Mark,

I hunted over Tacktor (aka Dreamworks Yosemite) for the first time today at Wing & Barrel Ranch in Sonoma. He did great for a 6 month old pup! Look at the intensity on this first chukar retrieve (see photo). He made 6 more pheasant and chukar retrieves to hand after this one.

My daughter Tyra and I worked with him all summer in California, Utah, and Pennsylvania and had him retrieving well even in deep water out to about 40 yards by 4 months.

Then Mike Sutsos at Black Point (now Wing & Barrel Ranch) had him for a month of intensive work on upland pointing and retrieving in August. Mike said he’s the best pudelpointer he has ever trained.

I will take him back to Utah to chase sage grouse and partridge in a couple weeks with my dad. Then it’s duck and quail season in California followed by pheasant and prairie grouse in South Dakota.

Thanks again for a great dog!

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It’s been almost a year now since my daughter Tyra picked “Tacktor” (aka Dreamworks Yosemite) from your Y litter last spring and it’s been a busy, sometimes challenging, but overall great year.  He took to hunting very well at a young age, and spent the whole season in the field with me after a month of training last summer with Mike Sutsos introducing him to birds and gunfire after Tyra and I had laid a foundation in obedience and retrieving.

So I have him entered in the NAVHDA Great Central Valley Chapter Natural Ability Test in April, which is a couple weeks away now.  Just wanted to ask if there’s anything you’d recommend working on before then with him? I’ve never done any testing or trialing before, just hunting, so I’m new to this.

He’s a great dog, about full-sized now at just over 50 pounds, and he loves to hunt.  He will also sit happily at place with my 3 year old daughter hugging him for hours, so a great all around companion (except on the occasional days he decides to chew up his dog house while nobody is watching!)

He has hunted with me extensively this past season in California, Utah, and South Dakota and he made about 100 retrieves including upland and waterfowl.  He’s a great little retriever on land and in the water–even in open sea water on the San Francisco Bay!  And his searching and pointing has gotten very good this season, too.

I’ve been fortunate to hunt over a lot of great dogs over the years, including some of Mike Sutsos’s terrific German wirehairs, Lou Pasqua’s national field trial champion German short-hairs, as well as all sorts of well-bred and well-trained Labradors, English setters, Brittanys, and Small Munsterlanders.  I wouldn’t trade Tacktor for any of them.

I haven’t seen enough pudelpointers in the field to know if they’re all this good or if your lines are just exceptional, but everyone who has seen Tacktor work this year has been very impressed (including Mike and Lou), both with his blind duck and snipe retrieves deep in the tules and with his enthusiasm finding, pointing, and retrieving pheasants, grouse, chukar, and quail in the fields and mountains.

His stamina and enthusiasm is amazing, too.  He has run in everything from 80 degree California heat in the early season to a frigid 9 degrees and a foot of snow in Utah in December in all kinds of terrain from coastal salt marshes to high alpine mountains.  On a typical day his GPS collar will record him running 10-20 miles and he really doesn’t get tired.

You breed some terrific dogs! Thank you.

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Thanks again for your efforts in breeding such fine lines of pudelpointers.  If you’re ever looking for a really tough, tireless, big-running dog that hunts hard, points well, and retrieves over a hundred gamebirds and waterfowl a season in everything from seawater to high mountain snowpack, let me know.  He could definitely be a good match for a talented, but softer female in a breeding program.

When I had him out last fall on the prairie with my friend Quentin, who is one of the top guides in South Dakota, Tacktor ran with Quentin’s South Dakota wild pheasant-trained Labs for 20 miles a day (according to his GPS collar) for two days in a row, then on the third day when the Labs needed a rest Tacktor went 30 miles and pointed both wild roosters and greater prairie chickens, both of which are said to be nearly impossible to hold on point after the end of October by all the locals in the Dakotas.  The last week of the waterfowl season I had him down at Oakland Land & Cattle in Los Banos and he retrieved two straight limits of green-winged teal for me and my friend Lt. Shawn Olague from DFW.  Four of the teal were cripples and he didn’t lose a single bird even though they were diving on him.

–Andrew