Tuffies dog beds

So, at last, having been to two field trials this winter and seen Gollum being put out for missing the birds, he got a first prize on Saturday at the GSPC Novice Trial at Ashintully. He never missed a thing. He first came on point on a woodcock, which was missed by the guns, then a pheasant, which he retrieved. The judges were happy and I was totally ecstatic that I was in fact still in, not out. Never dreamt of winning!!! They wanted Gollum to run again, but first they wanted to see him retrieve a bird. He had to cross a cattle grid or a fence, but did it all and produced the bird. Then a piece of ground he had to hunt up and had a point of a woodcock and basically he was there.
I am convinced that my own shooting over him has played a large part in getting him to understand what I want and he has now tuned into pheasant, snipe and woodcock instead of only grouse.

Here he is with the prize. Next hurdle will be the open stakes. Can’t wait.

Maybe it’s the good nights sleep on the Tuffies dog beds that has improved matters. They do say that your brain gets sorted during the sleep…. lol!!!

We receive many photos from happy customers and the one below was not at all unusual.

Karen Wallis, based in France, sent this photo of Reglisse, the rescue dog, on her new Tuffie bed. I commented on the beautifully cared for fluffy coat and Karen explained briefly Reglisse’s story. I asked more and below is Karen’s account of what happened. It was such a lovely story that we asked permission to put it in our blog and to show the pictures.

Here it is:

Hi Luise

We took our original medium size labrador cross from the RSPCA centre in central Leeds, England, in January 2003 when she was a 5 month old abandoned puppy. Our primary motivation was to help our then 12 year old son, who is autistic and was at the time very withdrawn and isolated. He was at home full time due to lack of appropriate educational services, and my partner, his Dad, had given up work to look after him. We were, in fact, complete novices as far as dogs were concerned, and read a lot about how to best look after her. One of the best things was that the agreement with our son was that he would go with his Dad every single day, rain or shine, to walk and exercise Honey in the park. This was very first step towards his future – and to cut a long story short, we moved to France (a very remote mountain village in the Pyrenees) in 2004, and since then our son has had very specialised help and is now 21, living independently in an apartment nearby and working as a bike mechanic in the summer, and ski technicien in the winter.

All the above is relevant to the story of Réglisse, as Honey is still our son’s adored dog, and as he has become more open and capable, he has become more able to look after his dog himself. She has been such a big part of helping him in his journey. So much so, that after a few trial over night and weekend stays, she is now living with him pretty much full-time and they are blissfully happy together – we only have her occasionally when our son is away biking or snowboarding.

So we found ourselves, rather unexpectedly, and rather suddenly, not only with a boy-shaped hole in our lives, but with a dog-shaped hole. We had often thought about a big dog, and had thought about taking an old dog who needed love and care – in a fantasy sort of way, but we suddenly realised that we could do as we wished and make it a reality.

I joined two french dog forums – one a german shepherd rescue and one just ‘big dog’ rescue. We made several approaches which didn’t work out for a variety of reasons – I still have a huge long haired german shepherd cross in my sites – she was found lost after the earthquake in Spain and hasn’t found a home because of her size and health issues. Unfortunately she does not yet have the paperwork to travel. So one rainy Sunday (I only have one day off a week, and it is a Sunday), I spent pretty much the whole day at the computer searching and contacting people, then just towards the end of the day, I looked on the local Dog’s Home site (equivalent of RSPCA in France) and saw Réglisse ‘en sauvetage’ which means dogs that are so hard to home they are given away free. There was no way to contact them on the Sunday, so had to wait until I got home from work on Monday afternoon. Phoned straightaway, she was still there, so we set of immediately and got there after a 2 hour drive down from the mountains, to arrive just before closing (although they said they would wait for us!). Unlike the UK, the procedure was very simple – the dogs were all in outside grassed areas, about 3 or 4 dogs to a good sized enclosure, with little kennel/sheds for them to shelter. Réglisse was brought for us to see, we loved her on first sight, we showed our identity documents, filled in a questionnaire, and she was handed over! We paid the fee for a ‘normal’ rescue even though we didn’t need to – we were so impressed with the work the centre was doing. The only information they could give us was that Réglisse had been found back in March (we took her on the 18th July) wandering alone, very thin and bedraggled, and despite big efforts to find her owners, no-one had come forward. The centre staff were so delighted for her to be going to a new home – they had thought that she never would – and they even put a message from her beside her photo on their website telling other old dogs not to give up hope!


