I was up and out early (well by 8am) today for another training session. It all went very well - we did some 'watch me' practice and then went into the big field to do some hunting. There were LOADS of rabbits and hares charging about all over the place, but none of us chased them and all concentrated on our hunting.
After a while Charlotte fired her dummy launcher (a noisy thing but it makes the dummy go much further than she could throw it) and I spotted where one of the dummys landed - the technical term for this is marking. For the first one, Charlotte let her very pretty Labrador called Rose go and fetch it, but what a surprise when she did it again and I was allowed to have a go at retrieving.
Mum was convinced I had marked the dummy and I had - I did a lovely retrieve straight back to Mum's hands with a very waggy tail as I was very pleased with myself.
We carried on hunting until it was time to head home and then, I am afraid to admit, I lost the plot a bit. It was all because a pesky bird flew overhead and distracted me by calling 'chase me Merlin'. Actually it didn't say that, but I chased it anyway which resulted in Mum shouting at me to stop, which I didn't do, until I saw Charlotte running to cut off my line of chase. It was at this point I decided against my line of action, turned swiftly on my tail and headed back to Mum who was cross but also laughing with Auntie Kim because they said I had a very funny look on my face as I scuttled back.
Overall though I think Mum was happy with me, and I had a short rest in the car with a piece of liver cake as a reward whilst she went and had tea and cake - again!!
