reflections and redirections

[trekmoor]

Hi Neil, If you mean the two men who offered to take me and Lady down to the Retriever Championships with them then the answer is I can no longer remember their names ! I think one of them is still in the land of the living though and is possibly still trialing. Both men came from the Inverness area and not from Forfar and both men were about the same age as me but I'm not telling anyone what age that is !

Here is the next instalment.
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As a test dog Lady was just next door to useless but Tessa was still a very good bitch. She had developed one fault over the years and that was that Tessa could no longer be trusted to always pick up the dummy if she thought there was game nearby.
In one test she was to go for a simple marked retrieve over shortish grass with just a few odd patches of higher, rougher grass about halfway out to the retrieve but the grass clumps were off by about 5 yards to one side from the "true line" of a dogs run out to the marked retrieve. They should not have interfered with the dogs mark. I was about 8th or 9th dog to do this test and I thought it looked a doddle. Tessa was the best marking dog I have ever owned and was also the best handling dog I have ever owned.

The dummy was thrown and Tessa was sent. She broke off hard to the right partway up her run out route , went into the rougher grass and flushed out a rabbit then promptly sat , spaniel fashion, to watch it run away. I waved my arm and she completed the rest of the retrieve in textbook fashion. I thought we'd lose a lot of marks but the test judge was an old gamekeeper with old fashioned ideas ! He gave Tessa full marks plus 2 !!! He told me he'd noticed the rabbit while setting up the test but had left it in it's couch ..." Just to see what would happen." He was scathing of any dog that would run straight past strong game scent ," Just to pick up a lump of canvas ." He was, in short, my kind of judge !!!
Tessa won that test mainly thanks to him though I don't think his "marking system" was very fair to the dogs that ran after Tessa had cleared the ground of rabbits, they had no chance to emulate her performance.

I think she competed in about 3 Interclub Tests and my club won all three of those tests. One of the individual tests held one sunny Sunday had the best rabbit distraction I have ever seen in a test ....... far better than the usual " elasticated rabbits." The competitors were all kept on the far side of a thick strip of trees and were called forward one by one to the judges. They were standing on a dead straight grassy track through the woods. At the end of the woods and the track about 50-60 yards away was a wire mesh fence and an upward sloping grassy field beyond it with a pile of hay bales on it.

From where we all were we could not see any of this but as the dogs were called forward one by one we could hear a lot of panicked whistling , some shouting and a lot of laughter from the judges and from the competitors who had already done this test and who could now get a laugh at the others still to take part.
I went forward when called for with my whistle at the ready.....it was obvious something unusual was going on over there ! I was informed by the judges that the retrieve was a mark over the fence that would fall in the grassy field that formed the slight slope of the hill. That was all I was told. A shot was fired , a dummy was thrown and Tessa was sent. She had that dummy well marked and went for it at full speed ahead. As she was in the air going over the fence , a remotely controlled "rabbit" which was really a sort of 4x4 model truck covered in rabbit skin with a rabbits tail attached to it's rear antennae was set in motion. It bumped and hustled over the short turf and then vanished into a deliberately made hole among the hay bales.

I blew stop and having made sure the rabbit was safely gone I then commanded Tessa to fetch the dummy which she did but not without first having a very thoughtful look at where the rabbit had gone. To me it looked and acted just like a rabbit and an awful lot of the dogs thought so too ! I now joined the other spectators to laugh at the misfortunes of the other handlers. One lab was really determined to get that rabbit . He was busy demolishing the pile of hay bales to get to it when the rabbit's "owner" intervened to save his very expertly operated model truck from being reduced to wheels and springs !

By the end of that Interclub Test two or three of the clubs were just about level as far as marks were concerned and it would all depend on the very last test as to which club won. Every point gained or lost counted and tensions began to rise among the handlers. I was the last member of my team to compete and it all came down to how well Tessa completed this test section.
The test was a blind retrieve during which the competitor and the judges stood in the bottom of a shallow valley . A dummy was placed on top of the plateau over the crest of the valley's slope. Neither the handler or the judges would be able to see if the dog was in the area of the dummy for neither they nor the handlers could see a damned thing. It was a test designed to see if the dogs would hunt a large area when told to by an unseen handler. The other competitors could, however, see every move the dog made for they sat on the grass of the other side of the little valley and had a high vantage point.

