Christopher Nemitz

How was my life affected through social media while working in rural Georgia over the last 4 months?

Let’s start from the beginning for those that have just tuned in and are about to follow along. On January 1^st 2015 I started my journey that would take me all over the state of Georgia and even around all of north Florida and all the way down to Lake Okeechobee. I was working as an assistant trainer/bird technician for a large retriever hunt test and field trial training kennel that is located out of Monticello Minnesota.

My journey actually began in November of 2013 when I saw an ad on RetrieverTraining.net when Hidden Acres Retrievers was looking to add an assistant trainer to their program. I responded to the ad and was offered a job training young dogs in obedience and beginner retriever work. When the time came to travel down to Georgia for the first winter trip I was gung-ho and set out on the open road ready to train some dogs. However, this ambition was short lived. When I arrived in Georgia I didn’t pull into a typical plantation style setting with peach trees and pecan orchards all over the place. Instead I pulled in to southwest Georgia and all there was, was picked cotton fields as far as you could see. The first week started off horribly. It rained, and rained, and rained some more. The weather was cold, we didn’t get much training done, and I was living out of a cheap motel. Quite the culture shock for someone who had only been south of the Mason Dixon Line once before in his life and that was to go to Disney World. Needless to say, I didn’t last long. After two weeks I pulled up camp and went back home. That was my first go ‘round at training dogs.

Let’s fast forward to June of 2014. I was working as a groundskeeper at the local golf course when I got that all so familiar text message from the head trainer at Hidden Acres. It read “Yo”. I just had to shake my head and laugh, thinking to myself “what the hell does this guy want?” So I asked Marc what was going on and he said they were looking for some more help for the summer and was wondering if I wanted to give the dog thing another shot.  Of course I couldn’t refuse an offer of getting to go play with dogs every day.

So I gave my two weeks’ notice, packed up my dog and my belongings and headed to Monticello to train dogs. The summer started off great, I was getting to train dogs, spend my days outside in the sun and having a great time. Sure, days were long, and there was the typical grunt work that had to be done around the kennel to keep it looking nice and keep the training grounds usable but overall it was a good time. I got to do a lot of training, and my dog was advanced very quickly in his training and we were able to start running senior hunter hunt tests. I love the feeling of showing up on weekends full of that confidence that were are here to take down some tests and collect ribbons. I loved showing off Kirby’s “swag” and being one of the best dogs week in and week out. I got to go all around Minnesota running tests and meeting new people and getting to experience what the dog life was all about. I had no idea it was as involved as it is before I really got serious into training and found out about hunt tests and field trials.

As the summer came and went fall rolled around. I was asked to go on the winter trip starting at the end of October, but with a busy fall semester and of course hunting season, I pushed back my trip to January 1^st. So I spent my fall doing school work, and hunting… And I mean hunting A LOT! I hunted probably four days a week. The only thing that would have made my season better was if I had had Kirby there with me picking up all my ducks and geese I shot.

Shoot, I almost forgot. I got my new puppy River the last week of October and was very excited to get started training her! She was a little pud when I brought her home and was such a ball of fire. She was going to be my real field trial dog. Her daddy won the 2014 National Amateur Retriever Championship and hopefully someday she can follow in his footsteps.

As the season changed from fall to winter I was getting the itch to head south. January couldn’t come soon enough! Finally the time had arrived! I packed my truck and headed to Monticello to pick up a couple puppies and supplies from the kennel and I was on my way out of the cold and snowy weather of the Midwest.

My journey was mostly uneventful, except for a couple days while traveling through the St. Louis area. I had to pick up a client dog just on the west side of St. Louis and was then going to get a hotel in the area to crash for the night before I finished the second leg of my trip the next day. Upon recommendation from a very nice police officer I was advised I probably shouldn’t stay overnight in that area of town. He recommended heading downtown St. Louis where there is a casino and quite a few hotels. The activity keeps it a pretty safe area of the city. He did warn me not to cross the river though to the east. That is when you start running into towns such as Ferguson where all the Michael Brown uproar took place. So, we stopped downtown and I aired dogs and got them all fed and watered. Finally I got done with them around midnight and headed up to bed. The next morning I was outside by 6:00 taking care of my dogs again when all of a sudden animal control arrived and wanted to seize custody of the four dogs I had with me. Apparently there is a city ordinance that prohibits leaving a dog inside and unattended vehicle. Now, it wasn’t 90 degrees outside, nor was it below freezing. It was about 50 degrees overnight and all the dogs were fine. They were left alone for 6 hours at most. I sweet talked my way out of any tickets or getting the dogs taken from me and was on my way again.

