What Whistle??

re⋅gress
v. ri-gres; to revert to an earlier or less advanced state or form.

Six days from now we're supposed to hunt on a preserve. A few chukar, and if all goes well, maybe a couple pheasant. In an effort to not overthink the hunting aspect (I know, I know. Too late.), I thought I'd spend some time this week on control. Primarily recall, but with some directional stuff too.

But this evening, Winnie decided to throw a wrench in the plan by completely ignoring abut two out of every three recalls. Whistle, voice, both, she just ignored me.

When we go for walks we're sometimes simulating hunt situations. Well it is in these open field hunt situations where the recall is breaking down. I feel like I need to be a little careful here, because I DO want her to range out far enough to find birds. So while I was frustrated today, I tried to refrain from repeatedly testing the recall in the field while she was 'hunting' just to see if it'd work. She picks up on things very, very quickly, and I'd hate for her to make the connection that when she's in the field, I'm going to call her to me whenever she ranges out 30 yards or so.

Not sure if any of that made sense.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to use the long check cord and go back to some basics. And if I don't trust her completely, I have no problem hunting her with the check cord at the preserve. Might slow her down a bit but I'll be glad to have that 'handle' if the recall isn't where I want it to be.