Category: Handler Reports
Welcome, in this section you will find articles written by owners on their experiences. They are interesting to read especially if you are new to the working Spinone. If you would like anything added to this section please contact the working committee.
My young Spinone, Toby, and I had a long weekend on the grouse moor, firstly joining a small team of dogs and handlers counting the grouse, followed by two days of training.
Continue reading “Spring Pointing – It’s all about the grouse”
GSP Club, Yorkshire Group Team Retrieve Challenge 2015
This annual event is open to all HPR breeds.
Groups of friends form teas of either mixed or single HPR breeds. This year there were 54 entries making 7 teams, and 16 of these entries were Spinoni, split across 2 teams. This is exciting beacuse it is rare to see so many Spinoni entering ”Working” competitions, often there will be just one, or none at all in a working test or field trial.
The event was split into 4 retrieve tests of varying difficulty. Each team member does the test and is marked individually. The scrose of the top 3 dogs from each team are then used to give the total score for each test.
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Test One
A long seen retrieve across a field to the edge of a wood. Each dog started off with 25 points and lost a point for every error. So, for Toby and me, while the test itself wasn’t difficult, Toby marked the retrieve and ran out fast, but he lost marks for peeing on a tree, hunting wide of the area and on his return he came back to me on a slight curve rather than in a direct straight line.
Test Two
The second test was a split retrieve. Two dummies were set out, quite close to each other, on the edge of a crop field (with a strong scent of game – probably rabbits). One was a seen marked retrieve, representing a dead bird, the other, representing a “runner” or wounded bird, was a blind retrieve. We had to decide which bird to send the dog for first and points would be lost for selecting the wrong bird. I correctly sent Toby for the runner first, which he winded quite quickly, brought straight back and delivered to hand. The second retrieve was more challenging because although Toby had marked this, by now he had forgotten about it. I set him off correctly but he became distracted by the scent in the crops, as did many other dogs, and it took a while for me to direct him back towards the dummy. I lost points here for over direction and confusing my dog with to much whistle. Eventually he winded it and brought it back with a nice delivery to hand.
Test Three
Alli Kay & Toby 2015
By Colin Elliot 2007
Alfie and I turned up on Sat morning not knowing what to expect and found a farm yard full of people and dogs of all ages and breeds, it seem that half the local village was there. There were 8 guns and about 20 Beaters some with dogs and 2 Pickingup teams not including Alfie and myself. When we arrived at the shooting ground I was told to stand with one of the Pickingup teams and watch how Alfie behaves and if he is not happy with the sound of the guns to move further away from the sound of the guns.
Late last summer I was lucky enough to be asked if I would like to come ‘up north’ once a month and join in with a small group of people who enjoy training their HPRs. For me this entailed a round trip of approx 4 hrs but as I found out it is well worth the trip each month. Having heard how this group was formed I approached Ingrid Moyser and Marie Holt to see if they would like to share their experience of setting up and running this training group. Between them they have a very interesting story to tell.
Colin Elliott
He may look dumb but….
Last weekend (Sunday 6th April) i took Boswell aka Ozzy to his first gundog training day with the GSP club. ( I got Ozzy via the rehoming scheme 4 months ago).
Very unsure how he would be, i was prepared for the embarrasment of him running off and finding something more fun to play with, but to my surprise he was very good. “The makings of an excellent hunting dog”, said the trainer.
So after a hard day of ‘sit and stay’, ‘walk to heel’ and ‘fetch’ we decided to call it a day and went home with homework for the next lesson, Whistle recall and sit-stay.
He seems to be coping with the recall (due to the fact that there is a biscuit at the end), but sit and stay is a bit more long-winded, any ideas???
Also we are looking for training classes closer to home, this class is in Bournemouth, any one that knows of a class closer to Winchester would be grateful….