reflections and redirections

[Martinp]

cheers wully !! and as a bonus you had the spaniel theme today!! thanks for taking the time to post!!

[trekmoor]

I was now on a bit of a roll with my Brittany , she just seemed to get better and better. That did not seem to matter much in trials however and I got chucked out of or did not win first place in several. Part of the problem was my habit of attacking trials in a "sh*t or bust" sort of manner. I gave her a lot of freedom to hunt in her own way and if a trial ground held a lot of game she often went too fast and too far with the result being that she got herself into trouble. She bumped up two woodcock, a bird I rarely encounter, and that got her chucked out of two trials. She hunted well over some very "pheasant rich" fields of vegetables including my enemy the turnip without ever bumping a pheasant, a partridge or a rabbit or hare but woodcock were the kiss of death for her in trials.

It was, I found, likely to be better trial for me if game was scarce for that made it more likely that with her range and pace , she would succeed in finding game where the slower more ploddy dogs failed to cover enough ground to be in with much of a chance. I made two errors in those trials and one of them was due to me trying to be more careful and to make her hunt her ground in the way I thought she should. That happened on a grouse moor and her hunting took her into a very large sort of bowl shaped depression in the ground. I saw her change the angle of her hunt and I interfered by using the stop whistle and arm directing her in what I thought was the right way to give her the little wind there was in the bowl. She ran straight into a covey of grouse , the only grouse she ever bumped in trials or out of them.

I could have kicked myself but I was indisputably ...OUT !

My other error was caused by my failure to handle when I really should have. She was called in to hunt a field of large cabbages on a tailwind. She was doing O.K. , going about 30 -40 yards out in front of me and then hunting her way back to me using the wind to best advantage. She decided it was time for another cast out from me but she had turned to do so while still 5 yards or so from me. She was on her way back out so I began to walk forward to cover with my legs the ground she had already covered with her nose. This time, however, a hen pheasant erupted from the cabbages as soon as I took my first step forward. She was chucked out for "missing" game but it was really my fault. I should have insisted she hunt the area all the way back to my feet.

During a pheasant trial at about this time I encountered the craziest field trial rule I have ever heard of. One of the competitors dogs, a G.S.P., found , pointed and flushed a pheasant on command within 15 yards of the fields boundary with a young fir wood. The dog tried to run in to flush but was roared at and he stopped. I was not at all surprised by that since it was a regular occurrence in the HPR trials of that time. The bird was fired at and came down in the wood about 30 yards away and the dog again took off after it without any command. It looked like the bird was a runner and the dog vanished into the woods after it ignoring all whistles and shouts to return.

Eventually the dog returned minus the bird despite being "on it" just about as soon as it landed. I thought no more about it, the dog was clearly "Out" as soon as it ran in to fall. At the end of the trial 3 of us were still "in" when we were taken to do the obligatory water test. To my amazement one of those dogs was the dog that had ran-in . I queried this with the dogs handler and was rather angrily told that of course the dog was still in for he hadn't actually came back with the bird !

H.P.R. trials back then had a rule that I'd never seen in retriever or spaniel trials. It went something like this.... a dog that runs in to fall of game will not be eliminated unless it cannot be recalled before it retrieves the bird. That particular G.S.P. had ran-in and had ignored all attempts to recall it but it had not returned with the bird so it was still in the trial !!! That same dog later did something very similar in the HPR Championships and it got away with that too !

I said no more about it at the trial but moaned my head off about this rule whenever the opportunity arose after the trial. Several judges argued with me that it was a good rule and that I was judging the dogs in a negative manner but that did not shut me up. I argued back that it was a recipe for finding poorly trained dogs or untrainable dogs with poor marking skills and poor noses. I pointed out that if a dog that did mark well and did have a good nose had ran in for that pheasant it would have found and retrieved it ....and have been eliminated for having performed a worthwhile run-in !

Once more I was arguing with HPR judges but some of them must have seen sense for a year or so after that the HPR rules were changed to fall more in line with the spaniels and retrievers where running-in is concerned. HPR's still seem to get away with rather lax behaviour where chasing game and steadiness is concerned and I still feel this works against the handlers who have trained a good standard of steadiness but it ain't as bad as it once was.

