Well now that our waterfowl season is over up here, I wanted to take a look back at the progression of our little "project"  

The last weekend of April "Addi" the BLF was ready to come home from Maine, my 11 year old daughter and I skipped youth turkey weekend and made the 14 hour round trip.  We kind of forgot how much work and effort goes into having a puppy around, as our last chocolate is now 10.....but it quickly came back to us.

First days home



Not quite sure what to make of this



A few weeks later, getting a little bigger






Later on in the summer a little socialization with all the people at one of my daughter's horse shows



An artsy fartsy shot after doing some water work




We sent her away for 5 weeks near the end of summer to a friend who is a pro trainer.  He FF and CC her along with finishing up on her obedience.

Most of September is our early goose season, we put her right in the mix making easy retrieves on water, which she took to right away.  You have to remember that she is now 7 months old and might be 40 pounds dripping wet, water was easy but she had a little trouble on land retrieves........getting her mouth around the big honkers and short legs didnt help  

First of 3 September bands for her



Nice shoot with a couple of friends



She ended up with about 60 retrieves in the early goose season.  The last weekend of Sept. was our youth waterfowl weekend, it was slow because of the warm weather and all the high water but we made the best of it.

My daughter






October moved into our regular duck season and opening day



I went to Sasketchewan for a week and came back to a open goose season and went out with my daughter after school one day, first snow for both of them.



Now here is a progression of pictures from the rest of the season.  You will see many are in kind of the same pose as she runs off the back deck of my boat, and likes to stand up and look around when things are slow, giving me a perfect opportunity to snap a few pictures.

First duck band (she picked up 4 banded mallards total)





Another band



And finished.  She did a great job this fall, a little timid of the real cold water the last week or so.......but I can't blame her, she is still only about 47 pounds without an ounce of fat on her.  A definite fun work in progress.  

Great looking dog! Thanks for sharing.

Looks good, we had to get rid of our 4yr old chocolate male due to aggression issues, but my new Fox red female is at the trainers now getting FF in anticipation of a late march duck trip.

Good looking dog

Gorgeous dog!

Getting me psyched to get training my black lab!

She's only 3 months right now.

Great looking LAB, i have a choc , he is 110 pds , 3 yr old

Good looking dog man.  Great job training her on your own too.  Did you follow a certain program, or just improvise different methods?

I guess I should update my post with a few new pictures.  First off thanks for all the comments and she is really a great dog!  Addi is going on 17 months next week and has topped out at a whopping 47 pounds, by far the smallest lab I have ever owned.  To answer the post above, I am not following a "formal" training program so to speak, she is the 4th lab I have trained and have learned a few things over the years.  

Before our daughter was born I was into the hunt test game, and got a senior title on one of our chocolates and she was starting some master tests.  I trained quite a bit with our pro and learned alot with him, then free time got cut way back with the baby, so lots of training and tests were cut out also.

She will always be considered a "meat dog" and not be fine tuned for tests, I will tolerate a little bit of sloppiness on her part    If she can do double and triple marks, handle to a single blind and be steady I will be happy (she is most of the way there now)  We train almost every day, and on some days off she is swimming like crazy off the back of our ski boat at the local lake.


Sometimes it is tough with all the distractions  








Big leap





Working on her tan

This is a damn good thread.

Thanks for the update and pics.
 

I will add a couple more summer pictures, because the goose hunting is REALLY SLOW right now and there is not alot to take pictures of.

She has picked up a few geese so far this year and has a much better attitude about the whole thing, even though she is still little and land birds are kind of a pain in her butt.  


A couple of big leaps off our ski boat and a neat under water picture taken by our daughter.

Just wanted to do another quick update on how Addi is doing.  Duck season is down to less than 30 days left and has been pretty good so far, she has come a long way since last year.  I forgot how nice it was to be hunting over a well trained dog again.

Quite the band collector.
 
 

Why yes she is!!  Slower than usual this year.....only 3 so far this season.

This is way cool.

I wish I would've trained my lab when she was younger.

LBC (little band collector) strikes again!  Northern Quebec greenhead


She didn't want to pose, the dead porcupine behind her was much more interesting  




Covered in burr marigolds, I have spent hours getting them out of her coat this year


Gray stinky mud and burrs    

Be glad you have a lab. I had a Golden Retriever. They are burr magnets. Thanks again for the additional pics. Vermont is a beautiful state.

Hunting partner has a house Golden, and he cringes every time we go into these spots    

We are a beautiful.....very liberal state, almost getting out of control.  If you ever make it out here, beers or a hunt on me!


This morning, the ducks in this area know our decoys by name and we really had to scratch.  The pictures really do no justice, these are the biggest greenhead and drake black I have ever killed, and there have been a couple over the years.

Great pics!

And we are done! The 2012 duck season is in the books.  Finished the season with a nice low key whistler shoot, seems like yesterday the season was just starting.   Merry Christmas to all from Addi the wonder mutt  

Merry Christmas to you and yours as well.

Happy 2nd birthday little duck dog    

He looks like he needs a vacation. Maybe have the cat fetch some birds for him.

Beautiful bro beautiful

Down for the count for 10 days..........she was spayed yesterday.  And the cat turns into an Obama voter in the winter....just sits around all day mooching off "the man" and complaining.    





Thanks    

Early spring means crow hunting!      Some people will not use their dogs to retrieve crows, but I think it is a great time for touching up on training.  Marks, blind retrieves, steadiness all come into play, we tend to ground pound any cripples before we send her, and she has figured out to be cautious of any cripples that she may encounter.  She will actually grab a crip behind the neck so the beak is totally out of play.

Up to 108 crow retrieves this spring as of Sunday








Artsy VT shot including sap bucket




Sorry about the fingerprint on the camera  

I like the shot on the rocks. Well composed.

