 |
|
|
|
|
JUDGES CORNER - August / September 1997 - Hunting Retriever magazine by Tim Gibson
If
you did not get a chance to attend this years HRC National Meeting in St.
Louis, you missed a wonderful opportunity to visit with old friends and meet
new HRC members from every region. A
Judge’s Handlers Seminar was held, open to any HRC member who wished to
attend. I believe we had in
excess of 50 judges and handlers attend the seminar.
The seminar we hold at the national meeting is very special in that all
the HRC/UKC Field Representatives are in attendance. It is rare that so much judging experience and test set-up
knowledge is present at one meeting. In
addition to their participation in the seminar, the field reps have the
opportunity to offer their advice and opinions on how we can improve the
content and presentation of the judging seminar material to our membership.
I want to thank those field reps who presented a section of the
seminar and made the day a very productive and enjoyable one.
One comment I heard from representatives of every HRC region was we
still need to get more of our members to start judging.
Becoming an HRC licensed judge is a lot of work and a big commitment.
Those individuals who judge our events are our fellow members who make the
sacrifice so we all can enjoy running our dogs.
This issue of the Judge’s Corner is slightly shorter than normal.
This summer seems to be especially busy.
I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time working on some
exciting improvements to the Judges/Handlers Seminar which will be announced
soon. Let’s get to our first
scenario.
Scenario:
The Seasoned land test was a simulated dove hunt. The dogs came to the
line and were asked to mark and retrieve a straightforward double using dead
pigeons. After completing the
marking test, each handler was
asked to momentarily leave the line with their retriever. While the handler and dog were “offline”, the blind was
planted. This blind retrieve was
placed between the two marked falls the dogs had just picked up.
The handler then returned to the retrieving line, fired a shot at the
bird with the dog at heel, and ran the blind retrieve.
Question:
Was this a legal test?
Answer: Two licensed Seasoned judges set this test up at one of our hunts this
past spring. The hunt committee
felt the test might be either illegal or improper and questioned the judges
about the scenario. The judges
stated that it was their intent to “see who would go to the old falls”.
In checking the Seasoned Rules and Guidelines in the rule book, the
hunt committee found nothing illegal about the test.
Predictably, the majority of dogs went to one or both of the old falls
first. The judges ended up
passing every dog who picked the blind up, regardless of how they got there.
While this scenario was not an illegal test, the judges demonstrated a
profound lack of understanding of how to set up a Seasoned blind and evaluate
the dogs running it.
Our HRC rule book offers very few guidelines for our judges concerning
blind retrieves at the Seasoned level (and no guidelines for blind retrieves
at Finished). These
limited rules and guidelines concerning blind retrieves gives our
judges a lot of flexibility in our tests, but make it imperative that judges
have a good understanding of the purpose and objective of the blind retrieve.
We discuss the purpose of the blind, and the rules and guidelines for
Seasoned blinds in the Judges/Handlers Seminar and offer some recommendations
to our judges for setting up a successful blind test.
The first recommendation offered in the seminar is that the Seasoned
blind should be run in a direction that is away from the marking test!
Separating the blind from the marks increases the judges opportunity to
adequately evaluate the retrievers ability to be controlled “to a bird it
has not seen fall”, which is the purpose of the blind retrieve. At some test
sites (perhaps a small pond), it is hard for the judges to place the blind
away from the marks. In those
instances, it is our recommendation that the blind retrieve be run first, then
the marks. Perhaps I’m missing
something, but the judges in the above scenario should explain why they felt
they needed to test which dogs would go to the old marked falls.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and offer these judges the
following advice: When judging Seasoned, the blind should be set up to test
the retrievers ability to do Seasoned blind retrieves!
It would seem to me that they were testing
which dogs were ready to do Finished blind work (albeit at 40
yards), where running the blind
in conjunction with the marks is acceptable. The best judges set up their
Seasoned blind retrieve tests to run in the absence of distractions.
Distractions affect the handler’s ability to successfully control the
retriever, and the judge has a difficult task evaluating whether the dog was
controlled to the blind, or merely stumbled upon it. Probably the number one distraction for a young dog on a
blind retrieve would be other
birds in the field (such as old falls). Other
distractions would include the contour of the terrain, scent from bird boys or
crates of birds, changes in cover, field roads across the path of the blind,
echo of the gunfire, angle of the bank on a water blind, etc.
