I went out with my buddy Justin rock crawling this weekend in his crawler/hunting ride. We had amazing weather and I even got a little sun on my red neck. Could have used a sun hat!
Sunday Don (our shipping manager) and I got all of our Nevada big game applications in. I have a good feeling about my chances of drawing at least one tag this year. Don and I basically put in for the exact same hunts, so now it kind of feels like a competition to see who gets lucky and draws tags and who doesn’t. We will see is a couple of months.

Jay

Keeping my bird dogs in good physical condition is something that I am very passionate about.
First of all they simple love to get out and run. The way I see it is that they should get every opportunity to do that as possible. A dog’s life is relatively short, so I appreciate the idea of giving them the best life possible while they are on this earth. Dogs love to run, so let them run.
Second, it is good for their generally health, for obvious reasons. Studies have shown that an in shape dog that is slightly under weight will on average out live a slightly over weight dog by two years. Two years is a significant percentage of a dog’s life.
Third, I hunt a lot and I want my dogs to get to hunt and enjoy every day that we are in the field. You can not take a dog of the couch and expect him to be able to effectively hunt hard for you for any amount of time. Would you try running a marathon without any training? If I go on a week long hunting trip I want each of my dogs to be able to easily hunt 5 of those 7 days, and that is very realistic. Not only can they run over 20 miles a day for days on end, but they can do it without being sore or getting injured. This makes hunting a lot more fun for everyone.
This time of year I do what I consider maintenance conditioning. I run the dogs about four days a week. This consists of physically taking them on long trail runs, taking them on mountain bike rides, hunting pen raised birds, and doing retrieving exercises with them. For me these are all fun things that I enjoy doing, so it is easy for it to be a priority. As the weather gets hot I will run them 6 days a week but instead of running them for an hour at a time as I do now I will cut that time back to about ½ hour a session because of the heat. I will also swim them as many of those days as possible. Then about a month out from hunting season I will give them a coupe of harder weeks consisting of long runs every day, then tapper the exercise down over the next two weeks so that their bodies are fully recovered and they are in peak condition for the start of bird season. The bottom line is that if you want your dog to hunt like an athlete then you need to treat your dog like an athlete.
I make sure to always have water available for my dogs, and I am very careful in temperatures over 60 degrees. I have learned over the years that 60 degrees is the magic number. Anything under that and I generally do not have to worry about them over heating, though I am always paying attention. Anything over 60 degrees, even if it only a degree or two and I can almost immediately tell the difference in their body language. I give them water much more frequently, shorten the length of exercise, and pay close attention to their body language. Every year people kill their hunting dogs by hunting in the heat without water and without paying attention to their dog’s body language, and honestly I think that it is incredibly sad.
A few things that I personally look for that are obvious sign of overheating that can lead to heat stroke are these; First, I watch the dogs tongue. When a dogs tongue is hanging out of the side of its mouth with no control it is because it has lost muscle control of its tongue and that is one of the first signs that it is over heating. Keep in mind that there is a difference between a panting dog and a dog that’s tongue has lost muscle control. You will have to be the one to understand the difference with your dog. Second, if a dog is looking for shade and wants to lie down out of the sun it is doing that for a reason, because it is obviously too hot. Third, I will watch how it is standing, walking, or running. If it looks dizzy, is stumbling, is not running in a straight line, looks wobbly, or looks confused then the situation is most likely very serious and you need to get that dog cooled down, right now. Water and shade are the quickest and easiest ways to do it in the field. If you can physically get you dog into water then do so.
So, whatever kind of dog you own, hunting dog or not, take a little time out of your day and let them run. They will love you for it.

Jay

This is a picture of Coby and his two bird dogs, Miley and Daisy. Miley is the Shorthair and she is only about 5 months old in this picture. This was kind of a hard year for a puppy here in Nevada because we did not have great bird numbers so consequently the hunting was really inconsistent, but Miley did great. At 5 months it was easy to tell that she would grow up to be a fine bird dog.
We dedicated a couple of hours of “work” one morning during this past bird season to getting some new photos. So, Coby and I loaded up all of our dogs and made a quick local hunt. It turned out great. We got a handful of good images that we can use here at Glacier Outdoor, we got a few birds, and the dogs got in some good work. Not a bad day’s work, if you know what I mean.

Jay

The bird season is over, but really what that means is that we now have to run the dogs on pen raised birds. Do to the nature of me, I run my dogs pretty much every day in the off season, or they run me. Anyway, basically ever other weekend I try to run them on some penned birds. At this point I really only do this because it is fun. Considering that I have shot hundreds and hundreds of wild birds over each of my Shorthairs I think that it is safe to say that they are learning nothing from hunting planted birds, but as I mentioned, we do it anyway because it is fun.

On Sunday I took the dogs out to Hungry Valley, which is a very common place to run bird dogs, and we shot a handful of planted birds. The dogs learned long ago to pay attention to where we are going, and they always know when we are going to Hungry Valley. This means absolute dog freak out mode, which I am happy to live with, but can also become a bit annoying. Once there I always plant my birds on the drive out, then park the truck, get organized, put the dogs on the ground, and then try to actually mimic a real hunt. The idea is that if you plant birds far enough apart that it should take you 30 or 40 minutes to find them all, then the dogs actually have to hunt. If you pant your birds with in a couple hundred yards of the truck then all the dogs have to do is run full speed out of control until they basically stumble across them. Both systems will work I guess, but I prefer to the first of the two.

Anyway, the birds flew great and it was about as much fun as you can have while hunting planted birds.