Wednesday February 26, 2014

Ivy has finally started her season!!! Which means it now to time breed her with Flocon. To help us with her breeding we are doing progesterone tests on Ivy, she went for her first one on Monday and is going for her second one today. The tests will determine the best time to breed her so that we can as many puppies as possible from her and so that the timing of the breeding is perfect to ensure that Ivy gets pregnant. Also this will let us know the best time to go to Montreal. Until we know when we are going to Montreal Ivy is keeping busy by fitting in many naps and training. As seen in the picture below it can very tiring for Ivy when your waiting to go on trip.




We have been getting Ivy out and being more active with her recently, even though it is still cold it is still important to take Braque Francais outside for some exercise even if it is only for a short period of time. We have been doing hunting exercises with Ivy; the Braque Francais are excellent hunters and take to it very easily however they do not so well with modern aggresive techniques. Instead it is better to use positive reniforcement that focus towards the dogs nature ability. This week have done a couple of training exercises with Ivy. The first one is to teach her to go out and bring back the bird to the hunter, some trainers will use force fetching techniques for this however if you do this on a Braque Francais they will be quiver in fear and may become afraid of you. Ivy can be seen below being taught to bring the bird back.


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Another hunting exercise that we Ivy likes to do is sniffing out and finding the bird the video below shows her doing this. It was particularly difficult on this day because it was very windy.


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We were very happy that she found the bird so easily and was eager to bring the bird back. This is excellent progress for Ivy considering that when she was puppy she would bring nothing back to us. As can be seen Ivy is using dummies sented with bird smell. She is currently not working on real birds for the simple reason that we don't have any, we are working on getting some to advance Ivy's hunting training. As with all training it takes time and patience.