That shooting season and that Brittany pup were to give me some big disappointments and some big surprises too. I managed to get a run in a two day Open trial with Lady and all went very well for me right up until the very last retrieve of the second day. The judge walking along beside me was a friend ....he owned a Field Trial Champion bitch from Tessa's litter. He told me to make sure to not take my eyes off the next bird to be shot for it would be mine's and if Lady got it she'd win the trial and be a F.T.Ch.
We were walking over a field of part grown turnips at the time and we were nearing the end of the field. A shot was heard well off to our left but I saw nothing in the air and nothing fall.... I hoped it wasn't a rabbit ! The shot was ignored and the line walked on, we presumed the bird or whatever had been missed. A cock pheasant got up out in front and was shot . It fell right next to the fields boundary wall and I had it marked to the inch because it had fallen just under a big red stone in an otherwise grey coloured stone wall.
My judge waited a moment then said ..."Right Bill, send her." An instant before I could say "Out !" we heard a shout of "Stop!" It was the trials most senior judge and I didn't like him one little bit and I don't think he liked me much either ! He had a reputation of favouring his own little clique and I have never liked cliques or joined them ...possibly because they are usually controlled by a sort of gang leader. I'd already heard "hearsay" stuff about this man but now I was to find out for myself.
He told my judge there was a bird down behind and well over to the side and he wanted that bird ,not the one out in front. My own judge was not pleased and said so.... they moved away from me and had a bit of an argument. Then back came my judge and apologised profusely to me and said that like it or not I would have to send Lady for the previously shot bird.... The thing was nobody but the man who had shot it seemed to have a clue where the bird was ! I began to suspect a stitch-up was taking place and so, I think, did my judge. He had another argument with the senior judge which the other judges joined in but seemed to be over-ruled by the senior judge.
My judge again apologised to me then told me the area to be searched for the bird. Lady failed to find any bird as did the next dog tried in the area. The judges walked out and they too failed to find it as did the gun. It could have been a runner I suppose but I suspect I'd either been told to send Lady to the wrong area ....or the bird had never even been hit . We were eliminated from the trial as Lady had been "first dog down" on the bird. I was not amused and neither were several other people at that trial. I was not the only one with strong suspicions that a " fix" had just taken place.
This was the only retriever trial in which I suspected "bent" judging had taken place that I had ever taken part in. I have since seen, as a spectator, one other instance of what I suspect was bent judging in a retriever trial but that was many years later ....this season in fact but I am not going to go into details. I wasn't close enough to the "action" to be reasonably certain.
I didn't know it then but that was to be both Lady's and Tessa's last ever trial. I drove home from it absolutely disgusted and furious. The following season I did enter more retriever trials ....but more about that later....if I remember.
My Brittany pup was now 11 weeks old and one day I could not get a "baby sitter" for her so I took her with me picking-up. I intended to leave her in the car but the drives had been changed around and she would have been very close to the bangs during one of the drives so I took her back-marking along with the labs. She was kept on the lead and we were always 1-200 yards back from the guns but even so I watched her carefully in case the shots frightened her. The bangs meant nothing to her and they certainly did not frighten her. On the other hand she took a very keen interest in the pheasants flying past among the woodlands and in the birds my labs brought back.
Towards the end of the morning a very obliging hen pheasant fell stone dead within 15 yards from me. I couldn't resist it, I let the pup loose ! She gave it a sniff then tried picking it up but she couldn't quite get her jaws around the body so after a couple of false starts with the legs and wings, she held it by the neck close to the wing joint and dragged it back to me like that. That grip was to become her normal method when retrieving any bird too large to comfortably hold by the body. She eventually picked hen pheasants properly but cock pheasants were almost always brought back by the neck as were pinkfeet and greylag geese both dead and alive.
She had been retrieving stuffed socks etc. in the house and outdoors by then and when I saw her bring back that hen pheasant I thought I didn't have to trouble myself with retrieving and could move on to the hunting and pointing training ..... it was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made.
Vicky took to hunting game like a duck takes to water. She was, even at 11 weeks old, already hunting for and occasionally pointing partridge coveys. She fascinated me. To see that tiny pup going at full gallop over a fairly rough field to try to find birds was quite a sight. By about 14 weeks old she had taught herself to point but did not "hold" the point for very long ....3-10 seconds....before she moved in to flush the birds. She chased after every bird and every covey she found until she could no longer see them and I let her do that.
Eventually her chases became a little bit less keen and she did not chase the birds as far. It was only then that I began to introduce the recall whistle ..... she was already thinking about returning to me. I still do that to this day. It makes for a more willing to obey dog instead of a dog that is still thinking " If I disobey and keep on chasing, maybe I could catch that bird ?" I do often use "aversive" training methods but not if it is easier to do things in the way the pup is very happy with.
By about 4 months old she would "hold point" at her usual hunting ranges of about 50-60 yards from me. She still indulged in an occasional chase but I now began to introduce the stop whistle when she chose not to chase followed by a lot of praise. This stop whistle later became the sit whistle. She just kept on getting better and better at quartering the fairly easy open fields I had available which were, at that time , alive with grey partridge coveys. She now hunted with a very good pattern , pointed very readily and was at least semi-steady to the commanded flushes she now did. By 5 months old she was as good a hunter and was a better pointer than my present Brittany is at 14 months old.
The main thing that has caused this difference in ability was the sheer numbers of partridges plus a few other game species I had available to me at any time only 5 minutes car journey from my house. I often took Vicky out hunting twice a day. The other big help was that I was still relatively young and very, very fit ! I could still "run a dog down" and I made sure I did that while Vicky was still young enough to be caught ! She grew up believing that I could and would come after her , my present Brittany has grown up believing I am virtually rooted to the spot. It makes a hell of a difference !
The ground I hunted Libby over was land bought by Edinburgh town council for future development . It had been at least two farms , one of which I been allowed to shoot woodpigeons on . I already knew there were a lot of partridges there and when the land was allowed to go wild after the council bought it , the weeds grew among some remaining bits and pieces of grain crops and the partridge population exploded. There was a lot of predatory vermin on that ground both furred and feathered but it is habitat that makes for a really good wild bred game population and that area was now prime gamebird habitat. I made the most of it.
Wullie
reflections and redirections
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trekmoor
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Re: reflections and redirections
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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cuda
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Re: reflections and redirections
about bloody time 
- I was beginning to think your 'reflections and redirections had been - redirected! 
Dodgy judging in this day and age ? -
Charlie
- I was beginning to think your 'reflections and redirections had been - redirected! Dodgy judging in this day and age ? -
Charlie
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trekmoor
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Re: reflections and redirections
Wait until I get started on what some HPR trials were like ! 
I think dodgy judging was extremely rare in retriever trials ....wish I could say the same about HPR trials. A few of the judges were either incompetent or were a bit less than "straight."................Or maybe their interpretation of K.C. trial rules was very different from mine's ?
Wullie
I think dodgy judging was extremely rare in retriever trials ....wish I could say the same about HPR trials. A few of the judges were either incompetent or were a bit less than "straight."................Or maybe their interpretation of K.C. trial rules was very different from mine's ?Wullie
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
Re: reflections and redirections
another great episode I thought you had burnt your keyboard out!!
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trekmoor
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Re: reflections and redirections
Vicky the brittany pup was a flying machine and when I heard a Spring Pointing Test , which is a hunting and pointing test normally held in March or early April , was to be held just over the border in England I wanted to run her in it. I discovered I could not do that for she would still have been less than 6 months old on the day of the test. I decided just to go as a spectator.
The test, as usual, was held on "spring planting" fields where grey partridge were to be found. I soon saw that Vicky was as good as most of the other dogs of about a year older than her. Then I saw a hare get up and get chased .....but the dog was not eliminated. I asked about this and discovered that the younger dogs at least, were allowed to chase for about 60 yards before being deemed to be out of control. That was a new one on me ! Had a lab or spaniel done that in a trial it would have been quickly eliminated.
