I just have to vent a little.

[ohiogsp]

Just returned from some hunt tests. My dog is going for his SH title (he needs 2 legs) and he is really doing MH work most the time, I just didn't test alot last year. So I am trying to finish SH so I can move on to MH. Here is the way I got screwed. My dog goes on point and the bracemates dog backs. I flush and the gunners shoot the bird down. I turn my back to release my dog and the bracemates dog retrieves my bird to the other handler. Nobody says anything but I did not see the dog retrieve the bird. I send my dog for the retrieve and he starts a search that widens till my dog finally puts up a live bird. He holds STW&S. I go over to him and change his direction and he starts hunting again in the opposite direction. Then he makes a loop around the bird field and went to where the bird flew that wild flushed on him earlier. Maybe a minute elapsed. The judge says collar your dog. I am like why. They say delayed chase, you can't go back to the same area for 2 minutes. My dog could run the perimeter of this bird field 5 times in 2 minutes???? This would have never happened if my dog would have been able to retrieve the bird he pointed or if someone would have said don't send your dog for the retrieve because there is no bird there, "The bracemate stole the "bleep"" Could the judges not have said "Don't send your dog" or been easier on my dog because of the situation it was in. He actually did everything I expect of him and nothing wrong in my eyes.

[Ayres]

Ouch man, sorry to hear about the stolen retrieve. A backing dog in Senior should have been collared and never allowed to break like that.

In a similar "what the heck?!?" fashion, a friend was running a Brit in JH this weekend and found two birds just as he entered the bird field. So, being respectful to the other handler and dog, he went to a back corner of the bird field and stayed there until the other dog was able to find a bird. The judges called time and told him that he failed in hunting because he didn't hunt the field. The Brit ran great in the back field, ranged out, hunted, and had two finds immediately upon entering the bird field and got failed for "not hunting." It was rediculous.

[Casper]

that sucks. Is there not a way of contesting a ruling a judge has given?

[pear]

Bad rap in both cases!!! ..."pear"

[larue]

I would have to call that very poor judgeing.My first broke trial points were on a bird that I sent my dog for the retrieve and the bird got up and flew away! The judges,judged the situation,and threw a dead bird,after a shot,which he retreived fine.
Negative judgeing is a bitch.If I was judgeing,one of two things would have happened.If you already had a bird retrieved,the situation would have been a non -issue.
Your dog would not have to retrieve that bird,as he had already showed me he could,and the other dog screwed up the situation.
If not after the offending dog was taken away,your dog would have been given a thrown dead bird,to finish his find.I also believe once a dog is sent on a retreive,he cannot make a mistake by chaseing a bird,he was sent for a retreive,how can you expect him to know a difference?
I would remember the judge's name,and not run under him again,that is about all you can do,and if asked why you are not running at a clubs test,tell them.

[original mngsp]

Ditto for what Larue says.

Bad deal all the way around. Negative judging is a bad deal. So is the bird field, single course without a birdfield is a muach better way to do things. Don't see it too often becasue clubs might have a tough time finding enough adequate gunners or might just be downright lazy. Birdfield is alsways easier to run but so artificial and lots of bad things happen in there. My best knock against a birdfield is that it penalizes a good dog, mights find 6 or more birds if their out there, and helps a crappy dog, any dog can stummble into a bird or two in a birdfield without hunting.

Remember the judges and don't run under them again. I have a couple in this area I won't run dogs under. It's not because they are "tough", but imcompetent. Some of my favorite judges are "tough" judges but they have knowledge of the rules, real life hunting, and some common sense when a strange situation pops up in a test.

Hope you get those SH legs, I still have to pick up one more for my dog this spring.

[Wagonmaster]

i would not second guess the judges and label them as "bad," because we did not see what they saw. they saw a dog come into a birdfield, have two quick and easy finds, and quit. It is the handler's job to show the dog to best advantage. If you are going to not do that, tell the judges, explain the reason, and ask if it is OK. That way, if the judges are getting impatient with you standing around in one end of the field doing nothing, they know why you are there and will tell you that you need to get your dog hunting. If you do it on your own, the judges just my not know what is going on in your head. in fact, they may be wondering what the heck you are doing.

