The future of working gundogs

[PERCE]

I think there's more problem about when you consider one of the most used Labrador studs around is being bred from purely on colour.

[beechessam]

I think the claim of a shrinking gene pool is a total myth! There's more choice then there's ever been in respect of popular sires.

The evil that's trialling, I love the ads that read. Pup for sale, bred to do a proper days work from generations of workers. Sire by FTCH X dam by FTCH Y!

So why does the shooting man want to use the latest FTCH? To help sell his pups of course, because without it they're not as valuable. He could have used his mates dog but he wanted a pup in return, that £600!!! So he thought I will use a FTCH, they won't want a pup back and it's only £400!! Or maybe they're fed up with generation after generation of noise hard mouth totally ignorant utrainable mutts and need to put proven quality and sound dogs back into their lines.

Dogs like people like everything else evolve and change to suit the needs of the individual, bigger more powerful dogs in heavy cover, faster flashier small dogs on open ground. It depends where you look on what you'll find.

Trialling dogs are shooting dogs, please don't tell me they only do it for 10 minutes can't manage a full day etc etc. do you think we drive 4-5-6 hours to shoot over our dogs for 10 minutes? No we shoot all day,possibly rotate 2-3 but they're out doing it all day. They also go out picking up, beating, doggin in, most of us don't have the shooting rights on half of Yorkshire or Scotland so the easiest access to game is on real shoots, with other people, hunting our dogs, picking up with our dogs! The only difference is in general and not all the time our dogs are better trained than the dogs along side us.

[James]

I didn't see anyone mention stamina, James. I think the worry is the narrowing of the gene pool due to popular sire and celebrity trainer syndromes. And aren't triallers always complaining about the amount if dross they have to pass on before they get a dog that might be capable of winning? I thought even you'd given up on trials because it had all become a bit of a charade.

Naj

They do get through more dogs but i would put that down to the fact that they are getting better so finding something special is needed. Handling has come so far now that the dogs have to be the very best. I stopped trialing for personal reasons not because of the dogs.

[Judy]

Perhaps the owners of the stud dogs should say no, offer sensible advice? Last I heard it takes two to make a pup.
How many of you drive 5 or 6 hours to shoot over your dogs? Not competition, even I've been stupid enough to drive 4 hours to compete, even flown 4 hours to watch a Working Test, just plain shooting for pleasure not training for Trials?

[trekmoor]

This is likely to be a rather long and rambling post....

Like most other people I am interested in the health of my dogs. They need to be healthy to do the work I have for them. During the approximately 50 years in which I have worked gundogs not even one of my dogs has had a serious health problem . Almost all of those dogs had no "health certificates" of any kind and yet I have never had a dog with H.D. or P.R.A. or any of the other things the battery of modern tests claim to give a "count" on. Not to a degree that would prevent the dog from working or lessen it as a worker. That puzzles me Maybe we are missing something ???

Conformation ...... I get really p*ssed off on this subject. I have had labs that certainly would not have been capable of winning even a booby prize in a show ring .....and show folk used to tell me so. But those "badly shaped" labs easily wiped the floor with any show dog when it came to working.

I had two good friends , one a lab breeder, one a goldie breeder . Both of those ladies were a good bit older than me and both had the old fashioned idea that their breeds should be good workers and good show dogs. I trained or helped to train their dogs for them. The dogs were too much like working dogs to win in the ring and were too much like show dogs to ever win a trial.

One of the lab bitches I trained was re-named "Hyper" because she had all the mental attributes of a really good trial dog and she had a terrific nose and "drive." Unfortunately she had the heavy build of a show dog and I don't mean she was fat. The poor dog just could not maintain good pace for very long while working and her build meant she simply could not jump anything but very low fences or walls. She won in the show ring but I never even entered her for trials . Possibly I made a mistake in not entering her. Maybe she could have won a trial given the very few retrieves a dog is likely to get in a trial.

She was mated to a rather good looking F.T.Ch. but I would not have used that dog. He was a "softy" and I have a feeling that if he had not been owned by one of Britains best ever trailers , he would never have become a F.T.Ch. .........The dog liked and expected to be handled onto birds . In my opinion he lacked drive.

A pup was kept from the litter and I trained her too. She made an adequate gundog but no more than that....she lacked drive. I thought she was a very good looking pup.....a nice half-way house mix of show type and good, solid, work type. She was not going to be a good trial dog .......I don't like having to guide dogs onto birds so her breeder entered her for a show or two. She, according to the show judges, was a bit too lightly built and her tail was not quite the show approved club shape. She didn't win in the ring either.

Then there was the lady with the goldies.....she firmly believed in a more old fashioned type of goldie that could work so that is what she bred for but she had to use show goldies as sires for her bitches. As workers her dogs lacked trialing drive and as show dogs they lacked "substance" .....lacked fat....... and also lacked "coat."
That lady was a show judge and she said it sickened her to see her breed wobbling around the show ring looking like big balls of white candy floss but she was outnumbered and out voted by the rest of the showing fraternity. Why do the show folk think gundog breeds should have profuse coats ?
She died a disillusioned woman.

