Training an HPR

[lagopus]

I have just started going to a trainer with my large munsterlander.

Haven't heard them called 'wiries' before Bill

[Lynn]

Hi Wullie

Do you have contact details for Guy Bagshaw.

I am shortly to take on a HWV having lost my Lab to cancer and would like a good HPR trainer reasonably close to me.

Thankks

Tony

Karen, Think Wullie was replying to this
ps: you aren't concentrating Karen - too excited thinking about the HPR Championship

[trekmoor]

Hi Wullie

Do you have contact details for Guy Bagshaw.

I am shortly to take on a HWV having lost my Lab to cancer and would like a good HPR trainer reasonably close to me.

Thankks

Tony

My post using the word "wiries" was in response to this one .... HWV.

Munsties ain't wiries ....... they have no brain cells to connect to !

Wullie

[lagopus]

Hadn't realised it had changed person
Lynn I don't think excited is the word I would use. Reckon that would take more than a nip of rum!

[Greymaster]

I would recommend that you commit to training with Steve Kimberley if you really want to achieve anything HPR style with your dog. What Wullie has cautioned will come to pass if you train the initiative out of the dog, and Steve will be able to set you on the right path.

[trekmoor]

Best of luck in the Champs Karen ....wonder how many dogs will be competing ? I also wonder which breeds will be competing ?

I think it will be one Munsty, one Brittany, one or maybe two GWHP's and the rest maybe G.S.P.'s ? I look forward to knowing for sure. Whatever you do Karen do not overtrain for it just before the trial.

Wullie

[lagopus]

Thanks Bill

[Goffy]

It may be worth looking at some one off training sessions/events, these are usually full days or weekends and cover most aspects required of HPR work. Also you will be in a group of other HPR handlers of similar standard. This will be more cost effective than travelling weekly to a HPR trainer. And stay with the local retriever man for bread and butter retrieving, you will also be was able to advise him on the type of retrieves you need. Rory holds plenty of these days, also look at Alex friar she arranges training dates with trainers.
Jan

[trekmoor]

I knew nothing about training HPR's when I began with these breeds. I bought a brittany out of a desire to have a dog to find birds for me to shoot that I could send a lab for in preparation for retriever trials. It didn't take long for my interest to change from labs to HPR's. I was not impressed by the couple of books I looked at about how to train HPR's ...... especially as I knew one of their authors and his own dogs were as wild as hawks !

I already had a good idea of how to train labs to field trial standards so what I did was read books on how to train spaniels to trial standards and pointers and setters to trial standards. They were "specialist" books but if you put a retriever book, a spaniel book and a pointer/setter book together then you have a book written by experts in their fields. The main job left to me was to blend them all together with "real" dogs to achieve the standards I wanted.

Wullie

[crackerd]

Bill, why do you reckon HPRs over there can be so difficult to train up? Or to train up whilst retaining their "style" and enhancing their natural abilities?

What Jan's described below is the template for NAVHDA in N. America - and the last of her entreaty, re the "retriever man" is the way an increasing number of them are going these days. Retrieving carrying more weight in NAVHDA's ultimate annual event, "the Invitational" which awards VCs* to dogs that get through it with flying colours.

It may be worth looking at some one off training sessions/events, these are usually full days or weekends and cover most aspects required of HPR work. Also you will be in a group of other HPR handlers of similar standard. This will be more cost effective than travelling weekly to a HPR trainer. And stay with the local retriever man for bread and butter retrieving, you will also be was able to advise him on the type of retrieves you need. Rory holds plenty of these days, also look at Alex friar she arranges training dates with trainers.

* Versatile Champion titles, not Victoria Crosses.

MG