3 way split?

[Springfield Pointers]

To be honest I don't think that old man was entirely wrong .... maybe we are getting too "handling dependent ?"

Wullie

quite right. Could not agree more.

[Rascal]

What those of the “whistle and wave” variety, accompanied by white handkerchiefs.............?

What’s that all about for heaven’s sake......

Rascal

[goshawk]

Agree that drive is genetic, but to make my point clear, let me give you an example.

A greyhound and a saluki look very much alike. Still they perform very differently, because they are bred for completely different purposes. The grey purely bred for extreme speed, the saluki more as a long distance runner, being able to pursuit its prey over long distances. The different breeding has led to different muscle build.

Question: when you are breeding gundogs only from trial lines, most probably their muscles will develop in sprinter muscles like those of the greyhound? I am not talking about tomorrow, but maybe in 30 years?

Gr, Jan

[WGD]

What those of the “whistle and wave” variety, accompanied by white handkerchiefs.............?

What’s that all about for heaven’s sake......

Rascal

I thought it was for folks who got a bit tearful when all their hard work paid off...

[pontbeck]

I'm certainly tearful when I wave my handkerchief at my dog, as it's a wave of goodbye til she decides to come back, usually with a bird mind.

Bill

[Qest12]

of course drive is inherited otherwise we wouldn't breed from ftch's. I think you can alter the level if drive by the way you train it; If a dog has 3 x 20 min training sessions a day I think it would be a safe to say it would be a little more hard going than a dog that's given long walks/training sessions.

[Naj]

You often hear posters talking in terms of working bred dogs v Trials bred dogs, but where's the distinction? Unless it's changed, it used to be the case that all 'ordinary' lines of working bred spaniels were constantly bred back into trial lines. Do any/many kennels exist that don't periodically dip into field trial bloodlines? If not, there is no choice, nor split. I don't see this as a problem because, as others have pointed out, most trials bred dogs end up in ordinary shooting/working homes.

I used to buy into the common belief that a trials spaniel should be hunted in short bursts, otherwise it would slow down & begin to pace itself. Then I realised that I had been habitually shooting over my own cockers for many years with them hunting non stop for a couple of hours, sometimes longer, & they didn't noticeably pace themselves. Certainly, over the first three or four shooting seasons they attacked their hunting from the off without any loss of drive & were still going strong after a couple of hours. Perhaps lack of fitness & conditioning in trials dogs is more the problem than an inherent weakness in stamina & drive. It's difficult to make an objective judgement on this because most trial enthusiasts have so many dogs that they can only afford to hunt them in relays of 20 - 30 minutes at a time. And why hunt them for longer when this is more than ample for the average trial run. With my dogs, the first noticeable dip in pace might show when the dog was 5 or 6 years old, long past the period when it would have proven its worth at field trials. And it would likely have dropped pace in any event at this age even if it had been 'paced' in its younger years. So although spaniel trials might appear, on the face of it, to be a bit self-limiting, I would have no concerns about going to a trials bred dog no matter what I intended using it for.

As a matter of interest, with the GSP I am currently training I started out from the beginning with the aim of purposefully trying to condition her to pace herself & she has been hunting solidly for up to two hours or more since she was physically able. I appear to have failed miserably. She is just approaching 3 years old & shows no loss of pace or drive.

Naj

[Springfield Pointers]

The purpose of field trials is to find the best "hunting dog" in the bunch. So they should be one and the same, things have changed sadly, but generally they are cut from the same cloth. Unfortunately the more driven dogs eliminate themselves early on and you're left with plodders that are well mannered. Generally though, the cream rises to the top.

[Bryn]

I suppose it depends what you mean by drive and hard going, I have thought reading this thread that were quite often saying the same thing in different ways and from different directions

Following on from Wullies post To be honest I don't think that old man was entirely wrong .... maybe we are getting too "handling dependent ?" maybe consideration should be given to the original purpose of trials and whether over time this has been diluted by changes, admittedly brought about by practical necessities..just a thought

[Springfield Pointers]

of course drive is inherited otherwise we wouldn't breed from ftch's. I think you can alter the level if drive by the way you train it; If a dog has 3 x 20 min training sessions a day I think it would be a safe to say it would be a little more hard going than a dog that's given long walks/training sessions.

No. You cannot train drive into a dog. I think you are confusing drive with stamina.