[ezzy333]

Right on John. They call it communication and the judges are just human like the rest of us so talk to them. During and not after.

Ezzy

[original mngsp]

John, I step back a bit on my stand because of we aren't sure what the judges saw.

But this type of thing still concerns me that two judges in a small bird field, most bird fields you see in HT are 5 acres maybe up to 7, failed to see the honoring dog take the retrieve. After the honoring dog stopped and honored the pointing dog in SH the handler can and should coller his dog. At that point both judges should have thier attention on the pointing dog, watch the dog for steadiness until the shot and then get an idea of the fallen bird so as to judge the quality of retrieve. During all this two judges failing to see the honoring dog make the retrieve!!!! This blows my mind.

They say delayed chase, you can't go back to the same area for 2 minutes. My dog could run the perimeter of this bird field 5 times in 2 minutes????

Delayed chase in a SH test is always vague as the pointing dog is allowed to break at the shot. I know this wasn't the case, but all kinds of wierd things happen in SH tests. Nowhere in the rule book does it state anything about a time limit defining what makes a delayed chase and what doesn't. In a small bird field any dog worth it's salt can cover the perimeter 5 times in 2 minutes, see my above post about single course no bird field vs. single course with bird field.

Ohiogsp should have taken his dog and hid him in a corner of the bird field, watered him for 5 minutes, checked the dogs pads for injuries, etc and thus avoided the "delayed chase" and probably would have passed. This is all to common in what passes in HT now. Show me a dog and handler team that has confidence in each other, isn't scared of multiple bird contacts, trusts one another enough to let the dog get out of sight for more than 5 seconds, handles his birds with zest and style and there you have a dog worthy of a title!!

[Greg Jennings]

The other handler should have collared his dog on the back. If he didn't, the judges should have instructed him to.

Best regards,

[Ayres]

Well John, I guess I should have told more to that story. Here goes: First, two handlers go out, A and B, to run junior. Handler B runs his dog right into the center of the bird field and lets his dog run a radius. His dog finds five birds and each bird either gets up and flies well out of the area or the dog actually catches it and handler B puts it in his vest. As a result, 5 birds were fully removed from the bird field and handler A's dog goes birdless and fails.

Handler A and Handler C (friend with the brit described above) go out in a later brace and Handler A was obviously upset over handler B's conduct. One judge asks handler A what they would have done in that situation. Handler A says that they would have, after finding a bird, gone and sat on the back flag to give the other dog a chance to find a bird. Handler C hears this. Both dogs run and pass.

Handler C then gets his brit ready and goes out in a subsequent brace, and the situation happens as above. He handled the situation exactly as handler A described that they would have handled it (handler C is new to hunt tests - handler A is very experienced) and the judge flunks him for not hunting. This isn't a course where nobody but the judges can see the dogs. The brit hunted the backcourse and hunted the area where handler C was at, it just didn't run all over the bird field because handler C kept it in the corner so that his bracemate had a chance to find a bird. Time was called right after the bracemate found a bird.

Yeah, it's easy to say "well we didn't see what the judges saw," but I can assure you that this was, in fact, poor judgment.

What does it really take to flunk a dog in the hunting category in junior hunter?

[Wagonmaster]

I am not picking an argument with you and obviously more facts are always helpful. But I have seen a gizzilion of these situations where someone does not win or get what they think they deserve in a test or trial, and then the description you hear in the parking lot of what happened, portrays the judges in the worst possible light and the handler and his dog in the best light. I judge. I don't judge judges based on what handlers and their dogs and their friends tell me happened after the fact because I apply the same rule then, as I do when I judge. I judge what I see, and what my trialing, testing and hunting experience tell me is going on. I do not judge on what I don't see, and I do not judge based on lobbying.

Sure judges make mistakes. Handlers make mistakes also. You should still always tell the judges if you are going to do something different, so everyone is on the same page. Your job is to show the dog in the best light. If you communicate, rather than assume, then you are doing that and giving the judges the chance to avoid misunderstanding what you are up to.

