   It was time for the work to start.

The internet, much  more developed this time around, was a double edged sword: there is a lot of information, too much, but it is difficult to decipher good info from bad.  Also, no matter how pretty a web page is you still can’t see how well a dog hunts or how well it interacts with others through it.

Old hunting and training friends were contacted and consulted about different dogs and breeders.  I am sure some to of them wish that I hadn’t been able to find  their contact info, but they humored me and helped out all they could.

This time around there was going to be one major difference.  This time I was looking for a Deutsch Drahthaar or as they are often called endearingly by those that love them, and amusedly by those that don’t, an Ugly Dog.

Rose was the first DD that I ever met.  She was a month or two older than Chester.  Her owner/handler was the greatest help/resource that I had while training my pup.   He loved dogs, I think all dogs, and he loved to see dogs succeed.

He happens to be one of the people that I hounded with questions about dogs and breeders.  I was unaware at the time, that he has been a VR judge and that he has been helping in the VDD-GNA for some time now.  I guess that made him a more qualified adviser than just about anybody else I could have consulted.  But true to himself and being a real dog man, he told me that I would learn more from going out and watching the dogs run for a few minutes than I could ever learn from reading about them or talking to others.

Being on a tight budget and being less patient than is good, when looking for a good pup, makes it difficult to do all the homework that one should.  Fortunately, most DD breeders care about the future of the breed and not just selling litters.  They want to breed sound pups, full of natural ability.  They want to place them in well rounded hunting homes.  Also, the VDD breeding regulations help to ensure that just about any DD pup will have what it takes to become a good hunting and family companion.  My personal bias is that it is as important or more so to pick the right breeder for you, as it is to pick the right litter.  At least if you pick the right breeder, most any of his pups would make a good fit with you.

I continued to research and communicated with several breeders and was finally able make a choice on a breeder.

Here is a link to the breeding

Then came the hardest part of all: waiting the months for the puppies to whelp and mature enough to come home with us.

Bry:  She sure hopes these pups get here soon

Bry: She sure hopes these pups get here soon

When I first showed this picture to my dad, the first thing he said was: “she’s ugly.”  I tend to think of it more as, “Man, doesn’t she look miserable and ready to have this over already?”

The pups arrived on Easter day and will be coming home in a couple months.

Here are a couple of pictures of puppies.

Feeding time

Feeding time

The Magic of a puppy.

The Magic of a puppy.

It is amazing  how cute Ugly Dogs can be!

Man’s best friend.

Some may say that I am completely biased, but I firmly believe that every boy needs a good dog.  They say that a dog is man’s best friend.  Not every man remembers that, but there are few young boys that ever forget it.  This story is about me, my family, our dogs, and the little boy inside me that never forgot the importance of a good dog.  (I am sure that one of these days there will be a post that defines what a good dog really is.)

I guess that I was cursed from the beginning.

Dad came from Mormon pioneer stock and has the mountains and desert in his blood.  I think that I got a double dose of his blood.  Either that or the love of the mountains and desert is definitely a dominate trait.  Some of my fondest memories are of our adventures out in the ‘hills.’

Mom came from New England protestant lines and brought with her culture and an overwhelming love of education.  At almost 69 years of age mom can still quote every poem she memorized in 8th grade.  Mom has never accused me of lacking when it comes to hunting, fishing, and my other outdoor endeavors but she has mentioned a time or two my lack of ‘culture.’

As a young boy, life was good.  Camping, hunting, and fishing were an important part of life.  Those experiences and the visits to extended family are the memories that come most easily to mind.

Tick was our first dog, at least the first that I remember.  She was a German Shorthaired Pointer.  Dad was not a dog trainer but he was a hunter and loved bird hunting.  He had grown up with quail in southern Arizona.   Back in the days when he was attending school at Brigham Young University, there was still great pheasant hunting all over Utah.