I still find it hard to believe the HPR trials had such a crazy and stupid rule and the few spaniel trailers I have told about it all thought I was pulling their plonkers ! That rule was unbelievable but true. Just a few years before I had began to trial HPR's they had another way of doing blind retrieves too.

Apparently if a bird fell unseen by the dog or if a dog was called into line to search as second dog down for a fallen bird the handler was allowed to move round to face directly into the wind. He was then supposed to quarter his dog into the wind over the ground to search for the bird, handling a dog onto a blind retrieve was a very rough and ready affair and it remained so even after that rule was changed. The handler stood more or less where the bird had flown from but the dog, when sent , ran about all over the shop searching for the bird and very often paid scant attention to any directions the handler might give it.

This was very, very different stuff to the retriever trials I'd competed and judged in but I just had to learn to live with it. Blind retrieves took forever to find so it was fortunate that they didn't occur very often. Field test blinds were even worse for every competing dog had to do a blind or maybe two blinds. It took ages to get through a test entry of just a dozen or so dogs.

I got thoroughly p*ssed off with this state of affairs and did things a bit differently when I judged HPR tests . I set a time limit on the test and any dog that failed to find the dummy within that time got no marks. Doing that saw me in conflict with several handlers who ran out of time as their dogs ran all over the landscape during blinds. A couple of them told me they would never run a dog under me again. I didn't care, I was trying to push the standards of handling up not trying to win a popularity contest. Things have changed a good bit now and some HPR's handle onto blinds very well , I think that pressure from the up and coming new generation of HPR handlers had a lot to do with persuading the "old guard" to improve their own training.

It was at about this time I read an article in a certain sporting magazine that annoyed me. It's regular gundog contributor was running down all HPR's with no personal experience of these breeds at all. I was already writing for a fishing magazine so I decided it was about time I tried writing in to a shooting magazine.
I sort of tore into it's regular contributor and he was prompt to reply with an apology saying that he hadn't really meant what he'd said in the way I had taken it. He wasn't the only one to reply to my letter. Keith Erlandson did too and very kindly said he'd heard of my Brittany even high up on his "mountain fastnesses." I was chuffed to bits, my hero liked the sound of my dog ! Keith did a lot more than just trial spaniels, he was my hero because he'd had a go at retrievers and spaniels and pointing dog trials.

He came to my defence later on too when someone said my Brittany was part American bred instead of being "purely" French bred and was therefor probably not as good. Keith promptly wrote in to say that a good American Brittany was better than a " manky French Bistro Brittany !"
The editor of that magazine must have liked my remarks about gundogs too for following my letter to it's contributor he asked me to write a regular article for the magazine. I did and Keith Erlandson fairly often wrote in to agree with me , I got a lot of support from Keith , a man I'd only met very briefly and just once before I even had a Brittany. He is still my favourite gundog training author ...possibly because I can read between the lines he wrote.

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To be continued
Wullie

[Malfuss]

Very enjoyable read, looking forward to the next part.

[Mike A]

I was going to get so much done today but I found this thread and it all went out the window. I look forward to the next instalment .

[Malfuss]

I was going to get so much done today but I found this thread and it all went out the window. I look forward to the next instalment .

Lol, I know what you mean. The other ones to look out for are Libbys Diary and Charlies Chatter, you can lose days in those 2 threads

[Mike A]

I was going to get so much done today but I found this thread and it all went out the window. I look forward to the next instalment .

Lol, I know what you mean. The other ones to look out for are Libbys Diary and Charlies Chatter, you can lose days in those 2 threads

No way not today I've promised the dogs a walk on Exmoor !

[trekmoor]

There is another similar thread over on "another channel" called "Buck's Diary" It is about the training of my last G.S.P.

Wullie

[Mike A]

There is another similar thread over on "another channel" called "Buck's Diary" It is about the training of my last G.S.P.

Wullie

What are you lot trying to do to me ! Lol

[trekmoor]

...... "Buck's Diary" ran to 242 pages ..... that's a lorra, lorra lot of reading !

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Vicky the Brittany was co-owned by myself and a well known lady from the world of dog shows. The lady knew almost nothing about working dogs while I knew even less about showing them so we made a good partnership. She, to her credit, always placed Vicky's working life before her participation in dog shows. If I felt a days dog work somewhere was likely to be beneficial to Vicky then I was told to take her there and any planned dog show could wait until another time.