Tessa was sent for the dummy and over the crest of the little hill she went so I called out , "Hi Lost !" and hoped she found the dummy quickly up there. A few more seconds passed by but still Tess did not appear with the dummy or without it for that matter. I began to get anxious and repeated the "Hi-lost!" command in order to encourage her . One of the judges said not to worry too much about the time taken for it was a large field up there and the test was meant to see if the dogs would continue hunting.
After about 4-5 minutes of "Hi-losting" and worrying, Tessa came back over the hill crest with the dummy. "There ye are ," said the judge, "told you not to worry. I'll give you 18 out of 20 for that." I was the last dog to go and I thought the 18 points should be enough to ensure a win for my team so I rejoined the other competitors with a smile all over my face.
The other teams were not just smiling too, they were actually laughing ! My own team was looking distinctly dischuffed however so I asked what was wrong . Apparently, from the high view point of the competitors on the hillside ,it could be seen that Tessa had at once found the dummy but had looked at it and then blinked it. She then set off across that field, jumped the far fence and went to take a bloody good look at the hay bales where the "rabbit" had vanished during the first test in the morning !!! She'd remembered that rabbit for about 6 hours and despite not knowing that ground at all had somehow recognized she was within about 200 yards of it in the next field !

She'd ran all the way out there, took a good look and sniff at the hay bales then made the return journey casually picking up the dummy en-route back to me ! Neither I nor the judges had known she'd done that but when I collapsed in laughter my team mates weren't too pleased until I told them that because the judges hadn't seen what they'd seen, she had been given 18 points for the retrieve so we had won the test ! The other competitors thought I was joking at first but when they came to know this was true they too laughed ....or most of them did anyway !
Tests were "different" back then, folk seemed to have a better sense of what was funny !

In another Interclub Test a blind retrieve had been set up over about 100 yards of very rough grass and rashes galore plus a few little bushes. We were to send our dogs for this blind while all the competitors still to take part remained behind a little grassy hummock to ensure no dog could possibly see the dummy being placed. Back then handling was pretty much in it's infancy and that length of blind retrieve over that sort of ground was pretty well guaranteed to need a bit of extra handling on the dogs' way out to the retrieve. A fair amount of whistling and arm waving was the norm.

When it came to Tessa's turn she took my initial direction from heel perfectly as she almost always did , went out like a rocket all the way to the dummy with no deviation on her part and no handling on mine, picked up the dummy as if it was waving a flag at her and returned at the gallop. It was a "full marks" retrieve , no doubt about it but a couple of the judges did have doubts. They said no dog could do such a determined , fast outrun directly onto a blind retrieve among that degree of cover unless the dog had seen the dummy being placed. I was suspected of cheating.

One of the 4 judges had been over the pond looking at American gundog trials and he stepped in to say he'd seen American labs do blinds like that but Tessa was the first one he'd ever seen do it in Britain. The man was a highly respected "A" Panel judge so the other judges did not argue with him but they did go to the competitors still waiting to compete behind the hummock to ask if I'd moved away from them at any time prior to my retrieve. They told the judges I had been with them the whole time so Tessa was given full marks but the fact I'd been accused of cheating still rankled ! In fact I felt, though I did not say so, that the dogs who had also gained full marks after needing an extra command should maybe lose a point or two !

It was, I think, following that test that quite a few of the younger trial handlers came to me to ask how I trained dogs to do blinds. ...... Most trial handlers back then had never even heard of an "Obedience " arena Send-Away exercise which is all a blind retrieve really is except that a blind retrieve is often done over far greater distances with cover getting in the way and with a retrieve lying there as a reward at the end of it.

In a spaniel test I competed in with my cocker Charlie about 3-4 years ago ,he too did a blind retrieve that made one of the judges ask me if I'd cheated and had practiced with Charlie over the pre-set course during the night ! He was very suspicious ! ..... That was about 30 years later however so it can wait it's turn in this story.