When I arrived in Georgia, rural, southwest Georgia, it was dark and very very muddy since they just had a lot of rain. My GPS took me down a wrong turn and took me in to some back field road that was flooded out and I almost buried my truck in a swampy area. Luckily I was able to back myself out and get back to the black top. A little more driving around down dirt roads and I finally arrived to winter camp in Georgia! Finally!!

I soon came to realize this winter trip would be nothing close to what working at the main kennel was like in the summer. We worked sun up, to sun down. Every single day. I was outside every morning by 6:45 by myself, starting puppy chores. I fed, and cleaned up after puppies alone every morning. Surprisingly just as I finished up with that the other two trainers happened to be walking out the door with a hot cup of coffee in each of their hand. No time for me to head back in for a short break as now it was time to take care of the big dogs. They aired for about half hour then I was on poop duty and had to go pick up dog crap for the next 15 minutes. Now it was time to go have a quick breakfast. Usually consisting of a bagel or some granola.

Around 9:00 the training started. I went and worked 12 puppies, doing obedience training and starting collar conditioning and getting them to retrieve. It was fun, for about the first 3 or 4 puppies, then it got to be annoying having puppies with muddy paws jumping all over and scratching and just being puppies. I couldn’t get mad because they didn’t know any better, they were, after all, just puppies. Around noon we would finish up our drill work and head out to the field to run marks with the big dogs. My main job was to sit out in a chair and throw birds for 26 dogs every single day. No big deal, I got a good tan, and got to spend a lot of time on my phone texting my family and trying to keep up with what was happening back home.

After a couple months my phone usage went down and I seemed to disconnect with reality more and more. I was getting burnt out and all I wanted to do was go back to bed. It got to the point where I began to just go through the motions and I quit giving a crap about my job, my dogs, and even my friends and family back home. I needed a pick me up. So I took a week off and flew back to Minnesota to see everyone and it was a very much needed break. When I was home I realized I had no clue what was going on in society. Working outside, all day, every single day really disconnects someone from reality and I couldn’t keep up with the news at all.  I felt refreshed and was ready for a strong push to finish off the winter trip.

I got back to Georgia and that feeling of refreshment went away after the first week. It was go time and training was getting grueling. We were in the field by 8:00 every morning now throwing marks and really hammering home concepts on these trial dogs as we were about to run the gauntlet of 6 weeks of trials every single weekend. No breaks, no days off. It was tough. We started off with three weeks of trials around our winter camp and then packed up and started the push home.

This is where the fun really started….. NOT. Going through the mountains in Tennessee and Kentucky with an overloaded F-150 was not a good idea. I had a large dog topper on my truck and was pulling an 8 hole dog trailer. The toll of winding roads, steep inclines and declines finally made my truck crack. As we were going 90 miles per hour down the interstate my front end started walking and throwing us back and forth on the highway. Luckily we were able to get stopped on time without a major wreck on our hands. A call to a tow truck and being lucky enough to find a mobile mechanic that could fix my truck that same night yet was a God send. The bearings in my front right hub were shot and the tire was about to fall off my truck. My CV joint busted and snapped my axel, my ABS sensor burnt up and locked all the brakes up on my vehicle and they all needed to be replaced. Needless to say, $1,500 in parts and labor later, we were able to get back on the road. On the bright side, I guess I now have a whole new front end on my truck. Always have to look at the good in things, or you’ll never survive. That’s one thing I am taking away from this whole experience.

The next day we made it to Paducah Kentucky to train. We ran a nice set up and the dogs did fairly well on it. In our rush to leave I had to turn around with my truck and this heavy trailer on some wet ground… Yep you guessed it. Buried. By this point in the trip I wanted to say F it all and drop the trailer and drive home. However, I stuck it out, we got the truck and trailer pulled out, and were able to finish off the rest of our trip to Sedalia, Missouri. From the start of this trip I had not hardly been on my phone, or did any sorts of accessing the internet or keeping up with any news or social media. I was pretty much oblivious to the outside world.