"We was robbed by the ref" is one of the oldest lines around, probably invented by a caveman playing stickball.

[Ayres]

I wasn't picking an argument either, just giving more background so you can see why I thought it ok to tell that story as a fault. But, I take your point - no matter what the story you don't make any judgments against the judges unless you saw it yourself. You have every right to take that position.

Note that your back-to-back statements are counter-intuitive:

we did not see what they saw. they saw a dog come into a birdfield, have two quick and easy finds, and quit.

Yes, we did not see what the judges saw. That also means that we can't then say that "they saw" a dog quit. I know you judge and because of that it's easier to be sympathetic to the judge's position of 'maybe they saw something else,' but you should reverse that position for the handler as well, and shouldn't assume that the handler is always lying after the fact because of sour grapes. In fact, in this case, the handler with the failing brit had the dog sold already and only ran the dog in the hunt test because the entries were already in and paid for. The handler had nothing vested in the dog's passing or failing. Sour grapes weren't part of the equation at all - confusion was!

My gripe about this whole ordeal is that this judgment to fail a dog on hunting ability was so out of line with other runs that it sends very mixed signals. This guy is just getting into the hunt test game. He has other dogs that he is running but this was only his second hunt test. Things like this, in the junior hunter level, don't give new people a good impression of hunt tests. They see their dog do everything that would be expected of them on a fall hunt and wonder why there was such a huge discrepancy in judgment from one test to the next.

[Wagonmaster]

one of the tougher parts of judging to get a handle on, in my view, is the judge communicating with the handler. it is not the judge's place to interfere with the way the handler is handling the dog. it is entirely within the judge's province, though, to communicate with the handler when something obviously is going wrong, and to communicate in a way that is helpful to the handler without binding the handler's hands in some way.

it is not always easy to figure out if something should be said, or what to say. alot depends on the level of experience of the handler, and the person in the judge's seat does not always know that. sometimes you have to figure it out from the way the handler is doing things. sometimes you figure out too late that you should have said something. i would not give much direction to a pro, for example. he or she knows as well as i do what the rules are and what needs to be done. but it is surely not wrong to try to help a rookie avoid mistakes. it just takes some experience to know the difference between the two.

learning what to say and when to say it when judging, is something that is learned the hard way, and takes experience. i have managed to screw that part of the equation up more than once. example, some years ago a very good friend, in fact my training partner at the time, was running a very nice pointer in a cover dog trial, and i was judging. we started out with my friend and his dog assigned to the other judge, but switched part way through the hour, and then the bracemates got separated. at one point the dog, which was running a really beautiful race, came in from very slightly behind the handler, but in front of me. in the few steps it took her to catch up with him, she ran right over a woodcock, turned her head in mid-stride and saw it fly, but did not stop to flush. i told my friend what i had seen. he got kind of combative - i think because he knew she was putting down a winning race but the tension had been mounting because she badly needed a bird to win. the emotional nature of his reaction which was apparent in his face and tone took me aback a little. He demanded, "Do you want me to pick my dog up?" I did not say "Pick her up," rather I repeated what I saw, that she had run over a woodcock.

Now, under AF rules, at least those that were in effect at the time, a dog could still be placed if it had a minor failure of manners, especially in a wild bird trial. That was in my mind at the time, and I assumed my friend, knowing the rules, would leave the dog down. But the two of us also ran alot of AKC trials where any failure of manners at all meant the dog was picked up. Under the circumstances of the moment, he was thinking AKC. He put the hook on the dog, and then of course was mad at me when we got back to camp. I didn't see what I thought I saw, I didn't know how to judge, etc. etc.

I did make a mistake. My mistake as a judge was that I failed to make clear to him that under the AF rules he did not have to pick the dog up, and in fact depending on what the other dogs did, and how his dog finished the brace, he could still be placed. I just assumed he knew because he and I had talked about it before and I knew that he knew exactly what the rule was and how it was to be interpreted. I did not make a mistake in calling his dog's work a failure to stop to flush. I saw what I saw. The dog went right over the bird, looked at it in mid-stride, and kept going. Frankly, I should have explained the rule, but was kind of taken aback trying to process my friend's emotional outburst.

