Steadiness work with pheasant cocks

Near Warrenton

Beautiful day, light wind, low 60s. Training Laddie with Dave and a training buddy, plus Lumi and the training buddy's retriever.

Dave threw all marks. He fired a shotgun and used no duck calls, and wore a white jacket. All birds were large, colorful, fragile pheasant cocks.

A) Land double. First mark (pheasant) on the left at a stickman, thrown RTL at 120y, the fall over a crest and invisible from SL.  Second throw (pheasant flyer) on the right at an LP, thrown LTR at 90y, area of fall visible from SL. Dave remained at the go-bird station, while the stickman showed the first station.
Laddie ran first, then honored Lumi with Dave's training buddy handling Lumi. As always at training these days, Laddie wore a tab, but I didn't hold it for the marks. I did hold it, hopefully without him being aware of it, for the honor. He was rock steady both working and honoring. As an added bonus, Laddie's flyer was a "cripple" and he brought it back while it was still active when I called him in, rather than ignoring me and trying to crush it first. Also, Laddie nailed both marks.

Lumi's first mark was dead on,  but she was so slow on her return with the flyer that she wasn't sent to the memory bird. Dave just picked it up.

B) Identical setup to (A), including same throwing stations, but with SL moved up to half the distances and on a different line to change the picture somewhat. I held Laddie's tab both working and honoring. After Laddie ran series, Dave's training buddy ran own dog for Laddie to honor, and unfortunately released the dog after Dave threw the dead bird, so that Laddie had to hang around to wait for the dog to get the flyer mark as a single. Perhaps this was to some extent a simulation of a"no bird" while honoring, but in my opinion it wasn't ideal training. Laddie actually seemed uninterested in the flyer when honoring it, and seemed primarily interested in heading back to the van to play. That's a good attitude for him to have on an honor, I think, but I'd like to see him have that attitude in a sequence that wasn't broken up by sending the working dog at the wrong time.

Dave suggested that I continue to hold Laddie's tab (loosely) as we continue working on steadiness thru the winter. We can see how his steadiness is without the tab next spring when we're actually running in an event.  That's consistent with the advice Jody and Alice have always given me.

LL&L