Pheasant Pelt

I ordered a pheasant pelt from http://www.sportingsaint.co.uk/ to see what Olive would do with it.

It's like a pheasant skin with feathers that you can either buy already attached to a dummy, or separately. I bought it separate as I already have a few dummies, but probably would have been better to have got the attached version. I wrapped it around a 1lb dummy and put a few elastic bands around it to hold it in place. The dogs were VERY excited when I got it out, and were sniffing it like crazy. I thought it best not to throw it as could see it all falling apart, so just placed it down on a memory retrieve.

Olive has a habit of running full speed at dummy once sent and sort of pouncing on it when she gets there, never really worried about it as thought her enthusiam was good!... but when she pounced on the pheasant pelt a few feathers came out so had to re-think how I was going to do the retrieves with it. I decided to do blind ones so she didn't know where it was and therefore was sniffing around for it and not running full speed. This worked fine and no pouncing.

I was really pleased she picked it up straight away and retrieved as normal. The 1lb dummy is big for her anyway, and with this skin wrapped around I wasnt sure she would hold it, but she found a way. She delivered to hand and didn't drop it so all good. Although she was alot more reluctant to let go of it than usual and as I was trying to take it away kept trying to mouth it.

She loves retrieving anyway, but this pheasant pelt definitely made it super exciting for her. She was alot quicker on the blind retrieves too, I guess because the skin smells.

Once the skin is on, you can't really see the dummy, but Olive had no issues with knowing what to do, she knew it was for retrieving as normal, so thats great.

I think this is will be brillant training aid for progressing to cold game. I am pretty sure now if I put a bird down for her to retrieve she would know what to do with it.