Gertie Receives 2 AKC Junior Hunter Passes.

This weekend we attended our first AKC hunt test of the year. With COVID hunt tests were not opening like they should or they were cancelled. This was ok for us as Gertie needed to be 6 months in age before she could run. She also needed more training as she lacked a decent recall so train we did. The beginning of July I entered Gertie in the hunt test at the end of the months as I figured it gave us 3-4 more weeks to train and she should be ready by then.

Gertie is a few weeks over 8 months of age. The host club was Wisconsin Amateur Field Trial Club held in Horicon, WI.

In a AKC Junior hunt test your dog needs to retrieve 2 land marks and 2 water marks. They are all single marks with one dead bird and one live flyer. The first land mark Gertie hauled ass out to the mark took a big loop and ran over to the flyer station to check that out then ran back to the bird and grabbed it up like she knew right where it was. She was just stretching her legs as she must of thought she needed to run more and check things out.

On the live flyer she ran right out to it and brought it right back but not before parading it around the judges and showing it off to them.

If you do well on land you will get called back to run the water marks.

Gertie got called back to run water. When the judges were explaining the test they said your dog needs to get into the water and swim across the pond in order to move on to the second bird. If the dog runs the bank around the pond without getting wet your out. I figured we would be doomed as Gertie likes to take the fastest route which is the land. She did surprise me as she jumped right into the water, swam to the duck which landed on land and then she ran the bank back to John. She did the same with the second mark. She passed since she did get into the water and she brought the duck back. These are usually young dogs so the judges don’t fault them to much for the return as they haven’t been trained not to do that yet.

She did real well on Sunday as well so she passed each day. She received 2 out of four passes needed for her AKC Junior Hunter title. The judges were Cathy and Stan on Saturday and Jen and Carol on Sunday. They set up some nice fair tests.