Tuffies dog beds

After some upset on Facebook over this I thought it best for a clearer and correct understanding of the writing below to call this it’s UK title, the controled retrieve.
No!!!! Not all Wirehaired pointers have hard mouths!!! However, when breeding the German Wirehaired Pointer, a very strong hunting instinct is favoured. This is because we want a dog that will keep on going with enthusiasm and drive all day. To see a dog loving the work all day is a true delight. Now, with that territory inevitably comes a somewhat keen attitude to the game. Let’s say there can be a touch of ownership attitude in the sense that the dog hunts for himself and sees the game as his. Training a dog like that is a great challenge because you have to make him understand that the game belongs to you and only by co-operating with the handler will he be invited back. So the dog has to find the birds, be steady on point, flush the birds on command and indeed curtail his instinct to go and fetch straight away. He has to go out, on command, and carefully pick up his master’s game in order to bring it back in perfect condition for the kitchen. All of this goes against the dog’s nature. However, if we don’t achieve this mind-set in the dog, we lose control and the day ends in tears. With plenty of experience the hunting dog learns that co-operation with the guns means more fun and more game to retrieve.

In this blog I am addressing the retrieve part of the work. When a dog loves the hunt so much there is a danger that he, in his excitement, damages the bird when he picks it up. This is no good when the idea is to use the game for human consumption.
Let’s firstly agree that birds shot sustainably in the wild, heading for the kitchen, is better than mass-farmed chickens, scoped up with machinery! Happy meat as we call it.

The controlled retrieve simply consists of two parts: firstly teaching the dog to hold an object (dummy or game) tenderly in its mouth and secondly to pick the object up even when it doesn’t feel like it. The “controlling” just happens when the dog refuses to pick up and you make it clear that retrieving is NOT optional.

First the dog has to learn to HOLD the training dummy (here a soft toy). I have her on the lead and place the dummy in her mouth. In the beginning she simply spits it out, but she soon learns to have it there. Every time she spits it out, I put it back in with the command “HOLD”.

The lead helps to make her understand that I am in charge and that she needs to hold the dummy. A firm tuck at the lead focuses her mind.

Once she understands not to spit it out, I make a point of stroking her and praising her, but she must still understand that I am in charge. I also make sure that she still holds the dummy even when my hand is under her mouth. This is a vital part of the training because if I detect ANY biting on the dummy, I respond with a “A-A-NO!” She understands that this is MY property and she cannot chew on it. She has a submissive ear-position. This soft toy is great as it is stuffed with some noisy filling, which makes a sound if she bites. It makes it easier for me to know when she squeezes and to stop her.

She now needs to learn to let go and deliver on command, so on the word “DROP” I ease the dummy out of her mouth. She is very happy to let go of it.

The next step is to make her HOLD the dummy and carry it. Here I am leading her while I emphasise the command “HOLD”.

And then I sit her down before the command “DROP”.

Now I need her to carry the dummy carefully to me. I have established the very important impression on her through the “HOLD” command. She knows that the object has to be held very, very tenderly. As I sit her down at a distance, I back away whilst facing her and repeating the HOLD command. Then I call her, but I keep reminding her of the HOLD. She understands that this dummy is mine, not hers and from the pictures below you can see her agreeable walk towards me.

Now to the next stage: Actually taking the dummy on command, which is the step before picking it up at a distance.
I mix the dummies all the time and here I am using a soft Kong type dummy. This exercise can be really tricky and let me warn you: it can seem like nothing is happening for days or even weeks when the dog doesn’t want to “FETCH” the dummy from your hand, but trust me, the penny will drop eventually. Holding the dummy in front of her mouth I say “FETCH”, open her mouth and put the dummy in, then say HOLD. Suddenly one day she opens her mouth and actively takes the dummy for which she get a HUGE amount of praise. Repeating this exercise will end up with the dog understanding what you mean. Titbits are fine to make the praise better. In the pictures below the dog has learnt to take the dummy on the “FETCH” command, but if she at any time refuses to do this then it is a matter of giving a tuck on the lead. The whole point of this is to make her fetch that dummy because she knows her master wants it, not because she just wants to do it for her self. Most Labradors have been bred to have a soft mouth and an insatiable appetite for retrieving and you will rarely have this problem.

Once she has understood the fetch command and takes it from my hand, I put it on the ground in front of me and make her fetch it from there, which is done in little bits at a time: I hold the dummy near the ground, dog on the lead, and say the command FETCH. She reaches out and takes it very carefully. The moment she reaches it, I also say HOLD. This is all to prepare for the fetch in the field, where she is away from me and needs to pick up the bird under my command.

