Meliora Drents

Drents are not technically Spaniels in heritage or hunting style, but we’ve been admiring our friend Julianne (@breeze.e.bear) and her English Springer Spaniel Ruse’s work for some time. After visiting them at a Southern California Sporting Spaniel Club (SCSSC) training day briefly back in April when we were in the area for a Scentwork trial, I knew I wanted to come out again for a full day and finally made it this past weekend! I spent most of the day as a sponge learning as much as I could and helping with training exercises and planting bumpers/birds. It was bird dog/spaniel heaven!!

I first helped out with, then ran Iris in, a basic quartering drill. See the Instagram post below with some highlights and further explanation of this exercise:

We ran the quartering drill again in the late morning and Iris did even better, giving me a couple indications that she was starting to recognize the pattern of the game. In between, I continued to help out with other dogs (including a 4-month-old Clumber Spaniel’s first intro to quartering – SO cute!), absorbed as much advice and wisdom as I could and answered tons of questions about Drents.

After the formal training day was over, Julianne and I found a pond to let the dogs cool off and try to get Iris swimming. While Iris loves splashing around in the water and has zero concern about getting wet generally, we didn’t prioritize swimming enough when she was a puppy and thus she is currently lacking the confidence to voluntarily leave where her feet are touching the ground in order to actually swim. It’s one of my big goals for this summer to fix that! And part of it is taking her out with other dogs like Ruse who are confident swimmers as a positive influence.

Iris got extremely close trying to retrieve her favorite ball, and while she “accidentally” got a few swimming strokes in, ultimately no dice. Regardless, it was a small step closer, and a good opportunity to burn off any remaining energy before our long drive home.

Where Next?

I often mention that I have limited sport/activity slots for Iris – based mostly on the time and effort to train for each activity in the way that I like to. Up until earlier this year, those four slots were filled with Scentwork, Heelwork/Obedience, Canicross, and Conformation. But as it’s become clear that Iris really doesn’t enjoy Conformation, every time I take her to do bird dog things (like Spaniel Club, or NAVHDA) and I see just how joyfully and naturally she takes to it, I wonder why I keep trying to force it.

So, I went ahead and ordered Force Free Gundog Training by Jo Laurens, a book I’ve been eyeballing for some time. While I’m not sure yet where exactly we’ll go from here, I’m thinking I can read up and revisit some of the other books on my shelf (such as Mission Control by Jane Arden and How to Help Gun Dogs Train Themselves by Joan Bailey) and start to cherry pick some gun dog skills, like a formalized retrieve for instance, that cross over easily between spaniel and pointing dog venues to work on with Iris.

And I’m already planning to take her back to the next SCSSC Training Day in August 🙂