I had to admit however that Vicky would have been eliminated for although I could now control her chases of birds I was just about certain she'd have chased any hare she found all the way to Scotland. The competing dogs were graded as being "Good " or "Very Good" or "Excellent " but there should have been a 4th award available ......" No f-in good !" Some of the dogs went at about the speed of a Wimbledon Womble and my cockers would have ranged out further. Most of the dogs failed to gain any grade certificate .... those certificates were not given out like confetti at a wedding.
Vicky became the best dog on partridges that I have ever owned. The numbers of partridge she encountered every time I took her out saw to that. She began to get into fields while still on the lead, hold her head high into the wind and quite often she could go straight to partridge coveys sitting out in the field. I began to hunt her on tail winds to counteract this for it messed up her hunting pattern to be able to find birds without having to hunt for them.
Very soon I noticed she had developed a new "trick." She could no longer scent the birds prior to being cast -off to hunt but she could still hear them. I think partridge probably emit little chirrups of alarm when a man enters their field . Vicky would hunt herself towards the tiny sounds they made. She bumped a lot of birds while doing this but she hated bumping up birds even more than I disliked seeing it happen. She began to run wide of the sounds she heard and then home in on them with the wind in her favour.
I can, of course, only guess that she heard and recognised partridge calls but I can think of no other reason for the way in which she could find coveys so quickly .
Since I already knew.....or thought I knew.... that she would retrieve with no trouble at all I didn't do any retrieving with her. It was all hunt-hunt-hunt. I took her to water at the beginning of the summer and tossed a little dummy into paddling depth water but she refused to go in to fetch it. I tried again but on dry land , she still refused to fetch it and she kept on refusing for many months !
She would not retrieve any dummy no matter if it was wrapped in rabbit skins or bird wings , all she would do was hunt. She would not swim either no matter what I tried and I tried everything except throwing her in ! I did not like that but decided that since I'd bought her to be a hunter that would find game to be shot for my field trial labs it wouldn't matter too much if she would not retrieve.
I began to take her to HPR training classes which were held on some quite extensive but mainly gameless moorlands once per month. I ran into trouble there on two counts. The first was that she hunted far too far and wide for the liking of the two men who took the classes. I got a row again and again for letting her hunt out past gunshot range. I thought they were very wrong about this and said that if I'd wanted a spaniel , I'd have bought one.
I continued to let her run wide as did a couple of other men in that class with their GSP's.
The classes also included retrieve "lessons" but those lessons did not do much to help the class. I have a vague memory of hearing the senior instructor telling a pupil during training for a blind retrieve of only 30 yards or so ...... " Try to get your dog to go in that direction and then maybe it will find the dummy." I felt like interfering but did not..... so not much improvement was seen in the class. My main reason for not trying to help was that I would have been unlikely to be listened to ! My own pup would not even do a 30 yards long marked retrieve !
Vicky soon developed a little trick of her own that I have never seen any other dog do in order to avoid retrieving. She'd sit at my heel facing the dummy thrower but as soon as the dummy had been thrown and was in the air, she'd do a 180 degrees about turn then sit again facing the opposite direction ! Her attitude was ...." If I haven't seen it then you cannot possibly send me for it !"
The class thought this was hilarious but I was quietly seething ! Small wonder I did not offer to help with the retrieve training !
I got the chance to take her on grouse counts once July arrived and I did and she was good at it after bumping her first covey or two. The keeper I was out with was very pleased with her work and her steadiness. He saw her find a couple of late grouse broods where the chicks were not much bigger than sparrows. Vicky never tried to grab those chicks and that amazed him . He told me his lab bitch usually ate a few chicks if he let her hunt !
When the 12th of August arrived I took my labs to the driven shoots but did not take Vicky .... I thought there would be no sense in taking her picking-up since she did not retrieve . I should have taken her..... I'd have had my eyes and my mind opened.
The pheasant shooting season arrived so with Vicky and my lab Lady with me I headed out to the farm to try to find and shoot one or two. Vicky hunted well and went on point near the start of a field of long stubbles. I moved in on her with Lady at heel and ordered Vicky to flush. She did and up got a covey of partridge and I managed a right and left on them.
I decided to see if Vicky would retrieve one of them, it was all good practice for the lab anyway to have to keep to heel. Vicky refused to budge, in fact she remained on point. I reloaded my gun. I gave her the flush command and up got a partridge. I shot that too then told her to retrieve it, she refused and went back onto point. I thought to myself that she was pointing the remaining scent and tried again to get her to go out and retrieve. She still refused so I once more told her to flush , she went on a few steps and flushed a pheasant. I shot that too and Vicky sprang into action. She ran in and retrieved every one of those birds one after the other !
I forgot all about the lab for my goose had become a swan ! I could hardly believe what I had just seen but maybe I should have known. She had retrieved a fresh shot pheasant while still just a tiny pup. Brittanies are one of the most "natural" breeds of gundogs on the planet provided they are working on game in natural circumstances.
I now believed all I had to do was to give her cold game retrieves in order to gain some steadiness and some directional handling ability. In this, I was much mistaken . She completely refused to retrieve any bird that was not still "red hot !"
Since having that Brittany I have never again trained retrieving as a secondary to hunting. I try, if I can, to train hunting and retrieving at the same time but now, if a pup is an "iffy" retriever or a non-retriever I drop the hunting training until the pup will retrieve fairly reliably.
I still had a lot of work and trouble ahead of me before Vicky became a reliable retriever of anything other than straight out of the sky game.
.....................................................................................................
To be continued
Wullie
The test, as usual, was held on "spring planting" fields where grey partridge were to be found. I soon saw that Vicky was as good as most of the other dogs of about a year older than her. Then I saw a hare get up and get chased .....but the dog was not eliminated. I asked about this and discovered that the younger dogs at least, were allowed to chase for about 60 yards before being deemed to be out of control. That was a new one on me ! Had a lab or spaniel done that in a trial it would have been quickly eliminated.
I had to admit however that Vicky would have been eliminated for although I could now control her chases of birds I was just about certain she'd have chased any hare she found all the way to Scotland. The competing dogs were graded as being "Good " or "Very Good" or "Excellent " but there should have been a 4th award available ......" No f-in good !" Some of the dogs went at about the speed of a Wimbledon Womble and my cockers would have ranged out further. Most of the dogs failed to gain any grade certificate .... those certificates were not given out like confetti at a wedding.
Vicky became the best dog on partridges that I have ever owned. The numbers of partridge she encountered every time I took her out saw to that. She began to get into fields while still on the lead, hold her head high into the wind and quite often she could go straight to partridge coveys sitting out in the field. I began to hunt her on tail winds to counteract this for it messed up her hunting pattern to be able to find birds without having to hunt for them.
Very soon I noticed she had developed a new "trick." She could no longer scent the birds prior to being cast -off to hunt but she could still hear them. I think partridge probably emit little chirrups of alarm when a man enters their field . Vicky would hunt herself towards the tiny sounds they made. She bumped a lot of birds while doing this but she hated bumping up birds even more than I disliked seeing it happen. She began to run wide of the sounds she heard and then home in on them with the wind in her favour.
I can, of course, only guess that she heard and recognised partridge calls but I can think of no other reason for the way in which she could find coveys so quickly .
Since I already knew.....or thought I knew.... that she would retrieve with no trouble at all I didn't do any retrieving with her. It was all hunt-hunt-hunt. I took her to water at the beginning of the summer and tossed a little dummy into paddling depth water but she refused to go in to fetch it. I tried again but on dry land , she still refused to fetch it and she kept on refusing for many months !
She would not retrieve any dummy no matter if it was wrapped in rabbit skins or bird wings , all she would do was hunt. She would not swim either no matter what I tried and I tried everything except throwing her in ! I did not like that but decided that since I'd bought her to be a hunter that would find game to be shot for my field trial labs it wouldn't matter too much if she would not retrieve.
I began to take her to HPR training classes which were held on some quite extensive but mainly gameless moorlands once per month. I ran into trouble there on two counts. The first was that she hunted far too far and wide for the liking of the two men who took the classes. I got a row again and again for letting her hunt out past gunshot range. I thought they were very wrong about this and said that if I'd wanted a spaniel , I'd have bought one.