I began retriever trialing at a time when a more racy sort of lab was becoming popular. My first lab bitch was not greyhound type but she was very, very fast. She won me many sacks of dog food at a time in my life where I had to count every penny. I became keener and keener on fast dogs. Luckily for me that bitch was very good in every other respect too so she won trials too.

I was deploring the lack of speed shown by some labs during a trial when my old mentor quietly took me aside and said the words I have never forgotten.... "Bill, gundog work is not a race." His labs were "old type" and he told tales of the days when there were still some very good looking labs that were dual champions. I thought about it and ended up agreeing with him that speed is not the be-all and end-all of retriever work.
Take a look , google some of last lab dual champions, I think they are what labs should be like. I loved the look of a dog called "Knaith Banjo" although I am not sure he was a dual champion ?

When I was trialing labs all of the judges were considerably older than I was. Most of that "old guard" detested seeing lots of handling , they wanted the dogs to get out there and hunt like hellions for downed birds. I have remained in that camp but the other "up and comers" felt differently and when they became judges they gave good marks to dogs for "handling onto the sixpence."

I was present in one Open retriever trial when an old-time judge was judging a now "famous name" in retriever trials. The handler insisted the judge should give him more precise instructions as to where exactly the bird was lying........ I burst out laughing when the judge replied..... " What are you wanting ? F*cking sign posts on it ? !!!!!!" ............. I still find that very funny, them there old boys didn't mince their words !

I have no idea what all that waffling proves but I did enjoy writing it !

Wullie

[beechessam]

Perhaps the owners of the stud dogs should say no, offer sensible advice? Last I heard it takes two to make a pup.
How many of you drive 5 or 6 hours to shoot over your dogs? Not competition, even I've been stupid enough to drive 4 hours to compete, even flown 4 hours to watch a Working Test, just plain shooting for pleasure not training for Trials?

Quite a few! isn't that right James.

[Judy]

And I enjoyed reading it! I think the word "conformation" is an unfortunate one in that its always tarred with the "show ring" brush. When I say "conformation" I don't mean fit for a show ring, nor bred to conform to a breed standard as interpreted by show Judges, I mean a dog which is put together in a way which makes it able - good structure - I have no doubt Tess was put together right as she was fast and physically able.
Breeding for colour, breeding for the show ring or breeding for Trials without looking at the whole dog will always lead to problems sooner or later.

Just asking, BS! Is there no shooting nearer?

[beechessam]

Not really, in areas dominated by commercial shoots any shooting over dogs is limited and £30 + birds!

[trekmoor]

Judy,I just wish the show folk would pay as much attention to what is inside a gundogs head as they do to the length or shape of it's tail .....or to it's "presence" in the showring. I used to take weekly classes for retrievers and monthly ones for HPR's . I was not a very politically correct or even a diplomatic taker of training classes.
I taught in much the same way as the old guard had trained me. It was a case of "suck it up" or bog-off !

Those ways of getting through to people worked very well with most of the folk back then but certainly not with all of them ! People who had not done a damned thing in between their classes got hell from me.
As far as I can remember very few of the show people came back again !
I can remember show people telling me their lab was a very good retriever. Those dogs could maybe retrieve a slipper across a room but anything more than that left them floundering. Most of them lacked in retrieve instinct and drive . What I felt would have been a simple retrieve for a 4-5 months old lab pup was impossible for those show dogs unless their owners went along with them to cajole and plead with them to pick up a highly visible dummy out 20 yards away on short grass.

I also ran into trouble with the show dogs that would do simple marked retrieves. Their owners feared that having the dogs sit while walking to heel and watching for thrown dummies would spoil their show ring "presence." I had the same argument with a few of the HPR folk too.

One lady who lives just a few miles from me asked for my help with her vizsla which was winning in the ring. She wanted to win in trials too. I took her out training a few times without any fee at all and spent several hours on the lady and her dog. I left her with some homework to do before the next monthly class.

On the class day her dog still did not sit to voice, to hand signal or to whistle. I enquired as to why and expected to hear of an illness or something similar. She told me she had not done any of the exercises I'd shown her as they might spoil her dog's presence in the ring.
I went ballistic and ranted on about her having wasted hours of my time and energy. She was a fairly tough sort of lady, she was a secondary school teacher but my tirade reduced her to tears and she bogged-off there and then never to be seen again at any class I took.

I make no apologies for "my way" of dealing with people at classes. It was "tough love" and hit the road if you don't like it ! No modern day trainer would even think of taking a class as I once did. I was a barsteward and had earned the nickname of "Hitler" from the lab classes ........ I was quite proud of that. "Tough love" works very well if the folk can suck it up and learn from it.
I was much harder on people than I ever was on dogs.

Sorry folk, that lot is nothing to do with this thread.

Wullie

[Judy]

Absolutely nothing whatsoever, apart from the first line and one other! I agree, as I rant on about regularly, its the whole dog you should be looking at if you breed not just the 'bit' you want.
As for retrieving, I knew a work bred Lab that would only retrieve to me in classes, sometimes the owner need to get a brain as well as the dog.