SRHPC Working Test
August 13th, 2011 § 8 Comments
This was a great day and one of the best organised and run tests of the season (thanks to Colin, who has done the Club proud).
There were not many SRHPs in evidence, considering it was the club’s test: There were none in Open. Grey was the only SRHP in Graduate. There were (according to Mick’s comment below!) 3 in Puppy. There were 4 in Novice and 1 in Special Beginner, making a total of 9 SRHPs. Surely there should be more than 9 SRHP owners who are interested in working their dogs? Surely the purpose of breeding a working breed, is so that they can work? Why are breeders over-producing this breed when there is obviously so little demand for them, as working dogs?
Anyway, the tests…
Grey
Was a pain in the arse. Highly embarrassing. If I’d just turned up with an untrained dog, and decided that a bit of public humiliation would be nice, it would probably have looked something like this. I guess I am a bit spoiled from handling Slate, who tries so hard and takes casts. Grey was pathetic and I was mad. (Is a summary of events.)
In more detail: Grey was running in Novice and Graduate. First up was hunting for both. This test went relatively well. Grey didn’t range as far as I’d like, but she was for sure working and hunting and not just out for a dawdle. She sat to sit whistles quickly. Tony Russell (lovely man) said she was ‘nice’ and seemed to quite like her. We got 17/25 for Graduate hunting and I didn’t see what we got for Novice. I have to say that I believe I’m at fault for having 2 dogs which range poorly. I am such a control-freak with them (not in a heavy-handed way, just in a relationship-building way and being the source of all good things), that I think it affects their independence and focus outwards. So I always accept that hunting will be our crappest score. It is one of the things which makes me think that I’m much more suited to owning a retriever than a HPR.
Then came a Novice blind retrieve. This was: Heel the dog off lead about 50 yards. Sit the dog. A bolting rabbit (dummy on an elastic, for those non-gundoggy people reading) was then released immediately in front of the dog, horizontal to it. Once the bolting rabbit had passed, the dog then had to be sent for a blind straight ahead (ie – not where the bolting rabbit had ended up).
Well, Grey did the heelwork part, sit and steadiness to bolting rabbit just fine. (I guess this is progress; 2 yrs ago as a puppy, she was a nightmare with anything to do with steadiness.) I put my hand out and carefully lined her up for the retrieve straight down the path. We’ve only practised this a million billion times with various lining exercises and teaching her not to go for the last thing seen, but to take lines from us. What did Grey do? Decided – bugger Jo’s hand, I’m going where I want – and ran out to the right, where the bolting rabbit had disappeared, to check it out.
At which point (not very far away at all), I stopped her and cast her Left. She took this first cast fine, but soon banana-ed round back to the bolting rabbit. I again sat her and cast her away. The problem was that, with each cast, it was as if she had never done any lining before or casting, at all: She meandered around, not confidently holding any line (even the wrong line would have been a line). This meant she never really covered much distance and just was no where near where she needed to be. (Down the bloody path.) She just wouldn’t go that far. Now, we have practised and practised directions and lines and casts at much greater distances…
Then the stickiness began: As in training, she would sit and remain sitting and refuse to take a cast, just kept looking at me. I then did a great aerobics workout in front of everyone. Sheesh. I ended up with a dog which would sit to the whistle fine, but then remain sitting and refuse casts. When I finally (after god knows how many reps) got her to take a cast, she wouldn’t take a strong cast with a good line (as she does in training), but would get up and pootle roughly in the right direction (Back) for a few metres, before going off sideways. This would necessitate another sit whistle, and so the whole thing just repeated, with her then being stuck in the sit for bloody ages.
In fact, it was worse than a totally untrained dog: A totally untrained dog would probably have gone out and quartered the area and eventually found the dummy by persistence. Grey, left to her own devices, wanted to give up and come back to me. Several times she headed back towards me, having given up on the retrieve. If I hadn’t stopped her and cast her Back again (or tried to), she would have ended up coming all the way back to me without the dummy and ‘giving up’; that was what she really wanted to do.
Eventually, Grey did get this dummy. I was almost at the point of moving forwards with her, when I tried one more ‘Back’, and she luckily went just that bit further and ended up in the territory of the dummy.