Wullie

[ramona]

I love this thread! the stories are funny, witty, informative and well written. Thank you for taking the time to write these 'episodes', it is much appreciated.

cheers

Ramona

[trekmoor]

It was at about this period in time that I began to take a different direction in my life again but I did not know that or intend that at the time. I felt I was not making the best use of the farm I had to shoot over . The farm was a hill farm of several hundreds of acres of mainly rough grass and rashes with a few patches of poor quality heather near it's far end.
Geese came into that farm by the hundreds to feed either on the pasture land or on the stubble field of which there was usually only one. In exchange for shooting the geese and the rabbits which were fairly plentiful on one part of the farm I was allowed to shoot any other kinds of game I came across. The farm had rabbits, hares, partridges, snipe, a few pheasants , occasional blackgame and sometimes a small number of grouse could be found among the heather. I suspect those grouse were the ones unable to hold a territory on the better heather of the nearby hills.

The farm had deep litter hens , hundreds of them and also quite a lot of pigs in the very old fashioned farm buildings. The fields had cattle on them some of the time and sheep on them at all times as did the moor itself. It may sound like a shooting mans paradise but apart from the geese it was neccessary to do an awful lot of walking while chancing to luck before any game could be seen. Labs walked at heel , field trial fashion, don't find much game ! I was wanting to give my labs more walked up shooting experience but I could not find the game to shoot it.

I decided a hunting dog was required but for once in my life I did not at once charge out to buy myself a spaniel. Several of my friends had spaniels and a couple of my friends had field trial winners or even field trial champions. I asked two of them out to the farm to see what the spaniels could find.
They didn't find much at all ! There was too much ground to be covered even when two spaniels were being hunted by two individual handlers. I discarded the spaniel idea and began to think about H.P.R.'s. A pointer or setter might have been even better but I hoped I could add any extra dog I trained to my picking up team. It could have been done , the picking up that is , by a pointer or a setter but everything I'd read about them gave me the impression they did not retrieve.

The gundog club I was a trainer for and a committee member of held an Hpr trial every year so since I'd already met two " A" panel HPR judges at committee meetings I thought I'd ask them onto my ground. One of them did come out and I was impressed by the GSP's range if not by it's level of control. The other judge was M. Brander, a man of strong opinions and the author of the only HPR training book available at that time. He invited me onto his land to watch his two GSP's working.

Both of those dogs also ranged well and pointed well. They pointed a cock pheasant which flew off over a fairly high stone wall and was lightly hit by the shot fired at it. Both dogs ran in at once and covered the 70-80 yards or so out to the hard running bird in no time flat. Both dogs grabbed it too and the pheasant wasn't going to run anywhere no more ! One of the dogs retrieved it but only to the base of the wall where it dropped it and neither dog would pick it up again.

I liked Michael Brander he could be a philosophical sort of man. He said quite calmly and with a smile.... "Perhaps a little more training is needed !"

The hard mouth aspect of GSP's worried me. I was and still to some extent am , a labrador man and I like dogs to be soft mouthed. So far no GSP I'd ever seen had been soft mouthed.
I had seen GSP's on two shoots I picked up at. One shoot had two GSP's belonging to the same man. Those two dogs were known collectively as "The Smith's Crisps Bunch " or were individually known as "Munchit and Crunchit !!!" If anything the other shoots GSP was even worse for it turned up with one of the guns friends and joined in with the picking up team.
Not only was he hard mouthed , he would not enter even the rhodie bushes for a fallen bird but he would run around and around those bushes hoping to mug and roll any other dog that did bring the bird out ! We called that dog " Dick Turpin" for he did quite a lot of robbery with violence.
The dog would not swim either but again he would mug and roll any dog that did ! As you can imagine we pickers up were not amused by that dog but his owner thought his dog was great. He claimed the dog had too much intelligence to enter bushes or water and that it knew some other dog would come along to fetch the birds !