We brought our enormous, smelly, dirty dog home in the back of my tiny Twingo, she was so calm, but looked so funny with her big head looking around. The evening we brought her back is the photo of her lying exhausted on the quilt – she absolutely stunk!

Our other dog Honey as here at the time, but left again the next day. She has been here a few times since, and the two of them are rubbing along just fine.

The next morning we started the big grooming job – we had to cut off a lot of the felted, lumpy, matted stuff which was really disgusting. We went slowly and gently, bit by bit, over the next few weeks, and gradually she is improving, and has started to groom herself. We hadn’t realised at first, but she didn’t wag her tail – Honey is a big tail wagger, and it bangs on the furniture and floor. In the past couple of weeks or so, Réglisse has started wagging, really wagging, and she just seems happy and settled. We started walking with her straight away, we live in a beautiful mountain spot, with lovely walks everywhere. At first she could only walk a short distance, was very stiff, and quickly tired. These days, she runs and plays, and loves swim. We gave her a bath in the river on a very hot day a few weeks after she came, she seemed pleased with that! We have even taken her on an overnight camping trip in the high mountains

- a very happy dog who enjoyed eating our vegan pasties and biscuits – she is very reluctant to eat anything that is a prepared dog food of any kind, we think she must have always been fed on leftovers – so now we are two vegans with a fridge full of Top Budget paté, sausage, cheese and ham, with dog pasta to mix with tuna and sardines. How strange life is!

So that is the story of Réglisse – I have attached some ‘before’ photos of the evening we brought her home, and will send another mail with some more recent ones.

Thanks again for your interest, and hope this long ramble makes some kind of sense.

Karen

It is again with some apprehension that I write about hunting as I know many of you are against. Please read my last blog as I tried to explain why hunting has its place – certainly as wild bird hunting is concerned. In brief, responsible hunting means that a vast amount of money is put into habitat care, which benefits both game AND other wild-life. So when we hunt grouse on the moor, we support the estate’s efforts in preserving the moor land with ALL its species by keeping foxes down and by supplying the all important waterholes and vegetation.
When I work my dogs on the moor for people who come to Scotland to hunt, we are very aware of finding EVERY SINGLE bird and of bringing it back to the larder in a shape that is worthy for the table. That is why “the mouth” is important. It is crucial to have a dog with a soft mouth so that the game is fit for eating.
Out of my three, Alice is perfect and totally reliable. Tippex almost always squashes the birds and Gollum….. well, the jury is still out.
I have worked the dogs on 21 days’ grouse shooting so far this year and Alice has performed some stunning work. The one that sticks in my mind is her recent river retrieve. Tippex pointed a bird, which was shot, but fell on the other side of a very fast river. Although there were Labradors about on the day, I saw, through the corner of my eye, that Alice had definitely marked where the bird fell, so I mentioned her name and she went. Across the river in spate and full of boulders, up the other side and straight to the bird. On the way back she balanced on a boulder to decide exactly how to cross, slipped and fell in. Right under the water, bird and all. She reappeared and swam across. The bird she delivered to hand was in perfect condition.
I do not allow Tippex to pick up, but I am still hoping Gollum will have a good mouth.