I continued to let her run wide as did a couple of other men in that class with their GSP's.
The classes also included retrieve "lessons" but those lessons did not do much to help the class. I have a vague memory of hearing the senior instructor telling a pupil during training for a blind retrieve of only 30 yards or so ...... " Try to get your dog to go in that direction and then maybe it will find the dummy." I felt like interfering but did not..... so not much improvement was seen in the class. My main reason for not trying to help was that I would have been unlikely to be listened to ! My own pup would not even do a 30 yards long marked retrieve !
Vicky soon developed a little trick of her own that I have never seen any other dog do in order to avoid retrieving. She'd sit at my heel facing the dummy thrower but as soon as the dummy had been thrown and was in the air, she'd do a 180 degrees about turn then sit again facing the opposite direction ! Her attitude was ...." If I haven't seen it then you cannot possibly send me for it !"
The class thought this was hilarious but I was quietly seething ! Small wonder I did not offer to help with the retrieve training !
I got the chance to take her on grouse counts once July arrived and I did and she was good at it after bumping her first covey or two. The keeper I was out with was very pleased with her work and her steadiness. He saw her find a couple of late grouse broods where the chicks were not much bigger than sparrows. Vicky never tried to grab those chicks and that amazed him . He told me his lab bitch usually ate a few chicks if he let her hunt !
When the 12th of August arrived I took my labs to the driven shoots but did not take Vicky .... I thought there would be no sense in taking her picking-up since she did not retrieve . I should have taken her..... I'd have had my eyes and my mind opened.
The pheasant shooting season arrived so with Vicky and my lab Lady with me I headed out to the farm to try to find and shoot one or two. Vicky hunted well and went on point near the start of a field of long stubbles. I moved in on her with Lady at heel and ordered Vicky to flush. She did and up got a covey of partridge and I managed a right and left on them.
I decided to see if Vicky would retrieve one of them, it was all good practice for the lab anyway to have to keep to heel. Vicky refused to budge, in fact she remained on point. I reloaded my gun. I gave her the flush command and up got a partridge. I shot that too then told her to retrieve it, she refused and went back onto point. I thought to myself that she was pointing the remaining scent and tried again to get her to go out and retrieve. She still refused so I once more told her to flush , she went on a few steps and flushed a pheasant. I shot that too and Vicky sprang into action. She ran in and retrieved every one of those birds one after the other !
I forgot all about the lab for my goose had become a swan ! I could hardly believe what I had just seen but maybe I should have known. She had retrieved a fresh shot pheasant while still just a tiny pup. Brittanies are one of the most "natural" breeds of gundogs on the planet provided they are working on game in natural circumstances.
I now believed all I had to do was to give her cold game retrieves in order to gain some steadiness and some directional handling ability. In this, I was much mistaken . She completely refused to retrieve any bird that was not still "red hot !"
Since having that Brittany I have never again trained retrieving as a secondary to hunting. I try, if I can, to train hunting and retrieving at the same time but now, if a pup is an "iffy" retriever or a non-retriever I drop the hunting training until the pup will retrieve fairly reliably.
I still had a lot of work and trouble ahead of me before Vicky became a reliable retriever of anything other than straight out of the sky game.
.....................................................................................................
To be continued
Wullie
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
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trekmoor
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Re: reflections and redirections
I made an effort to get my labs Lady and Tessa into a few Open trials since if either of them won just a single day Open trial it would have made that dog a F.T.Ch. It would be very difficult for me to get the neccessary days off from my work. The P.0. gave men days off or even helped them with expenses for other sports but not for gundog trials. I'd been refused time off, using up my official holidays, even to compete in the Retriever Championships with Tessa. It was only when I showed my bosses H.M. the Queens invitation to "supper" at Sandringham Palace that the P.O. had a sudden change of mind. I'd produced the invitation, waved it in front of them and ever so sweetly asked , " Should I tell the queen her Post Office is refusing to allow her employee to attend her function then ?"..... I got my days off !
I spent quite a bit of money joining clubs in Scotland and well down into England then put in my entries for their trials. I didn't get one single run ! One of the English clubs sent me back word that I was 72nd reserve !!! I made up my mind on the spot not to enter any more Retriever trials and I never have.
I began to concentrate on my brittany. Since she would not enter water I knew she would never win an HPR trial so I did my utmost to persuade her to swim but all to no avail ....she would hardly even dip her toes into the water ! Then I hunted her into some fields bordering the local canal as I did things the easy way and just strolled along the tow path.
She hunted very well to begin with but found nothing in the fields so after about 5 minutes she galloped back across the field towards me then jumped into the canal and swam over to it's far side to hunt among the plentiful cover over there ! She did it without turning a hair and I wasn't sure whether I should be pleased or angry .....she could swim just fine when she wanted to ! Following that I began to "launch" her into water in much the same way as a boy launches a toy sailing boat. I refused to take any more water refusals from her.
She didn't like it but she did end up entering water from exactly where I told her to and would , once in there, swim over to it's far bank . Her reward for swimming was to hunt the far bank, it was the only reward I could give her since she still would only retrieve freshly shot birds . She got several of those for I now began to take her picking up.
I desperately needed her to retrieve cold game because cold game or cold homing pigeons are used for the water tests in HPR trials. It is to be hoped that I never again have to train a dog "in reverse" to pick up retrieves ! I had to begin with red hot, fresh shot birds then leave those birds to cool for ever lengthening periods of time. Eventually she would retrieve game shot an hour or two earlier and then game shot the previous day.
I began, on the farm I had shooting on, to very quickly cut the wings off freshly shot birds then tie them onto dummies. She was very dubious about this but she retrieved them. From that start I eventually persuaded her to retrieve "bare" dummies but it took some time !
Her co-owner was a show person and Vicky was already doing well in the showring. She was delighted that Vicky would now retrieve. She had seen her work only twice but that was as a hunter and pointer with which Vicky had no problems..... apart from occasional "stickiness" on point and a strong liking for chasing hares of which she had now chased several ! Her co-owner thought that since she now retrieved she was a dead cert trial winner ..... I knew better !
To my astonishment her co-owner told me she'd entered Vicky for a field trial. I did my best to withdraw the entry but she was determined to push ahead. I found out that the trial was down in Yorkshire so I thought I could wriggle out. My car was an old banger and probably would not make it that far from Haggisland. She quickly countered this by saying that she'd drive me down and back.
It was about a week later that I found out that the trial Vicky now had a run in was an All Aged trial and not a Novice. I tried again to wriggle out but her co-owner was a very determined lady and she did not let me evade that trial.
I went to work improving Vicky's handling and her steadiness to falling game. She was pretty easy to train to be steady. I had made one glaring ommision in her training however and that omission showed up during the trial.
When I arrived at the trial ground I had no idea what the ground to be hunted would be like but I had assumed it would be fairly open ground. Every trial I had spectated at had been on open ground ..... this trial took place in woodlands.
Vicky's turn under the judges came and I cast her off ..... then hardly ever saw her for the next 10 minutes ! I had trained her on moorlands and on stubble fields but not in woodlands. She ran those woods like a bat out of hell, it was easy running for a dog under the trees but it was not so easy for a man to walk in there , seeing a dog was impossible unless the dog kept within 20-30 yards of it's handler.
That trial suffered very badly for enough game to fill a cook pot never mind a gamebag and Vicky, like so many other dogs, found no game at all. We were not called back in under the judges following her initial run. The dog that eventually gained the first place did so where nobody but the judges and a gun could see it happen. They left the rest of the trial competitors standing near a river and went off towards a pen and a feeder somewhere in the distance among the trees. We heard a shot but that was all we knew of how the hunt had gone.
When they all returned the trial was declared to be over and the dog they'd went off with was the only dog that would be required to do the water test. Since this was an all-age stake the water test was a blind retrieve on cold game placed just onto the far bank of the river. The river wasn't very deep so the dog only had to swim a few strokes out in the middle but it did do the retrieve very well. It won the trial and was the only dog to get an award.
