Crufts 'gundogs'

[trekmoor]

The breeders of the modern cocker have made a terrific job of it I.M.O. Like Naj I saw the rather unpromising material those cocker people had to work with and I wasn't at all impressed with what I saw back then. For a few years I did some training for a very old lady with large kennels of cocker spaniels, Labradors and a few pointers. The lady believed that the same dogs should be able to both work and show and she tried to breed for this.

It just did not work ....not if success was to be measured by show ring wins or field trial wins as her dogs were not "extreme" enough to win in either of those things.... The first thing the lady did to change her success ratio in the showring was to start breeding cockers to suit the ring . She knew what she was doing and she was good at doing it . Her line of show cockers is now well known both here and abroad. She had maybe 30 show bred cockers and would brag a bit about how well some of them would work and they did work for I saw a couple being trained and worked by a trial minded lady. That lady however , had 30 dogs from whom to choose the ones most likely to work , few people have that sort of advantage.

Those cockers still did not reach the standards of work bred cockers , they hadn't been bred "for the job."

I was mainly concerned with the labs but did a little bit with the pointers too. There is or was a well known pointer "line" in Britain called "Crookrise." The old lady tried breeding from this line because it was known for it's pointers that would both work and show. I found that I liked one of those pups very much and I trained her but she was never going to win in a trial or even gain a place. She lacked a bit in both range and pace for that. She could have won an H.P.R. trial for I also trained her to retrieve but she just did not have enough "go" to win the pointer/setter trials and it seems she wasn't "fashionable" enough in type to win in the show ring either.

The labs suffered the same fate as the spaniels and the pointers. They had to be bred to suit showring fancies in order to win and the work side of things suffered. I met and trained two that I really liked. One was a little black bitch that was so close to working type that she never won anything in the showring, she was a damn good worker though and I took her picking up. I considered trialing her but the old lady sold her as a trained gundog to a friend so that was that !

It was the other lab, a dark yellow bitch called "Hyper" that I really felt sorry for. " Hyper" was not her original name , her name had been changed to suit her character. That lab had been sent for training to two other trainers before I got my hands on her and both of those trainers had returned her for being untrainable. Those people should be ashamed of themselves , the bitch was easy to train , she loved being trained everything except steadiness !
It took me a while to get her steady but that was her only real fault. She was mad keen to work and I took her picking up too but she did have a problem.
She was showbred and had a good enough build for the ring so she had won a couple of shows. That worked against her out working. She was too heavily built and try as she might ... and did....she could not jump fences with her build attached to her short, showring legs.
I liked her very much , she had a working dogs brain, unfortunately it was attached to a show dogs body !

The old lady and I decided to try to improve the work abilities of her puppies by mating her to a F.T.Ch. .... The old lady chose the Champion because he was fairly close to show type. I would not have used that dog .
I began to train one of "Hypers" pups and although I liked the pup she wasn't a patch on her dam as a trouble free dog to train. The pup was extremely soft and great care had to be taken with her or she would just "dry up" when asked to do directional control. I ended up training her directions "on the job" in order for the birds to keep her wanting to work. That took a while but it worked and she became a good gundog with a build I thought was more "show type" than I was used to.

I began to think about trialing her the following season but she had "too long a tail" for the show ring I was told so the old lady sold her as a trained gundog too.
I gave up round about there and went back to training dogs that were only meant to be good gundogs.
If a dog is not quite good enough as a showdog then to my mind this does not matter at all, no harm is done, but if a dog is not quite good enough as a worker then an awful lot of pricked birds are not going to be found and that does matter. I think the showdogs should be bred more towards the working dog side of things in the "looks" department and in the brains department but that is very unlikely to happen which is why I think the Crufts gundog show is a waste of time, for the most part those dogs aren't really gundogs.

Imagine dumping a good working working Labrador just because it's tail is an inch or two too long to make it a winner in the showring !

Wullie

[Naj]

But the problem with that is that there isn't a standard 'working dog look' to be found within the working bred breeds. By all accounts breeders & trainers of working lines are more diverse in their opinion of what constitutes a good looking working gundog than show people are. So where would you start? And if 'we' are so keen to show the general public what a 'gundog' really looks like we should take the trouble to become involved in showing our own dogs, and through critical mass of entries get back to real dual-purpose gundogs - shut up or put up! But it's never going to happen. We could start by having a simple, non-competitive conformation test that dogs have to pass before they can attain FTCh status, like they do with some of the German breeds. Hmmm. that would be fun.