After this debacle, we went off to try our hands (paws) at the Graduate blind.
This was a wide grassy ride between trees. The dummy was down an 80-100 yard slope, right in the middle of this grassy ride. Halfway down the slope were loads of hard plastic pigeons (decoys), set out in the middle of the path.
If I had had Slate with me, I would have lined her up for a blind, she would have run straight out and down the grassy ride. When she reached the pigeons, she would have been momentarily distracted, and I would probably have had to sit her and then cast her on Back, to the dummy. Job done.
So, I line Grey up, and she runs out perhaps 5-10 metres before veering off to the right and starting a detailed sniffing-around of the bracken on the bank. WTF?? I sit her, and cast her Left. And so on: An exact repeat of the Novice nightmare. In fact, the 2 retrieves were quite similar, in that they involved some form of distraction on a straightforward blind. And the other difference is that the distance is much greater than the Novice retrieve, and getting her Back that far proves impossible when she won’t turn and run straight back, given a Back cast. (Or even diagonally Back, or any Back at all!). Several times, she attempts to give up and return to me and is only stopped by my sit whistle.
Eventually, I have little choice but to walk down to just after the pigeon decoys and try her from there. Nope: Same problem, and I’m not going to continue the whole thing down there. So I decide to walk almost up to the dummy itself and just let her find it. Grey finds it, and I then walk away and let her run with it, so she would bring it to me all of… oooh… 4 metres. Grey drops it on the floor and decides she’d rather sniff a blade of grass. This was just too much, so I bellow ‘GIVE!’ at her, and she brings it to me.
In short: Hair. Tearing out.
At this point, it is lunch time. So I eat my lunch and deliberate. I decide that I can’t see the point of taking up everyone’s time by running her in the afternoon. I also don’t think it would be very beneficial for Grey to bugger around like this and essentially detrain herself. (That’s assuming she retains any of her training, which it’s not looking like she does.) So I withdraw.
Slate
Slate had a reasonably good day with Adam and was not too far off 4th place in Open. She got stung by a wasp just before her hunting, so had to have antihistamine cream applied and a bandage on her foot. Her hunting on non-gamey ground is rubbish anyway, but this for sure didn’t help. Adam says that she baulked at crossing a huge ditch on a seen, and so needs more seens across obstacles of various descriptions. But she did pretty well on the other tests and we’re pleased with her. Which is more than can be said for a certain more hairy grey dog currently sleeping upstairs.
No more SRHPs for us, I fear.
Don’t be too despondent Jo. Everybody (and dog!) has a bad day at times. The problem I had when training Ruby was that I trained her like a cocker spaniel and therefore she became more dependent on me as – like you – I am the bearer of all things exciting ie food (in Ruby’s case!). You’ll feel a bit flat tonight but there’s nothing like this happening to make you step up your training a couple of levels and get right back into it. If its any consolation the first Pointing Test I ran Ruby, she pootled about and started eating sheep poo…. and kept looking back at me to see if I was still following. I was embarrassed because, like Grey, she’s a super hunter when nobody is around…. Don;t give up; this is just a blip..
Great to meet you and Adam today Jo, and thanks for talking me through the in’s and out’s of what was going on.
No doubt bump into you again at another test, i’m looking at the 4th or 10th of Sep to enter our first
Matt and Oz
Hi Matt – Good to meet you too and good luck at your first test!
Don’t be too down, Jo. You’ll have learned loads from today’s experience. And I don’t think you can get away with owning a slovak and not having a dose of public humiliation on some level! The judge said she was nice too.
[...] yesterday’s debacle at the working test was not a great ad for my dog-training abilities. Note to self: Handle Slate in future. [...]
You may wish to update your blog with regard to the SRP working test as there were in fact 9 competing, you missed the 3 puppies out (10 if you include Finlay, his owner kindly gave up his run to help with stewarding)
Ok Mick, I will update it. Still not a lot of dogs running, when you think about the numbers which are bred each year, of a breed which should be bred for working purposes with the excess going to pet homes.
[...] the debacle at the SRHP working test, we have been focussing on building Grey’s confidence up. An analysis of the problems might [...]