We stayed in Sedalia (about an hour east of Kansas City) for 8 days. Ran a trial on the weekend we arrived then stayed to train on some property all week before heading to Nebraska for the last trial of our winter trip. About this time the whole Baltimore riots began to heat up and here I was, sitting in rural Missouri and Nebraska, no idea what was going on.

When I arrived home that’s all I saw on TV and in the newspapers and all I heard about when people would talk. This is when I realized how much I had missed while not being active through social media, or being able to read a newspaper or watch more than a couple minutes of TV every few days. It was a real shock to me. And in all actuality. I loved it. I loved not having to hear about how shitty it seems our country is becoming. I loved not having to see the way human beings were acting like animals with no regards to anyone’s wellbeing or anything other than their own selfish actions.

While social media kept me in the loop in the beginning of my trip, I disconnected about halfway through and I’m glad I did. I realize now that I don’t need all this technology to survive. Or to function in this world. I liked the simplicity of the lifestyle I got to experience.

I guess I didn’t completely disconnect from all social media. I did use my phone to take a lot of pictures and those I will share. Most of them are all dog training related but being able to experience parts of the southeast that I would have never even thought of going to see was a really cool experience and probably one only I can say I did.

We are coming to the end of our winter trip. Packing has started and preparation to leave has begun. We are leaving next week to head to Missouri to run the Kansas City Retriever Club field trial then train there for a week. After training in Missouri we are headed to Illinois to run the River King field trial before we finally head back to home base in Minnesota. Even though we are prepping to leave we are still hitting the training hard.

Here are some blinds we have run the past couple of weeks.

This first blind the objective was a long angle entry, drive over the first point and up over the second point as well. Then the goal was for the dog to swim down the shore parallel before it got out of the water for the end of the blind.

This blind I ran at the Snowbird Retriever Club field trial. A short angle entry, then dog has to clip the left hand point then the blind is at the end of the point on the right hand side. Very tough blind.

This next aerial picture is of a blind drill we ran called a "Tune Up Drill". The goal of this drill is to keep the dogs honest and balanced on their water attitudes. The dogs clip land on each of these blinds to teach them it is OK to get out of the water and get back in. This drill helps the dogs water attitude because they are run for multiple days and the dog can just run by the third day and hopefully do the blind very well without having to think too much about getting in trouble. Very low pressure drill.

The next picture is of the marks we ran today. The left hand mark was the go bird and it was a live shot flyer. The right bird was the memory bird angled back from one piece of land, over the water on to the next piece of land. Very tough bird for dogs to get.  The flyer was thrown left to right, and the memory bird was thrown right to left.

I missed out on a few weeks of blogging but we have been extremely busy in preparation for a strong finish to our winter trip here in Georgia. Team Hidden Acres has place THREE dogs on the national derby list and we currently sit in 3rd place nationally for derby points by a professional kennel!! This is HUGE for us since we are only running 4 dogs. The top two kennels have 14 and 9 dogs respectively. We are competing against the toughest competition week in and week out. I think we are all ready to head back to Minnesota and get that success flowing back home! It will be great advertising cleaning up those ribbons in MN!

I have been running Kirby in the qualifying stakes and he is doing fantastic. Me on the other hand... Not so much. The last 4 trials we have run I have screwed up on the water blind and we haven't made it back to the 4th series. A lack of experience is all it is and we will work through it. Much more a team game than people think. We both have to be firing on all cylinders to make it happen.

I have been accumulating a lot of training pictures of our set ups that last couple of weeks and will share a few with you.

These are some marks we ran last week. Been doing a lot of cheaty water work. Dogs are really showing how hard we are working in training come trial day. The dogs never lie.

Great news from the Hidden Acres South kennels the past couple of weeks. We have put a dog on the derby list! Doc, our Golden Retriever received a 2nd place and a 3rd place last weekend and made the national derby list. It requires 10 points to make the derby list and Doc now has 13 points. We are having a great winter trip with the derby dogs. Doc is on the list, and the 3 others are all within 2 points of making it! Ice has 9 points and has one more week before she ages out of derbies so hopefully she can pick up that last point this weekend and make our second dog on the list. Clyde has 8 points and ages out in late August. Finally, Larry, has 8 points and ages out in May. This would be a HUGE accomplishment for us to go 4 for 4 with these derby dogs all making the list. Making the derby list with one dog is extremely difficult, and being this close with 4 is an extremely big accomplishment. We are just starting another young dog running derbies too. Eli, he is just barely over a year old so he has a long time to compete yet (can not be over 2 years old to run derbies).

