Every year, near Estonian Independence Day, our friend hunters organize a pheasant hunt.

This year we participated, as I wanted Yip (will be 12 years old in March) to show Tøre (now 6 months old) some good hunting habits. As dogs were not allowed to go picking during the shooting, we had to wait until the hunters finished. We slowly started to move closer to the shooting area with the dogs, and I played with Tøre to ensure his not paying too much attention to the shooting. It worked very well. He did not mind any shooting (at pheasant hunt they shoot 2-5 times at once and so 25 times, as there were 25 birds). When we got closer Yip was only looking into my eyes waiting for "go" and Tøre's body language got alert and ready to go. Pity I could not send them when the birds fell. When it finally was our turn Yip and Tiit went immediately working - he did really well, but we could not keep him in the wood too long as he is too old for hours of searching. Tøre sniffed and was interested, but did not go too far from me. So we went back to the meeting point and I introduced pheasants to him. Tøre was very surprised :) I did let him sniff the birds and threw few to him to pick up. He picked up well! Now I know how to move forward with him and I truly believe their instincts work much better in real situations than in artificial.