Badgercourt lines

[Gavin]

Can you say which dog?

[kelco]

Where have all the great spaniels of yesteryear gone?????How many times do we hear that?
In my opinion-
If you want to produce any dogs that resembles these dogs you have to do 2 things.

You have to source a bitch line that has the dog that you want up as close as possible to the bitch.Ideally the bitch will have this dog on the top and bottom lines of her pedigree.
You then have to source a stud dog that contains the desired line up close him and mate the two.

The closer they are related the higher the chance that you will reproduce something close to what you desire.

As for thornycourt,he may not trial but he has strong Badgercourt Warlord+Moss(+ Parkbreck) stuff up close in his dogs and bitches.

In my opinion trial people use the stud dogs of the moment/last couple of years and each new stud dog moves further away from these old lines.Thats fine if thats what you want.

When you want to get a strong old line it turns out to be the shooting not trialling man that will have it.I trial dogs(good or bad is another thread)but my two best shooting mates are brothers who never had anything other than badgercourts.They bought all badgercourt stuff down the years and bred their dogs between each other.They never trialled or made up Champions but they always had a hard going cover dog with a lot of liver that would go all day every day.They only sold the shit off.Their dogs are all big strong dogs that lack top end speed but definitly not power or courage.It all depends what you want the new Discovery(that looks beautiful but is an unreliable kinky bastard)or the 1980 defender(which is not trendy wagon of today but does exactly what it says on the tin all day every day)

[Rothievale]

Where have all the great spaniels of yesteryear gone?????How many times do we hear that?
In my opinion-
If you want to produce any dogs that resembles these dogs you have to do 2 things.

You have to source a bitch line that has the dog that you want up as close as possible to the bitch.Ideally the bitch will have this dog on the top and bottom lines of her pedigree.
You then have to source a stud dog that contains the desired line up close him and mate the two.

The closer they are related the higher the chance that you will reproduce something close to what you desire.

As for thornycourt,he may not trial but he has strong Badgercourt Warlord+Moss(+ Parkbreck) stuff up close in his dogs and bitches.

In my opinion trial people use the stud dogs of the moment/last couple of years and each new stud dog moves further away from these old lines.Thats fine if thats what you want.

When you want to get a strong old line it turns out to be the shooting not trialling man that will have it.I trial dogs(good or bad is another thread)but my two best shooting mates are brothers who never had anything other than badgercourts.They bought all badgercourt stuff down the years and bred their dogs between each other.They never trialled or made up Champions but they always had a hard going cover dog with a lot of liver that would go all day every day.They only sold the shit off.Their dogs are all big strong dogs that lack top end speed but definitly not power or courage.It all depends what you want the new Discovery(that looks beautiful but is an unreliable kinky bastard)or the 1980 defender(which is not trendy wagon of today but does exactly what it says on the tin all day every day)

Very well said!

[paul spaniel]

I have met Tony Emery(Thornycourt guy) once 3 years ago and have to say that I found him a nice guy and knew a lot about the Badgercourt line.Peter Combes actually took back one of his the Thornycourt stud dogs to trial before he was taken ill and passed away.(so he must have rated the dog/and I would imagine that he would know.)

I don't buy that these dogs are not bought by the top trialling men because they are not up it.My experience with most of the "top Trialling men" are that they promote their own lines and most have a FTCH/FTW stud dog and want to promote him.

I went to Thornycourt spaniels to buy a Badgercourt bred dog for my best friend who had me plagued to find him a Warlord line spaniel bitch because it was all that he has ever owned and shot over.Thornycourt was the strongest Bagdercourt line that I could find and I picked him a b+w bitch.The day before that I bought 2 pups for myself out of one of the top FTCH's Dogs in the country bred to a winning top well known bitch.(top drawer stuff).I sold the bitch pup at a year old as she wouldn't hunt and the dog went to trials,ran in 4 and didn't have the gears required and I sold him last week as a shooting dog.I also bought a year a pup later out of a winner of the championship and gave that away last week(free) as it was a crocodile with noise,bursting dummies for fun and barking like a hound at water.

I have spent up on four grand on top trial bred dogs and have zero to show for it and my mate with his thornycourt bitch has a hunting machine with no faults that would blow a hole in anything that I have owned in the last 7 years.That sold the old lines to me and a good hunting dog man(or woman) is as good a judge/breeder as some of the big guns in trialling.