The pictures below show her taking the dummy, holding it whilst being praised and letting go on command. The lead is off, only a collar to keep her in check in case she decides not to do as she is told.

The yellow dummies I am using here are fabulous. They are Squeaky AirKongs. No, we don’t sell them, maybe we should: they are big and bouncy, but they squeak at the slightest squeeze. That way you know exactly what is going on if the dog is hard on it at any time. I have stuck feathers on one of them for effect.

I leave the dummy about 15 meters away and send her to pick it up. As you can see, she bounces towards it, which is usually a sure sign that she is going to “kill” it when she gets there. So JUST as she arrives at the dummy I say HOLD!!! And as you can see in the picture, she picks it up carefully and returns to me in a slower pace with her tail a bit down and her ears in submissive position. Delivery is nice and an enormous fuss is made.

If you can extend this dicipline to the field when everything is super exciting, you will get a long way towards a dog with a soft mouth.

It takes patience, but again, if we are going to defend field sport, we should always take care that the quarry is treated with respect and that it is used in the kitchen. Careful picking up by dogs is the first stage of this.

Crufts this year was again fantastic!! When we set up stall in hall 5 at Crufts every year, we enter four days of the amazing world of dog people and Tuffie fans. Lots and lots of known faces come to us at our stand to see how we are doing. Lots of people bring friends, whom they think ought to get them selves a Tuffie. Many people simply make it the yearly event to top up the Tuffie collection at Crufts. Customers come along to see if we are doing anything new they might like and of course there is an army of new customers who have had Tuffies recommended by friends and who would like to make their first purchase taking advantage of the fact that there is no delivery charge if they can take the dog beds home on the day.

We also have nice (and weird and wonderful) visitors such as the Bulldog below. As a representative of the Bulldog rescue charity, he was proudly attending Crufts and decided to check out a Tuffie nest. In fact, he was so reluctant to leave the nest that his owner gave in at the end and took that bed home. What a face he has and I got a chance to look inside his mouth, which took me back somewhat. Half his tongue was sticking out under the upper jaw. I’ve never seen anything like it.

On the Gundog Day we are particularly excited as the Tuffie Trophy is awarded to the best WORKING HPR bitch shown in the BASC ring. As I am always too busy to get away from the stand, I only see the final result just as it is my turn to run over and present the trophy to the winner. Off I run and leave the dog beds alone to congratulate the winner, who this year turned out to be Ms Dempster with Hungarian Vizsla Moricroft Moonshine Miatt Madilor. We have had the trophy made as a shield about six years ago, by Julian Schmechel, who makes fine furniture here in Scotland.

Oh, and a small child also came along to test one of our dog beds: THE GIANT NEST:

Just thought I would share this little moment: When working Gollum (and Tippex) in the deep snow at the end of January, I noticed a bit of blood spillage in the snow. I inspected Gollum and found a wound on his chest right between the two front legs. He wasn’t bothered, so we just carried on.

The position of the wound meant that Gollum couldn’t clean it himself, so it crusted up and looked a bit dirty that night. So when all the dogs were inside in the evening, Tippex spotted the troubled area and decided to help. This was gratefully appreciated by Gollum, who staid still while the long cleaning process took place.

Another interesting photo (I think) is one I took on the day. I have made an explanation on the picture below.

Finally, here is Tippex on what is not one of her great dog beds, but in certain situations, one must improvise….

After all that work, it paid off. …Gollum (Trudvang Faurbauste) got the first prize at an All Age HPR field trial stake yesterday. This was also a fantastic victory for Chris Gray, who bred Gollum as his own dog, Trudvang Balder, got second prize. There were no third and fourth prizes, but two certificates of Merit awarded.

There is no doubt that you need a little bit of luck on the day and yesterday everything went just right for Gollum and me. There were 12 dogs running and he got two runs that he solved perfectly. I was lucky that we found birds very quickly on both runs, so it was short and sweet. Well, it is good to get birds quickly, but it can also work against you as the danger can be that the dog is slightly headless when you first cast it off and therefore bumps the birds and fail to point them, but Gollum seemed to keep his head cool.

