I made the trip to Bayard to pick up Punch yesterday.  I picked up Matt Gideon and Steve Roe in Wood River.  Matt has his dog already with Chris and Steve took his dog out with us to start his training.

I was very impressed with the amount of time that Chris spent with me going over all of the training that Punch had been through, and what I should spend time on in the coming months. 

We started with the swim-by drill.  Very Cool.  We then worked on some cheating singles in the swim by pond.  We then moved to another pond and tested the swim-by with some difficult cheater singles.  He handled it great.

We worked our way over to where his assistants were setting up a marking test.  Chris handled him in a honor drill, then I got to handle him on the marks.  He drove out nice on the long bird  (275 yrds), but had an extended hunt, other than that he did great.

We finished up the day by running him through a pattern blind drill.  It was a long day a he was getting tired, but I could tell he knew the concept well.

I just hope I can build a nice house on the foundation that Chris and the crew at Flatlander Kennels laid for Punch!