LONE PINE PUDELPOINTERS
ABOUT LONE PINE
A wife’s story:
When Mike came home announcing that he wanted a “bird dog” instead of the male boxer we’d been talking about, I was a little put out. We already had Tyner, our female boxer and were looking to add a second dog to the family. He’d never really bird hunted much, but insisted he wanted to do more and didn’t want to “fetch his own birds”. I guess I only had myself to blame since I was the one who had told him 5 years earlier that if he was going to be part of my family he needed to hunt because hunting was a big deal to my family and I. I had grown up spending every second that I could with my dad hunting, trapping, and fishing in the Pacific Northwest. Little did I know that a Coastie from Boston would end up being every bit as enthusiastic about the outdoors as my family and friends.
At first I thought maybe it was a passing phase and said something like, “Okay, but it has to be female, it can’t shed or it has to have short hair. You do the research and let me know what you find and then we’ll talk about it.” But soon he started discussing the merits of different breeds that he’d found, reading descriptions to me and *gasp* asking my opinions. This was no passing phase, we were going to be getting a bird dog. Good bye dear boxer boy, maybe someday.
Then it happened. He found the pudelpointer. He came home one day all excited that he had “found the breed for us”. When he showed me the first picture I’d ever seen of a pudel-pointer I have to admit I thought they were a little goofy looking. We were lucky enough to live a half hour from the man who originally brought the breed to North America from Germany, so we called and scheduled a visit to meet a pudelpointer in person and chat with someone familiar with the breed. That day, we learned a lot about the breed, its history and we came away feeling better about this potential new dog, but we still wanted to see some bird work. So we looked up another breeder in Oregon and asked if we could watch his dogs work. It was worth the 5 hour drive!
It’s a joy to watch a pudelpointer work, upland or waterfowl. Their hunting drive is awesome! There’s no craziness, just focus. They are obedient, steady, and joyful in their hunt. What was even more endearing was that when the hunt was over, and they were back at the house, all they wanted was to be loved on. All of the hunting intensity suddenly melted into a wonder-fully mannered house dog. I couldn’t believe they could mellow out that quickly. And that goofy looking dog suddenly became cute in a goofy looking way, and melted my heart. I was sold.
Enter Callie. At 4 and a half pounds she was the cutest little bundle of pup. We brought her home in October 2010. Tyner looked at us like we were torturing her with this new little thing. Sure enough Callie provided Tyner with plenty of torture. I think Tyner’s poor jowls are still scarred from those sharp little puppy teeth. Thank goodness for the big gentle boxer nanny.
We played with wings, mini bumpers, and did all kinds of things new inexperienced bird dog owners do wrong. Ultimately we decided we’d better get serious about training and joined a gun dog club a couple of hours away; meeting once a month starting in February each year. There, we discovered clicker training….and all of the training atrocities we’d been committing. Although I was skeptical, clicker training worked great for Callie; she thrived on the positive reinforcement training method. Slowly we started correcting the training mistakes we had made in earlier months, and discovered how forgiving she was in her training. She was way smarter than her trainers.
After a while we started thinking, “boy this dog is really good.” She picked up the training quickly, and seemed to excel at everything. She got a lot of compliments from other people in the club (where she was the only pudelpointer), and seemed to be such a natural at all of this bird dog stuff. So, naturally we started thinking about the NAVHDA Natural Ability test and possibly breeding her in the future.
Since I wasn’t working at the time, I became the principal trainer, with Mike helping me a lot when he wasn’t at work. We were lucky enough to live where we could keep a few training pigeons, and had a big open field right out our back door. We were also lucky to have some really great dog trainers, willing to help us along in this endeavor, and a couple of bird preserves that we could go to in order to get her familiar with different types of upland birds. Even if it did mean a 2 – 5 hour drive to get to them. We were willing. So from March 2011 until August 2011 training was our focus almost every day.
When Mike had to go fly on the Deep Water Horizon spill for a few weeks I took the opportunity to train Callie to fetch beer out of the fridge as a surprise for him when he came home. Boy was he impressed! The video is on her page.
We tested her at the Willamette Valley NAVHDA Chapter test in August 2011, 3 days before her first birthday. I was SO nervous! Callie and I went over the day before her test to watch the other dogs run and get Callie used to the area. Mike had to work and came over the day of the test to cheer us on. She was the last dog to run which was good for the field work. She found 3 birds and pointed them all beautifully, also having to relocate one that I couldn’t find. She had two wild flushes, one of which she ran down and retrieved to hand like a champ. Not an ounce of gun shyness; she even ran over to the shooter hoping for some action. The water work was a piece of cake for a dog that loves water as much as Callie. She was the only dog that day to track and point her pheasant. I kept thinking something was going to go wrong, that we weren’t prepared, that I was going to mess something up, but I could not have asked for a better day with that dog. She didn’t falter once. When they announced her score of 112, prize one, I cried. What proud mom wouldn’t?
Since that day we have produced 7 litters of pups, acquired 5 more Pudelpointers and handled those dogs in 4 more Natural Ability tests and 3 Utility Tests. All of our dogs have scored 110 or higher with a Prize 1 in Natural Ability and 2 of those dogs have also prized in their Utility test with 2 more currently in training. When it came time to choose a kennel name for our breeding program we chose Lone Pine for our favorite deer hunting ridge in Eastern Oregon where there is also a great chucker and grouse population.
Sadly, we lost our beloved Callie in 2016 very suddenly to what we sincerely believe was heart disease, resulting from a grain free diet. Thankfully, we still have Callie's daughter Ava as well as her half sister Zayda and Zayda's daughter Cadi. We also have our "little brick", Evony, from an unrelated line.
We are currently stationed in Chesapeake, Virginia – the latest in a long line of Coast Guard assignments for my helicopter pilot husband – and working our newest pup Cadi towards her Utility test.
Not only are Pudelpointers great hunting dogs, they are the happiest, silliest, best snuggling, most wonderful house dogs. They make us smile every day. I guess you could say that first goofy looking furry faced little dog worked her way into my heart and I will be forever grateful for the day my husband came home and said he wanted a “bird dog”.