After my two runs without faults, I was asked to send him for a third bird that needed to be picked up quickly. Once that was done, Gollum qualified for the water retrieve, which was tricky as the dogs have to swim across a river “blind” and, once they are across, take directions from the handler in order to find a pheasant on the other side. In this case the banks were steep and all four dogs that had qualified for the water test struggled to get up on the other side. Gollum has developed a habit of picking up his bird and then start running to find the bridge…… I struggled a bit with getting him to return back, but he did it in the end (getting himself awkwardly through the rapids).

Such a nice feeling when you have worked hard to get the dog trained.

After Gaia came home with us from Denmark, it got rather hectic as Christmas came along and the dog bed manufacturing was all-consuming right up to the last day. So Gaia was left to just get used to our house and the other dogs and live at Tuffies in general. Christmas involved family and friends around and everyone seemed to get a good dose of the flu, so we didn’t get much constructive training done.

So this has to be sorted now and Gaia comes out most days for basic obedience training, even just for 20 minutes at a time. She is of course also being trained in general house manners. Basically to behave almost as one would like an adult dog to behave. Here are some photos of today’s training as the weather was nice and clear.

The all-important stop-whistle is being implemented and the sit and stay is being built in too. Here she has been stopped at heel and I have told her to stay and walked away about 25 meters.

And sit-stay on the other side of the stream, which seems more disconcerting for her. It took me a few attempts to make it over the stream without her following.

I have also decided to get her to go flat down on command and stay there. This is going to be built in on a separate whistle and the reason for this trick is that if the dog hits the deck on a special whistle with its head between its paws, it can’t see the hare that you don’t want it to chase….

Here I have put her down on the ground and walked away. Later she should go down in that position by a whistle-blow from a distance.


It’s good to get on with the water asap, but right now it really is very cold for swimming and I don’t want to put her totally off. So I have just kept it to paddling and this is looking a bit cold in itself.

After a bit of all this boring discipline, it was time for some “hunting” and Gaia certainly loves the running and searching. She has a nice pattern across the wind and is looking out for me all the time, which makes it easier to guide her direction with my body movements.

The retrieving is proving to be challenging as she doesn’t seem to have any interest. I confine this to play indoors for now and with a little piece of cheese, she can be persuaded to give up the dummy (if she has bothered to pick it up) if I sit on her dog bed and pretend to be a vending machine: put dummy in mum’s hand, claim cheese bit. Whatever it takes….

It all happened this weekend. We drove from the North of Scotland to Harwich on Wednesday and sailed across to Esbjerg over night. Spent about six hours in Denmark where new puppy, Gaia, was handed over.

She took it all in her stride. Separation from her family and driving in a strange car. We got through the passport point, where she was scanned for her microchip. On the ferry she was in her car cage on a Tuffie dog bed and that was it. You are allowed to see your dog after a couple of hours, then again at 11pm, but then there is no contact till 8.15 the next morning. The “walks” are on the bare car deck, which is a scary place when you are 15 weeks old.

When you shut that big door to the car deck, there is no way of knowing how much they howl. It might be hours, you’ll never know.

We got to Harwich and the passport was checked for vaccinations and microchip was checked again. It took 12 hours from the ferry till we got home, where we had carefully planned that she should sleep in the car and then be introduced to the other dogs, one by one, in the morning. That all went to pots when we got home. We put the log fire on, got a G&T and allowed the dogs to say hello. It was amazing to see the four grown dogs. They knew that this was NOT a visitor. First they all ignored her. Then they went into the sitting room and sat on their dog beds looking at me in the other room, where I was with Gaia. Eight ears all up, looking in silence.


As we sat for a while, they all, one by one, came over to sniff the baby. The funniest moment came as Vulin, the old Labrador of 14 years decided that a puppy was totally inconvenient and went out of her way to growl. Lying on her dog bed, she just growled nastily when Gaia was anywhere near. Tippex, top dog, thought this was too much, so when Gaia came too close to Vulin, Tippex went over and put a paw on Vulin and growled at her! As to say “stop that nonsense. This is a new family member and I welcome it. Don’t you dare growling”.

There was a great deal of crying on the first night, but it’s to be expected.

On Saturday and Sunday we had lots of fun and the Kongs were gratefully received, full of mince and goodies for entertainment.

Well, here is one for the books: I spilled Gollum out on the road while driving at normal speed and didn’t know till another driver stopped me.

This was back in September this year. I am quite embarrassed about this, so it took me a while to get round to tell the story, but here is a warning to all truck drivers:
I picked my friend, Anne, and her three dogs, up in the morning. We were driving along with six dogs on the huge dog bed in the back of my Nissan Navara. As the main road was closed, we were forced to take a smaller, more windy road, which turned out to be a complete blessing and saviour.

