What’s Next for your Sporting Dog?
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By Chris Robinson
So, your beautiful sporting dog has completed its conformation championship, perhaps two or three different championships from breed registries in the U.S. and Canada, maybe even owns a grand championship or two and a bunch of blue, red, yellow and white ribbons for group placements, possibly even a few Best In Show trophies. But, now the dog’s show career is coming to an end. It has either won every possible award you ever wanted or it has indicated that it simply has had enough of being a “foo-foo.”
What this means is that you are about to be faced with the decision of “What’s next for my dog?” If you are a conscientious dog owner or breeder, you know that your dog deserves more than a life as a couch potato interrupted by occasional trysts with amorous females or a once-every-couple-of-years foray into motherhood. If you are really conscientious, deep in your heart, you know that what you ought to be doing with your sporting dog is what the breed was intended to do, which is hunt or at least compete in the field either in hunt tests or field trials.
If you decide that you want to pursue field titles with your dog, you need to do some research and have as many facts as possible. The first decision you will have to make is which one of the many entries in the alphabet soup of field programs available in the U.S. and Canada you want to try. Think I’m joking? There are AKC field trials for retrievers, pointing breeds and spaniels but in the latter case, only Springers, American Cockers and English Cockers are eligible to compete. The Canadian Kennel Club offers field trials for retrievers, pointing breeds and spaniels with the latter open either to all sporting spaniels or restricted to a specific breed if the sponsoring club so chooses. Both the AKC and the CKC have hunt test programs for all three types of sporting dogs. The CKC also has a field dog testing program leading to field dog (FD), Field Dog Junior (FDJ) and Field Dog Excellent (FDX titles) as well as a working certificate program for retrievers. The United Kennel Club has a retriever hunt test program through the Hunting Retriever Club (HRC) as well as a pointing breed field trial program and also recognizes titles from the United Field Trialers Association (UFTA) and National Shoot to Retrieve Association (NSTRA.) The Field Dog Stud Book (FDSB) conducts field trials for pointing breeds. The North American Hunting Retriever Association (NAHRA) has a retriever testing program. The North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association (NAVHDA) conducts a testing program for versatile hunting dogs and the list goes on and on including many sporting dog parent clubs that have their own working certification programs. So you can see there are opportunities galore and you’ll need to pick the one that seems to fit best with your dog and with you.
One of the best ways to make an informed decision is to attend a few events that are open to your type of sporting dog and ask questions. Usually the members of the clubs offering these events are pretty open to answering any questions you may have and many are willing to provide tips on how to get started. If you should run into a club whose members are clannish and act like they have no interest in helping possible newcomers to their sport, don’t give up. Try another event at a different club. If you encounter the same sort of treatment at that event, you might want to look at a different type of program for your sporting breed. Running into a situation like this doesn’t happen often but it does occur so don’t let it discourage you from working with your dog in the field. Remember that you, after all, are the one who has all the options.
Once you have decided on the program that seems right for you and your dog, the next step is getting started with training and the first move is to find out if your dog has any real interest in birds. Now, if you did the right thing with your dog when he/she was a puppy, you already know the answer to this question because you introduced the dog to birds at some time during their first year. The simple fact is that once you put the “bird” in a sporting dog, it never goes away. The dog can spend five years in the show ring never so much as seeing a bird during that period and when you start working with the dog in the field, the desire for the bird–the prey drive–is still there. If this was not done and you are a complete novice at training a sporting dog for the field, you need the guidance and assistance of someone who is knowledgeable about introducing dogs to birds. This can be either a professional trainer or an amateur who has had a fair amount of experience doing this introduction. It is not difficult. It just requires someone who knows what they’re doing.
Assuming your dog has shown you that chasing/hunting birds is something it loves to do, you are ready for the next step and it’s a big one because you’ll need to decide who is going to train the dog, you or a professional field trainer. If you make the wrong choice–you are a complete bust as a field trainer or you pick the wrong kind of pro–you can easily ruin the dog’s chances of ever being a decent field dog. There are several possible problems with either choice. If you are a complete novice as a field trainer, there are a lot of books and DVDs available that are very helpful in teaching you how to train a dog.
But, one size does not fit all in dog training and I can tell you, based on many years of experience training retrievers and pointing breeds for field work, that you will encounter issues in training your dog that are not covered by either the training books or the videos and that is when, in all likelihood, you will have to turn to a competent professional trainer for advice and assistance. And, here lies a BIG problem. There is no ‘Michelin Guide to Professional Trainers’. Anyone with a board and a bucket of paint can hang up a sign that says “Dog Trainer” on it. While there are many, many high quality, knowledgeable sporting dog trainers in the country, there are also more than a few incompetents, nincompoops and just plain charlatans. If you happen to hook up with any of these latter three, it can permanently damage your dog’s ability to perform in the field.
How do you tell the good ones from the bad? It’s never an easy, cut-and-dried process because some of the most glib talkers are some of the worst trainers. The first step would be to go back to the type of event you’ve chosen and talk with the people running their dogs in the event. Ask them if they’ve ever sent a dog to a professional trainer and if so, who that individual was and what was the outcome? Would they recommend that trainer and if so, why? Also, watch the dogs being handled at the event by pros. Are they happy with their tails wagging and seem to enjoy their work or do they come to the line with their tails between their legs and every fiber of their being screaming fear? Then, if you are going to send your dog to the trainer either for the complete training job or for some remedial work, you better find out how many different breeds the trainer has successfully trained. If, for example, you have a Chesapeake Bay Retriever or an Irish Setter or a Clumber Spaniel, you would not want to put your dog in the hands of someone who had never successfully trained anything but a Labrador or a German Shorthair or a Springer.