HPR judges often give a little spiel at the end of trials and what they said about Vicky went something like this .... " A very keen, hard hunting little bitch but we could only see her when she whizzed past us like Hale's Comet about once in every 76 years !" I couldn't argue with that for it was true. I had ommited to train her to hunt like a long range spaniel. I began with that as soon as I got home.
.............................................................................................................................................
Wullie
I spent quite a bit of money joining clubs in Scotland and well down into England then put in my entries for their trials. I didn't get one single run ! One of the English clubs sent me back word that I was 72nd reserve !!! I made up my mind on the spot not to enter any more Retriever trials and I never have.
I began to concentrate on my brittany. Since she would not enter water I knew she would never win an HPR trial so I did my utmost to persuade her to swim but all to no avail ....she would hardly even dip her toes into the water ! Then I hunted her into some fields bordering the local canal as I did things the easy way and just strolled along the tow path.
She hunted very well to begin with but found nothing in the fields so after about 5 minutes she galloped back across the field towards me then jumped into the canal and swam over to it's far side to hunt among the plentiful cover over there ! She did it without turning a hair and I wasn't sure whether I should be pleased or angry .....she could swim just fine when she wanted to ! Following that I began to "launch" her into water in much the same way as a boy launches a toy sailing boat. I refused to take any more water refusals from her.
She didn't like it but she did end up entering water from exactly where I told her to and would , once in there, swim over to it's far bank . Her reward for swimming was to hunt the far bank, it was the only reward I could give her since she still would only retrieve freshly shot birds . She got several of those for I now began to take her picking up.
I desperately needed her to retrieve cold game because cold game or cold homing pigeons are used for the water tests in HPR trials. It is to be hoped that I never again have to train a dog "in reverse" to pick up retrieves ! I had to begin with red hot, fresh shot birds then leave those birds to cool for ever lengthening periods of time. Eventually she would retrieve game shot an hour or two earlier and then game shot the previous day.
I began, on the farm I had shooting on, to very quickly cut the wings off freshly shot birds then tie them onto dummies. She was very dubious about this but she retrieved them. From that start I eventually persuaded her to retrieve "bare" dummies but it took some time !
Her co-owner was a show person and Vicky was already doing well in the showring. She was delighted that Vicky would now retrieve. She had seen her work only twice but that was as a hunter and pointer with which Vicky had no problems..... apart from occasional "stickiness" on point and a strong liking for chasing hares of which she had now chased several ! Her co-owner thought that since she now retrieved she was a dead cert trial winner ..... I knew better !
To my astonishment her co-owner told me she'd entered Vicky for a field trial. I did my best to withdraw the entry but she was determined to push ahead. I found out that the trial was down in Yorkshire so I thought I could wriggle out. My car was an old banger and probably would not make it that far from Haggisland. She quickly countered this by saying that she'd drive me down and back.
It was about a week later that I found out that the trial Vicky now had a run in was an All Aged trial and not a Novice. I tried again to wriggle out but her co-owner was a very determined lady and she did not let me evade that trial.
I went to work improving Vicky's handling and her steadiness to falling game. She was pretty easy to train to be steady. I had made one glaring ommision in her training however and that omission showed up during the trial.
When I arrived at the trial ground I had no idea what the ground to be hunted would be like but I had assumed it would be fairly open ground. Every trial I had spectated at had been on open ground ..... this trial took place in woodlands.
Vicky's turn under the judges came and I cast her off ..... then hardly ever saw her for the next 10 minutes ! I had trained her on moorlands and on stubble fields but not in woodlands. She ran those woods like a bat out of hell, it was easy running for a dog under the trees but it was not so easy for a man to walk in there , seeing a dog was impossible unless the dog kept within 20-30 yards of it's handler.
That trial suffered very badly for enough game to fill a cook pot never mind a gamebag and Vicky, like so many other dogs, found no game at all. We were not called back in under the judges following her initial run. The dog that eventually gained the first place did so where nobody but the judges and a gun could see it happen. They left the rest of the trial competitors standing near a river and went off towards a pen and a feeder somewhere in the distance among the trees. We heard a shot but that was all we knew of how the hunt had gone.
When they all returned the trial was declared to be over and the dog they'd went off with was the only dog that would be required to do the water test. Since this was an all-age stake the water test was a blind retrieve on cold game placed just onto the far bank of the river. The river wasn't very deep so the dog only had to swim a few strokes out in the middle but it did do the retrieve very well. It won the trial and was the only dog to get an award.
HPR judges often give a little spiel at the end of trials and what they said about Vicky went something like this .... " A very keen, hard hunting little bitch but we could only see her when she whizzed past us like Hale's Comet about once in every 76 years !" I couldn't argue with that for it was true. I had ommited to train her to hunt like a long range spaniel. I began with that as soon as I got home.
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Wullie
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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-
trekmoor
- Member
- Posts: 16074
- Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:38 am
- Dogs: Too many and not enough !
- Location: Central Scotland
Re: reflections and redirections
Vicky was one of those dogs that could do just about anything connected to gundog work . I began to use her as a rabbit clearance dog on the farm. The cover was that spike grass stuff known in Scotland as "rashes." I'd gained permission to shoot on that farm by saying I'd keep down the rabbits which wasn't too hard to do since it wasn't heaving with them. Doing this did help a lot when training her to hunt at about 4 times spaniel ranges as I'd discovered she needed to do at times during the trial we got kicked out of.
I could see when she disobeyed the turn, recall and stop whistles among the patches of rashes and do something about it very quickly ....like get out there after her and catch her ! How I wish I could still run like that !! She became very good at finding and pointing rabbits which I shot over her, she became very good at retrieving them too and she could follow the line of a pricked rabbit as well as any spaniel I've ever seen.
Very soon I began to regret the cost of the cartridges I was firing at the rabbits. She didn't need any more steadiness practice or retrieving practice where rabbits were concerned. I had noticed how often the rabbits she pointed remained utterly still in their couches among the rashes and so I tried something else. I took to hunting them with an air rifle instead of a shotgun and this worked very well. Very often I could move quietly past my pointing dog to where the rabbit crouched in hiding. Having seen it I then shot it in the head if possible from very close range ...... feet not yards.
It was a murderous and very cheap way of keeping the rabbit population down. I just picked up the rabbits myself and put them in the bag. On the few occasions where I only wounded the rabbit I sent Vicky to collect it and with one exception she always did. I will come to the exception later.
She also became quite good as a picking up dog but during that first season of picking up with her I made a bit of a boo-boo during one retrieve. I'd been back marking and was making my way forward towards the guns when one of them told me he had a bird down inside a little fenced off plantation of young fir trees. I went over the fence then sent Vicky off to look for it .
She went on point right in the middle of the plantation and I thought she was pointing on the pricked or dead bird as inexperienced HPR's quite often do. When I reached her point I could see the bird and it looked very lightly hit to me . The gun was watching from the fenceline and I didn't want to chance Vicky losing the bird if it ran so I scudded it one over the head with my stick . I then held it up and proudly proclaimed to the gun .... "I've got the bird sir !" He replied ...." So I see but it was a hen that I shot !" He was a sarky bugger that gun !
I'd massacred a completely unshot bird right in front of the gun . I took no more chances and sent Lady and Tessa off hunting to find the gun's bird.
At the start of that season Vicky had been chasing every fallen bird and also any rabbits she encountered on the shoot. The head picker up told me straight that I would never manage to steady her , she was just too "hot" and too wild but by the end of the season she was totally steady to both birds and rabbits.
I put this down to being able to shoot over her on the farm I'd had for years and also now on the waste ground that had once been farming land before the town council bought it over. Part of that land had now been bought from the council by a very large and well known building firm and I was on chatting terms with it's multi-millionaire owner !
I asked if I could shoot the game there before he got around to putting offices and whatnot all over the land. He agreed that it would be better to shoot the game than to see it die of starvation once the place was all covered with concrete. He also said he didn't think I'd get much shooting .....he'd never hunted a dog over that land !
I shot partridges by the dozen and quite a few pheasants too plus one or two ducks that used the place. Vicky became a lot better than just very good at finding game and being steady as game fell. I ran her in no more trials that season but by now I was looking forward to the following season. I was beginning to really rate the bitch....who was still only just a bit over a year old.