With these experiences in mind I decided to spectate at an HPR trial to see how the really good dogs did things. I went to a trial as official picker up with one of my labs. It was an Open trial and the very first thing that struck me was how noisy many of the dogs were . I don't mean noisy as they worked, I mean noisy as they waited their turns to work.
I politely enquired of the dogs handlers about this and was told by a couple of them..... " If we got rid of all the dogs that whined there would not be many good dogs left to run in trials." I'd been to spaniel trials so I , probably politically incorrectly, pointed out that spaniels too were keen to hunt but did not whine nearly as much...... I certainly know how to make friends and influence people !

The trial, almost all of it, took place on stubble fields holding partridge and a good number of hares. The dogs that stayed in the trial were the ones that didn't find a hare during their runs..... ! I saw a dog or two go "out" for running in far enough to grab the fallen birds and I saw and heard one dog give a partidge a bit of tenderising within feet of it's handler . In short, I was not impressed.

Somehow 5 dogs out of the 12 managed to please the judges enough to "get through to the water test." H.P.R.'s are required to swim for game thrown into water during Novice trials and for blind "planted" retrieves over water during Open trials. The only water available at that trial was a small stream of not more than 12 feet of width and no dog had to swim more than two strokes out in it's middle in order to cross it.

Dogs failed that very simple test that I would have expected any lab pup more than 8-9 months old to have completed with ease. The dead bird was placed 2 -3 feet back from the waters edge on the far side of the stream and the handlers and the dogs were allowed to stand right on the edge of the far bank from the bird . I doubt very much if that blind retrieve over water was at any greater distance than 15 feet from the handler and dog.

I saw handlers repeat and re-repeat the fetch command, I saw and heard handlers coaxing, cajoling and threatening their dogs. I saw dogs running up down the bankside near the handlers to look for a way across without getting their feet wet ! Those dogs did not want to enter that water and if anything when they did cross and find the bird they liked recrossing the stream even less. I still occasionally see those things nowadays but more so at HPR tests than at trials. Awards were given out at that trial but I had no idea why. I didn't know it then but it was to be the worst HPR trial I ever saw and I saw some real Lulu's later on !

One of the trials guns was standing near to me and we watched the water retrieves together. He noted I had a lab and not an HPR then quietly said to me something like...." I'm pleased I came here today, it has been a very cheap way of finding out that I definetely do not want to own one of those things !" It was a fair comment on the work seen that day.

Living fairly near to me is a man called Tom Brechney, he is known all over the world now but back then he had never entered a trial. He just worked his two GSP's to suit himself....and he still does ! I had a chance meeting with him when he turned up to a retriever training class I was taking in the early spring. He wanted to give his GSP a bit of lab style retrieve training just out of curiousity.
His dog did well and only very occasionally could I suggest any way to improve it's retrieving. My class ended so we all crossed over into the next rashy field where about 8 spaniels were having their training class. We had hardly started across the field when Tom's dog went hard on point. The spaniel lads asked what it was doing and Tom very quietly said , " She is pointing game."

The spaniel men laughed at this and told us their dogs had already hunted and retrieved over that ground so there was no game there. Tom called me and the spaniel class trainer over and said , "Let's take a look." He very gently went forward past his still pointing dog, then slowly parted a clump of rashes. Inside it was a mallard duck sitting on a nest.
All of those spaniels had missed that duck but the GSP did not and Toms' belief in his dog's ability was fully justified. He took his dog away from the still sitting duck and we had a wee talk. It turned out he'd noticed me at various game fairs where he had ran his dogs in the scurries gaining very good time scores .....but not as good as my lab Tessa's ! Tom said he'd sometimes ran his dogs a second time in those scurries in the hope that they would be faster on their second runs but all to no avail for Tessa still won. She was known among my friends as "The Sighthill Whippet " .... Sighthill being the part of Edinburgh I lived in at that time.

She was also called the "Scurry Queen ," she was one hell of a fast and accurate bitch and could easily do what the Americans call the "Wagon Wheel Drill" but which I called the " Clockface Exercise " for I, along with almost all other British trainers of that time knew sod -all about American drills. I believed I had invented the Clockface Exercise and when I first read in an American magazine about the Wagon Wheel Drill I thought ... "Those bloody yanks have pinched my idea !"