If you are sending your dog to a professional trainer, you also need to be aware that there are “circuit pros,” trainers who are away from their training facility for weeks and even months at a time running the field trial or hunt test circuit. In that case, your dog is probably going to wind up being trained by an assistant or if the trainer is just traveling the local circuit, only trained a few days during the week when the trainer is not off running an event. Unfortunately, some of the best trainers in the business are the circuit pros and if you can live with having your dog trained by the pro’s assistant or only two to three days a week, fine. But for the price tag, which can range from $700 per month to more than $2,000 plus the cost of birds and shells, I’d like to think my dog was getting the benefit of the professional’s experience and skills on at least a five-day-a-week basis.
While we are on the subject of expenses, if you are running your dog in retriever hunt tests, there are certain areas of the country–the Upper Midwest being the most notorious–where it is very difficult indeed to get a qualifying score on a dog at the senior or master level unless it is being professionally trained and handled mainly because the average dog owner does not have the time, the facilities or the knowledge to train for a lot of the cockeyed tests the judges in these areas set up. Of course, it goes without saying that if your dog is running in any type of AKC field trial, you’ll probably need to have it handled by a pro whenever possible. Obviously, you can’t have a pro running your dog in an amateur stake but, at least in retriever trials, virtually all of the dogs in the amateur are being run by people who are amateurs only in the broadest definition of the term. Most of them train almost full time with a pro and their dogs are handled in every stake other than the amateur by their pro. While it is not impossible, the number of owner/handlers who manage to put a field championship on their dogs in a year pales in comparison to the number of professionally trained and handled dogs that achieve this pinnacle.
The next-to-last component in this decision is you, particularly if you have any desire to run your own dog. “How so,” you ask? Well, let me answer a question with a question. How do you feel about blood, mud, snakes, spiders and other creepy crawly things along with say skunks and porcupines? For that matter, what are your thoughts about the whole issue of firearms? And, about killing things? Let’s address the latter two questions first.
If you are a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) or the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) or Handgun Control, Inc., or Cease Fire or any number of other animal rights or gun control organizations and you believe in their precepts, you are going to have a very difficult time enjoying life in the field. Because field work with sporting dogs, by its very nature, means that birds will be killed and firearms play a vital role in the training, testing and trialing of dogs in these activities. Here, I might add, if these aspects of the sport do not really bother you but you have a non-gun background, it would be very wise to take your state’s department of natural resources gun safety course. These courses are typically short in duration and inexpensive because virtually all are taught by volunteers but they teach you how to handle firearms safely and to not be afraid of them. Frankly, field rookies, firearms are nothing more than a tool, no different than the carving knives in your kitchen, the screwdriver in your tool kit, the tire iron in your vehicle or even your kids’ baseball bats. All of them can result in lethal consequences in the hands of someone bent on mayhem.
Now to address the first question. If you faint dead away at the sight of the droplet of blood that appears when the nurse in your doctor’s office pricks your finger, the field may not be the best choice for a second career for your sporting dog because field work often involves blood. You’ll have to handle dead, bloody birds. You may even have to administer the coup de grace if the dog returns with a bird that is merely crippled and not dead. If you scream in terror or flee in panic at the sight of a snake, spider, worms or bugs, your time in the field is going to be one long nightmare because all of outdoors is full of these things. I need not outline the hazards of encountering either a skunk or a porcupine when you are afield with your dog. While the brunt of these unwanted meetings usually is borne by the dog, in the case of skunks, you could also be the target. As for mud, the stuff you find in the field is nothing like the benign garden variety you occasionally track in from your flower beds. In certain parts of both the United States and Canada, mixing the soil with water creates a compound that when dried could easily withstand the inferno a spacecraft experiences during reentry. When wet, its adhesive qualities rival that of super glue. In foul weather, mud in some areas of North America is off the charts in terms of sheer misery and if you have a spaniel or a retriever, you face the additional discomfort of a dog emerging from a muddy, stinky pond and shaking that crud all over you.
The final factor in this decision, as with all other dog activities, has to be “Can I afford it?” Field work is not cheap. In many field activities, the entry fees will be $50 or more. There is also the cost of training birds which are pretty pricey everywhere but in some areas of the country ridiculously expensive. There is also all the equipment you need to properly train your dog for the field, some of it so technologically sophisticated and costly that you’d think it was part of a military procurement.
In view of all the obstacles to success in field work, a legitimate question would be why anyone would bother. For one thing, that’s what sporting dogs were meant to do. They were not meant to trot around a show ring smiling at judges. You can have a trophy case filled with Best In Show and group win hardware and bins full of ribbons from the show ring but if your dog cannot do what the breed was intended to do, in other words find, flush and fetch birds, a lot of its value to the breed as a whole is missing. There is also great personal satisfaction in watching your dog do what it was meant to do. None of my dogs have ever shown me half as much animation and enthusiasm in the show ring as they display at the slightest indication that we might be going hunting. Finally, when your dog is doing what it was intended to do and does it with such style and class that it sends shivers up and down your spine and brings tears to your eyes, it just doesn’t get any better than that in your relationship with your dog.
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Posted by ralbee
on Apr 15 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured.
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