I now gave up my job as a trainer for the local gundog club ....it didn't cater for HPR's . I asked a man I'd trained with his dogs to take my place and he did . He did it for about 3 weeks then asked me to return as the number of folk and dogs needing to be trained were more than he and the other trainer could cope with.
For the rest of that spring and summer I took a retriever training class once per week as usual but I gave Vicky much the same retrieves as the labs were getting while I was there. She got better and better.
I still took her to the once per month HPR classes too and folk weren't laughing any more for now she did retrieve dummies from land or from in or over water. One of the things I dislike about many HPR's is that they get away with not entering water where and when they are told to. Far too many of them run up and down the bank or the shoreline looking for an easy way out to the dummy while not getting wet ! Very often they whine like crazy as they do this too !
Their owners, or at least the newbie owners, rarely seem to do much about this and actually tell the reluctant dog how good a dog it is as it misbehaves. Simple marked retrieves from water are turned into the clowns turn to perform at the circus. Once I have got a dog to swim fairly confidently I don't accept much more in the way of refusals from it.
I had turned up to spectate at an HPR Novice trial earlier that year and it was a bitterly cold winters day with skim ice around the edges of the pond used for the water retrieve which is normally held at the end of every HPR trial. I think 5 dogs had got as far as being required to do the water retrieve . Three of them did it but only one did it well. The retrieve was a 10 yard swim for a cold pheasant.
Of the remaining two dogs one would not go in no matter how much cajoling or cussing the handler did but the last dog managed to make me really think HPR trialers are stark, staring bonkers ! The dog would not enter the pond but it was owned by a very determined lady handler to whom I take my hat off. She was told by the judge she had just one more chance to get the dog to retrieve from the water or it would be eliminated.
That lady picked up her very large dog and waded out into the pond with it !! I think she went in up to her waist and I am sorry to say that when she released the dog to go the rest of the way itself, it at once swam back to the shore and bogged off ! Some folk are simply desperate to get an award in a trial . Even I would not have walked out into that ice crusted water just to try to get a place in a trial. I start to shiver just thinking about it !
I have no idea how the judges would have marked that dog if it had swam on and collected the bird. I have seen some very odd marks and placings given by the old-time HPR judges.
I was to witness something similar but more funny (ha-ha) in a trial the following season . This time it was an All Age Stake . A lady got through to the water retrieve which was a blind over a river. There was about a foot of sheer drop from the earthen bank down into a couple of feet of water and her dog did not fancy going down the drop . The lady cajoled the dog and gave great encouragement to the dog but still he would not enter the water.
She began to get even more excited and the excitement changed to anger so she did a little war dance and stamped her feet in frustration .... and the bank gave way and she fell in ! Her dog still would not join her in the water so the lady gave in and even saw the funny side of it ..... thank goodness because I was laughing fit to burst !
Following Vicky's first ever shooting season and field trial I asked around for grouse work for her and I got it. I was given the chance to do grouse counts on two estates and in addition to that work I also took her onto the army firing ranges up on the Pentland Hills. There weren't many grouse there but there were just enough to work on. When the red flags went up it meant the army was about to commence shooting practice so when I saw the flags I used to run like stink for safety !
I was also given the chance to do a weeks grouse counting on the Lammermuirs during July and the man that asked me to join him is someone I have been grateful to ever since. He was and is Wilson Young on whose shoots a large number of trials for all sorts of gundogs have now taken place including at least one spaniel championship. I met Wilson completely by accident when I was propping up the bar in his hotel down in the borders. He noticed my dog-whistle and having found out I worked a brittany he wanted to see her work.
I did a one day outing with him on Lauder Common which holds a few grouse and he liked her and seemed to like me so I then was given the weeks work. Wilson has won the Pointer/Setter Championships and he helped me a lot. I learned from him how to "manage" a grouse point in pointer/setter style and from what angles to approach a pointing dog on any particular wind direction. It wasn't so much that he set out to teach me these things but whether he knew it or not ....and I think he did know it ....I was picking his brains !
He also introduced me to Peter O'Driscoll another very keen Pointer /Setter trainer and another man who has won the pointer/setter Championships. I learned quite a bit from Peter too .
It was while I was doing the weeks grouse counts in the Lammermuir Hills that I finally managed to stop Vicky from chasing hares. Hares have always been a bit of a problem for me because I don't see many of them. I had tried to stop Vicky's hare chases for months but without any success at all. I could run well even over rough ground but not fast enough to catch her as she chased a hare.
Confession time ! A few weeks prior to my grouse counting week out on the hills I decided the only way I would ever stop Vicky chasing hares was with an electric collar. I didn't own one so I borrowed one but it was an old fashioned type with only one shock setting on it and that setting was ," OUCH !" I had tried it just once on myself and I nearly hit the ceiling !
With the collar attached to Vicky off we went into the local hills to find a hare or two. She found one very quickly and she chased it quickly too ignoring my frantic stabs on the remote button. She came back when she was ready to so I took her straight to the local loch and made her swim then re-attached the collar a bit tighter. She found and chased another hare, again totally ignoring the prods I gave the shock button.
I gave in and took her home where I found my wife in the kitchen washing the dishes ...... I don't know what got into me but I wish I hadn't done it ! I asked her to hold the collar "just so" and then pressed the button. She let out a godawful screech and jumped about two feet up from a standing start. Then she came after me so I took refuge in the toilet with the door locked until she'd calmed down a bit. My wife has got a "shocking" temper !!!
I have no idea why the collar hadn't worked on Vicky for my wife certainly felt it ! I told a few of my mates about this and ever since I have suffered their comments about having e-collar trained my wife.
Anyway.... back to the grouse moor and it's hares. Vicky had a couple of hare chases up there on the blue hares but nothing was said ....maybe because the pointers and setters had a few chases too ! I was just casting Vicky off again following one hare chase when she made a leap into the heather and pegged a hare only feet from me. This time I did catch her and I quickly killed the hare and then walloped her a couple of times with it from sheer bad temper..... she never chased another hare ! She found and pointed several hares during trials and behaved perfectly with every one of them when they ran off.
She retrieved shot hares whether dead or alive just fine but she did no more chasing of the unshot ones. This was one of the very few occasions in my dog training life where my temper did me a favour .
.............................................................................................................................................
Wullie
I could see when she disobeyed the turn, recall and stop whistles among the patches of rashes and do something about it very quickly ....like get out there after her and catch her ! How I wish I could still run like that !! She became very good at finding and pointing rabbits which I shot over her, she became very good at retrieving them too and she could follow the line of a pricked rabbit as well as any spaniel I've ever seen.
Very soon I began to regret the cost of the cartridges I was firing at the rabbits. She didn't need any more steadiness practice or retrieving practice where rabbits were concerned. I had noticed how often the rabbits she pointed remained utterly still in their couches among the rashes and so I tried something else. I took to hunting them with an air rifle instead of a shotgun and this worked very well. Very often I could move quietly past my pointing dog to where the rabbit crouched in hiding. Having seen it I then shot it in the head if possible from very close range ...... feet not yards.
It was a murderous and very cheap way of keeping the rabbit population down. I just picked up the rabbits myself and put them in the bag. On the few occasions where I only wounded the rabbit I sent Vicky to collect it and with one exception she always did. I will come to the exception later.
She also became quite good as a picking up dog but during that first season of picking up with her I made a bit of a boo-boo during one retrieve. I'd been back marking and was making my way forward towards the guns when one of them told me he had a bird down inside a little fenced off plantation of young fir trees. I went over the fence then sent Vicky off to look for it .
She went on point right in the middle of the plantation and I thought she was pointing on the pricked or dead bird as inexperienced HPR's quite often do. When I reached her point I could see the bird and it looked very lightly hit to me . The gun was watching from the fenceline and I didn't want to chance Vicky losing the bird if it ran so I scudded it one over the head with my stick . I then held it up and proudly proclaimed to the gun .... "I've got the bird sir !" He replied ...." So I see but it was a hen that I shot !" He was a sarky bugger that gun !
