Gundog Training Forum

There's surely more to gundogs than trials & tests.

Naj

When you know what you are doing and start out with a nice dog,tests and trials are obtainable. To "fix" other people's dogs and "their " training problems is a whole different matter. Unfortunately,I too have done both. I would rather show up to just run tests with one or two dogs.

eastie wrote:We'll he is yet to turn up at a trial or even a test with a decent dog.....

What a strange thing to say does that really have any bearing on his ability to teach people?

farmboy wrote:To "fix" other people's dogs and "their " training problems is a whole different matter.

eastie wrote:We'll he is yet to turn up at a trial or even a test with a decent dog.....

Look at the old posts . He spoke sense based on experience and could work dogs . He posted videos and could work the dogs , Commentate and work camcorder in training situations and shoot days .

He was rude though but that takes nothing away from the mans ability to train working gundogs.

As someone with a new lab pup at the time I learned more off Polmaise posts than many on here .

LucyLab wrote:

eastie wrote:We'll he is yet to turn up at a trial or even a test with a decent dog.....

What a strange thing to say does that really have any bearing on his ability to teach people?

I guess for the same reasons as most people like to buy a working gundog from lines with Trial awards in the pedigree, its quite nice to know that a trainer can train his own dogs to a reasonable competition standard? Kind of a proving ground?

That lets me out then!

eastie wrote:We'll he is yet to turn up at a trial or even a test with a decent dog.....

LucyLab wrote:What a strange thing to say does that really have any bearing on his ability to teach people?

farmboy wrote:To "fix" other people's dogs and "their " training problems is a whole different matter.

Naj wrote:There's surely more to gundogs than trials & tests.

Seems there's a consensus that this Polmaise chap can "get'r done" afield with both folk and their four-legged friends - what's trials or tests got to do with it?

MG

crackerd wrote:

eastie wrote:We'll he is yet to turn up at a trial or even a test with a decent dog.....

LucyLab wrote:What a strange thing to say does that really have any bearing on his ability to teach people?

farmboy wrote:To "fix" other people's dogs and "their " training problems is a whole different matter.

Naj wrote:There's surely more to gundogs than trials & tests.

Seems there's a consensus that this Polmaise chap can "get'r done" afield with both folk and their four-legged friends - what's trials or tests got to do with it?

MG

If your teaching people who aspire to trial or test yet you have had no success at that yourself, then I'd say Eastie has a point?

I could teach someone to swim ... they go on to be a champion wild swimmer and win races across the Tay several times a year ... I have never even dipped my pinkie in the Tay let alone swum in it (good grief there are jellyfish in there ) ... does that invalidate me as a swimming teacher? of course not because I can teach swimming in a swimming pool (sans critters) - in fact come to that how many swimming teachers even get in the water to teach swimming? hmmmm

A teacher/trainer helps people learn a skill - if the teacher is good at teaching that skill then the person can go on to develop that skill to the limit of their potential (not the trainer's potential). Have you ever wondered why we don't need accompanied by a teacher our whole lives? maybe because they give us a foundation to build our life on.

I didn't see Lucy say she went for training for trials or tests ... I saw her say she asked for Robert Polmaise's help with a couple of issues she has encountered with her dogs. I also read that she now has work to do with each dog before her next lesson - so she is not suggesting that after the lesson her dogs are the finished article or could be trials winners tomorrow ... she is going to use the skill taught to her to develop her and the dogs potential.

Lucy I am glad you got so much out of the lesson - that is how a good teacher/trainer should leave their pupils feeling ... motivated and with a direction to travel to achieve their goal.

Cathy

Nonehpets wrote:I could teach someone to swim ... they go on to be a champion wild swimmer and win races across the Tay several times a year ... I have never even dipped my pinkie in the Tay let alone swum in it (good grief there are jellyfish in there ) ... does that invalidate me as a swimming teacher? of course not because I can teach swimming in a swimming pool (sans critters) - in fact come to that how many swimming teachers even get in the water to teach swimming? hmmmm

A teacher/trainer helps people learn a skill - if the teacher is good at teaching that skill then the person can go on to develop that skill to the limit of their potential (not the trainer's potential). Have you ever wondered why we don't need accompanied by a teacher our whole lives? maybe because they give us a foundation to build our life on.

I didn't see Lucy say she went for training for trials or tests ... I saw her say she asked for Robert Polmaise's help with a couple of issues she has encountered with her dogs. I also read that she now has work to do with each dog before her next lesson - so she is not suggesting that after the lesson her dogs are the finished article or could be trials winners tomorrow ... she is going to use the skill taught to her to develop her and the dogs potential.

Lucy I am glad you got so much out of the lesson - that is how a good teacher/trainer should leave their pupils feeling ... motivated and with a direction to travel to achieve their goal.

Cathy

No you can certainly teach people to swim, its just you wouldn't be a very good swimming teacher and should someone really want to swim well they would be well advised to go elsewhere for swimming lessons.

Nonehpets wrote: - in fact come to that how many swimming teachers even get in the water to teach swimming? hmmmm


Cathy

I have no idea how folk get a job as a swimming instructor now but about 45 years ago I was a swimming instructor and I certainly had to go into the water with some of the pupils. As a trainee swimming instructor I was tested on my own swimming skills by qualified swimming instructors . I did so called survival swims where the idea seemed to be to either drown me or have me die of exhaustion or hypo-whatdyercallit

I agree ,however that, in particular, field trial wins do not necessarily make a person a good trainer of people. To my mind having a lot of trial experience is a good thing .....even if you did not win. If you have that experience you are more likely to know what to do in trials ..... and what not to do in a huge variety of different situations. Tests are different from trials .... I won far more tests than I did trials. The live game in trials and the number of unforeseen situations that crop up makes a hell of a difference but the more trials you take part in the better able you are to deal with unexpected situations .
It is one thing to be able to take a dog to a shoot and prevent a run-in or some other disaster, but in a trial where you cannot reprimand the dog without getting kicked out you need to have a well trained dog plus a slightly different attitude yourself to increase your chances of winning.
Many very well trained dogs get taken to trials but the dogs owners sort of "fall apart" in that situation. Maybe their dogs can take the pressure but the handlers just aren't so good at taking it.
I have seen people be physically sick just prior to trials .....or desperately need to go to the toilet. At ordinary shoots this just does not happen so some folk stick to ordinary shoots and good luck to them.

Not sure if this has much to do with this thread , it was just random thoughts.

Wullie