There are 46 dogs back to this final series of Flight A. When we arrived this morning, it was 43 degrees with both a brisk wind and water current moving from right to left. The mat for this test is located beside a long and fairly narrow stream that is filled with large smooth rocks and mud flats. The mat is on a point that juts out slightly into the water. The handler faces down the left shoreline.
Bird #1 is directly in front of the handler. This long bird is launched to the right from a well-brushed blind on to the next point landing 104 yards from the line. The handler and dog must turn 90 degrees to the right for bird #2. This bird is launched to the left, landing in brush on the far right shore at 45 yards from the line. The dog and handler then turn their attention back to the left-hand shore where bird #3 is launched to the right. This bird lands just short of a shallow island of rocks in the middle of the stream. It is approximately 25 yards in front of the line and crosses the line to both bird #1 and the line to the water blind.
The Land Blind is on the far left side of this test. The line to this blind parallels the left shoreline and continues out to the left. The dog must cross a path and find his bird on a small mound marked with an orange ribbon at 45 yards.
The Water Blind is straight down the stream on a line that runs between bird #1 and bird #3. The correct line to this blind takes the dog over the left end of the small rock island. They must navigate through other rocks to the tip of a point that is 114 yards from the line.
We watched 11 dogs do this test. There were six handles, one pick-up and one break on the marks. Two or three dogs had trouble navigating the water blind. The long bird posed the greatest challenge to the handler in this test. Many of these handles were used by handlers who had one to spare and wanted to make sure they picked up the last bird of the 2019 MAI.
