For example, say in that video that Ally has just posted at Gleneagles, if his pointer had pointed & flushed a pheasant off the bank top, Ally had shot & clipped it & it glided on or towered to land where they were tossing dummies, then it would have been an interesting marked retrieve, not a blind. If he had killed the bird dead in the air or hit it hard enough to drop it then it would have been a very simple mark. Far less scope for long blind retrieves when shooting over a dog.
If the dog is unsighted then it will be a blind, and there are numerous reasons why a dog will be unsighted from the mark. That is the only reason I train a dog to `take a line' and `handle'. . Training is all about preparing the dog for as much as we or others may have experienced and therefore `could' encounter when out hunting with our dogs. It will be down to the individuals circumstances what level we train the dogs for, for my dogs as long as I can get them to a point of 100/150m is more than enough, after that its up to their nose. Shooting over your own dog , most of what I use the dog for is `extraction' rather than retrieves of any distance, so on balance I try to train with more emphasis on giving `obstacle experience' than pure distance. If your working your dog for others then your more likely to need a little more distance handling, whether it goes as far as some `competitions' take it, is another matter
Again, you should really say what you are training the dog for, otherwise we are talking apples & pears.
The other thing is that there's a difference between a young dog fresh out of training and a finished working dog. What everybody thinks of as the finished working dog will be different for a variety of reasons. You can keep a young dog in aspic with all its training perfectly intact but that wouldn't be my idea of a useful shooting dog. We all look for a different balance between initiative & control & many end up with more initiative than they would perhaps have liked but such is the nature of entering a young dog.
Naj wrote:Again, you should really say what you are training the dog for, otherwise we are talking apples & pears.
I'm just trying to see what would be a realistically accepted distance for a shooting spaniel. My logic dictates that past about 50m it wouldn't make sense. But my logic may be flawed. Hence the question.
As Naj says, it all depends, shooting over it or picking up with it, even Partridge or Pheasant, Partridge can go a fair old distance sometimes and if the dog has mismarked the fall or its over the brow of a hill then handling the dog at 75 / 80 yards may mean the difference between success and failure.
In life, it is important to know when to stop arguing with people and simply let them be wrong.
Naj wrote:Again, you should really say what you are training the dog for, otherwise we are talking apples & pears.
I'm just trying to see what would be a realistically accepted distance for a shooting spaniel. My logic dictates that past about 50m it wouldn't make sense. But my logic may be flawed. Hence the question.
I was agreeing with you, may 'observation' was aimed at BIKRS
Last edited by Naj on Tue May 10, 2016 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yep. I figured, my reply was hoping to provoke a response from people on distances. The shooting I've done over spaniels has all been within gun range. Retrieves are as long as is required. Some of the dogs I've seen faffing around the handlers feet I feel have little practical use (for moi) And don't get me started on the incessant whistling...
say in that video that Ally has just posted at Gleneagles, if his pointer had pointed & flushed a pheasant off the bank top, Ally had shot & clipped it & it glided on or towered to land where they were tossing dummies, then it would have been an interesting marked retrieve, not a blind. If he had killed the bird dead in the air or hit it hard enough to drop it then it would have been a very simple mark. Far less scope for long blind retrieves when shooting over a dog.
. Training is all about preparing the dog for as much as we or others may have experienced and therefore `could' encounter when out hunting with our dogs. It will be down to the individuals circumstances what level we train the dogs for, for my dogs as long as I can get them to a point of 100/150m is more than enough, after that its up to their nose. Shooting over your own dog , most of what I use the dog for is `extraction' rather than retrieves of any distance, so on balance I try to train with more emphasis on giving `obstacle experience' than pure distance. If your working your dog for others then your more likely to need a little more distance handling, whether it goes as far as some `competitions' take it, is another matter 
I was agreeing with you, may 'observation' was aimed at BIKRS