I am not going to talk down anyones lines here on this site but I will give due credit to anyone who breeds a dog that impresses me.(because I'm a very fussy F***er)

My mate now has 8 pups and four dogs and 4 bitches out of his dog mated to a FTCH dog that has 9(open stakes won).The pups are 3 weeks old and all gone, 6 out of the 8 to trial men............

just a little point how come the guys at the top of the game can constantly year after year season after season make up ftch after ftch out of the lines off today, ian openshaw, david lisset, aubrey ladyman, simon dixon, john bailey, pat brennan, mick walsh etc so those of us who struggle to come out with a dog for trialling from todays lines have to sit back and ask ourselves is it the dogs that are not up to standard or is it really our training thats not up to standard, i think its the latter..

[arwesa]

but I want a hummer? seriously though, there must be a balance to be found

[Rothievale]

just a little point how come the guys at the top of the game can constantly year after year season after season make up ftch after ftch out of the lines off today, ian openshaw, david lisset, aubrey ladyman, simon dixon, john bailey, pat brennan, mick walsh etc so those of us who struggle to come out with a dog for trialling from todays lines have to sit back and ask ourselves is it the dogs that are not up to standard or is it really our training thats not up to standard, i think its the latter..

because paul, yes they are bloody good trainers with years more experience than us but also because they have ALOT of rabbit shooting to get a dog going and 'harden' it up. I don't have anything against some of the modern lines but I still have a soft spot for badgercourt, robinsmoor, skipper of arford stuff.

[Hales Smut]

Those succesfull trainers indeed show us succesfull dogs (on purpose I am not using the word good dogs ) . Are these dogs good hunting dogs??? I only can judge by championship DVD's and on this grounds it's inpossible to see if a dog hunts. I think, on these grounds, you're even better of with a non hunter, who likes to run and being handled. How frequently do you see a dog that gets a bird in his nose and makes a 10/15 yard flush? Almost never. A dog that realy finds the bird , drives in and makes a strong possitive flush???? The trialing system is completely wrong and still I believe that trialing is the only way to compare dogs. Trials should be run on grounds were no birds are released. Wild game only. Even if this means only 1 flush every 2 or 3 dogs. This is the only way to discover game finding ability. After a while you will see that always the same dogs find the game. Handling would and should be far less important. Most "modern" dogs are very spectacular ,easy to train and handle, runners who hardly hunt. I've had a good few of them and on our grounds they are useless. A famous trainer whose video tapes are extremely good , declares that he doesn't like a young dog to hunt and smash cover apart, without knowing what's in it. I do like them, a young dog that hunts cover ( brambles) with little or no stimulation shows that he "knows" by instinct where the game hides. That's what's called game finding ability. THE most important thing in a spaniel. That's where the old lines where that much better than these modern ones.

[liverandwhite]

When did badgercourt become badgercourt? Did they just fall out of the sky?. Peter got his first dog ,badgercourt susan,off keith erlandson. So is this really a badgercourt dog?. When mated to rxtex rex she produced badgercourt dusty, which peter later told a friend was the best animal he had ever owned, so was this the mystical badgercourt dog?. Some actually praise the lines they want to hate by not looking into things. When did a "old line" turn into a "new line"?. Some praise this old stuff and slag the new stuff when really its just the same stuff !.

[Polmaise]

When did badgercourt become badgercourt? Did they just fall out of the sky?. Peter got his first dog ,badgercourt susan,off keith erlandson. So is this really a badgercourt dog?. When mated to rxtex rex she produced badgercourt dusty, which peter later told a friend was the best animal he had ever owned, so was this the mystical badgercourt dog?. Some actually praise the lines they want to hate by not looking into things. When did a "old line" turn into a "new line"?. Some praise this old stuff and slag the new stuff when really its just the same stuff !.

Now theres a very good point

[James]

So I go and get a load of spirits, and say a couple of fruit juices. I then mix them in a way that nobody has before and it just so happens to create a drink that many people like, is this not then my cocktail or did I just stick a load of drinks together that were already there?
For me if someone breeds dogs in a way that produces a type of dog that people like time and time again, then yes they are more than entitled to say its their line.