Clearly, in this test, having just picked up marked falls in the
vicinity of the blind had an adverse effect on
most of the retrievers ability and willingness to respond to commands
from their handlers. By moving
the location of the blind, or running it first, these judges would have had a
much better test. Instead of
losing the opportunity to properly evaluate the dogs for control, they would
have been better able to judge which dogs were performing to acceptable
Seasoned standards on the land blind.
Let’s look at another situation.
Scenario:
At the Finished land test, the retired working dog was required to honor the next dog running the test. The honor dog was positioned in a place where it could see the first two marks but could not see the third mark because it’s view was obstructed by the working dog handler and some bushes. Question:
Was this a legal test?
Answer:
At
the hunt where this situation occurred, a member of the hunt committee
questioned whether the test was legal or not.
I was informed that after a “discussion”
which included the two judges, the hunt committee, and the region field
rep who was in attendance, the test was declared “legal” (majority ruled),
and was run with the honor dog obstructed from seeing the third mark.
The HRC member who sent this letter to me stated that the majority felt
the test was legal because they felt the rule about obstructing a dog’s view
on the honor was intended to prevent the honor dogs handler only from
obstructing the dogs view. I was
asked to “please research and answer this question thoroughly”.
This is a very interesting scenario, and I want to thank the gentleman
who sent it to the Judge’s Corner. I
received this scenario about a week before the national meeting in St. Louis.
My “ research” involved
taking the letter with me and bringing it
up for discussion in the seminar. I was certain the field reps would agree that the rule
about obstructing the view of the honor dog was not meant to apply only to the
honor handler. I figured the meat
of the discussion would center on whether the dog needed to see all the marks,
or would two out of three suffice? I had formed my own opinion prior to the
meeting.
To help answer this
question, we need to review the definition of “honor”, and what the rule
book states about it. We know
from the Judges/Handlers Seminar that “honor”
means a dog must sit quietly and watch another dog work.
The HRC rule book says: “either or both the marked water retrieve
or the multiple marked land retrieve must include an honor,. . . . “ (HRC
Rule book, pg. 22, Description) Also, under Test Rules, page 24, Item V., the
rule book states: “During the hunting tests, a Finished Hunting Retriever
must be required to honor another hunting retriever at or near the
retrieving line. When the
Finished Hunting Retriever is honoring, its view of the hunting test cannot be
obstructed.” As I expected,
it was agreed that the honor must be part of the marking test, and the
obstruction rule on page 24 did not apply only to the honor dog handler
blocking the honor dogs view of the test.
An attempt to block the view of the honor dog by the honor dog handler
would also fall under the category of sportsmanship. To properly evaluate a dog on the ability to sit
quietly and watch another dog work, the judge should place the honor dog where
it can see the throws, and be in a position to watch the other dog attempt to
retrieve the marked falls. Upon
further discussion, it was the opinion of the field reps that a good judge
would require that the honor dog hold its position at least until the working
dog was cast for its first retrieve. Some
judges in attendance said they did not like to excuse the honor dog until the
working dog completed a retrieve.
The rule book does not cover the situation where the honor dog can only
see two of the three marks. After
a few minutes of lively discussion, I offered the following personal opinion
which seemed to be as logical a solution to the question as any we
could find: First, to
properly evaluate the honor dog, let’s try our best to put them in a
position where they can clearly see the entire test, including each thrown
bird. Recognizing that in the real world this is not always
possible because of test site logistics, then let’s ask that the judges
place the honor dogs where they can see a minimum of two marks for a Finished
honor. I went on to offer that
“two” is the minimum number of birds you can legally throw a dog in a
Finished marking test. My thought
was the rule book requires that the honor be part of the marking test, and a
legal marking test is two birds, so let’s ask that the honor dog see at
least two of three marks we are throwing.
This answer seemed to address the rule book requirements while still
recognizing that it can at times be impossible to position the honor dog to
see the complete test.
The true answer however, is each judge must decide within their own test
if they have a valid honor situation set up. Have they positioned the honor dog so it can see as much of
the test as necessary so that they can evaluate whether the dog completed the
honor requirement? The recommendations we develop in the seminar and answers
to the questions submitted to the Judge’s Corner are our best efforts to
guide our Judges in making informed, logical, and fair judgmental decisions.
We hope the “Judge’s Corner” will both entertain and inform you. |
|
The Judges Corner - copyright
2006 All Rights Reserved Last modified: February 18, 2008 |