What a week for Fresco

What a week this has been for little Fresco. Tuesday he was rushed to the vet after being hit by a car, in the event he was suffering from gravel rash - such that I threatened to call him Tetley. (for non UK readers this is a reference to a tea bag advert - the quality of the bag being linked to the number of perforations in it). Despite lying on the vets table very sorry for himself he was perky by the evening and back to full speed the following morning. Friday saw him up at sparrow fart to go to a dog show - he won his class - but then he was the only entrant. Catja came along as well and despite being feisty and alert outside the ring failed to appeal to the judge once in it. She hates being in the ring and makes it show. We had been looking for an 'easy win' as there were only three bitches in the class. Mind you such a result allowed me to get away and back home with most of the afternoon spare. This was used to good effect by meeting Steve and his pup Sam at the farm. I had a particular bit of work I wanted to do - we have one particular field of stubble turnips that is attracting about twenty birds regularly, i now have a feeder and water there but I wanted to know if they were mine or immigrants from the adjacent ground. My intention was to work up the boundary edge and push them back to our pens. The wind was not in our favour and Steve who was working the field had quite a few bumped birds - but it did allow him to make sure Sam's stop was up to snuff. The birds all flew out of our ground and Sam had a couple of tentative points and some messy ground work. But no worries you could see he was trying to work out what was going on. The next field proved an eyeopener to Sam who had several nice points and some good sits to flush. Fresco worked teh middle of the field and missed a covey of partridge - partly because of my poor positioning and partly because of teh size of the bights he was taking. By the third field Sam proved he had got the idea and indicated well. A very good evening for both dogs.
Saturday saw the first picking up day for us. A boys only day - leaving Catja at home. Topaz consistently performed well - mostly runners. The only one he failed on was a bird that fell next to a beater who said 'I'll get that' followed half a minute later by 'You've got a runner' we never found it. I noticed that he often 'aimed off' and ran deep when working to a downwind bird. this allowed him to then work across the wind to find the bird. As he did this several times I read it as a conscious decision on his part.
Fresco was allowed a short blind for his first retrieve of a 'hot bird' - he ended up with a mouth full of breast feathers and a perplexed look on his face, he left the bird and came back to me. Sent out for it again this time he picked it up by its rump and struggled back with it - it was a very large bird. He had three further retrieves during the day and performed nicely on all I was very pleased. Otherwise he had to sit off lead and watch. He even wanted to retrieve a bird that was in its death throes with wings flapping.
One particularly memorable moment was when a shot bird landed between me and the dogs - neither moved, even when the dog from the next peg came in (complete with lead on it) to collect. I wonder how long that sort of steadiness will last?