Last night was a good night. Storms and tornado warnings caused by sons flag football practice to be cancelled, so when TMOB got home I loaded Hank in the truck and went out for some training. The goal tonight was to get him to start stopping (if that sounds correct) when he smells birds. To start with, I let him run a bit to burn off some enthusiasm. Then as it was headed towards me I held a pigeon by the feet and let it flap to get his attention. First time or two he lunged to grab them, but a soft WHOA had him on point. I did this a couple of times then put one in the launcher and him on the check cord. Manual launchers make this less than ideal and a bit complicated, but it's what I have available. I led him downwind of the launcher until he hit scent and when he got close enough I could grab the laucher cord I stopped him with the check cord and no verbal command. We did this about 1/2 dozen times and each time it took less and less pressure on the check cord to get him to point. Once on point he'd hold it while I came up to him and even in front of him! Here he is locked up and as you can see there's no pressure on the check cord. He'd stay like that until I launched the bird and then I'd let him chase it while I got the next one ready. I'll work on steady after I feel better about the point.
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Next step I loaded the launcher and turned Hank loose with no check cord, but with me holding the launcher cord. I'd wait for him to hit the scent and react to it, but if he didn't stop pretty darn quick like, I'd launch the bird. Only did this a couple of times as it was kind of a cluster trying to juggle all of that stuff... For our last 'run', I moved the launcher to an area we hadn't been be for and put him back on the check cord. I let him move out in front of me for the full length of the check cord. We started to get closer to where the bird was planted and BAM, he locked up just as I was thinking I needed to get ready to stop him! The previous times he was quite close to the bird when I'd stop him, but this time he was a good 50' away! This caused a small problem as I had to get in front of him to get to the launcher cord. I dallied up some check cord and moved in front of him and he stayed put until I got to the cord and launched the bird.

All in all I was very happy with last nights session. We'll do it again on Friday. The cool part about the homers is that he probably doubled the number of birds he pointed in one night! Not as good as wild birds, I know, but it's the best at my disposal.