Now I had to stop using pigeons and expose him to chukar for the first time. Pigeons were available 10 minutes from home for $2 a piece. Chukar were an hour away and $7 a bird; I arranged to get a cage to hold a few birds so I could buy 6 or 8 birds to use over the course of week. His first exposure came near Grafton ND; when a few of us joined a friend for a training day. We planted the birds and several dogs were having problems finding them. Brewer was no exception, he didn't find a single bird, even being at the end of a check cord 3 feet away. I took him home and threw a frozen chukar around the backyard. I then took him out and tried again. This time the light went off and he was pointing chukar with the same intensity he had pointed pigeons with earlier. Was I relieved! In total he would see fifteen chukar before his test. In total the first season he would have about 35 birds planted for him.

He was already entering the water readily, without any coaxing, so I wasn't concerned there either.

Now we needed to train for the pheasant track. He'd already showed he could track; now he needed to learn the NAVHDA way. I bought a pheasant, took him out and ran him on the last chukar he would see before his test. Then I put him away and grabbed the pheasant. I took Dennis' advice and didn't render the bird flightless; I did tie a piece of string around one leg in the hopes of recovering and re-using the bird. I held the pheasant down, made a feather pile and shooed the bird off. It took him 10 minutes to finally get out of sight. I brought brewer to the feather pile and he didn't show much interest at all. Once released he started hunting again, didn't track at all. I put him away then went back and tried to flush the pheasant, which I did. I then recovered it when the string got tangled in a tree on flush. More advice from Dennis and a new approach .I took a frozen chukar out and showed it to the dog, then I crated him. I took the chukar into the backyard, created the feather pile and dragged it around the corner of the house, a whopping 10 yard drag. This time Brewer was zoned in on the pile, he tracked the drag line and retrieved the chukar. I would repeat this process two more times with pheasants out in the field. Both times he nailed the drag and retrieved the bird. A day before we were leaving for Bismarck, I planned to take the live pheasant and release it for him to track. To my dismay, the pheasant was dead. He wouldn't get a chance to track a live bird before his test. I wasn't too worried though, he was already associating the feather pile with a bird at the end.

Before testing him, it was important to me that I get him out hunting; I wanted to test a hunting dog. So we volunteered to participate in the Manitoba youth hunt mentor program. We'd be out a full week ahead of waterfowls opening day by doing so.

As the first flock of 10-12 teal buzzed the decoys, both kids stared and said, look at the ducks! No shots fired. After a quick pep talk about "less talking, more shooting", they started to get the hang of things. Brewers first retrieve in a hunting situation was a green wing teal. He swam the 40 yards, made the retrieve and right back to me with his prize. He's a duck dog now!

The second bird down was a blue wing teal. This would be his first "highlight retrieve" in his hunting log. As he approached the duck ,it dove on him. He was again about 40 yards out in open water. He spun around looking to see where his prize went. As he did the duck surfaced right in front of him, and dove again. This time he dove with it, no duck, no dog for 3-5 seconds. We finally saw the duck pop up with the dog right behind it, or rather, in his mouth! I couldn't believe it, neither could anyone else. I've learned to never under estimate him, he seems to do something special every time out. In total the boys shot 5 ducks that day, Brewer made all five retrieves.

Now it was test time!  Honestly it was a little tough getting excited for it when all I kept thinking was, "we could be hunting right now" But the 7 hour drive did get me thinking in the right direction. We camped out near the test site, and were on time the next morning.

The field portion of the test was first. We scheduled to run 9th of 9, but ended up running 8th with a dog in heat running behind us. We waited a long time for our turn to come up. When our turn came we walked out listened to the judges, and we were off. Two minutes into the field Brewer goes on point, about 50 yards in front of us. This was his first time on birds without being check corded into them. He held point until we got there, and thru flush. To my surprise, Brewer was steady to flush. He would go to have 7 contacts in twenty minutes in the field. On last bird he pointed, the senior judge moved ahead of him to make sure there was a bird there, then had me carry him off.

Next was the track. It was a warm day as we watched the dogs before us track with varying degrees of success. I asked that they show him the bird before taking it out to the judges. He almost bit it's head off when the birds head was pointed at him out of the bag. We walked out and waited to hear the judges instructions. I then grabbed him by the collar, as we'd done in training; and led him to the feather pile. he was pulling away from me as we hit the first and second feather pile. When I released him he kept that nose to the ground and went to the edge of the bush and in. He appeared again briefly to chase a bunny out, then turned around and went back in again. I was then asked to call him in, we were done.

The water portion of the test went off without a hitch. He charged right in after both bumpers, like he'd done hundreds of times before.

Now we just had to wait until the judges added up the scores. When it was all said and done, Brewer had scored a perfect score,  Prize 1 112 at just 5.8 months of age. I later heard how Wirehairs are generally slow to develop; I'm glad Brewer didn't know that. His training for the track really only ended up having him associate the pile with a bird at the end, pure DESIRE.