Well I got thinking today and decided to revive this thread with an update and some thoughts.
13 year later.
Pearl will be 13 years old this year. And is still going strong. But a little slower.
We have not hunted the past two years for waterfowl, but have for grouse. I throw 30-40 balls every day for her. I sit in a lawn chair and throw balls as far as I can until she starts to tire which is around 40 balls. The rest of the time we just pal around during the off season.
A shout out to Warren at Ireland farms for a great dog.
Pearl spends her nights in her 13 x 13 kennel since she was 6 months old. Every am she comes out and pals with me or hangs out in our back yard. Everyday of off season she does receiving drills or obedience drills, than retrieving play time.
When we go camping with our RV she hangs out around camp and sleeps in my truck at night.
From the start I taught her to remain silent regardless of where we were. She was never meant to be a guard dog but a silent and obedient companion. She has barked only about a dozen times in all the years. Never growled at another dog or human except once at two game agents sneaking up behind me duck hunting.
From the beginning I protected her joints. Using a ramp to load her in and out of my truck. She will never jump down off the tailgate unless I tell her. I learned with my first lab that joints wear out jumping in and out trucks. She weighs about 60 lbs and have never been fat.
She gets two cups of food a day. Recently we noticed she wasn’t eating the hard food so we now wet it and mix in half of can of wet. Cleans it up.
Her drive to receive or for birds has never waived in the years. She is 100% about retrieving. In my canvas tents ,she sleeps at the bottom of my cot all night. And only gets up when I do.
All in all she is happy , content hunting partner and companion. As I have said before she is a better dog than I deserve. From the looks of it we have a few more years left together.
She will be my last lab and maybe my last dog. At 73 I too am slowing down. And like her my heart is all for it, but sometimes my body says nah.
So here’s to good breeders like Ireland Farms, and good dogs.
