July 2016, Independence Day, Very, Very Consistent and Payment for being consistent…
Hornets! Bald Face hornets to be exact.
During the warm months I walk Gibson about 4 miles a night around town and we utilize our county fairgrounds for training. It is a nice facility for the county fair, mid west snowmobile championships, summer rabbit shows and horsemanship classes among a myriad of other uses. I like the corrals. With all the gates and pens I can release Gibson inside and he can chase his indestructible ball to his hearts content. He won’t chase real sheep, but he’ll chase that ball till he’s bleeding!
We also use the trees and shrubs on the property to train for bird hunting.
One of the sheep/pheasant moves we work on is the ‘ get around’.
The ‘get around’ is a move that I hybridized from a sheep book. The sheep dog is to get around to the other side of the sheep herd and move the sheep in what ever the desired direction the shepherd wants to go.
The way I use it is, I have Gibson ‘get around’ a likely looking patch of cover that may or may not be holding birds. The way I utilize the ‘get around’ is with Gibson on my left I give him the command, ‘get around’! He then swings around to the left of the cover, pine tree, clump of grass, what ever and stops at 12 o’clock opposite of me.
Then I give him the ‘find it’ command and he dives in searching for the bird. It works too. I missed all kinds of birds last year doing this. Ok, not that many, but I can remember 3 specific instances where he worked perfectly, the bird did what it was suppose to and I missed the bird.
The goal is to trap the bird between us in heavy cover and when Gib moves in the bird has to bust straight up and out of the brush. It is pretty cool when it works like it is suppose to.
Back to the Fairgrounds.
We utilize this facility every day. On one Tuesday there was a horsemanship class going on so we did not circle the corral like usual utilizing the large pine trees as training opportunities to practice the ‘get around’ move. There had to be 30 kids, some staff and that many horses, it was pretty busy, so we walked on.
So there we were back the next day and it was nice and quiet with no one else in the facility. We pulled up, hopped out and started to train. Like most dogs, Gib likes it when we get into a routine. We went to the right and started to practice the ‘get around’ move and practicing ‘jump’, when I wanted him to jump a log or other obstacle.
Everything was going good too. Right up until the last pine tree on the back side of the horse corral.
We were about thirty feet away and I had not given him the command yet. We just moved toward the tree… and BOOM!
I got nailed right between the eye’s by a Bald Face Hornet. Not once but twice and proceeded to punch myself in the face so hard I knocked my own glasses off of my own face. At the same instant two other Bald Face hornets stung me on the triceps muscle of my left arm.
I’M HIT! I just dropped to the ground and covered my face.
But they were not going for the dog. So I scrambled, army crawl style out of the strike zone.
But I lost my glasses. Now I was a good 60′ feet away, but when I would lift my face to look around those hornets would dive bomb my face and eye’s.
I tried sending Gib to get my glasses but he was looking at me like I was crazy. So as long as I kept my face down I was able to army crawl over and find my glasses. Then I had to army crawl about a hundred feet away before I was out of range.
I called the park office and the police and requested they go up and clear them out. I was really worried about all those kid’s and horses. Just imagine some little kid on a horse and the horse gets stung in the face. Not a pretty thought.
I did think though that it was a good thing that I went up there every day. It was a good thing it was me who got stung, I called, lot’s of folks wouldn’t.
We counted about a half dozen stings on my upper body.
I didn’t quite know what hurt worse, the stings or the punch to the face.
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