I arranged to meet up with Tom Brechney, I wanted Hpr training knowledge, he wanted retriever training knowledge .... I think ..... Tom keeps his thoughts to himself rather well. Anyway his GSP's were the best I 'd ever seen and I wanted to pick his brains.
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To be continued
Wullie

[Alice]

another fantastic couple of instalments, I look forward to reading more!!

[trekmoor]

That was an interesting spring and summer for me. I continued with the maintenance of my labs training but had several days out with Tom and his dogs. I was at last seeing what I wanted to see in the H.P.R. breeds. The main difference as far as I was concerned between what Tom did with dogs and the attitudes of many HPR owners was that Tom was not encumbered by having a head full of loose feathers and farts ! The " breed propaganda" and the "mystique" surrounding these breeds had no part in Tom's training ideas. Tom got rid of the fluff and fairy dust and just set out to train damn good gundogs.

He saw nothing wrong with trying to train retrieving to retriever trial standards or with trying to train steadiness to flush ,shot and fall of game to spaniel trial standards. This fell completely in with my own views on H.P.R. training. The difference between us at that point was that Tom was already doing it in practice while I had only thought about it in theory. I now knew that it could be done and knowing that is a big help to me.

One rainy windless summer evening Tom and I did a bit of training together that has always stuck in my mind. I had two labs with me, he had two G.S.P.'s with him. We were putting out blind retrieves for the dogs in a field of sodden, very rough grass. The distance to the dummies was only about 50-60 yards ....an easy blind retrieve anyone would have thought.

My labs found the dummies but not easily, Tom's dogs had real trouble, the rain was keeping the scent down and the lack of wind meant the scent was not being dispersed for the dogs noses to locate. The difference between the two breeds became obvious. The labs were more inclined to go nose hard down and to stay in the fall area as they searched. The G.S.P.'s windborne scent orientated noses failed to detect the dummies as quickly as those dogs were used to and they left the fall area to try elsewhere . Tom quickly and fairly easily put them back into the fall area but still only one of the dogs found the dummy.

One of my labs eyewiped the other dog , that was the first and last time I ever managed to do that to any of Toms' dogs !

My gundog club was asked to put on a display at a gamefair and I think we put together a little team of 5 dogs and handlers plus old Harry who was to do all the explaining and a running commentary over the central arena's tannoy system. We did one quick run through of our little circus gundog show prior to the gamefair then off we all went on a lovely day in early summer to strut our stuff.

Harry and his stinking old pipe plus a sheaf of papers containing our names and the order and manner of the demonstration were comfortably installed inside a little caravan at the side of the arena. He had a chair to sit on with a table in front of the caravan's window . The table took the papers and also had a large microphone on it connected to the tannoy system. I think it had a bottle of whisky on it too for oiling his throat.
We were set to go. The moment arrived and Harry's deep, rich voice boomed out over the tannoy as he introduced us. Then disaster struck. Harry had put his papers together ...after dropping them ....out of order and in the middle of the arena we looked blankly at each other as Harry proceeded to tell the audience things that we just were not doing.
Harry then realised he was reading off the wrong script and over the tannoy came ....." Fecking hell ! F-ing bits of f-ing paper are all wrong ! Where the f-ing hell is sheet number two ? !" He'd forgotten that everything he said came out loud and clear over the tannoy system ! He continued to curse in the most lurid and vivid fashion for about another half minute which made us lose our composure. We were convulsed with uncontrollable laughter out in the middle of the arena. We were actually having to hold on to each other for support as tears ran down our faces . My ribs were sore due to laughing so much !

The audience got over their shock and with us as their example they began to not only laugh but to clap ! Harry eventually realised that he was swearing away good style over the tannoy but that didn't stop him continuing to F and blind as he searched for the microphones "Off" switch. Over the tannoy it all came..... " F-ing thing ! Bloody modern technology ! Where the feck is that feckin bloody switch !"