I'd massacred a completely unshot bird right in front of the gun . I took no more chances and sent Lady and Tessa off hunting to find the gun's bird.
At the start of that season Vicky had been chasing every fallen bird and also any rabbits she encountered on the shoot. The head picker up told me straight that I would never manage to steady her , she was just too "hot" and too wild but by the end of the season she was totally steady to both birds and rabbits.
I put this down to being able to shoot over her on the farm I'd had for years and also now on the waste ground that had once been farming land before the town council bought it over. Part of that land had now been bought from the council by a very large and well known building firm and I was on chatting terms with it's multi-millionaire owner !
I asked if I could shoot the game there before he got around to putting offices and whatnot all over the land. He agreed that it would be better to shoot the game than to see it die of starvation once the place was all covered with concrete. He also said he didn't think I'd get much shooting .....he'd never hunted a dog over that land !
I shot partridges by the dozen and quite a few pheasants too plus one or two ducks that used the place. Vicky became a lot better than just very good at finding game and being steady as game fell. I ran her in no more trials that season but by now I was looking forward to the following season. I was beginning to really rate the bitch....who was still only just a bit over a year old.
I now gave up my job as a trainer for the local gundog club ....it didn't cater for HPR's . I asked a man I'd trained with his dogs to take my place and he did . He did it for about 3 weeks then asked me to return as the number of folk and dogs needing to be trained were more than he and the other trainer could cope with.
For the rest of that spring and summer I took a retriever training class once per week as usual but I gave Vicky much the same retrieves as the labs were getting while I was there. She got better and better.
I still took her to the once per month HPR classes too and folk weren't laughing any more for now she did retrieve dummies from land or from in or over water. One of the things I dislike about many HPR's is that they get away with not entering water where and when they are told to. Far too many of them run up and down the bank or the shoreline looking for an easy way out to the dummy while not getting wet ! Very often they whine like crazy as they do this too !
Their owners, or at least the newbie owners, rarely seem to do much about this and actually tell the reluctant dog how good a dog it is as it misbehaves. Simple marked retrieves from water are turned into the clowns turn to perform at the circus. Once I have got a dog to swim fairly confidently I don't accept much more in the way of refusals from it.
I had turned up to spectate at an HPR Novice trial earlier that year and it was a bitterly cold winters day with skim ice around the edges of the pond used for the water retrieve which is normally held at the end of every HPR trial. I think 5 dogs had got as far as being required to do the water retrieve . Three of them did it but only one did it well. The retrieve was a 10 yard swim for a cold pheasant.
Of the remaining two dogs one would not go in no matter how much cajoling or cussing the handler did but the last dog managed to make me really think HPR trialers are stark, staring bonkers ! The dog would not enter the pond but it was owned by a very determined lady handler to whom I take my hat off. She was told by the judge she had just one more chance to get the dog to retrieve from the water or it would be eliminated.
That lady picked up her very large dog and waded out into the pond with it !! I think she went in up to her waist and I am sorry to say that when she released the dog to go the rest of the way itself, it at once swam back to the shore and bogged off ! Some folk are simply desperate to get an award in a trial . Even I would not have walked out into that ice crusted water just to try to get a place in a trial. I start to shiver just thinking about it !
I have no idea how the judges would have marked that dog if it had swam on and collected the bird. I have seen some very odd marks and placings given by the old-time HPR judges.
I was to witness something similar but more funny (ha-ha) in a trial the following season . This time it was an All Age Stake . A lady got through to the water retrieve which was a blind over a river. There was about a foot of sheer drop from the earthen bank down into a couple of feet of water and her dog did not fancy going down the drop . The lady cajoled the dog and gave great encouragement to the dog but still he would not enter the water.
She began to get even more excited and the excitement changed to anger so she did a little war dance and stamped her feet in frustration .... and the bank gave way and she fell in ! Her dog still would not join her in the water so the lady gave in and even saw the funny side of it ..... thank goodness because I was laughing fit to burst !
Following Vicky's first ever shooting season and field trial I asked around for grouse work for her and I got it. I was given the chance to do grouse counts on two estates and in addition to that work I also took her onto the army firing ranges up on the Pentland Hills. There weren't many grouse there but there were just enough to work on. When the red flags went up it meant the army was about to commence shooting practice so when I saw the flags I used to run like stink for safety !
I was also given the chance to do a weeks grouse counting on the Lammermuirs during July and the man that asked me to join him is someone I have been grateful to ever since. He was and is Wilson Young on whose shoots a large number of trials for all sorts of gundogs have now taken place including at least one spaniel championship. I met Wilson completely by accident when I was propping up the bar in his hotel down in the borders. He noticed my dog-whistle and having found out I worked a brittany he wanted to see her work.
I did a one day outing with him on Lauder Common which holds a few grouse and he liked her and seemed to like me so I then was given the weeks work. Wilson has won the Pointer/Setter Championships and he helped me a lot. I learned from him how to "manage" a grouse point in pointer/setter style and from what angles to approach a pointing dog on any particular wind direction. It wasn't so much that he set out to teach me these things but whether he knew it or not ....and I think he did know it ....I was picking his brains !
He also introduced me to Peter O'Driscoll another very keen Pointer /Setter trainer and another man who has won the pointer/setter Championships. I learned quite a bit from Peter too .
It was while I was doing the weeks grouse counts in the Lammermuir Hills that I finally managed to stop Vicky from chasing hares. Hares have always been a bit of a problem for me because I don't see many of them. I had tried to stop Vicky's hare chases for months but without any success at all. I could run well even over rough ground but not fast enough to catch her as she chased a hare.
Confession time ! A few weeks prior to my grouse counting week out on the hills I decided the only way I would ever stop Vicky chasing hares was with an electric collar. I didn't own one so I borrowed one but it was an old fashioned type with only one shock setting on it and that setting was ," OUCH !" I had tried it just once on myself and I nearly hit the ceiling !
With the collar attached to Vicky off we went into the local hills to find a hare or two. She found one very quickly and she chased it quickly too ignoring my frantic stabs on the remote button. She came back when she was ready to so I took her straight to the local loch and made her swim then re-attached the collar a bit tighter. She found and chased another hare, again totally ignoring the prods I gave the shock button.
I gave in and took her home where I found my wife in the kitchen washing the dishes ...... I don't know what got into me but I wish I hadn't done it ! I asked her to hold the collar "just so" and then pressed the button. She let out a godawful screech and jumped about two feet up from a standing start. Then she came after me so I took refuge in the toilet with the door locked until she'd calmed down a bit. My wife has got a "shocking" temper !!!
I have no idea why the collar hadn't worked on Vicky for my wife certainly felt it ! I told a few of my mates about this and ever since I have suffered their comments about having e-collar trained my wife.
Anyway.... back to the grouse moor and it's hares. Vicky had a couple of hare chases up there on the blue hares but nothing was said ....maybe because the pointers and setters had a few chases too ! I was just casting Vicky off again following one hare chase when she made a leap into the heather and pegged a hare only feet from me. This time I did catch her and I quickly killed the hare and then walloped her a couple of times with it from sheer bad temper..... she never chased another hare ! She found and pointed several hares during trials and behaved perfectly with every one of them when they ran off.
She retrieved shot hares whether dead or alive just fine but she did no more chasing of the unshot ones. This was one of the very few occasions in my dog training life where my temper did me a favour .
.............................................................................................................................................
Wullie
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
.
-
trekmoor
- Member
- Posts: 16074
- Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:38 am
- Dogs: Too many and not enough !
- Location: Central Scotland
Re: reflections and redirections
Vicky was my first ever HPR and as a newcomer to pointing dogs I made a very big mistake that took me about 2 years to overcome. I was so fascinated by her pointing that I greatly overdid the praising of her as she pointed. In short, I made her "sticky" on point.
Rather than accept all the blame for this myself I will pass some of it on to the Yanks ! I read a few American pointing dog books and magazines and in among all the stuff about training tables, training barrels, training boards and chain -ganging dogs I read about how to steady them on point. This should have been called "How to make dogs sticky on point" for that is exactly what the majority of Americans seem to deliberately do.
