by Maureen Cooper » Fri 26 Mar 2004 11:49 am
Very interesting to read the comments on the Wildrose trial and having been to a UK field trial,albeit only a Novice, and watched (too many) UK Championship vidoes, Andre's comments were good.
When birds are downed in a trial, the precise location of the blind bird might be fairly vague and a general area only indicated and sometimes the bird might have been a runner too so the dog is sent to the location told by the judges and the dog has to work it out for itself from there. These means the dogs have great self hunt built in and less reliance on the handler.
In walk-ups I have seen, there is a general walk-up scenario where ALL dogs left in competition are walked up in a line and dogs must not forge ahead of the handler at any time and if it does, the handler is not allowed to command the dog to heel. Any dog seen forging ahead is eliminated!
In the other scenario, the normal way a trial is conducted, the two nominated competing dogs are at either end of the line and some dogs yet to run are also within sight of shot game in the line.When game is shot the retrieve might be only 25 metres from one dog but the judges will select the dog from the opposite end of the line so it has to run diagonally across the line for a much longer retrieve. This does not appear to have been the case in the Wildrose trial.
Re dogs picking up poison game, in the UK trial I watched when numerous pheasants were downed, if a dog collected a nearer downed bird, it returned with the game and was resent for the longer nominated game without penalty.
I did also see birds downed in a wood and dogs being sent to hunt them out with almost no idea of the precise location of the game. These two latter scenarios show how easy it is for dogs to collect ANY game en route.
Jack Lynch has probably been to a few more UK field trials than me and might be able to give more details. One of the end of Championship tests I enjoy watching is where the few competing dogs are gathered together in very close proximity, off lead, and the beaters put up several birds which are shot surrounding the dogs and handlers, some can fall almost at the feet of the dogs! The dogs may turn round or stand to mark the downed birds but must make any forward attempt to retrieve game, however close. The judges then select game for each dog to retrieve( the very close ones usually get picked up by personnel prior to this) and the game is anything shot, pheasant, partridge or snipe. I have seen a dog go out on this last run of a Championship when it would not pick up a snipe.
The comments made on this site re our trials "going the American way" is possibly due to more emphasis being placed on line running and whistle orientated dogs and removing the ability of the dog to think for itself. However as a buyer of the UK Shooting Gazette for many years and watching Championship videos, I do notice and read that the UK dogs are now much more whistle obedient and take directions much better than they did when I first watched but due to the unplanned shooting environment, freedom of the dog to work things out for himself is still in situ. When I was talking about our trials to a UK trainer/ competitor he was very critical of line running dogs and pointing out a line to me to a fence with various shrubs and trees etc en route he said he would want his trialling dogs to briefly check those places out for bird/ rabbit scent and not just run blindly on until he blew the stop whistle!!! Food for thought?
TTFN
Maureen