Very nice, our next dog will likely be a black lab.  Not sure I'll have the time to work with it though to help on our hunts, most likely will just be a pet for the kids.

The "dog" days of summer.....nothing better to do than go to the lake and lounge around when it is 92 degrees, we are not used to this    

Horridly hot here as well.



Is he able to climb back onto the raft if he jumps off?

No, she just likes to float around on it when we are anchored in the shallows.  When she goes into the water she comes back to the swim platform on the boat, then hops back on the tube (it is a 2 person tube flipped upside down)

Awesome thread, awesome pics, and awesome dog.

I'm seriously considering an Airedale Terrier as an all around hunting dog. Would probably be used on squirrels, rabbits, doves, ducks, and maybe even hogs. It shall be interesting trying to train a generalist instead of a specialist.

Good job on your dog OP!

Year 3 has now officially started           Addi is back doing what she lives to do





This gives you an idea of the size comparison between a 50 pound lab and an 11 pound canada goose

What a great thread.  It brings back lots of memories.  I lived in W. Monroe, LA for 5 great years of my life.  Louisiana is indeed sportsman's paradise....between the hunting and the fishing.  I had a couple of rice field pit blinds, both north and south of my home.  But my favorite hunting was the flooded timber on the Upper Ouachita Wildlife Management Area, north of town.  It was there that I met one of the best friends and hunting companions of my life.  Gandalf the Gold. Obviously he was a Golden.....and one of the best pure hunters I've ever had the pleasure of swinging a gun over.  We spent many a fine day hunting the great mallard duck.  I lost him a few years ago.....and I miss him every day.  Actually, this room is getting a little dusty as I type and think of him.  Thank you for your thread.....and the walk down memory lane.

I saw the first picture and thought, "Wow, that's a huge duck!"    

 

Yeah it really sucks, I know how you feel.  I guess this post will bring us a little off topic on remembering hunting dogs that have passed........    We lost our 2 chocolate labs within 9 months of each other, one was 15 and the other was 10, that was really hard and something you don't get over quickly.

Dallas at 13 in MD  She was my best dog with thousands of retrieves all over the US and Canada





And Tess, the picture in my avatar, she was well on her way to being a great gun dog and got cataracts at the age of 4.  One of the neat things is Addi and Tess both have the same father thanks to technology.





Now back to the happy posts!

nothing better than a Lab

Resident goose just finished up this evening and it ended with a bang, lots of migrators down the last few days and willing birds to decoy.  It is amazing the difference another year in Addis' confidence level on big geese, no hesitation on cripples on land or in water.....they just drive her harder to get them, and actually hammers them on land.


Yesterday a nice day with the 3rd band of the season, banded 3 years ago just outside Montreal.






Tonight with about 10 minutes left of shooting light, the sun just started going behind the hills and the geese bombed into the decoys.  I hate "tailgate" shots but it was the easiest with the fading light.  We actually had geese landing in the decoys with the trucks in the field     goofy dog face is goofy

Wow, that's a lot of geese. Nice job.

That animal has great points. If you want to see what a Lab should look like, well that's what a Lab should look like.
And if they look like that then generally they perform to standard as well. Great dog for work and companionship.

BTW, that picture of your girl and the dog in the blind just makes me feel like everything is good and right in this crazy, fucked up world of ours.

Thanks.

Yup!!!  and the great thing is youth waterfowl weekend 2013 is only 2 days away and we get to do it all over again    

Thanks

Back from my week in Saskatchewan and hitting the locals hard again.  This little corn piece had so many geese going into it I don't think you could fit many more and a great edge to hide the blinds, Addi came up with another 18.

Saturday





We left the blinds in place for Sunday and brought out a friends son who had never killed a goose, we put them on his hat and he was a very happy kid    

Thanks for the update. You must have a huge freezer!

Very nice pictures.   Lots of ducks and geese and the pictures are clear.  Y'all slammed em.  

I like your dog.   I like the fact that she's on the lighter side.   We've had  yellow labs  that weighed 50ish
pounds and were able to retrieve ducks all morning and were real workhorses.  

My yellow female died from old age two yrs ago, and i havent replaced her. I needed a break.   But I'm starting to get an itch for another.  

I'm leaning toward a black lab female.  

You'll find that the good field dogs from English stock run lighter than American labs.
They also have a little more "game" in them.
Best for working, still make great companion dogs.
Males are always going to naturely run a little larger too.

Then there is the American tendency to make everything bigger and fatter including pets.
Most of the really big Labs you see are just overfed and underworked.

Well duck season has been a little slow, spent last weekend trying to get my daughter a deer with no great outcome, other than spending the weekend in a blind with her.  So now back to the ducks.....we always say "real" duck season doesn't begin until our rifle deer season gets going (it starts tomorrow)  all the yahoos are out chasing Bambi and not on the lake, and some new birds are always down.  We went out today and had an odd shoot......3 banded drakes    

Ducks are winding down and goose is over, this last week was great with Addi making over 70 retrieves and the temps only making it above freezing 1 day.  She does not hesitate on going in the cold water and the picture with ice on her coat was about 7 degrees.  Thank God for the heaters in the boat  

I love the pic of her watching the sky. Great shots as always, thanks.

Year 3 is in the books!  Last day brought strong winds and lots of birds, it was neat watching Addi plow thru the waves to make her retrieves......yup, she is doing great.    



Chilling by the heater out of the cold





First bird in was another banded greenhead, lost count of the bands this season....it was a bunch

What a long , crappy winter it has been!!     Today is the first day of crow season and our 2' of snow Wednesday really screwed everything up, big time.

A couple of shots of Addi chillin' in the snow, it is over her back when she makes a new trail.  Come on spring and training time.









Watching the deer in front of the truck during our last big storm.