We are Members of the FCI, of the German Retriever Club and of the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Club of Nederlands www.straight-and-gentle.eu Beaver’s Youth Hunting Test 2012, October Spirit of Chippewa Achmik On Friday October 5, 2012, I participated in the DRC Hunting Trial with cold game for young dogs with Beaver; the day before was his first birthday. Unfortunately, we were faced with stormy sometimes even violent weather. At first, the gun- shyness of the dogs was examined. When I tried to have Beaver strolling around, he did not really withdraw from my position, so I issued a “back” command; this caused him to run away into the forest ignoring the shooting completely. Obviously he was pleased with this situation and did not return for a while. The judge Mr. Hinrichsen-Verkennis asked me to call the dog back, and his suggestion sounded a bit as if he would say: I wonder if that will work! However, upon my “return” whistle Beaver showed up immediately and returned to me with no delay. Next came the retrieve of a duck from the water. This happened at a medium size pond with a reed strip tall as a man vis-a-vis. The duck was cast into the reed with a low curve, very difficult to identify and almost not audible due to the stormy weather. Despite of these conditions, Beaver had observed the scene very attentively and upon my “start” command he swam straight toward the target area and began to search in the reed. When the judges had seen that Beaver could search with intensity and durance, I was told to give him a helping “look at this place” whistle when appropriate and so I did. It worked perfectly: Beaver came out of the reed with the duck in his mouth and delivered the prey orderly. The next task consisted of a follow-up of a rabbit track. Mr. Hinrichsen-Verkennis tried his very best to provide an accurate tail, but the storm avoided an easy recognition of the scent. So, the dogs had to do work hard until they reached the prey. Beaver had lost the track and followed the scent, but then came back, detected the real track at his own, progressed now utilising thoroughly his nose and returned with the rabbit orderly. Next task consisted of a search in the forest with quite a lot of underwood. Two rabbits and two ducks had to be found and retrieved. Beaver again did a good job and accomplished his mission amazingly fast. I noticed that with pleasure although I also recognized that he began to slow down a bit at the end of the exercise. The last test of the examination consisted of a mark in a white beet field (not yet harvested!) Beaver failed to identify the target site well what he usually does, he had to utilize his nose and that also worked fairly good. However, it could be seen that there occured some lack of concentration at the end of the day. Area of a the search Results 2014 Ergebnisse 2014