Those judges are hooman beins. They are not gettin paid. And it is a pretty thankless job.

Sounds to my like there was a failure to communicate. Would be good if both handler and judge learned from it.

Monday morning quarterbacking was probably also invented during that prehistoric stickball game, they just did not call it that because "Monday" had not been invented yet.

[Ayres]

That's a good post John, and I'm sure everyone can relate to it. Both handlers and judges.

[Wagonmaster]

thanks, you ole irish setter you.

[Greg Jennings]

My comment was intended for handlers and judges in future events. I have to be terse, can't hold a session for long at work.

In a SH stake, there is nothing to be gained and much to be lost in not collaring the backing dog.

Once the backing dog has "acknowledged" the pointing dog, its part is done. After that, it can only interfere with the pointing dog.

Regards,

[ohiogsp]

I am not saying these were bad judges. If there is some 2 minute rule I broke it. My fault. If I knew some rule like that existed I would not have allowed him to go there. The judges did see the other dog retrieve the bird because when I question them they said, "Your dog did a beautiful job it is just unfortunate the other dog retrieved your bird." It is very aggrevating because I seen the same bracemate I had flush a bird in front of a dog on point the day before. When I figured out that I was running with him the next day it was like I knew something would happen that would screw my dog up. These people do not belong in the SH test. Maybe when I start running Master it will be different because these same people will still be trying to get their SH. I am done with my ranting now and am over it, ain't nothing anyone could do anyways.

[Wagonmaster]

same stuff happens in trials. drive 300 miles, ride all day, and then your dog gets braced with a green broke dog that steals point, bumps a bird out and both dogs go. not much you can do about it except go home and try to figure out a way to train your own to be that much more broke.

i would have to say, from listening to your account of your dog, that you are going to get that title. the dog is good enough. it is just going to take some time, and probably a few more bad breaks along the way, but you will get there.

[Mary]

Ohio
Sounds like your dog did exactly what it should have done it is a shame you got a bad break. Hope the next test is better for you.

I like some of you have been sitting a distance away from the action and wondered how the judges did not see what I saw.

I have been the judges marshall at a national breed trial sitting right beside the judge and we saw two different things. That experience really brought home to me the fact that each person has a different perspective.

Mary

[ohiogsp]

Yes, it was just a bad break. Last weekend was not a wash we qualified 3 out of 4 runs so I can't complain too much. It was just aggrevating and I am a perfectionist. I hope this weekend goes good I am running 6 times.

[Mary]

Your right you did great 3 qualifiers out of 4 runs.
Good luck this week end. Dogs, test, trials will cure you of being a perfectionist.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for Brenda's and my dogs this week end at the Championship, so will include you.

[ohiogsp]

Thanks alot.

[Wagonmaster]

how many more do you need?

[ohiogsp]

2 legs of senior until my boy can move up to master. I am also running my females this weekend. One needs 1 JH leg and the other needs 2 JH legs. Both my females are not quite ready for SH yet. One is really close and might pass some of the time, but I like to have my dogs trained close to master level before I go for SH because I don't like not passing.

[Wagonmaster]

stuff happens at trials and tests ohio. the first broke dog stake my current FC won was an AA stake that had enough dogs entered to be a 3 point major by one dog. last dog in the last brace was a bye dog, and the handler decided to scratch it. don't know why. that dropped the stake by a point. that dog then won another 3 point stake fairly quickly, got up to 9 points, and then it took 7 or 8 more months to get that last win. it was worth it, it was a big 4 point AA against tough competition. but he would have been finished almost a year earlier if that guy had not scratched that dog for whatever reason. as it was, he still finished while he was two years old. all's well that ends well. no sense in worrying about things you can't change.

you are so obviously going to get there. best of luck.

[TAK]

Nothing to add about the call that was made but By golly that is one good looking dog in your picture!!!

