straightbarrel

Please make sure she is 6ft tall, blonde and wrapped in the stars and stripes! Straightened out I will certainly be Hup, know this has gone a little circuitous and know Texas is a Texas-sized state, but have you been in touch with Dave "Strong" Jones or Martin Bell by any chance about training for trials?MG Judging by this (your last sentence), the penny has dropped

I think you are missing the point a bit mate. The dogs are all spaniels and they all have the same circumstances throughout a trialing/testing season. Regardless of the time of day,air temps, air pressures, humidity, early morn runs late in the day runs. A spaniel is the perfect dog for this type of work IMO.

I can understand "sometimes" running out of 'gas' in the odd trial, I could not understand why you would mention in your first post that she "always" is down to long and "running out of gas". I would have though she would have the same opportunities as every other dog in the competition, especially so given the manufactured way trials and tests are run. Good luck anyway.

Warm dry sleeping space. Food suitable for pups, ask the breeder what they have been feeding the pup on. Worming treatments, flea treatments, grooming tools, food bowls and some ear plugs for you to help you get some sleep! Dvd's and training books will also help. Good luck.

As to the first highlighted. I recognised this in my previous post and made reference to it by saying it is the luck of the draw and it is a case of swings and roundabouts, in other words, some days you will get the luck you need or the 'rub of the green'. All that said, the dogs are all in the same boat, they face the same circumstances, as a whole, throughout the trialing season.To be continuously unlucky is strange. I have watched some US spaniel field trials, they are mediocre in comparison to anything else I have witnessed and of a much lower standard to that of our trials here. As for the last part of your post, I fail to understand the relevance between a spaniel retreiving a fox and the running out of gas issue? If you are trying to suggest that somehow asking a spaniel to retreive a small fox for the benefit of a photo or whatever, prooves any point at all in relation to the posts made, you are very much mistaken. You have a habit of deviating from the original thread once the penny starts to drop, you seem to think that posting a picture of a dog doing something that is not normally required of it, backs up everything you have said previously. Good luck with the mating Hup, I hope it all works out well.

The circumstances are the same for all the dogs that compete. It's the luck of the draw regarding certain things but swings and roundabouts. Hup, Good luck with D though, I hope everything works out.

Why? He has already said she is continually running out of gas, if she is continually running out of gas and doing three times as much work as the other dogs in the trials, why? Sounds like she is struggling with something...no? I have also seen UK field trials where dogs run out of gas and end up plodding their way through the trial 30-40-50 mins without a find or flush. If the same dog was doing this trial after trial, is it not fair to ask the question why? Hunting, finding and flushing game to provide sport for the gun is a spaniels job.IMO

Running out of gas, is running out of gas, if he has trained, excercised and fed the bitch in the correct way to gain a performance from her, and she is running out of gas, does it matter whether it's in the USA, UK, Timbuktu or the moon, she runs out of gas.

I asked exactly the same question but had my post removed with no explaination? Hence the ?

Not an easy combination even if you had the right dog for the job. IMO

?

I would personally say make sure you have the tools for the job within yourself first, then start to question whether or not you have a dog that is capable or not. The post above is quite right though, Ian Openshaw has a record second to none as an owner, trainer, handler and breeder. Only fair to add that his wife has played a massive part in the success of their kennels also.

Is the bitch you have just bred from the same bitch that has been "running out of gas on you"?

We got there in the end. Less is more...more or less. I talk to the treeees

A picture that has been painted by men in white coats ! Crack, those white coats are nearer than you think buddy.

I would have another trip to the vets mate in case it's something different but I use warm water, cotton wool, and a small dusting of Thornit inside the ear but not to deep down. It's about £8 a tub and lasts for ages. Seems to keep things under control. Try Amazon or Pedmeds, they both sell it.

So what you are saying is, when the goalposts are changed it causes problems. Once the set up they are used to is altered, they have problems.That to me suggests robot. R2D2. If you think a splash at 400 yards is too much of a giveaway to a dog, how come you dont see the relationship between a hairy ****d bloke waving poultry around above his head as a giveaway?

I would stake my nuts on every single one of those dogs going to exactly the same place to make a retreive if the blokes that do the throwing went through the motions but refrained from throwing the birds. That in my eyes is not a dog marking a bird down.

Robotic was not my word but is probably close to the mark. It would be good to see the dogs as finished articles, taken from their comfort zones and sent to retreive birds shot down, at distance, on unfamiliar terrain. I'm not suggesting they would not be capable of completing the task but in my opinion, a staged or manufactured trial like you posted, cant be a true yardstick for how well a dog can mark a bird down at distance.

Ha ha quality! He could also be spilling champagne on the bed :o

The word wrong was "stamped" with IMO following it.In my opinion. My take on repetition, the thing that you say "makes them learn", is that it is used to gain consistency once a task or way of behaviour has been achieved or learned. The learning comes through association with good or bad experiences. The "pictures" are put together by everyone that aids in the throwing of the birds, the marker flags or points, the picture is also vastly improved by the vantage point of the dogs and handlers. Celebrating differences is all well and good, no good being totally blinkered, I am open to anything that can offer improvements on methods/training practices, but, until I can see something in the differences that is worth celebrating, I will chose to observe and comment if necessary, rather than celebrate.

Wrong!IMO

Memory retrieves are not the question, multiple memory retreives are not the question. Marking a bird down was the question. The fact a thrower sneaks away to watch an episode of judge judy while he waits for the retrieves to be made is neither here nor there.The fact is they are standing out like sore thumbs when chucking the birds. The dog will be so well conditioned that when he sees a bod chucking a duck he will remember it. Thats not to say the dog would be incapable of taking a line out to a blind retrieve and eventually coming back with the goods. The question was one of marking the bird down. This is more of a training excercise than a trial in my opinion Field trials should replicate the real thing where possible. "The exceptional dog capable of putting those pictures together", as you put it, should only be regarded as exceptional if he is putting those pictures together himself

Building a dog up over a relatively short period of time to travel these distances is not a hard excersise IMO and we were talking about marking birds down at distance in a real situation. I would be very dissapointed if i could not get a spaniel or a lab trained from an early stage to go out in long straight lines with the odd bit of sheep-dogging to these distances. Taking a dog to a memory drop and walking it back, increasing distances each session would take care of the dog taking a line out, the distance is however far or however near you want it to be. Once you have a dog happy to take a line out at distance it's then up to the dogs nose and your handling or sheep-dogging to do the rest. Throwing a dead duck a few meters up in the air to a point the dog is probably accostomed to through association with the thrower, who by the way is there and plain to see, does not constitute a dog marking a bird down well in my opinion.