In their field trials and tests , dogs are down marked if they fail to show good "style" on point or if their points fade in their intensity after a while. The Americans want their pointers to remain on point at maximum intensity while the handler moves in front to kick the birds up from the cover. They seem to be at odds with the rest of the world when doing this for in Britain and on the continent and in many other parts of the world it is the dogs job to do a commanded flush from the point.
I failed to realise that I was "styling" my dog on point and she became sticky which caused me trouble occasionally. After I had competed with her in a few trials her stickiness became noted by the folk who judged those trials. They began to insist that I sent her in to flush from several feet further from me than seemed to be the case for the other dogs. The judges were making sure that she did the flushing ,not me . One or two trialers had a dig at me about this but I turned the tables on them. I told them that the reason the judges did allow them very close to their dogs when commanding the flush was that the judges knew their dogs would try to peg and kill the birds while my little angel would not !
I competed in one trial that Michael Brander judged and he knew Vicky was suspect for being sticky. When she pointed out in a turnip field he insisted I commanded the flush from about 8 feet away from her. He told me in advance that when he told me to flush her she must get the bird into the air at once while I remained where I was.
This looked bad to me for I could often tell by her posture when she was going to be sticky and she looked damned sticky on that point. I looked at her and Brander looked at me and a wee man carrying a red flag on a pole who was supposed to be controlling the spectators and competitors distance from the action stood mesmerised very close by , he'd never seen a dog point before that trial and didn't know how things were done.
Brander said loudly ...."Flush the bird !" and before I could do a thing that delightful and very helpful wee man stepped in at once and thrashed the turnip tops with his flag ! I burst out laughing and so did Brander, he had a very good sense of humour ! The bird flew off and was shot and Vicky did a good retrieve on it. Brander said to me .... "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley " and we laughed again. I'd like to thank that wee man ....he saved my bacon and both Brander and I knew it . I think maybe Rabbie Burns had been an Hpr trial judge !
The 12 th of August arrived and I got ready for Vicky's second and third trial on the grouse. I took her picking up to give her experience at retrieving them for she, by now, had loads of experience of hunting and pointing grouse. On the day of the first trial she was probably both the youngest dog competing and the most experienced grouse finding dog on the moor.
I.M.O. she ran well in the trial but not as well as I had seen her do. She wasn't used to seeing me walking in line along with 2 judges, two guns , a gamekeeper and a game carrier. We got through to the afternoon and were to be given a second run. She had done nothing wrong in the trial but again, I.M.O. , she hadn't performed to the standards I knew she was capable of. Meanwhile ,however, the other novice dogs weren't performing all that well either so I felt Vicky was in the lead ..... the best of a bad bunch if you like !
One lady competitor was a very good friend of mine's and she was really worried just prior to her dog's second run. She told me in a very upset and agitated manner that she was sure her dog was going to run in on the very next bird shot in front of him. I asked her if, like some women seem to be capable of doing, she could turn on the tears at will ? She said she could do that no bother at all so I made a suggestion that I have seen work during retriever tests by other ladies.
I told her that if and when her dog ran in she should at once command , "Get out !" her retrieve command. Then when the judge remonstrated with her to say the dog had ran in and she was eliminated she should burst into tears and say she was sure she'd heard him tell her to command the retrieve.
Her dog did run in and the lady gave an Oscar winning performance. The judge was so sorry for her he gave her a cuddle ! It should be mentioned that she was a rather pretty young lady ! She was not eliminated and I began to wonder if she would beat me to first place ! I think I was beginning to regret giving her that advice .
My bitch won the trial and the lady was either 2nd or 3rd I think, I can't remember . I was delighted to have won but then the judge gave his apres trial summation. He said he felt there was too much professionalism creeping into the sport. He then turned to me and said he was sure I would agree. I disagreed and said so. I said that if by "professionalism" he meant people asking for too much money to help train other people with their dogs I did agree but that in my opinion , the sport needed a more professional standard of retrieving and steadiness.
The judge and I agreed to disagree because I wouldn't back down and from that day on we didn't like each other an awful lot. I had given up any "fear" I ever had of judges while getting chucked out of retriever trials ! I was to continue my Hpr trialing career with several more disagreements with the "ruling class" ..... the judges.
I remained up in the highlands of western Scotland on the day following that trial for I had taken the bull by the horns and had a run in a second trial two days after that first one. I couldn't afford to drive home and then travel up there again. I couldn't afford B+B accomodation either so I slept in my car along with my dog for two nights. I was sort of camped out on the side of a hill and I washed in a nearby river and did a bit of cold water shaving. My dog ate better than I did , I got by on crisps, digestive biscuits and mars bars !
The next trial took place on a beautiful sunny day . The entire trial was spent walking around the contours of just one very large hill . I'd never met the "A" judge before and while I think he had seen a brittany work before he'd never seen one tasked with beating all the GSP's out on a grouse moor. He suspected she'd fade quickly running up and down the side of the hill .
Running hard, fast and wide is difficult for a small dog in heather and if someone reading this wants to say that GSP 's can do it better than a brittany then I will not argue with them but that depends upon how well those GSP's have been conditioned, how much grouse experience they have had and on how good a trainer they have.
Vicky went up and down the steep hillside time after time for 25 minutes before she came onto point. It was the longest run any HPR of mine's has ever had in any trial. I have never seen any dog in any other trial being hunted non-stop for so long. The judge, a sort of refugee Scot or Welshman (he was wearing what he said was his national dress, a sort of grey kilt) told me later he'd wanted to see if she could keep that pace up . He told me that at lunchtime and he also told me that if I kept my nose clean during her second run in the afternoon she would win the trial.
Vicky was descended on the American side of her pedigree from a couple of dogs that had , I think, been bred to compete in their horseback trials. She had both the build and the temperament to run on and on and on . She was the only dog I have ever owned to quite literally pee blood at the end of several days of hard hunting . I was lucky to notice that happen for she wanted to continue running !
During her second run, this time of only 12-15 minutes she got another point but the guns missed the birds. She was called back in later when a dog failed to find a fallen bird. Vicky did a blind retrieve on it, found it and that was the trial over except for the water retrieve.
The "A" panel judge took me aside as we walked back to the cars and asked if she swam O.K. and if she retrieved cold homing pigeons O.K. I replied that swimming shouldn't be much of a problem but that she preferred grouse to pigeons. He informed me there and then that he would insist a grouse was used for the water retrieve.
That walk back to the cars was "interesting." Most of the other handlers had let their dogs off-lead to "play." They had been told by the landowner that this was O.K. .... I kept Vicky firmly on the lead as the judge and I walked back together so he asked me why I didn't let her off to play with the other dogs. I replied that good hunting dogs don't do playing , they do hunting and I wasn't about to let my well behaved dog off to run around hunting along with a pack of possibly not so well behaved dogs !
The judge gave a sort of grim smile and just said , "Yes, the handlers are not being very clever, are they ?"
The water test was to take place at a loch about 10 miles away from the trial ground so we all piled into our cars and set off for the loch .....but the judges car got lost en-route ! Once at the loch we all waited for ages for the judges to arrive which they eventually did at getting on for dark in the evening ! Jokes were flying around among the competitors that the water retrieve would have to be on an owl !
The "A" panel judge was flaming mad at being left behind to get lost among all the glens. He very firmly stated that only one dog would be doing a water retrieve and the bird used would be a grouse . Vicky did the retrieve and won the trial.
My thoughts were quite simply .... "Hello, hello two wins in a row !" I sang that as I drove all the way home to keep me awake...... it is the only football stadium chant I have ever found useful !
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Wullie
Rather than accept all the blame for this myself I will pass some of it on to the Yanks ! I read a few American pointing dog books and magazines and in among all the stuff about training tables, training barrels, training boards and chain -ganging dogs I read about how to steady them on point. This should have been called "How to make dogs sticky on point" for that is exactly what the majority of Americans seem to deliberately do.
In their field trials and tests , dogs are down marked if they fail to show good "style" on point or if their points fade in their intensity after a while. The Americans want their pointers to remain on point at maximum intensity while the handler moves in front to kick the birds up from the cover. They seem to be at odds with the rest of the world when doing this for in Britain and on the continent and in many other parts of the world it is the dogs job to do a commanded flush from the point.
