Some breeds suffered from this more than others , I am thinking of weimaraners here but they were not the only ones. That breeds misfortune was it's unusual colour plus one or two t.v. adverts that had this breed in them. Some really terrible dogs were bred both in terms of temperament and physique. I actually hated weims at one time. The dogs I met were either huge big show bred brutes or were skimpy boned nervous wrecks. Both types, one bred by show folk the other bred for the pet market shared one major fault. They had a streak of aggression towards other dogs and some of them could be aggressive to people too.
The last dog that ever bit me was a weimy bitch belonging to a man who turned up for gundog training classes with a dog he couldn't even begin to control. I had a sneaking admiration for that particular bitch. I felt I'd deserved to be bitten . I showed the man how to control her and she was controlled right up to the point where I tried to pet/praise her for good behaviour ....and that's when she bit me !
The training classes other pupils were not prepared to continue with that dog in the class however. They took their complaints to the class organiser and the man was told to remove his dog from the ground and not to come back with her. I didn't think she deserved that ....but her owner probably did !Since then the weim breed has improved a good bit where temperament is concerned but in addition to that faulty temperament very, very few of those dogs were good workers. They could not be taken around shoots with other dogs in case they fought, they were very often hard mouthed and very few of them actually ran while they were hunting. They were and many still are ,plodders. That does not suit our HPR trials which is why I am unlikely to ever compete with the vizsla I have been training.
She too is a bit ploddy on open ground and although she has no other faults that one fault would get her ejected from many trials. She is not alone in this among the vizsla breed but at least she has an excuse ..... she is show and pet bred from stem to stern.
I know a number of people from the retriever trialing world who have tried to train HPR's. Most of them have failed to make much of the dogs even if they bought them from good working stock. They, I think, went too heavily and probably far too soon into training the obedience they thought their pups needed and ended up training the stuffing out of them or, in some cases, turning their dogs into blinkers of game rather than pointers of game .... they were too soon and too hard when training for steadiness to flush ..... I think ?
In short Mike, I blame the people rather than the dogs themselves for most HPR failings here. It's people that breed them ....often never having worked them and people who try to make them into robots .... and unfortunately often succeed at the expense of hunting style . People would not buy cars if they did not have a road to run them on but people do buy HPR's with no ground and no game to train them on.
You might be surprised to learn just how many beginners to HPR 's think they can train hunting, pointing , flushing and steadiness plus retrieving without any access to game at all. They think these dogs will point dummies.
Wullie