Tick taught dad an important lesson: although he didn’t really know anything about training bird dogs and even though she was young,  she was a well bred bird dog and she naturally knew how to hunt.  The first time she went on point, dad told her that she was too young and that she didn’t really know what she was doing.  The pheasant the soon flushed convinced him otherwise.

Unfortunately, for a young boy and dog, dad became an active duty Chaplain in the US Navy.  Navy life was fun and very educational, but didn’t allow us to keep a hunting dog.  We still had many adventures: traveling all over the country, meeting new people, fishing on the beaches, catching squid down at the peers, and countless other experiences made up the rest of my childhood and adolescence.

The trips back home, to Arizona, are still remembered as some of the highlights of those years.  Those trips were full of  camping, hiking, hunting,  and floating flies down streams and across a beaver pounds.  Such activities (at least when coupled with the ‘unpleasant’ things that good parents make one do, such as chores, homework, and service) lay the foundation for a successful life.

Stepping forward a few years.  My wife was pregnant with our third child.  I was back in school, working on my masters degree, and money was tight.  We were living in hunting country and the little boy in me could hardly be contained and so badly wanted a pup.  My dear wife added some of her hard earned money (from baby sitting) to help me get a pup.

Being that the only hunting dog I had every had was a GSP, that is of course what I wanted.  The internet was still young but was growing.  I read everything that I could get my hands on and researched every breeder that I could find online.  I was a complete novice but I had an idea of what I wanted.  I wanted a close hunting pointing dog, that would fit well with my family.  I wanted a dog that would hunt waterfowl with me and that would retrieve rabbits when I was chasing them.

My research reinforced my desire for a GSP but focused it more on the German bred GSP or the Deutsch Kurzhaar.  I ended up with Chester, a GSP out of two imported DK.  He was all the dog that I could have ever wanted … and then more.  He had all the natural abilities to everything that I had every imagined.  He had more desire than I had ever seen before.

The first time  I took Chester hunting (right around six months old) he pointed six rooster pheasant for me.  I shot 3 of them, which he immediately retrieved to hand.  In the duck blind, the same season, it did not matter how cold it was or how few ducks were flying, he would wait eagerly for the chance to make a retrieve.  Back home in Arizona, Chester would wade through the cactus to find us quail and would expertly track down those wounded but running birds.

Unfortunately, the very next season Chester was boarding outside our home, while were in the middle of a move.  The kennel, where he was staying, was broken and he got out on the highway and  died.

The next several  years were a bit chaotic and moves were reminiscent of my military upbringing.  I have felt somewhat like Peter Panning, in the movie Hook.  The ‘little boy’ in me was forced down deep and needed encouragement to come back out.  Hunting, fishing, dogs, etc all sounded fun  and were occasionally experiences.  There were, however, to many excuses to make them a solid part of one’s life, i.e. no time,  no money, too little motivation, etc.

We now have six wonderful children.  They are growing up too fast. They are missing out on too many opportunities to gather the childhood memories that I hold so dear.  Dad is getting older every year.  I don’t know how many more hunting seasons he has left in him.  These and other thing have been helping awaken the little boy inside me.  For the last couple years I have been going to get a pup in a year or two, when we are more settled, or when we can afford it.

In January, after shooting some quail with my dad and my oldest son (without a dog) I decided that the time had come to fully awaken and make a pup once again a part of our family.  Ever since that day, I have been like a little boy on Christmas Eve.  It feels really good to be once again excited about the things a boy should be excited about.  I am getting a pup!  a well bred hunting dog!  My family and I are going to get some great hunting experiences and we are going to help our kids grow many wonderful memories to add to the foundation of their successful lives. Dad is going to be somewhat repaid for all the trips he took us and, as we take him out for the next several years.

I guess that it isn’t really about dogs, camping, hunting, or fishing.  It is really about love and relationships.  Only sometimes, a good dog makes that a bit easier.  Maybe that is why a dog is a man’s best friend.