IBOHUNT

"What doesn't kill you..."
leaves you scared for life and 5 too many concussions (raises hand)

Heathpack 

Heal up @sarals. Enjoy your down time. I am listening to an Audible course on Meditation. In some ways having a big block of downtime to work on meditation sounds delicious.
@Cleave, how was VOS?

My little doxie Phoenix got a call up late Friday night. Could she fill in at the Hunt Performance Test on Saturday for a dog who couldn't make it at the last minute? Sure.

The gig was that a few of her doxie friends were doing the four-dog pack version of the test. This is a test for scent hounds that hunters use while hunting rabbit on foot- beagles, bassets, dachshunds, PBGVs, etc. In the test, they have 30 min to flush a rabbit, working together as a pack. They're scored on various hunting attributes and for the pack to pass, each dog in the pack has to individually pass each aspect of the test. Picture a group of hyper-determined frenetic miniature wirehaired dachshunds... now picture them all staying on task, the same task, at the same time...

My expectations were low. The three other dogs in the pack are field trial champions and they all also hold at least the title Hunting Hound (meaning they have passed this hunt test multiple times already). One dog was going for his Master Hunting Hound title, meaning he's already passed the Hunt Test multiple times as a solo and working in a brace of two dogs and working in a pack of four. Only a handful of dachshunds have ever earned the Master Hunting Hound title, all he needed was one more pass in a pack to earn the title. No pressure on newby Phoenix who had never participated in a Hunt Test.

OMG it was crazy. They were flushing rabbits, one after the other. Its was hard to keep up with them. They'd work together, they'd work independently, whatever it took. So focused. It was really a sight to behold. The judges had us pick the dogs up after only 15 minutes, they had aced the test so completely that there was no point in running longer. Pack of mini wirehaired dachshunds, who'd have thought?

And very cool that Phoenix got to be part of Bentley making a little doxie history. Plus now she's on deck to join this pack, as soon as a spot opens up...

Hermes

Great dog story. How do the judges see the dogs in the field? Does the organizer seed the field with rabbits or are there always rabbits there?

Heathpack 

No they don't seed the field with rabbits, you just go to a place with a strong rabbit population. The place the field trials are held is an abandoned olive orchard in Chino. Its pretty ideal because most of the orchard is open grassy terrain with rows of trees. The olive trees are short bushy things, their lower branches arch to the ground. The trees make perfect rabbit cover and when the dogs flush them, its usually pretty easy to see the dogs and the rabbits out in the grassy area.

The dogs figure out pretty quickly that if they are not picking up a scent line out in open ground, they should check in the trees. This is part of what they are judged on- do they look for rabbits in places rabbits are likely to be? So sometimes they find a rabbit by picking up a scent trail on open ground, sometimes they search the right places and flush one that way. You can tell if they're on a rabbit scent vs just sniffing around- their tails go up and vibrate/wag in proportion to how sure they're on something good.

When they actually see a rabbit and are giving chase, the dogs voice. Beagles and bassets make the familiar baying sound that you've probably heard. The doxies make a weird high pitched bark, very different from their normal voice, its a critter specific sound.

For the hunt performance test, you can put bells on the dogs, which really helps keep track of them. They are also identified by coat color and collar color, so the judges can keep track of who's who. There's three judges out in the field and one handler per dog.

Besides the lovely open olive tree area at the test site, there's an area of dense forest that we call "the Black Forest". The forest is so dense here that its hard for humans to move through it. Great for rabbits though. Our pack flushed a bunny and then trailed it to the black forest. We really didn't want them going in there- these are small dogs and there's coyote in there and wild hogs (and hog **** for the dogs to roll in) and it can be hard to keep track of the dogs. Once they got into the Black Forest, they were popping bunnies left and right. It was really a great relief that we were able to get all the dogs out of the forest just with voice recall. But even though the forest was risky, it worked well for judging purposes, the pack really got a good thing going in there and flushed rabbits back towards we "hunters". Its exactly why you have little dogs like dachshunds- to get in those tight places rabbits go and to force them out into the open.

Again it was cool to see a newby dog do something like that right. Its really amazing how much instinct is bred into these dogs, pretty complex behaviors that are genetically pre-patterned. Its the reason purebred dogs exist, people bred them for specific purposes for so many generations. Useful little creatures, we forget sometimes that's the whole reason dogs even evolved to be dogs- because of their usefulness to humans. Its the core of what it means to be a dog, even if we don't really need most of the uses we previously had for dogs throughout history.

Hermes

Bandera 

@sarals,

"Zulu" by Cy Endfield , the 1964 film that introduced Micheal Caine with narration by Richard Burton, has come up on Prime streaming.
Stunning, simply stunning.
Hadn't seen it in years.
Made on location it stands at the actual Rorke's Drift location in SA with anything Hawks or Ford did the with landscape of the American SW or Monument Valley scenes for enormous scale, feel of place and sheer grit of both sides of the battle.

Makes "Fort Apache" seem like a tea party.......

-Bandera

sarals 

Oh, what a good movie! I don't have Prime, I hope TCM shows it.

Bandera 

No Prime?
How else can you have an endless stream of useless junk arriving just before you forgot that you "needed" it w/o Amazon dropping it for porch pirates to steal and sell on CL?

And we thought that the Period Correct Police on BF-C&V were Luddites......

-Bandera

Hermes

I saw @Cleave at VSC on Sunday afternoon. We had planned to attend the afternoon session but cleave attended due to the Piru TT being cancelled. I was doing sprints with two other racers and then motor work as part of a Madison practice. Great to see cleave at VSC.

Cleave

@Hermes, great to see you at VSC too. Hope you had a great training session. I was very happy with my effort. It's been a long time since I've been able to do that kind of effort in training or a race.

I just missed seeing @Heathpack at the postponed TT.

IronM

Hey - just throwing my hat into the ring here; 55 yrs old 'was' master's racer; I still feel the itch & pick up a few races here and there.
If not this forum, where's an alternate outlet to hear of the unique training requirements of us somewhat older competitive riders?

aaronmcd

I'm racing age 35 now so I can post in this ghost town!

But also I might not race this year, so maybe I'll stay in the 33 where you don't need to actually race.

Cleave

I didn't post when I wasn't racing much or well the past two years. Now that I'm racing more, but maybe not better...

batysa

I noticed that participation on this sub forum was fading and apparently hit a critical (low) mass a few weeks ago and now it looks like it is no longer self-sustaining.

Doge

See the -33

Flexderec

It wasn't much of a conversation.