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Subject: Re: [working-gundog] Big running vs. cooperation 2

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cwalt

MH
Posts:180

12/15/2007 5:17 PM
Just because a dog is big running it does not have to be non-cooperative. It might or might not have a lot of sagacity but the average hunter may never be able to tell for sure since he or she does not have the needed contact with the dog, nor the sensitivity to read its body language. Torsti ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Absolutely correct. I have been examining some photos of VHDF fall tests in Montana and Saskatchewan and I am impressed by the open country they have. A big running dog can be very cooperative and shows to best advantage under those conditions. When a dog learns to hunt in big open cover it can be awfully difficult for it to to forget about what it wants to do and close in to retain contact with the handler in heavier cover. A number of big running cooperative dogs will learn, with some experience, to close in and work more closely with the hunter. With shorter seasons and short hunting trips a cooperative big running dog may not close in enough in a day or two to work with the hunter. In our New England and eastern Canadian covers a dog at 200 meters is out of our sight and hearing virtually all the time. With my current hearing problems a dog at 100 meters in thick cover might as well be in another county... {! I have hunted with a number of cooperative English pointers in eastern Canada and have had excellent sport with them but they were all fairly "soft" pointers, the harder dogs were almost always working out of range for us. The dogs that were useless in New Brunswick grouse covers often turned out to be wonderful in open Nova Scotia pheasant farmland and so there are not many hard and fast rules. When a dog is frustrating it's all too easy to assume it's uncooperative... in fact the problem may be that the dog hasn't learned to hunt with you yet. With most hunting bird dogs its easier to push them to range out than it is to bring them back in, something that has often frustrated my aspirations in conditioning a close cover dog to run in NSTRA competition. Cj

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