We laughed all the more but some spoilsport went into the caravan and switched off the mike before old Harry had the entire gamefairs human population rolling about on the grass in laughter. We did complete our demo but it didn't go terribly well for we all were struck down every now and again with laughing fits. Our dogs must have thought we were all crazy but the crowds had really enjoyed the show anyway , they almost queued up to tell us it was the funniest demo they had ever been to !

There was a retriever test held that year on a day of very strong winds and some rain. Harry was competing with one of his labs just in front of me. We were standing on top of a small hill and marked retrieves were being thrown down in the valley below. Just as Harry sent his dog for the dummy, his decrepit old deerstalker hat blew off his head and bowled off down the hill. His dog brought back his hat and Harry was a bit peeved. .... " Not my hat you bloody fool, the dummy !" He cast his dog off again but by now his dog had lost it's mark. Harry had to handle but Harry was "old school" and did only minimal handling training.

His dog was not responding to whistle so Harry did a lot of blowing for very little result. The wind seemed to be whipping the sound away. Harry got very annoyed and tried to blow harder and longer only to see most of the contents of his pipe go up in the air . Ash and embers and unburnt tobacco strands went floating off in the wind. He'd blown his pipe instead of his whistle ! Once more Harry reduced everyone nearby to tears of laughter.
His dog returned with the dummy eventually and Harry took the dummy from the dog and threw it down behind him. As he did so his hat blew off his head and yet again went bowling off down the hill. " Harry yelled , "Fetch it !" and off went his dog but she went straight to the dummy he'd just thrown away ! ..... " Not the dummy you bloody fool " yelled Harry ..... " My bleep-bleepity -bleep-bleep hat !" We once more collapsed in laughter as Harry's lab dutifully went out to collect his hat.

I miss Harry a lot, he was a gem of a man , nobody I have ever met ever had a bad word to say about him or if they had nobody listened to them. Harry went picking up on the same estate as I did for as long as he was able to, we (the other pickers-up) made sure he was able to for a long, long time. We took birds from him to carry ourselves, we walked beside him up the hilly bits and we made sure he was still with us at the end of each drive.
Old characters like him are maybe in the history of our sport but I always liked the old guard. They said what they thought would help you and if you couldn't take it in the way it was meant instead of in the manner in which they said it.... that was your loss !

I did a lot of thinking about the HPR breeds that year and after asking Tom Brechney point blank what my chances were of getting a soft mouthed GSP , I was given this reply.... " Soft mouthed GSP's are as rare as hen's teeth!" I decided not to buy the devil I did know but to buy a devil I did not know .... I bought a Brittany bitch pup instead !
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to be continued
Wullie

[LJR]

I'm getting withdrawal symptoms - surely there is a Christmassy reflection!

[trekmoor]

Sorry ! I was going to write another episode yesterday but 16 bottles of whisky got in the way and that's not counting the one or two already opened ! Everybody seems to think I drink like a fish and bottles of whisky, including some very good quality ones, have been arriving here almost daily. My wife became worried their weight would collapse the shelf they sat on so they now reside in the bottom of the wardrobe...... I could start my own pub !

Anyway , I might have been just a bit too unsparing with the truth if I had written much yesterday . I don't like hurting peoples feelings too much when it can be avoided by just remembering that latin thingy which goes something like , " En vino veritas."
My apologies to those of you who speak and write fluent latin . I didn't get taught latin at school ,or much of anything else either ! My main intake of latin came from reading "Billy Bunter" and "Jennings" books when I was a boy.

I am sober now....it's a funny feeling I'll have a go at another episode. It should be ready by this evening ....I'm a one fingered typist.

Wullie

[Megsdad]

Thanks Mr Wullie and Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Terry

[Bryn]

I'm sure those of us who got Latin beaten into our brains during our formative years couldn't give a flying #*@k about the spelling or grammar. I look forward to every instalment.