I took a week of some much needed R&R this week and flew back to Minnesota to see my family and friends. This was much needed and will definitely give me a second wind to finish off our winter trip strong, both mentally, and physically.

We are on our third week in a row of trials. This week I am taking Kirby down to Miccosukee Florida to run the North Florida Qualifying on Friday. Marc is taking the derby dogs to Pavo Georgia to run the Tallokas deby on Friday, then on Saturday he is taking the derby dogs down to Miccosukee for the North Florida derby.

I have been getting into Kirby quite a bit this week as training standards needed to be raised and he is responding OK to it. Hopefully with the excitement and adrenaline of the trial he will be loosed up just enough to be on his game.

With the nice weather we have been having we are taking advantage of it and hitting the water pretty hard. We are running both water set ups and land set ups each day. Here are a few examples of what we did.

The first picture is a blind. The objective of this blind was for the dog to take a long angle entry into the water. There are three points of land in this blind that the dog/handler team needs to navigate. The first point is on the left just after the entry. The dog must swim past this point and through a channel of water. The next point is about halfway through the blind on the right side and the dog must swim past this point also. Finally, the third point is about three fourths of the way into the blind and the dog must get on the point, then get back in the water to finish the blind successfully. The qualifying level dogs were ran on this blind cold. The derby dogs had a white bucket marking the end of the blind.

 This was a water marking test we set up on Monday. The marks were thrown left (75 yards) right (150 yards) middle (300 yards). The dogs had to clip a sliver of water on the left hand bird. Then the right hand bird was thrown. Dogs had to fight factors of not squaring the bank to the left and ending up behind the gun, and not giving into the factor of swimming and cheat out early on the right side. Finally the middle bird was through the middle of the pond, drive up passed the right hand gun and go get the bird. Sounds easy, but was quite difficult because we retired this gun and he was not visible to the dogs when they exited the water. Was a very good test and would have been a real killer if it was ran as a true triple.

Another busy week here in Georgia, as will be next week. We are on week 2 of a 3 week stretch with trials each weekend and a lot of traveling to each stake and back to the other to run all the dogs. This weeks trials are held in Americus Georgia, and Leesburg Georgia. While they are not far from our kennel down here there is constant running back and forth between the two trials. The Americus trial is being held by the Southwest Georgia Retriever Club. And the Leesburg trial is being held by the Tall Pines Retriever Club.

Yesterday was a big day for us here at the kennel. One of our very own placed 2nd in the Qaulifying stake and is now Qualified All Age. Congratulations to owner Mike Wilson, trainer Marc Patton, and the rest of the Hidden Acres crew on getting Dominator's Slapshot "Puck" qualified all age!

Today we start over again and I'm hoping to have a good day with Kirby and bring home some color too! Getting two young dogs qualified all age in the same weekend would be huge for us! Hopefully we get it done!

Wish us all luck! I'll be sure to post results tomorrow!

This week is a trial week for us so it is pretty busy. We are running a lot of set ups each day but they are confidence building set ups. A lot of singles and very few multiples are being thrown. We have four derby dogs that are running this weekend and they are all looking pretty good. It is a fine balance between getting the derby dogs prepared for the trial this weekend and keeping the qualifying dogs in check and tight enough for the preparation of next week's trial. With the big dogs we ran the same set of marks but we added a tough blind to run after the marks.

Kirby is looking pretty good, with the exception of his obedience. Due to the confidence building we are doing with the dogs his head has gotten a little big and he doesn't think we need to work as a team right now. So the next couple of days I will be focusing on keeping him in check and tone him down a bit. I am looking forward to our next trial as I am quite pleased with how Kirby is looking and would really be ecstatic with a Q win or 2nd place finish. This is very important to me as he would be one of only a handful of pointing labs to achieve QAA status and would be a very popular stud dog.