We drove about 20 miles (we were on our way to work the dogs on a grouse moor for clients), when we went through a little town, Grantown on Spey. I stopped briefly and a Land Rover pulled up behind us and the driver came over to say that the back-door of my car was down. Of course we jumped out in total panic and as I stared at the open back of my car, still containing a dog bed and lots of dogs, it slowly dawned on me in my blown mind that GOLLUM WAS MISSING!! My beautiful big male German Wirehaired Pointer. The sheer panic is difficult to describe, but I can basically say that my mind was simply preparing me for finding a dead or almost dead dog as we back-traced our route. I told Anne to keep an eye on the fields while I tried to look for a brown, furry heap in the side of the road.

We drove miles and miles and I flashed down every car we passed to ask if they had seen a dog. Nobody had seen him, but we gave everyone my mobile number.

Driving along I was planning which vet to take him to. I imagined that the only way for the vet would be to put him down. We even had the compos mentis to call the clients and arrange for Anne to get a car and carry on to work her dogs. I was not going anywhere before I had a result.

Half an hour seemed like an eternity and I was seriously losing hope. A badly injured dog will tend to crawl into the thick vegetation and if it does not recover quickly, then it will just die there.

Then my phone rang and someone said my dog had been found. It turned out that the gillie at Tulchan estate, whom I had given my number to, had been in touch with everyone on the estate and hence talked to one of the ‘keepers, who had seen Gollum.

Tough dog or what….. Gollum had been standing in the side of the road. Mike, who used to work on another grouse moor, drove by and said “That looks like Gollum”. He picked him up and hence the story ended very happily indeed. The mobile communication meant that I was reunited with my dog super quickly.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Gollum had two grazes on his body: one on his shoulder and one on his bum. He must have been leaning against the back door when it suddenly opened up and sent him flying on the tarmac. If the main road had been open, it would probably not have been the same, happy ending at 60mph and more traffic on the road. I would have been driving about 40mph at the time.

We got to the grouse moor and I was just going to walk him to heel for the day. No, no. Not Gollum. He was so impatient to work and eventually I let him hunt, which he ended up doing most of the day.

The next morning I took the biggest drill-bit I could find and drilled a hole straight through the back door. I put the biggest bolt through the hole and arranged a chain and hook to make it absolutely impossible that this could happen again.

My car has done around 98,000 miles and with age the closing mechanism for the back door had gone a little stiff and therefore did not close properly. It looked and felt shut, but obviously only just hanging lightly on by the internal closing mechanism. It must have been a bump in the road that made it jump open.

Apart from trying to grease it, it is a scary thought that you can’t quite trust the back door. I could have lost other goods out of the back, which might have hit another car causing a horrid accident.

All of you, who drive trucks and vans with dogs, please remember this story.

Today we were sent a picture by Paula Tennyson. She is showing her fantastic dog beds arranged in her van in separate cages. We supplied her with custom-made Tuffie beds and Fluffie Tuffie covers for her transport van. What a super and secure arrangement for her agility dogs.

Picture by kind permission from P. Tennyson.

The time has come to get the next generation going. Alice is nearly 10, Tippex is 7 and Gollum is three years old. Getting a new puppy is essential now in order to be ready for work in a couple of years when Alice is too old to work and Tippex needs more frequent breaks.

With premises permanently occupied and cctv covering both work shop and living quarters, I am ready to take on another precious member of the family.

This time I was lucky enough to have the first pick of the three bitch puppies in a litter of German Wirehaired Pointers bred in Denmark. I went, with my pointer friend, Anne, to spend a couple of days with the puppies. Needless to say it was important to see the parents as well and I immediately liked the dam. A good looking and relaxed dog with the hunting instinct I am looking for.

We also went to see the sire at a field trial and, although he missed a partridge pair and was out of the trial, he was the sort of dog I like with hunting pace.

Choosing the best puppy takes a day or two. Depending on whether they are sleepy or hungry, they behave differently all the time. Choosing a puppy is also a personal thing as different people look for different things in a puppy. As we walked in and saw the whole lot (six puppies in total), one little bitch came tearing over and said hello, while the rest were a little weary at the new people at first. One of them was not quite as inquisitive, but happy to investigate things around us and one was at first sight the ugly one as she didn’t have much coat, ie would maybe not become a typical wirehaired pointer to look at.

As the time went on and we played and studied the puppies, I arranged them in the order of my choice.