[Wagonmaster]

that is a very unique coat isn't it. snips had a name for it. what was that?

[ohiogsp]

Thanks man, snips called it self-fronted I believe.

P.S. I will have to post some pics cause this guy is doing a painting of him right now that should be very cool.

[TAK]

Thanks man, snips called it self-fronted I believe.

P.S. I will have to post some pics cause this guy is doing a painting of him right now that should be very cool.

I really don't see myself at a bench show but if I had a dog with them markings I think I would giver a go! You should send his picture in for some calender or GSP history book.

[ohiogsp]

Just got back from testing all weekend. Whew, my dogs all finished there titles. I know 2 were JH but my male finished SH so that is great. 6 out of 6 is not bad even if 4 were JH. Master Hunter here we come!!

Tak, man I'm like you not into that show stuff. I tried to get the wife to do some, but I don't think it will happen.

[Margaret]

Love the colour of your dog in the photo there. Very eye catching.

[Wagonmaster]

congrats, ohio, what took you so long

[ohiogsp]

I know I could have done the SH last year but I have my own concrete business and was very busy. I only went to one test last year so now I had some time to do a couple. Wagonmaster, my little girl out of LB's Ohi Shameless got her JH the last two weekends, well the judges keep saying she should be field trialing. I thought about doing some walking stuff this spring. One accually said I should be doing horseback stuff. I don't have a horse or enough land to work her like that though. I train her at my training grounds that is only 10 acres but when we goto a big course she just "lets it out". This is not so good for testing she ranges 300-500 yards easy and is 13 months old I think she comes back just because I call her(when she feels like it of course). I have to run to the top of the next hill just to keep her is sight. If I do FT her in walking stuff puppy derby stake do the points thansfer to regular stakes? How many points do you need to get a FC title? Can you train for bigger trials without the land to work her on then just rent horses to run?

[ohiogsp]

Thanks, Margaret

[larue]

there is no distinction between walking and horseback trials,so any points recieved in walking stakes,count the same as horseback events.
You need 10 points for an fc,with at least 3 of them coming from a 3 point or better major win.You can use 2 puppy,and 2 derby points toward your fc As you have a gsp,you must also have 4 points total in retrieving stakes.
Walking trials are becoming more popular,here in the midwest you can run 4 or 5 easily,if you drive little,so a horse is not a must.
Branched oaks in nebraska has a few,eagle here in wi has 3 or 4,
missiori has some,our 4 lakes club has one in the fall,iowa has one,
min has a couple.You could easily run 6 trials a spring all walking,if you wanted to drive 8 hours or so.

[Wagonmaster]

congratulations again.

original mngsp who is on this site is involved in the Minn. walking trial. it is coming up in the next couple of weeks.

sounds like you have a good un.

you can look the FC/AFC requirements up on the AKC website, Rule 14 in the Pointing Breed Field Trial Rules. i go back and look at them when i have a question. not sure, for example, how an Am. Puppy counts, walking or not. the answer would be there.

points in walking stakes are the same as points in horseback stakes. Am or Open can make a difference depending on which championship.

you get a max of two puppy points, and a max of two derby. if you manage to do that, get your two puppy or derby points, then i would recommend that you stop running the pup in puppy or derby (whichever you have the points in). it helps pups progression to broke dog status not to run in too many young unbroke dog stakes, and nobody is very impressed with those "Derby dog of the year" standings. in other words, racking up more wins is not necessarily good for the dog even if it is good for the ego.

we finish, as a breed, about 65 FC's per year. we finish about half that many AFC's.

what's with the water in OH? you are the second guy this year who has cause he has discovered he has a nice dog and wants to give trialing a try.

good luck, have fun, honorable pursuit, you will find lots of people out there doing it.

[markj]

Branched oaks in nebraska has a few

Anyone going this upcoming weekend? I want to go to see what the walking stuff is about. Sure could use a "guide" or someone savvy. I missed last weekends DK test due to work. I dont want to misss this one.

[ohiogsp]

Thanks for the info very helpfull.