u/DingoDadLuce

We spent a few days camping and dove hunting on the Caprock in New Mexico, and Lucy seemed completely at home out there.

When we weren’t hunting, she was roaming around camp, working the wind, checking every patch of brush, and generally finding something to investigate, mostly pointing a nearby covey of blue quail that came every morning.

It was fun to watch. Out in that open country she just looked very natural, like that kind of place made immediate sense to her. I feel bad for making her leave. Wish we could both just stay out there and roam.

Mostly, she was just having a very good time being a very good dog.

It’s definitely not the same as having another person out there throwing marks, but we do the best we can.

This is in a little park in the middle of a subdivision, so there are plenty of joggers and people walking dogs on the path around us. I’d like to think working around distractions helps proof the behavior and reinforces she needs to be focused on the task at hand.

Curious if anyone else trains this way or has any good solo retrieving setups.

These clips are from some of Lucy's earliest training sessions, and I thought it'd be fun to share them. I think she's around 4-5 months here.

This was before force fetch, before she knew how to heel, before delivery to hand, and back when I was still figuring a lot of it out myself. We are still learning but she’s come a long way.

The camera work is all over the place because I was filming on an iPhone while trying to throw bumpers, and somehow she still manages to run out of frame when I finally put the phone on a tripod.

One thing's for sure—she was having fun.

Lucy is a Carolina Dog (American Dingo). She's almost two now, but she was already full of personality from day one.

Found a few photos of Lucy from last season.

Looking back, I spent a lot of time worrying about what she wasn't doing yet and not enough time appreciating what she was already doing.

It's funny how that works. You spend all season focused on the missed birds, blown coveys, the mistakes, and then later on, those aren't the things you remember at all. I love this damn dog and had a blast hunting behind her. We had some good moments last season.

What's something your dog did that made you stop and think, "damn, that's a good dog"?

Lucy’s first season hunting wild bobwhite quail on Texas public land.

She’s a Carolina Dog / American Dingo — definitely not your typical bird dog — but she’s taught me a lot about patience, trust, and letting a dog figure things out naturally.

This clip is the opening montage from a longer documentary-style project I’ve been working on called Goose on the Loose.

Meet Lucy. She’s not your typical bird dog, but she gets the job done all the same.

She’s a young dog who made all sorts of mistakes during her first hunting season, but she learned a ton. It’s been a blast working with her and getting to see the limits of this breed. Carolina Dogs are a pre-contact landrace breed, so they can be tough to work with. They are native to this continent up to 15,000 years ago. There’s no selective bird-dog breeding working in your favor — just cooperation and raw prey drive.

She’s sweet as pie in the house and hammers dove and quail in the field.

In some of these photos you’ll see what looks like a traditional point. Those are planted quail she found during training. On wild birds she’s developed more of an indication behavior than a classic point. She’ll slam on the brakes and look back at me to let me know there’s a covey around. Sometimes it’s a staunch point, sometimes it’s a full neck crane back at me — we’re still figuring it out together. She has learned the big lesson that wild birds will not accept pressure like planted quail, that was her big takeaway from her first quail season.

She’s become a nice little retriever in the dove field and is an overall joy to be around. I’m excited to see what her second and third hunting seasons look like and where the ceiling is with a dog like this.

This is training from last spring/summer, before Lucy’s first quail season.

She was about 6 - 9 months. It was a lot of fun seeing her figure it out.

Edit: Lucy is a Carolina Dog/American dingo, not a traditional bird dog breed. The pointing work is something we’ve been developing with her over the last year as an experiment.

So Lucy and I got some great feedback from this subreddit on how to push through some growing pains on force to pile.

We added a white pole with a trashbag on top to help indicate the pile and we have been working at a closer distance in the yard. I have added light collar pressure taps while sending her. I have tried to make it fun and keep it light when she messes up and keep expectations low. This was our first attempt at longer distances since our new game plan.

Its still a work in progress as you can see in her first send, she is still lacking a bit of confidence but once she gets past the first 10 yards her confidence builds and she stays online towards the pile.

The second send is about 40-50 yards and she stays on target although she is not running very hard until she passes the first 10-20 yards, then she kicks it into gear and finishes strong.

Thanks for all of your help, you guys have great insight and its paying off! Good luck this off season progressing on yall’s goals!