First: She is mine and therefore called Gaia. She is the inquisitive, but not totally forward one. The holding-down-test was good with her. I put her upside down and held her down by fixing my hand on her chest. First she wiggled a bit, but then she either looked at me or she accepted the restraint and looked at the world from her new upside-down perspective. A sweet little character that loves the world, but doesn’t need to rule it.

Second: The, apparently, ugly one with not enough coat and so far no beard. She reminded me of my Vizsla, Alice, as she was a bit more shivery in the cold and therefore liked to come to a human and get in under the coat for warmth. She would lick your ears and nose, but not bite constantly. I have chosen not to have another Vizsla as they don’t hunt quite as keenly as I would like, but there is a lot to be said for their nice characters and huge attachment to their humans. I am confident that she will have the drive and possibly be nice to handle and a great companion. She was my second choice.

Third: The little flee that came to greet us at first. A super character, which I would like someone else to take the fight with. She was the first to discover that she could get hold of Anne’s gloves by going further up the stairs than anyone else. She would have been the first to get out of the dog bed in the whelping box and she was not having ANY pinning down. At the holding down test, she simply fought till the end. She was also the one that had the most tendency to bite while you held her. She seemed to be the one with the least interest in people.

I made my choice and here she is. Now we just have to wait for inoculations, passport and transport arrangements.

We have managed to get a rare interview with a working pointer, which gives a dog’s insight into the trials and tribulations of working with the wind:

Journalist: I hear your name is Gollum. Is that your real name and are you pedigree?
Gollum: My real name is Trudvang Faurbauste and I am a German Wirehaired Pointer.

Journalist: What line of work are you in?
Gollum: I am a professional pointer, a HPR, which means that I can both Hunt, Point and Retrieve. I work mainly on grouse in Scotland, but I am also hired for pheasant, snipe, woodcock and partridge. I also do a bit of dog bed modelling when my coat is nice.

Journalist: What do you find the most challenging part of your job?
Gollum: As I am hired for my nose and my stamina the wind is my main tool. When the moor has a steady, warm breeze over it, pointing is quite easy. I just take a line across the wind and pick up any scent of birds. As I detect just the slightest scent, I hesitate, investigate and if it’s positive, I start moving in carefully till I come to a place where I am certain that I have the birds in front of me. This is the moment to stop and be absolutely still and on point, otherwise the birds might lift.
Challenging days are when the wind is either still or very strong and blustery. Also, it can be difficult to run on a moor with many hills and deep glens. Here you can have the wind perfectly in your face, but as you dip down between two hills, the wind can suddenly be coming from a completely different direction. This can cause me to miss birds or, worse, bump into them. Humans don’t always seem to appreciate this and we, pointers, are seen as making mistakes when we could not have known.
Very windy, blustery conditions can also be challenging as the scent seems to be scattered so fast that I can lose where exactly it originates.
As I need the wind to work, it can also be extremely difficult to work if it is a very quiet day. With no wind it is impossible to get into a rhythm and to find a direction. There is simply no way of running across the wind. When conditions are like that, you have to be very careful and not run too fast as you are suddenly ON the birds. It is very easy to end up bumping birds as you are too close by the time you detect their presence. Furthermore, the shooting party is also already getting extremely irritated because they are being eaten up by midges. Luckily we do not see many still days in Scotland, where I do all my work.

Journalist: When do you find that the scent goes away?
Gollum: Well, hahaha…. the humans always speculate and guess about this. There are certain conditions where the scent can be very tricky, but sometimes the wind is just not in my favour and the humans start claiming that “it’s a bad day for scent”.
Certainly, if you get cold rain, it can subdue the scent greatly. Recently we were out on grouse in August. We had driven quite high up a track in the cars and from here set out in the Argo Cat. As we had just arrived at the moor where I was going to work, we were overcome by a freezing cold shower of rain and hailstones. We all huddled in under the Argo till the rain went off. Well, what a disaster. I started running across the wind and missed everything. Even the guns were kicking up birds around them in places where I had been and not detected any scent. It was extremely embarrassing. However, it only took 10-15 minutes before the ground started to heat up and I was able to point again, no problem at all.
The other extreme can be really hot days where my tongue is hanging out as far as it can go and my nose is full of pollen. I am hot and bothered and constantly thirsty. Then it is very difficult to get the scent as I run from one cooling water-puddle to another.