[trekmoor]

I had read an advert in the Shooting Times about Brittany pups for sale. My phone call to the breeders may have sounded a bit demanding in terms of what I expected from the pup I bought , if I bought one. The lady who had helped me so much to get my lab bitch Tessa registered with the K.C. , discovered I was thinking about getting a brittany pup and she wanted to form a partnership with me.
The lady never worked her dogs , she had show bred Irish Setters and she was a very experienced show person and show judge. We discussed our proposed partnership in considerable detail before going ahead. The lady was called Libby Groundwater and she was a large formidable sort of woman with a heart of pure gold. Her intention was to show a brittanny while I was to be the working side of the dogs' life. Far too many so called gundogs ponce about in showrings that are never worked or perhaps could never work. This applies to all the gundog breeds as can be seen from the way in which the breeds have split between work and show. So far, it is still possible to both work and show the same HPR , these breeds have not been totally ruined .....yet !

At the time I wasn't too concerned about field trialing a brittany , what I wanted was a dog that could hunt far enough and fast enough to find birds on the farm I shot over. I wanted retrieves for my trial labs as they walked to heel. I had already discovered that not even a small team of spaniels accompanied by their trainers could take in enough ground while hunting to have much chance of finding game on that farm. I needed a wide running pointing dog.

My phone call to the breeders therefor, was a very thorough one, where I asked about the dam and about the sire, both of whom were completely unknown to me and neither of whom had ever been trialed. I was having to take a chance when buying a pup but I did all I could to minimise any chance of me buying a "plug !" The showing side of things was a gamble too, for , as far as I am aware, neither the sire or dam had been shown either.

The breeders seemed to like my very searching questions and put me to the top of the list of potential puppy buyers. I had 1st choice from the litter. Very few Brittanies were in this country back then and I had never even seen one "in the flesh" far less seen one out working. I would have to play it by ear , training on the principle of , " a dog, is a dog, is a dog." I did not know at the time that so much of the knowledge I had gained by trial and error methods would be needed when training the pup I eventually got ! All those years of training or helping to train every dog that turned up to the obedience hall, the retriever and spaniel classes etc. at last were of some real use. I do not think the "average" brittany is the best dog for the "average" first time gundog trainer .

The litter was down in Hampshire and I travelled there by train and by taxi from Edinburgh and back again via London. The dam of the litter was an American brittany , which is often a bit different in "type" from the French type .....more about that touchy subject later ! The dam came from Texas where everything is bigger and maybe better .... or maybe not .

I got my first look at the pups as they piled out of their kennel in the back garden while I looked out at them from the kitchen window. I think their was nine or ten pups but I only had eyes for one and I spotted her the instant she came out of the kennel. " That one ! That one !" I almost yelled . She had an " attitude" about her that just screamed quality at me. No other pup in my lifetime has been so obvious to me from the very first moment of meeting.

It wasn't that the other pups were not very good, it was just that she exuded more of what was "good." I did bring all the bitch pups into the house for an individual look at them and one other pup did take my fancy but I still saw no good reason to stray from my first instinctive choice. I did my usual little puppy tests, checking for hernias or bad dentition or entropian and ectropian but all seemed well with all the pups so I plonked my money down down and bought the pup. She was named by her co-owner and me using her co-owners K.C. prefix rather than my prefix . I didn't mind that at all .... names and any "fame" attached to them don't matter much to me.

We called her " Victoria of Talwater" or Vicky or ,quite often, "The Plum" as in Victoria Plum. She was orange and white and had a reddish brown nose which is a "no-no" among the French bred brittanies. She looked a bit like a small, tail-less setter which is also a no-no.
When the Americans bought their first dogs from the French the dogs they imported were of the old French breed standards but then the French changed their breed standards and the Americans saw no reason to change with them. The Americans liked what they already had . Personally, I think it is all a load of nonsense. Every dog breed used for work has had to suit or be changed to suit the country it has been imported into.

My co-owner "Libby" did a lot of winning in the show ring with Vicky competing against the French bred brits ......Vicky even won at Crufts .......but it wouldn't happen now. The "French" only party gained ascendency and American standard brits are now banned from competing against French type brits in the ring, in this country . It does seem, however, that I have good "eye" for a show dog too. The show judges back then seemed to agree with my choice of pup.
The breeders house was a large one with the river Test forming the bottom of the garden. I bought Vicky in October but the trout were still rising that far south , I drooled at the mouth while looking at those large fish pushing the ducks aside to eat crusts of bread we threw in .As a trout dry fly fishing fanatic I longed to have a go at those fish but the season had ended a month before. I never did get to fish for them.

