Dogs and Judging

INTENT

Our intent is to use this section to comment on dog work and judging as we encounter it along our way.

AKC HUNT TEST JUDGING  

One of the reasons that I wanted to add this section to our website is the ever increasing number of judges who seem to have forgotten, or maybe never knew, the original goals of the AKC hunt test movement…. To improve the retriever breeds and to give common, ordinary hunters an avenue for enjoying their retrievers year round that would not be as expensive or competitive as field trials which at the time was the only game in town.

Some judges, and some of the powers at AKC, seem to think that too many dogs are passing hunt tests( especially at the master level) and we need to make the tests more difficult in order to pass fewer dogs…..HELLLLOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! If the dogs are getting better then we should expect more to pass and be glad that they are….we are meeting our goal! Additionally one of the only ways to make the hunt tests harder is to make them more like field trials and, in my opinion, that would be a shame. I ran field trials and had a great deal of success. Due to a family problem I dropped out for a year, went to a hunt test and fell in love with the concept. If I want to enter a field trial I will. If I enter a hunt test I expect it to be a hunt test!

I do not want easy hunt tests but I do not want and will not run under judges whose only goal appears to be to drop as many dogs as possible and to make the hunt test like a field trial through excessive distances and field trial exactness and what I would call arbitrary decisions. These, and for that matter all, judges should look up the word “JUDGE“. Watch the dogs work and judge it.

AN EXAMPLE

I was running Linc in a master recently and he ran a blind which was part of a test which I felt he ran better than any other dog! A wonderful job. Pinned the three marks and one-whistled the blind while running a nice line directly thru an old fall without so much as looking down. He was dropped. The judges graciously agreed to hear my complaint. Referring to another dog whose owner told me did the same thing as Linc in the beginning of the blind, ,one judge stood with his feet about 18 inches apart and said ” his dog was here( pointing to one of his feet) and your dog was here( pointing to the other foot) and we had to draw the line somewhere”!!! WRONG!!!!! Look up the word judge!!! We could have inexperienced 10 year olds judge if we set up arbitrary guidelines…between these two sticks, less than 6 whistles, no more than one handle and the list goes on. To fail a dog with otherwise perfect work for being a few inches to the right at one point of a blind is ridiculous. By the way, some dogs were off line to the left by 50 feet and did not even come close to the area of the old fall and passed, including one of mine!!!

As you may have guessed Linc did not hit a very narrow spit of water which angled back toward the line. The correct line from where I ran Linc would have hit about 18″ of the finger. I’m smart enough to know that but in a hunt test with so many other hazards in the blind I chose to run the blind wo worrying about that. Others chose to avoid the correct line and send their dogs ” out to sea”. Some pros actually called their dogs back toward them when they missed the water and gave them a cast to do so. Thus training or recasting so to speak. Either way it can’t be judged as better than Linc, at least in my opinion. In a similar test in Ohio one blind of a double was a shoreline blind with the entire line on land yet no dogs that entered the water( because of the way they are trained) weredropped for avoiding the land!

Next Time…..THE WALKUP.