We had quite a few arguments about gundogs and I admit I used to deliberately wind her up to the point of fury ....or even to tears of annoyance and frustration....she was used to getting her own way but she didn't with me along as co-pilot. One of my favourite ploys was to say that the Brittany breed could do with an injection of border collie in order to increase its size a bit and in order to improve its "willingness to please." I was not doing this entirely in jest , back then tiny little Brittany bitches were appearing from imports from France and I honestly felt they were just a bit too small to be of all round use both as a hunter and as a retriever.

Brittanies are also inclined to be a bit "quirky." I have often heard them called far worse names and have used a few of those names myself ! I wondered if a dose of border collie might improve this. My partner disagreed very strongly and said she was not going to breed mongrels or even cross breeds. Out of sheer badness I informed her that brittanies had been mated to pointers very recently both in America and in France. ( I am told this still takes place due to the modern urge for range and pace in America and in France.)

Brittanies were not originally meant to be really long range dogs . They were general purpose woodland and heath or cultivated field hunters and fields in France 100 years ago were not the huge fields we see today. Anyway , Vicky was already a good long range hunter with very good pace so I had no intention of cross breeding her to any other breed. Finding a mate for her was not easy. She had won trials and she had won dog shows including her classes at Crufts. We did not want to mate her just to any old Brittany, we wanted a dog that also had good credentials as a show dog and working dog.

No other Brittany in this country matched her credentials but we knew of a gamekeeper with very well bred dogs of recent French origins and although he never showed his two Brittany males ( A father and son I think) they both did a lot of work on the moors their owner keepered. Vicky's co-owner liked the look of the young dog and I wasn't really fussy so it was decided to mate Vicky to the young dog. That turned out to be both difficult and hilarious .

The field next to the keepers house was several acres in size and was very well fenced in so Vicky and the young male were released into it for a "natural mating." Vicky was a randy little cow and she was all for a natural mating or any other kind of mating ! The dog didn't have a clue despite all the heavy hints given to him by Vicky. He ran away from her and she chased after him cornering him from time to time and ramming her rear end into him in a very blatant invite. The dog was having none of it and evaded her until she had ran him down and cornered him . This happened again and again and again for maybe an hour. The dog was getting exhausted through sheer stress while Vicky was getting exhausted through sheer frustration !

We all decided to leave it at that and to try again later as the keeper was willing to have her left with him for a day or two. We received a phone call the next day saying the mating had taken place and we could come and collect her. The keeper lived a long way from us so we did a lot of driving over those two days.
A litter duly appeared and I have always had the suspicion that the older dog had done the siring but it didn't really matter and I never said a word about it.

I could not keep another pup just then but her co-owner kept one and handed her over to me at about 6 months old to see what working instincts she had in her. I liked the pup and would have been happy to be her owner but I wasn't her owner and she was destined for the show ring so I never took her training any further.
That pup, in her turn, was mated but this time to a show dog and I wasn't too happy that the dog was not "worked" in the real sense of the word.

Some lines of the Brittany breed have the endearing habit of bogging-off hunting and not wanting to come back when called. When Vicky's co-owner asked me to assess this new pup I took her out to a place with lots of game scent and let her off lead. She was only 3-4 months old but it took me about 30 minutes to catch her again and on top of that her interest in retrieving was minimal, a failing often found in this breed. I handed her back to her owner with a "No thank-you !"
That pup was really lovely to look at ....even I could see that but she was not the kind of dog I like to work with, she had too much of an independent spirit for my taste.

By now I did have room for another dog and I had bought myself my first GSP. By this time I had seen the GSP's competing in trials and a few others out working and was beginning to sort out the possibly soft mouthed "lines" in my head. A friend owned a dog that seemed to be completely soft mouthed while another friend owned a very hard going bitch. I sort of "intermediated" and a mating took place. I chose my pup when she was just 3 days old and I chose her because she had a lot of white in her coat and white is easier to see than brown at distance or among heather when a dog goes on point.

The bitch's owner was in some sort of trouble by the time the pups were 5 weeks old so I took my pup from the litter when she was 5 days old. She was to be one of those dogs that just "trained itself." More about that later.
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to be continued
Bill T.