Tuesday May 22 – Flight B – Test 3 – "Three in the Air"

"Three in the Air" is a Land/Water Triple with a Water Blind and an Honor. The mat faces a spit of land that has water on both sides. The far end of the spit connects with a large sloping field. Upon the Judge's signal, the handler heals the dog emerging from the holding blind and sits the dog in front of the holding blind and then the handler retreats back into the blind – a "remote sit." The first bird thrown to the left comes from the far right corner of the left hand pond. This bird lands in the water close to shore in the middle of a peninsula 83 yards from the line. At the end of the spit on the far shore of the left-hand pond, a dead drake is thrown to the left, landing in the water near a patch of reeds and a group of geese and mallard decoys 61 yards out. The bird station for bird #3 is at the far end of the land bridge throwing from the far left corner of the pond down the shore to the right. This duck lands on the far shore 51 yards from the line.

After all three birds are retrieved, the handler lines the dog up for a blind. The line to the 50 yard blind is under the arc of the last bird down. Cutting the left corner of the right side pond, the blind is picked up on the far shore. At the end of the test, there is an honor to the left of the working dog. This is a long test, taking between 10-11 minutes per dog.

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

When we arrived at this test in the late morning, it was well-underway. The gallery was huddled under canopies trying to find any amount of shade they could in the 85+ degree sweltering afternoon. They agreed that this was a good solid test. The "money bird" was close to the end of the point and the dogs had to dig out the second bird from the decoys. The Go-bird sets the test on the opposite pond as the dogs need to swing around 180 degrees from that mark to pick up the other two marks. And finally, the blind is under the arc of that bird.

The gallery felt that this was a good test with good decoy placement. The wind was right to left and not being favorable in any way to the dogs. After the birds return with the go-bird, there is not much for them to see with the low-floating birds and a pond dotted with decoys. For the third long bird, they practically had to swim right up to the bank on the far shore to scent the bird: it helps for the dog to get on the far shore bank in order to be downwind and get their bird.