Senior Hunter Question

[MOOSE]

We are going to start working on our Senior Hunters for a couple of our GSP's in the spring. I have a question though when reading through the handbook on pointing hunt trials.

The one section says: "Dog must be steady to wing on all pointed birds and must remain in position until the shot OR they are released"

Then in another section it says: "Dog must be steady to wing on all pointed birds and remain until the shot or they are released. A dog which breaks before the shot can not receive a qualifying score"

So which is it? Do they have to remain steady to shot or can they be released on flush?

We are planning to train to steady to shot but I just want clarification on the rules because in the one spot it says OR til released then the next says it has to stay steady through shot.

Thanks!

[ultracarry]

Steady to wing is going to be until the shot.even if a dog bumps the bird it should still stop to flush also. If you blank the bird they are allowed to break when you blank. It's pretty simple stuff. Just train to be steady through the shot and do SH tests as you are building reliability.

Good luck and have fun!

[JuliaH]

We always trained ours to be steady to wing and shot so that the senior hunter tests did not cause a problem. If the dog is "ahead" in its training for the tests you have a greater chance of training taking over in the excitement of the actual test

[DonF]

For what it's worth, if your going to go for the master hunter, don't do the Sr. hunter. Problem is in senior hunter you will be allowing the dog to do things that it can't do in master. In effect you will be accepting things from your dog this week that you are not going to allow next week. Tuff to hold back but IMO take to the line the dog you want, not one that is close but not there.

If I were to read someone has a junior title on their dog and that's it, I know the dog has not shown much worth at being a bird dog. If I see a senior title I know the dog has it in it to make a bird dog. When I see master, I know the dog has it in it to take the extra needed training. What no title shows is how much independence the dog has.

Hunting test were the best thing to come from AKC or AF in a long long time, got guys with good dogs out working and showing them. Now I would like to see a trial based on the dog needing to have a master title, Fld. Ch. won't get you in. And it must be a walking trial. Come to think of it, I wonder if there are enough people with master hunters in the N.W. for a group to put on such a trial?

[RoostersMom]

For what it's worth, if your going to go for the master hunter, don't do the Sr. hunter. Problem is in senior hunter you will be allowing the dog to do things that it can't do in master. In effect you will be accepting things from your dog this week that you are not going to allow next week. Tuff to hold back but IMO take to the line the dog you want, not one that is close but not there.

Ditto what Don has said. I totally skipped SH and went from JH to MH this past year. I need 4 more passes since I was only able to run him twice last year on Sundays. The only negative to going this way is that you have to pass 6 instead of 5 tests if you skip SH. Still, that's a lot less than doing SH and then 5 MH passes. It seems like SH lets your dogs get away with a lot and if you're training your dog to be steady anyway....just go straight to MH.

[MOOSE]

We will be training to the MH level I guess you could say. We are using the SH as a stepping stone for our dogs on their path to their NAVHDA UT titles. Which I know they need to be at a stead to shot and fall for UT so that is what we will train toward. Who knows maybe they will pick it up in their training fast enough and be able to just run into MH we will see.

Thanks for the feedback!

[JuliaH]

I am not sure I like the idea of skipping Senior Hunter to do Master. As I mentioned we always continued training as the dog was ready and went on with testing thru Junior and then Senior. Now Rose has her first pass on the Master. Whether we finish her or not, she only needed some tuning up to be ready for Master. Just because a dog is allowed certain mistakes in Senior does not mean you only have to train to that level. Certainly it is the choice of the owner and/or trainer to skip certain tests, but I feel it was good for Rose to deal with Senior testing and be asked to complete her tests to the best of her ability and not just to the minimum required.

Just my thoughts

Julia

[ultracarry]

I did hunt tests because I had not tried field trials lol... didn't skip SH because I wanted to wait till my dog was a year and a half before she was force broke.... had this bad habit of dropping the bird on my feet and just wouldn't stop...

Do what gets you out the most training or testing but I would recommend trailing

[MOOSE]

With our one dog we are going to try a couple field trials here in MI as well just to see what it is like and go from there. We have one coming up in November but so far there are no dogs signed up for Puppy or Derby and he is not ready for anything higher than that right now. So it may not happen yet this fall but may in the spring. We are spending most of the fall getting out in the woods and doing waterfowl hunting so we will hit the actual training once the season is done and spring breaks a bit.

[Ruffshooter]

IMO:
I have only done MH never did SR. But you can learn from it but your dog will learn what you train it. (It will take 6 passes if you do not run SR. So you can see you can save money too.
If you are training for the UT forget the SR. That is just slowing down your training. UT requires the dog steady till the release. MH require steady to the release. You also need to have stop to the flush also.

Good luck.
Rick

[DonF]

By doing senior before master you don't gain a thing other than to get into it yourself. By holding back on senior and using that time to train the only thing that will change is the dog will be in a position when you can't enforse your training. If you can get someone else to train with or even a bunch of people, you can set up test's that you can correct your dog in and all it will cost is birds. I've had a lot of broke dogs but never ran the first hunting test. My dog's broke out just the same without being allowed to make mistakes that were un-corrected.

I've know a lot of trialer's that let their dog's go for hunting season then have to re-break them the following spring. And they wonder why their dog's are bullet proff in trial's, it's because they taught them that sometimes breaking at the shot is alright!