Today is Rusty's 2nd birthday. I was going to give him a rest, especially since we woke up to warms temps and rain and with the forecast for T-storms later. But he whined and cried and tried to get me to let him out the entry door into the garage where the Jeep's parked ... he knows that it's one step closer to "loading up". I told a still sleeping Carol that Rusty was really bugging me to go and she said ... "take him then, it's his birthday, but I'm not hunting in the rain."

Watched the weather and looping radar for awhile and then decided we might have a couple windows where it wouldn't be raining that hard, so we headed out about 9:30. I told Rusty ... "ok boy, only because it's your birthday ... if we're lucky, a couple ducks and we're heading back home, I promised to help mommy with the tree this morning ... fair deal?"

I saw more big flights in 30 minutes than we've seen in the last 4 hunts combined, and that's saying something. Heard large groups of Honkers and Specs but they were in the clouds and never saw them. Still lots of birds around our wetlands. We hunted from a pit blind that Rusty's never hunted from before and it has close to 60 yards of running depth water around it so he could have a few simple retrieves if we got lucky.

Within 15 minutes I had 2 single GW Teal down and Rusty made short work of each. As we were packing up to head out, a hen Gadwall responded to a mallard greeting and down she went. We were loaded and back homeward bound in less than 30 minutes in total. Unfortunately, I left the camera on the work bench in the garage when we left home. Could have has a couple nice action pics ... as the Gadwall was a swimmer/diver and gave Rusty a little challenge at first.

Did get a pic taken with the appreciative birthday boy when we got home. Kinda surprised him what we were serving for lunch.





The traditional Birthday party with cake, ice cream and presents will be tonight.

Very nice Jim!

WE saw several groups of birds moving as well!

J.J.

happy b-day Rusty

And another happy B day from the Sallysue family

IM new to the site what Kind of dog is that?

A duck dog.


Labradoodle = Labrador Retriever x Standard Poodle

Standard Poodles are also retrievers

Good quick hunt. Hope yall have a fun time tonight.

They are the original retriever.

Well done timberbird!

It's so nice to have a new member who knows their Retriever history!

Your new Daddy welcomes you to your new world, little fella ...



Have to say goodbye to your Mom, Dad and grandparents ...



You'll have to learn from your new big brother and sister ...





You'll have to learn to do what the other big dawgs do ...



And even how to sleep with the oldest dawg ...



And then one day in the not too distant future, it will seem like all of a sudden, you will have become an honest-to-goodness duck dawg too regardless of what the uninformed think about Labradoodles ...

Cappy, what is your source for those frisbees?

Happy birthday Rusty!

Walmart, Pet Smart & Petco. Buy the ones with the rubber exterior ring rather than the light plastic tubing. The ones with the nylon fabric sail the best but the dawgs chew them up faster. So as soon as they start getting worn, we use some 1000 denier camo fabric to "re-upholster" them. We have several dating back to 2004 that have been recovered twice.

The frisbees are the "Happy Bumpers" for the dawgs and they absolutely love being able to try to catch them in mid flight. Old dawgs, medium ones and even pups learn to love them!







plus ... the grandkids never get tired of throwing them ...

Looks like someone had a good day.

Happy B day Rusty.




hehe

Super cool story. Happy B day Rusty!

Rusty is a cool dawg.

Thanks. I'll have to give those places a look. Whipple has one that she absolutely loves and it's about shredded. Problem is we've had it for years and have no clue where we got it.

happy late BDAY Rusty. nice dog