I failed to realise that I was "styling" my dog on point and she became sticky which caused me trouble occasionally. After I had competed with her in a few trials her stickiness became noted by the folk who judged those trials. They began to insist that I sent her in to flush from several feet further from me than seemed to be the case for the other dogs. The judges were making sure that she did the flushing ,not me . One or two trialers had a dig at me about this but I turned the tables on them. I told them that the reason the judges did allow them very close to their dogs when commanding the flush was that the judges knew their dogs would try to peg and kill the birds while my little angel would not !
I competed in one trial that Michael Brander judged and he knew Vicky was suspect for being sticky. When she pointed out in a turnip field he insisted I commanded the flush from about 8 feet away from her. He told me in advance that when he told me to flush her she must get the bird into the air at once while I remained where I was.
This looked bad to me for I could often tell by her posture when she was going to be sticky and she looked damned sticky on that point. I looked at her and Brander looked at me and a wee man carrying a red flag on a pole who was supposed to be controlling the spectators and competitors distance from the action stood mesmerised very close by , he'd never seen a dog point before that trial and didn't know how things were done.
Brander said loudly ...."Flush the bird !" and before I could do a thing that delightful and very helpful wee man stepped in at once and thrashed the turnip tops with his flag ! I burst out laughing and so did Brander, he had a very good sense of humour ! The bird flew off and was shot and Vicky did a good retrieve on it. Brander said to me .... "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley " and we laughed again. I'd like to thank that wee man ....he saved my bacon and both Brander and I knew it . I think maybe Rabbie Burns had been an Hpr trial judge !
The 12 th of August arrived and I got ready for Vicky's second and third trial on the grouse. I took her picking up to give her experience at retrieving them for she, by now, had loads of experience of hunting and pointing grouse. On the day of the first trial she was probably both the youngest dog competing and the most experienced grouse finding dog on the moor.
I.M.O. she ran well in the trial but not as well as I had seen her do. She wasn't used to seeing me walking in line along with 2 judges, two guns , a gamekeeper and a game carrier. We got through to the afternoon and were to be given a second run. She had done nothing wrong in the trial but again, I.M.O. , she hadn't performed to the standards I knew she was capable of. Meanwhile ,however, the other novice dogs weren't performing all that well either so I felt Vicky was in the lead ..... the best of a bad bunch if you like !
One lady competitor was a very good friend of mine's and she was really worried just prior to her dog's second run. She told me in a very upset and agitated manner that she was sure her dog was going to run in on the very next bird shot in front of him. I asked her if, like some women seem to be capable of doing, she could turn on the tears at will ? She said she could do that no bother at all so I made a suggestion that I have seen work during retriever tests by other ladies.
I told her that if and when her dog ran in she should at once command , "Get out !" her retrieve command. Then when the judge remonstrated with her to say the dog had ran in and she was eliminated she should burst into tears and say she was sure she'd heard him tell her to command the retrieve.
Her dog did run in and the lady gave an Oscar winning performance. The judge was so sorry for her he gave her a cuddle ! It should be mentioned that she was a rather pretty young lady ! She was not eliminated and I began to wonder if she would beat me to first place ! I think I was beginning to regret giving her that advice .
My bitch won the trial and the lady was either 2nd or 3rd I think, I can't remember . I was delighted to have won but then the judge gave his apres trial summation. He said he felt there was too much professionalism creeping into the sport. He then turned to me and said he was sure I would agree. I disagreed and said so. I said that if by "professionalism" he meant people asking for too much money to help train other people with their dogs I did agree but that in my opinion , the sport needed a more professional standard of retrieving and steadiness.
The judge and I agreed to disagree because I wouldn't back down and from that day on we didn't like each other an awful lot. I had given up any "fear" I ever had of judges while getting chucked out of retriever trials ! I was to continue my Hpr trialing career with several more disagreements with the "ruling class" ..... the judges.
I remained up in the highlands of western Scotland on the day following that trial for I had taken the bull by the horns and had a run in a second trial two days after that first one. I couldn't afford to drive home and then travel up there again. I couldn't afford B+B accomodation either so I slept in my car along with my dog for two nights. I was sort of camped out on the side of a hill and I washed in a nearby river and did a bit of cold water shaving. My dog ate better than I did , I got by on crisps, digestive biscuits and mars bars !
The next trial took place on a beautiful sunny day . The entire trial was spent walking around the contours of just one very large hill . I'd never met the "A" judge before and while I think he had seen a brittany work before he'd never seen one tasked with beating all the GSP's out on a grouse moor. He suspected she'd fade quickly running up and down the side of the hill .
Running hard, fast and wide is difficult for a small dog in heather and if someone reading this wants to say that GSP 's can do it better than a brittany then I will not argue with them but that depends upon how well those GSP's have been conditioned, how much grouse experience they have had and on how good a trainer they have.
Vicky went up and down the steep hillside time after time for 25 minutes before she came onto point. It was the longest run any HPR of mine's has ever had in any trial. I have never seen any dog in any other trial being hunted non-stop for so long. The judge, a sort of refugee Scot or Welshman (he was wearing what he said was his national dress, a sort of grey kilt) told me later he'd wanted to see if she could keep that pace up . He told me that at lunchtime and he also told me that if I kept my nose clean during her second run in the afternoon she would win the trial.
Vicky was descended on the American side of her pedigree from a couple of dogs that had , I think, been bred to compete in their horseback trials. She had both the build and the temperament to run on and on and on . She was the only dog I have ever owned to quite literally pee blood at the end of several days of hard hunting . I was lucky to notice that happen for she wanted to continue running !
During her second run, this time of only 12-15 minutes she got another point but the guns missed the birds. She was called back in later when a dog failed to find a fallen bird. Vicky did a blind retrieve on it, found it and that was the trial over except for the water retrieve.
The "A" panel judge took me aside as we walked back to the cars and asked if she swam O.K. and if she retrieved cold homing pigeons O.K. I replied that swimming shouldn't be much of a problem but that she preferred grouse to pigeons. He informed me there and then that he would insist a grouse was used for the water retrieve.
That walk back to the cars was "interesting." Most of the other handlers had let their dogs off-lead to "play." They had been told by the landowner that this was O.K. .... I kept Vicky firmly on the lead as the judge and I walked back together so he asked me why I didn't let her off to play with the other dogs. I replied that good hunting dogs don't do playing , they do hunting and I wasn't about to let my well behaved dog off to run around hunting along with a pack of possibly not so well behaved dogs !
The judge gave a sort of grim smile and just said , "Yes, the handlers are not being very clever, are they ?"
The water test was to take place at a loch about 10 miles away from the trial ground so we all piled into our cars and set off for the loch .....but the judges car got lost en-route ! Once at the loch we all waited for ages for the judges to arrive which they eventually did at getting on for dark in the evening ! Jokes were flying around among the competitors that the water retrieve would have to be on an owl !
The "A" panel judge was flaming mad at being left behind to get lost among all the glens. He very firmly stated that only one dog would be doing a water retrieve and the bird used would be a grouse . Vicky did the retrieve and won the trial.
My thoughts were quite simply .... "Hello, hello two wins in a row !" I sang that as I drove all the way home to keep me awake...... it is the only football stadium chant I have ever found useful !
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Wullie
If at first you don't succeed .....find out if there is a booby prize !
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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Don't do what doesn't work - do what does.
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Alice
- Member
- Posts: 2748
- Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:45 pm
- Dogs: Spaniels
- Location: Sunny South Wilts
Re: reflections and redirections
delighted to see the updates to this, am saving it all and reading it like a book! long may it continue!
cheers,
Alice.
A spaniel is a vehicle for a nose
Alice.
A spaniel is a vehicle for a nose
Re: reflections and redirections
Wullie you are keeping me sane in what is otherwise a very dull day. The sun is shining here I am stuck in the office yet a few minutes with your latest read and I am back on the grouse moor or in that turnip field!
Thank you!
Thank you!