It seems evident that squashing a bird has to do with adrenalin…. when Tippex points, flushes and then sits down watching the shooting, her instincts are raging!!!! If she is then sent to pick up the bird, she simply makes sure that it is indeed dead and she gives it a squeeze. Sometimes a really good squeeze. However, if she is unaware of a shot bird and comes across it when hunting, she will pick it up ever so tenderly and bring it back. That happened last Friday. I know she can do it, but it’s the excitement that ruins the mouth.
I have sent Gollum for retrieves with mixed results. Sometimes the bird is absolutely perfect and sometimes it’s flat.
After all those grouse days, I took them all for a walk and just let them please them selves walking along the river and on the stubble fields. They were all tearing about enjoying some freedom. Suddenly Gollum came trotting towards me and delivered a pigeon to my hand. It wasn’t very well for some reason and he had just come across it. It was utterly unscathed by his jaws. You wonder if some more calming before a retrieve would help, but these dogs are German Wirehaired Pointers and the hunting instinct is very, very strong.
Some times there is some humour in the picking up, however, as last Friday, when Gollum was hunting away in the heather, stopped, went forward, picked something up and brought it to me: a red leather glove that someone had lost. It duly went in the game bag.

At the end of the working day Alice, who is now eight years old, is looking forward to get home to her Tuffies bed. Here she is, having a lunch time snooze in the heather.

Had a perfect 3.5 hours on the moor yesterday. Tippex and Gollum worked perfectly and this, lower, moor was stacked with well grown, healthy and strong grouse. It would seem that the high moors have taken the hit of June’s terrible weather and all the birds have lost their chicks early. Then they all bred again, but they now have small, weak chicks that are not good for shooting and are not even very well prepared for autumn and winter.
So it was good to see a moor with successful birds. In the time we were there, the ‘keeper and I with just Tippex and Gollum, we flushed just over 100 birds. I was there to take photos and to count the grouse. Unfortunately I got the wind direction wrong and ended up taking all the pointing photos in to the sun, which sometimes makes really interesting photography, but mostly just makes it really difficult. However, the dogs worked great and here is Gollum at one of his flushes.

The next picture is hilarious as he looks at me with submissive nose-licking saying “I’m a good boy, sitting to the flush”.

Of course, if the bird had been shot, he would miss marking where the bird fell and would have trouble finding it to pick up. Under normal circumstances, I would be positioned behind him and he would most likely mark the fall.

It seems like I am highlighting the faults of the day and here is another little embarrassing picture where Tippex tries to grab the bird, but the following picture shows that, when I blew the whistle, she hit the deck.

The reason for her ”misbehaviour” was mainly the fact that the birds were sitting so tight. By the time they flushed, they were almost 10cm from the dog’s mouth…. That’s my excuse anyway.

Here she is, perfectly still at a larger flush. She found these birds almost at 200metres off and there were 18 birds all together.

Good days!!!!

Well, due to a cut paw!!! we didn’t go to the working test.
However, everything is fine now and in fact one of the things that is important at the moment is to keep the fitness up for the dogs. I take them all on a little round trip of two or three miles (including the 12 year old Labrador).

But a couple of miles doesn’t seem to be enough for the two wirehaired, so I take them on a nine mile run with the bike.
My bike brakes are getting worn out every six months as I make sure we go slow down the hills to protect their shoulders.

As I am in Germany next week at a textile tradefair looking for fabrics for Tuffies Dog Beds, I only have a few more days to train for the working test next Sunday. I decided to leave Alice out as she is sooooo sensitive and is now getting anxious about running out in a straight line for a blind dummy. So I just had Gollum out today. As he won a Novice class last year, he has to go in open and I have my doubts he will be quite good enough for that.
Today I left a dummy on one side of the pond (with out Gollum seeing it) and set him off on the other shore. The idea is that he should go straight out across the pond till he gets further instructions. It went OK, but a bit more determination wold be good, Gollum!

Another obstacle one might come across at the working test competition is dykes and fences. So today I hid a dummy on the other side of a stone dyke on a field and same principle applies: he must run out, cross the dyke and find the dummy. Gollum has an annoying habit of returning, not back over the dyke, but to find a way round it. But we did a little enforcing of this too.


So off I go to look for dog bed fabrics tomorrow and Gollum will have to just think about his winning strategy in the garden.