I went for a walk with the breeder along with Vicky's dam and her litter sister. Once out into the countryside the bitches were allowed to free run and they certainly did that very well ! The breeder did not have a whistle and just yelled when he wanted them back in. I had a bit of trouble preventing myself from laughing as he called Vicky's dam back in for she was called "Pumpkin !" It is not a name I would want to shout while wandering about the countryside !

Getting home again with Vicky held in a little cat-carry cage was a nightmare. She was not fed prior to leaving and at 8 weeks old she had to endure a car journey to the railway station, a train journey into London, a taxi trip across London to catch a train at another station and then the long train journey home. She was travel sick so I cleaned up and used up most of the water I carried to do so.
Something went wrong during the journey home that caused delays to the train, very long delays. The pup was getting hungry and thirsty and I was too but I hadn't expected such a long trip timewise so I ran out of both food and water before we were even halfway back to Edinburgh. The buffet bar had closed down and I became worried the pup might need some fluid down her and probably some food too. We had left her breeders home about 12 hours before this and still had 200 miles to go before we got into Edinburgh.

I went begging among the trains other passengers and was lucky to encounter a young American backpacker . He very kindly gave me his remaining water and his cream crackers and his cheese. I fed the pup on these , she was ravenous. We arrived back in Edinburgh many hours later than we should have done . After a trip home by taxi the pup was placed on the living room floor to meet our two labs and my wife. The pup was as bold as brass and promptly took off for a tour of that room and the kitchen.

At that time we had a budgie with a death wish. He had been carried about the house by every pup he encountered and still had no fear of dogs. He had a little habit where dogs were concerned, he liked to land on them and then pull out their hair by the roots ! My labs had retrieved everything from snipe to greylag goose runners but that tiny budgie terrorised them ! If he was flying about , they hid anywhere they could. The budgie decided he needed a close look at this new pup so he flew around then landed right on her nose as she investigated the kitchen.

Vicky immediately went "on point !" It was hilarious to look at and to this day I regret not having a camera handy. The budgie strutted about on her muzzle as she went cross-eyed trying to see him. This probably only lasted about 15 seconds but it was a sight I will never forget. I "rescued" the budgie from the pup or maybe it was the other way around and put him back into his cage. Vicky went hunt crazy trying to find him again , she treated the furniture to the puppy test as she jumped about on it searching high and low for that budgie.

Next day she "found" the budgie as he plucked a few more hairs from Lady's back , the budgie was now a play article. It got grabbed and carried as Vicky ran round and round the settee with it as fast as she could make her little legs go. It took me and my wife combined about 2 minutes to capture Vicky and take the budgie from her. He was not in the slightest bit injured or worried by his time among a pups needle teeth.... I began to think I'd maybe got myself a soft-mouthed H.P.R. ! That budgie continued to terrorise my dogs for about another 2-3 years before he finally fell off his perch...... I like budgies !

I just could not resist taking the brit pup into the countryside to see what she made of it all so I did that a couple of days later . My labs went too and as they hunted their way along the base of a wall edged with thick bramble bushes they found a rabbit in one of the big bramble clumps. The brittany pup was investigating the hole the rabbits had made in the brambles, hard against the wall and when my labs pushed the rabbit through the brambles it was so terrified it ran into Vicky and bowled her right over onto her back. The rabbit was nearly as big as she was !

She picked herself up , raised her hackles and went after the rabbit that had dared to knock her flat. The rabbit went into the next bramble clump and so did Vicky . To see such a small pup so determined to mete out punishment to a rabbit had me creased with laughter...... I'd seen enough and I'd laughed enough so I lifted her out of the bush by the scruff and headed for home. I had a feeling she was going to become a very keen hunter !
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To be continued
Wullie