Anyway, the day came and although I was feeling optimistic about our chances, Ranger had started to regress on his retrieving. I noticed this about 1.5 weeks before the test day. I tried to clean it up a little, but didn't want to put too much pressure on him right before the test. I knew this meant we were in a pass/fail situation, but still had day dreams of a prize 1.
The day of the test seemed to come suddenly even though I had been looking forward to it for months. I woke up at 3:30am and knew instantly I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. So I went ahead and gathered up our things and drove the hour out to the test site. I let ranger run around for about 1.5 hours in the dark to burn off some energy. By the way...that doesn't really work. He was so freakin amped in the field you would never know he already had some play time that day. Still it was good for me to watch the sunrise as we hiked the hill above the pond.
The test started with the field portion. I ran 4th. After I told the judges that they should just relax and have fun without worrying about the days outcome, I let Ranger loose to work the field. First bird went well. I had to whoa him hard after the shot (again...he was freakin amped), but he then held to release and retrieved the bird. The next bird...well, I saw him do better on his na test. As the judge instructed me to start veering to the right, Ranger took off to the left. About 100 yards away I saw he was getting birdy. I headed his way not wanting him to have to hold point any longer than necessary and saw a running chukar round a piece of sage brush and then saw Ranger give chase. The bird flushed, and he ran after. We were done.
We did have another solid point, only to have the bird not flush well due to the fact it was a bird that had been shot earlier. The judges decided to not count that bird.
I was pretty bummed, but figured it took some pressure off of the rest of the test. I didn't have anything riding on the test besides desiring a better hunting dog anyway.
The duck drag went well, but I had to step to him right before he dropped the bird. He also dropped the duck just short of me on the long retrieve. So we ended up with 2's in those. The duck search did not go as well as it had in the last half dozen training days, but I knew it wasn't going to be the low point of the day either. He searched well at first, but then came back and looked for instruction. I never resent him, but he also never ranged out again as much as I would have liked. Steadiness by the blind was good.
When the time to read scores finally came around, I held out a small chance that somehow we could eek out a prize 3, but felt that was a stretch. The verdict: a 138 prize 3. Now...don't misread this. Although I was very happy to not fail the test, I realize this is a very low prize 3. I know that Ranger has done better work in every category, but the biggest worry for the day was that he could put a whole test together without totally falling apart in one section or another. While it wasn't his best work in any category, he did manage to do well enough to not totally fall apart. It was a big victory for him and I in my very novice experience in dog training.
In the end I have a much better hunting dog than I had 3 months ago and really enjoyed the whole process. If you haven't ever run a dog in Utilty, I encourage you to try. It will push you to train more and harder. Plus, it's a ton of fun...sort of.
If you have read this far I have a challenge for you. After looking over all 2017 test results I did not see such a low passing UT score. If you run your dog in UT in 2019 and can figure out how to get a lower passing score (technically you can pass with a 90 prize 3), prove it and I'll send you $100



