JKP wrote: I have sit astride my horse while a soon to be National Champion spent 10+ minutes no more than 75 yards from his handler.
10 minutes, you say?? Well, I guess that's proof enough...that dog's a foot hunting dog, no doubt about it!!
Proves the point for me....and how many dogs had to be located with the tracking collar??
So when my Euro mutt spends 10 minutes 500 yds away, I guess that makes him an NC dog.
particularly footage of a relocation
Super!! Yes I know what a relocation looks like ,,, if your dog doesn't relocate on running phez and try to pin them down, its a second class dog. Only I want the dog to relocate on its own and get that bird to hunker down, not wait while the bird runs 200 yds. But then again, that would be a hunting dog
Look I'm egging you on here....sorry for that...all I said is that trialing at the extreme is just that and less about a breed or standard ... its a self perpetuating race to be faster, farther and better. At the extreme, it has to be questioned as much as the show dogs.
JKP -
I know you are deliberately fueling the fire, and that is fine, but there is one thing that really needs to be plainly said in the context of this discussion. Steve alluded to it above, but I think it needs to be said plainly. The dogs that win field trials, especially those who win AF open All Age trials are a VERY select few of the hundreds, no thousands of dogs bred in any given year. THEY are the breeding stock for future generations of both field and trial dogs.
WHY?? Because it is incredibly difficult to even duplicate such dogs , much less increase their abilities in their offspring. It simply does not work that way.
Genetics of the group, and a litter of pups is a group, tend toward the average, of the sire's genes and the dam's genes. So even if the sire was a horizon buster and the dam was a horizon buster, and each was THE exceptional dog in their respective litters, the drag of genetics would dictate that at least some of the pups in such a special mating...would NOT be horizon busters.
In practice, MOST of the pups in such a mating would NOT be horizon busters with similar talents as their parents. The bulk of the litter would tend toward the average of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents litters and littermates.
As to your other observation, I am also very firmly convinced that most folks who hunt with bird dogs don't WANT to see their dogs. It is that they HAVE to see their dogs...because they do not trust them to be out of their sight.
A significant percentage of hunters also care less about the dogwork than they do a full gamebag, so they want the dog close to be able to have a shooting opportunity, even if the dog does not handle the bird correctly. That is fine for them, but it does almost nothing toward the betterment of the breed, IMO.
It is not the dog that has the problem...it is the human. In both cases. In the first instance, the dog is not afraid to go out of sight of its human in search of game...it is the other way 'round. In the second instance, it is not the dog's fault that it the dog may not have been thoroughly enough trained to stand its birds until flushed. It is the human's fault.
Field trials PROVE that, time and time again. Dogs can go into the next zip code in search of game...and still find their way back to their handler...or stand there, on point, for as long as it takes the handler to find them and get there. In field trials they do just that, and more...ALL the time. Well at least the winning ones do. And nobody cares much about the ones that don't win. They don't get bred much.
As far as a new breed, I do believe that the pointer is continually re-inventing itself, in response to the changing hunting conditions and opportunities that present themselves. The ALL AGE dog of today, is most certainly a much different dog than it was, even fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, the all age dog had tens of thousands of acres to run on in virtually every part of the country and was hunted, for the most part, on wild quail and pheasant.
Both the open land and the game have disappeared in mush of the country today. In many areas of the country, the only readily available upland game is penraised, pre-released birds. The bird dogs of today have had to adapt to these changes. Some things have been lost or diminished in the process and other things have increased.
The availability of technology had forever changed how bird dogs are trained. The technology allows the trainer to easily accomplish things that were virtually impossible previously. Dogs with traits that succeed under this new technology have flourished and their genetics have been passed forward. Thus the dogs have adapted to these changes as well. Again, some things have been lost or diminished and some things have increased.
I am confident that the bird dogs of today will continue to change and adapt as conditions warrant.
Oh and one last thin...if you have a euro type dog that is ranging out to 500 yards, I am quite certain that there are breed wardens out there who would say that such a dog should be removed from the breeding population.
I am not one of them, but ...well you know.
RayG
