This AM I took my 12 year old GWP hunting. He as always been an excellent retriever. His age is telling on him as his hips are bothersome in spite of medication. I shot 4 mallard across an Oxbow and he retrieved 2 but the other two he refused. They were dead so it was not devastating from a waste point. He made two more nice retrieves on bird 5 & 6, when I shot the 7th bird he went to the water but did not retrieve but rather took the short course to the opposite shore. He refused to fetch that bird. A most dicouraging event as he has never done that since he was a puppy. Anyway time to look for the next dog I suppose. I would stay with the GWP but the gene pool is pretty shallow locally. The family are leaning towards a Golden while I think that I would prefer a Lab as I used to have and train those. I hunt waterfowl 30 days plus per year and work my dog in all seasons. Any comments re breed? It can be tough here in late October and then through to the end of the waterfowl season in mid Dec.. You may ask why I chose a GWP 12 years ago - lots of upland hunting as well. He has performed very very well and the day of his demise will be a sad one indeed.
