"Terra"
     

Carol, we are coming up on one year since Pat and I drove out to Mexico and picked up Terra and I thought I would give you an up-date.

In a nut shell we have all bonded, fallen in love and created quite a troupe. Every dog has a characteristic that shines above all others. Stoic, distant, intelligent, cute and lovable are a few. Terra is the most lovable dog people have ever meet. Old friends or strangers she is just lovable to everyone. And she uses it to hide her intelligence. She is a very smart dog but she never leads with that. Always the lovable. She sucks everyone in and then manipulates them. Our obedience trainer feels she would make the most amazing therapy dog and we agree.

She is never more than a few feet away from me. Pat and Amber will head to bed. Terra curls up at the base of my chair and stays close. Sometime she curls up in my lap. 65 pounds of dead weight love sound asleep on top of me and I love every second of it.

She is a water freak. She stands in the lake, lays down in the lake, fishes in the lake. She will stand in the lake and stare at the bottom and wait for the fingerlings to scoot by and pounce on them. IF we are sitting in the yard, she is standing in the water. And true to form for a Golden she will retrieve bumpers in the water as long as someone is still awake to throw the bumper.

She and Amber are inseparable. Never seen two dogs bond so fast and so deep. They lay on each other all the time. They even lay on the floor and chew on the same dental dyno at the same time. It is priceless.

Terra is a sitter in the truck. All our dogs would lay down and sleep. Terra has to sit between the seats and watch out the front. She is extremely inquisitive with everything. And she kisses us all the way to wherever we go. When I get out my ear is soaked.

She still is frightened of new things. We always have to remember to introduce her to change slowly but that is not a problem we just go slow. Oh and don’t turn on a flashlight. You want to see a dog disappear fast. Oh my.

Then there is her nose. If she is smelling something everything in her turns off, especially her ears. I have been working with her around the yard using an E Collar. She has taken to the audible well and knows that if she does not re-call quickly after hearing the audible the result won’t be favorable. The last few days she has responded somewhat quickly to the audible without any back up needed. Plus she loves to have the collar put on because she knows she is going outside and she loves that.

Hunting, I don’t even know where to start with the hunting. Perfect, flawless, the most amazing thing I have ever seen? We had a great season. She limited out three times on public hunting fields with dozens of dogs and hunters all around. Twice with my partner and once when she and I were alone. All of our other trips resulted in birds, just not limits. Carol, she points them and locks up. I did not do any training she just does it on her own. I started working her on a release of “fetch” because she would just stand on them. One great story she has in her book will live forever.

We were moving through a cut corn field divided up with a few rows of sunflowers. Ken, Terra and I were on a row of sunflowers and had dropped a bird and were waiting for Terra to bring it in. An acquaintance was to my right about 40 yards with six guys and four dogs. Because we had stopped John and his crew had gotten out ahead of us by 30 yards or so. After Terra gave me the bird she started scenting of to the right behind John’s crew. She wanted to go so I let her. She swung in behind John, turned in the opposite direction to which they were moving and pointed up a bird. I yelled over to John and asked him if he would kindly turn around and shoot the bird Terra was about to flush. When he was ready I released her with “fetch” and John dropped the bird. Later, over a water stop John said to me that was embarrassing and amazing all at the same moment. John’s dogs are excellent. I have watched them for years. I would like to think that bird just held tight while they went by and got missed, and I am going to think that. The kicker to all of this was that six weeks earlier John was sitting on his tailgate when I took Terra out of the truck for her very first hunt and he got to see her on day one which was not as pretty as that November morning when she scooped him. I can assure you that no one was prouder that day than I was of Terra the Terrific. We call her the Breakfast dog. My hunting partner and I have a thing. If we limit out, we stop for breakfast on the way home because we are done early. I am hopping next year to get breakfast every week. And Terra always gets a piece of toast when I leave the dinner so I am hopping she is well motivated this year.

Carol, we will probably will never know her field trial capability. I have so much going on I know I won’t be able to learn an additional obsession. I can tell you she is the finest hunter I have ever walked the fields with and I truly believed that I would never see a better Golden in the field than my old love, Tana.

It took a lot of time and trips to the field in August and September to get Terra ready. Being afraid of everything I had to go slow. Bumpers, bells, guns, other people, decoys, boats, you name it I had to come up with ways to introduce her and get her comfortable with it but it all paid off. I will do it all again this year starting in August using the same routine re-introducing her to all of the aspects. Well not power bumpers. We do that all year long and she loves it when I fire those off out into the lake.

Well a lot of words to tell you how much we love her, how happy & healthy she is and that she is an incredible hunter. Oh, and she is finally getting a bit of a coat so no one is asking us what kind of a dog she is anymore.

Thank you for letting her come live with us. Our lives are incredibly rich as a result.


Many of the photographs on these pages are courtesy of Tony C. Zappia

Carol Lantiegne
239 Fravor Road
Mexico, NY  13114 - 315-963-8403  
Email:  puppies@adirondac-goldens.com
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