Naj

[trekmoor]

Over in America I think they tried a different sort of conformation test with their brittanies. I think it was a 3 day event ? On the first two days all of the dogs competed in a field trial and only about 10 or a dozen dogs were deemed good enough workers to get through to the third day. That was a Brittany show with only those ten dogs allowed into it.

From those dogs the show judges then chose the dogs with the best conformation .....not necessarily the winning dogs from the trial, as their choice for 1st., 2nd and third. I rather liked that idea. It meant that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dogs at the end represented the best available workers and the dogs with the best conformation. I would think any one of those dogs would be worthwhile breeding from.

Wullie

[crackerd]

Ta for all that, Tarimoor, but in answer to your question

Out of interest, I wonder if any of the Labradors in the US show ring are even near the ideal weight given in 1947? I would hazard a guess that they are heavier these days.

Em-fat-ically heavier.

But back to the point, if you are passionate about a particular breed, for me, it's not a case of style over substance, or substance over style, it's a balance of both. There's no point in owning a Labrador that looks like a collie cross, and boasting that it works better than a Labrador that is the epitome of the current fashion trend in the show ring. The same goes for any working breed, but unfortunately some are irretrievably split down the middle, and I don't think there will ever be a day where there is a dual champion in most gundog breeds.

I'm with you on that, mostly, though my view is that function supersedes form, just like style must necessarily give way to substance in most real world matters. Working gundogs is a real world matter, the show ring a land of make-believe.

MG

[Gundogguy]

Ta for all that, Tarimoor, but in answer to your question

Out of interest, I wonder if any of the Labradors in the US show ring are even near the ideal weight given in 1947? I would hazard a guess that they are heavier these days.

Em-fat-ically heavier.

But back to the point, if you are passionate about a particular breed, for me, it's not a case of style over substance, or substance over style, it's a balance of both. There's no point in owning a Labrador that looks like a collie cross, and boasting that it works better than a Labrador that is the epitome of the current fashion trend in the show ring. The same goes for any working breed, but unfortunately some are irretrievably split down the middle, and I don't think there will ever be a day where there is a dual champion in most gundog breeds.

I'm with you on that, mostly, though my view is that function supersedes form, just like style must necessarily give way to substance in most real world matters. Working gundogs is a real world matter, the show ring a land of make-believe.
MG

+1 Mr Crackerd, If the working attributes were not written down the show folks would have nothing to memorize and talk about concerning the skill levels of working dogs in the field. Because they would have never seen it or if they did understand it! Understand I speak from some experience, after all me wife and I made 5 champs in the field and 5 champs in the ring, the show dog for the most part were lovely pets but they could not find a bird in a box.

[trekmoor]

Quote ......" Working gundogs is a real world matter, the show ring a land of make-believe."

Make that Plus 2 please.

Wullie

[crackerd]

Bill, just don't try trademarking it for me like a la SP and his "takes birds to make a birddog"TM business.

'Cause, you know, some folk might argue that they work awfully hard on their "gundogs" getting them into the land of make believe. Snoods over the ears, dye for the coat, eye makeup (!), bathroom slippers - yeah, all that and it ain't make believe.

And meant to say, Gundogguy, you are my hero - wow, bonafides all over the place!

MG

[Judy]

I'm with you on that, mostly, though my view is that function supersedes form, just like style must necessarily give way to substance in most real world matters. Working gundogs is a real world matter, the show ring a land of make-believe.

MG

Here we say "form follows function" which I assume is the same thing and it probably holds true if you consider lean mean working Labs and short fat show Slabs!

As for style giving way to substance, never! Style is everything in competition, you can have the most obedient one in the World but it won't win if it doesn't have the style to go with it. And working Gundogs in the real World means actual shooting, nothing artificial!

[Callthatagundog]

Actually - I do!

This thread prompted a bit of googling and I came across an AKC dummies guide to labrador breed standards. In the guide it referred to yellows and blacks needing to have black noses (brown labs should have brown, before you ask!). I have checked all my shoot photo's and all the yellows have noses of varying shades of brown. Does this mean they'd be ruled out for showing in America or has the guide got it wrong??

Sarah xx

[James]

Style is everything in competition,

while its great to see a dog with style, if it cant find game its a waist of time and wouldn't win a raffle never mind a trial