PD308: NAVHDA: Utility Duck Search
Prerequisites: Fetch training completed.
Course cost and length:
Live: $150.00, 6 live sessions
Recorded: $150.00
Purpose: To prepare your dog for the NAVHDA Utility Search for Duck component and to teach your dog to search for a wounded duck in water using his nose and expanding the search area to locate the duck.
What you can expect to learn from this Course:
- Understanding NAVHDA Utility and Utility Prep Search for the Duck (Judge's perspective)
- Importance of dog fetching without something being “thrown”
- Dog learns to search in water and cover in water
- Dog learns expand his search in water and cover in water
- Dog learns to cross water to search across the lake
- Dog learns to enter water straight away and go out to search
- Dog learns to track a duck in water
- How to find a NAVHDA test and enter your dog in a NAVHDA Utility test.
Course Info: Welcome to the NAVHDA Utility Duck Search course! I hope you find this a valuable learning experience. As we progress, we will explore a variety of issues and experiences related to training your dog to be ready for the NAVHDA Search for Duck portion of the Utility and Utility Preparatory test.
When testing in Utility (and hunting) it is always desirable that your dog, when sent (“fetch”), enter the water and go straight out in front of you, cross the water while looking and scenting, and search for the downed bird in the water, cover and possibly the shore once he reaches the other side. Caveat: The following assumes you have already completed the force-breaking of your dog to retrieve on command all the way through to the e-collar.
As always, this is only ONE method to train and there are many others that may work just as well.
Instructor: Cheryl Asmus is a member of several NAVHDA Chapters: Rocky Mountain, Sandhills and Frontier. She is also a Senior NAVHDA Judge. The NAVHDA offices she have held as a chapter member are: Test Secretary, Training Director, Webmaster and Newsletter Editor. She organized the workers for the 2004 NAVHDA Invitational, and has worked at every job during testing including: bird planter, lunches, host judges, pick up or drop off judges, gunner, field marshal, bird steward, etc. She has also 
helped at the Invitational testing as a Field Marshall.
Cheryl has titled dogs in NAVHDA Natural Ability, Utility and the Invitational. She has also titled dogs at the Senior and Master Hunter level in AKC. Before working with the Versatile Hunting Dog, she had put 2 Tracking Dogs and 2 Tracking Dog Excellent on dogs in addition to teaching Tracking in Lake Elmo, Minnesota many years ago at the Animal Inn. Cheryl also put 4 Companion Dogs on dogs plus 3 Companion Dog Excellent on dogs. She is also a breeder of select German Shorthair Pointers: Outlander GSP.
In the 1980’s, she used to train and test in Schutzhund bringing 2 dogs to Schutzhund I and II and one dog to a Schutzhund III. She held the office of training director for the Twin City Working Dog Association for several years in the 80’s. Cheryl has served as the “helper” (bite suit) for the St. Paul and Minneapolis K-9 Police Department in her younger years. The tracking and obedience work are equally as exciting to build in a dog. Most importantly, the instructor, Cheryl Asmus has hunted for over 40 years. She started in the corn fields of North Branch Minnesota chasing hounds in the night after raccoon and sitting on the wheel hub of her uncle’s tractor shooting squirrels out of the trees as they went around harvesting corn or beans in the 60’s. She hunts deer, elk, antelope, waterfowl, varmints and best of all…upland game. As an avid outdoors person who also considers her number one hobby training her dogs, there is nothing more enjoyable to her than hunting behind a great versatile dog.
Student Information
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