[fabsroman]

Would I pay $10,000 to have Nitro trained, probably not, but not because of the cost. I take pride in doing things myself and learning how to do them. I built my first bike in 20 years over this fall, and I was worried about building it because it cost $8,000, was made out of carbon fiber, had indexed shifting, and I had never installed a fork or bottom bracket before on a bike, but I read a lot of manuals, asked a lot of questions from friends on a cycling chatboard, and ended up doing just fine (i.e., I have put 100 miles on the bike and nothing has fallen off yet).

My one and only problem with Nitro is getting him to stay once the guns go off or when he sees the birds coming right in at us. By turning his blind to face mine, I have mostly solved the problem with him taking off when the birds are coming at us, but he did break once the last time we were out. I have also tried to solve the problem by putting a stake in the ground and putting a short lead on his collar and attaching it to the stake, but that method might end up killing him. I do think he is learning that he needs to stay in the blind until we shoot, and I don't mind him popping out of the blind when we do shoot because I want him to mark the downed birds, but his taking off bugs the hell out of me. If I get out this week, I might just work on the dog and let everybody else shoot. What is kind of crazy is that I can call him off of birds that other people shoot in other fields and he completely listens. I just cannot get him to sit still after the guns go off. During the off season, I'm going to try to catch some pigeons and have my dad shoot them in front of Nitro with me handling him. Hopefully, this will solve the problem and hopefully I won't be too busy this summer to work with the dog.

At the end of the day, if I was told I would get a dog just like Nitro if I spent $10,000, I would. Nitro has heart like you wouldn't believe. I was cleaning the garage last night and went to put his vest away. I found two pretty good tears in it from the last time we went hunting and he went through a barb wire fence. On the same hunt, he tore the heck out of his paws and they were bleeding all over. However, trying to stop him from retrieving a downed bird with his bleeding paws was like trying to stop a locomotive.

At the end of the day, I think any dog can be trained if a person spends enough time with the dog and is willing to be patient with the dog. However, heart and drive cannot be trained into a dog and that is why we look for certain lines (i.e., breeding).