Journalist: Do you find it hard to work the back wind instead of running in to the wind?
Gollum: It is definitely more difficult and you have to know what you are doing. The guns also have to understand the concept of back wind. The best way to do it is for me to run straight out in front of the guns, then turn and work that piece of ground back to the guns, now into the wind for a little bit. I risk bumping birds on the way out, but it can’t be otherwise. As I hunt back towards the guns and if I find birds, they are then faced with me on point, facing them as in the picture below.

My master can take the whole party right round and walk up behind me, which she sometimes does for safety (my safety!), but if the guns understand, they can walk towards me and shoot as the birds get up between them and me. In the picture below is my colleague, Tippex, has flushed the birds and is now sitting down waiting to mark the birds for the retrieve.

Luckily we have not had any accidents and hopefully it will remain that way. My master always seems very nervous when they shoot towards me…

Journalist: Do the birds not tend to just run sometimes?
Gollum: Pheasants are quite bad at that, but you can have problems with grouse as well. The classic example is a single grouse cock. I sometimes point the scent and the guns join me, ready, but then I realise that the scent is maybe further along and I move on and point. Then again I find the scent is moving and it’s a stop-start game on and on for sometimes maybe 150 meters or more. It is really my master’s job to make sure that the guns keep walking with me till the bird gets up. If they are not experienced, they don’t keep faith that I will produce a bird and they lose interest and fall behind usually JUST at the moment where I find the bird. There is a general agreement that it is good to kill the old cock birds as they will not produce new brood, but will hold on to a territory that could have been used by a productive pair.

Running birds also happen on very windy days or on ground where there has been a lot of human activity. The birds sit up and look out all the time. Some say that because it’s windy, they can’t rely on their hearing, so they look out. Often they will sit while the dog points, but start to walk and run when humans appear as they seem enormous against the sky (from the grouse’s viewpoint). Below is my other colleague, Alice, on point on a whole group of grouse that is running along. To get them, you kind of need to stalk up to them. I get very unpopular if I move as well because that is almost certain to get them on the wing prematurely.

The opposite can also be a problem: when the birds sit too tight. It’s almost impossible for me to resist grabbing them if they sit right under my nose. If I do peg one, oh my God I am not popular. “Un-sporty” apparently…..

Journalist: Do you make mistakes some times?
Gollum: Oh yes!!! Come on, even the best makes mistakes and it’s fully accepted by master and guns. But a whole lot of mistakes in one day is NOT good. We were out three days ago and the wind must have been around 40mph with huge gusts. None of us could get to grips with the scent at all. We were bumping birds and also pointing convincingly on empty places where the birds had been sitting a while ago. Most annoying.

I also did make an embarrassing mistake a couple of years ago: as I was hunting systematically, I got the hint of something and was convinced it was a bird. I picked it up and proudly brought it to my master. Everyone laughed as it turned out to be a red leather glove that somebody had dropped on the moor ages ago. They all just thought I was cute and put it in the bag as “other”.

Journalist: You seem to enjoy your job?
Gollum: Absolutely! I am bred for it, they say, and I just LOVE the journey out in the morning, meeting all my friends and colleagues and all the humans. We run and work all day and it’s an absolute thrill. Then, after a long day with plenty of biscuits at lunch time and water during the day, we all lie on our big dog bed in the back of my master’s truck and chill out on the way home.

I am writing this while Gollum and the others are munching through huge pieces of tripe in the garden. It is of course the Glorious 12th (and overcast!), but it’s Sunday, so the day is deferred till tomorrow, where a very busy week on the grouse moor starts. The pointers have had their days of lounging around on dog beds in the garden, now it’s back to work.

We have been out counting grouse on various estates and I would say that the general feeling is that Scottish grouse is a bit patchy this year. As we had the very early warm period in March, the birds nested earlier than usual, but then we had snow on some moors and we had the well-known poor summer with cold weather, which reduces insect production depriving the young chicks of a critical source of food. The rain made matters worse and many grouse pairs would have lost their first brood. When we counted this July, we saw some places with very young birds.

Counting is a great way of getting the dogs off their dog beds and getting them FIT again after their summer holiday. Here is Gollum on point, but the ‘keeper is looking the other way…..hihihihi…

Here he is flushing a bird and watching it go away. “Steady to the flush”, which is important.

Tippex is the same: watching the bird as it goes.

Luckily, when grouse is scarce, it is usually the driven days that are cancelled in order to preserve the population. This is of course a hard hit for the estates, who very much depend on incomes from field sport, but the “pointer days” are usually going ahead because we make a very, very small impact on the population.

The truck is ready with an extremely comfy dog bed in the back (we are away initially for three days) and all the stuff we need is packed.