Thursday May 24 – Flight A – Test 5 – "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" is a Water Triple with a Water Blind and a Land Blind using all dead birds. Handlers will be facing this water test with a slight south wind at their back. It promises to be a warm day with "feels like temperature" near 95 degrees. This is a good day to work water. The test starts with a  mark to the far left of the test thrown to the right at 97 yards, landing on the base of a point. The middle bird is thrown to the left at 110 landing on the far shore. The dog must enter the water swim across and over the same point from the first mark and swim to the far shore to retrieve the bird. The third bird on the right is a 150 degree turn and is shot and thrown to the left at 60 yards.

After the dogs have picked up the three marks, there are two blinds to run by invitation. The Judges instructed the handlers that they can be run in any order. For the Land Blind, the dog will turn to the right and follow along the land side of the shoreline for a 45 yard land blind under the arc of the right-hand mark. The Water Blind is run to the right of the middle mark. It should provide some interesting suction from the marks when working to get this blind. The line to the blind is to the right of the middle mark, but this time the dog has to swim past the point of the first mark was on. He has another point to negotiate on the right before getting his bird. Some challenging angles will keep handlers and dogs on their toes on this test that is taking approximately 12 minutes per dog to complete.

The credit for the test diagrams goes to Terry Elliot – Thank you, Terry!

This water triple and double blind proved to be a challenging test. The first bird is on the left thrown to the right onto a peninsula. The Test Dog did not wind the fall area, reentered the water on the other side and had to be handled back to the bird.The line to the second mark is to go across the peninsula where the left bird was thrown and picked up. These two marks are "pinched" together. A "splash" go-bird is the third mark. 

The blinds are by invitation only with no specification on which one to pick up first. For the water blind, the peninsula that the first bird is thrown on makes a point about 50 yards out on a line to the blind. This acts as a place for dogs to wrap around or get behind and you may need to cast off or away from the point. The land blind runs along the shore and you must keep the dog on land while keeping them on a direct line to the blind to get the bird.