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JUDGES CORNER
June-July,
2003 - by Tim Gibson “By the time you receive this magazine, the new “Rules and Guidelines for Hunting Retriever Tests” (HRC rulebook) will be published and in the hands of our judges.” If you think you’ve read that statement before, well – as the great Yogi Berra once remarked, “This is like deja vu all over again." I opened the last Judge’s Corner with that sentence and made some comments about how I thought the wait for the booklet would be worthwhile. As I’m preparing this column, it’s mid-May and I just received my copy. I’m hearing good reports on the revisions I mentioned last month from folks who have received theirs as well. By the way, speaking about Yankee hall of famer Yogi Berra, he must have had HRC judges in mind when he uttered this well-quoted phrase, "You can observe a lot just by watching." I’ve received a couple of e-mails recently regarding the Judges Corner website. The first asked why the site had not been updated lately, and the second was an inquiry whether there was a way to get a “print” copy of some of the articles and topics. I created the site a few years ago to archive my past articles. I wanted new HRC members who had not seen earlier articles to be able to go back and read some of them if they wished. I will admit I’ve not been keeping the website as up to date as I should. So much to do, so little time. To correct that, I’m planning on a major site upgrade that I’ll hopefully have done by the time you receive this issue of the magazine. While there are no plans to publish the articles (Random House and Doubleday both told me they are fascinated with the concept, but we’ve not yet reached an agreement), I’m going to offer each article and topic in Adobe PDF format on the website. Someone wanting to read the articles off-line can easily save the PDF documents in a folder and simply view or print them as they desire. The HRC annual meeting will be taking place about the time you receive the next issue of the magazine. I can confidently predict that regardless of who gets elected to national office, HRC will be in good hands. The present national officers should be very proud of how they’ve steered our ship, and the shape they are leaving the organization in. If you get the chance, thank them for their unselfish service and for all they’ve done for HRC. The field reps will once again meet to discuss their duties and what they can do to improve both testing and judging. The reps will also participate heavily in discussions about judging issues, and about improvements to the Judges/Handlers Seminar and the seminar manual. I’ll be reporting on a lot of this in the next issue of the Judges Corner. Finally, near the end of my last article I briefly described a few statements by various judges that I thought might be profound enough to devote some future space to in this column. Here’s one more. When leaving the retrieving line after handling on one mark in the morning series, one of the judges turned to the handler and said, “Since you handled on a mark this morning, you understand that if you handle on a mark this afternoon, you’re out.” Think about that for a while. Let’s get to our first scenario. Scenario:
At the afternoon Seasoned
land series, the diversion bird was thrown as the dog was returning with its
second mark, which had been picked up clean.
When it saw the diversion coming, the dog spit out the mark. The
handler stopped the dog, and called it in.
After re-heeling the dog, the handler sent him back for the bird that
he had just spit out. The dog picked the mark up, delivered it promptly, and
then did the same with the diversion. Question:
What
factors should the judges consider in evaluating this dog’s performance and
would any part of this performance warrant failing the retriever? Answer:
This
scenario was sent to me a while back by a person who witnessed it at a hunt
test. They indicated that the dog
had already failed at the morning water test so the judges did not have to
consider the land performance at the end of the day.
For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just consider the dog as
having done fine on the water test, and still very much in the game.
Also, in fairness, I must tell you I did not get many details, such as
the distance the dog was from the retrieving line when the diversion was
thrown, or if it moved toward the diversion bird a few feet or yards after
spitting out the mark. Such
details might have an impact on the judge’s final decision.
While on its face this scenario appears fairly simple, it quickly became quite interesting for a couple of reasons. First, upon closer examination, it actually consists of a plethora of items the judges must consider in their determination of the dog’s performance. For example, which of these would you say this scenario pivots on: the re-cast rule, delivery, switching, control, cumulative markdowns, or perhaps even handling on marks? Secondly, after sending it to a group of folks I consider to be perhaps the most knowledgeable and experienced judges in HRC – your field reps, I was surprised to find some disagreement on whether to pass or fail the dog.
Before we break this scenario down and look at what the rulebook says
about each factor that might be in play, let me make a couple of broad
statements I think everyone can agree with.
When a dog picks up a bird (whether training, testing, or hunting) its
best that the dog keeps said bird in its mouth and brings it in promptly.
Also, being re-called to heel after it spit the mark would not be
something that we’d want to teach a dog to expect, nor would it cut the
mustard at any advanced level in testing.
All that being said, I personally don’t think this dogs performance
warrants a failing score. I’ll
explain why, and tell you what a couple of the reps that recommended failure
had to say.
As respects “switching”, the dog didn’t drop one bird and pick up
another. Even if it did,
switching is a markdown, not a failure at Seasoned.
Regarding “Delivery”, the rulebook says (page 27); “A
retriever should promptly return to the Handler with the bird and deliver it
in such a manner as not to risk losing it if it were a cripple”.
It also states that a retriever can be failed for excessive
dropping of the bird, and should be marked down for repeated dropping or
failure to return promptly to the line with the bird.
Let’s say we elect to markdown this dog for dropping the mark and not
completing its delivery. I would
think it would be only fair to note it occurred just once, when the diversion
was thrown, and at no other time during the test.
In my opinion, that’s not enough to label this Seasoned dog as having
delivery problems, and not enough to fail it. That brings me to the broader
category of “control”. Without
question, the handler certainly used what one rep termed an “unorthodox”
method (calling the dog back in after it spit the mark out) to “prevent a
switch”. Most would have
attempted to get the dog to pick the mark back up. You can’t argue that the
dog did not do what it was told. Does
this dog have control problems that would warrant failure? Someone mentioned the possibility of the dog earning a markdown for “handling” back to the mark it dropped. A little seminar review is in order. There is really no such thing as evaluating a dog’s “handling on marks”. The term is a misnomer. You hopefully learned in the Judges/Handlers Seminar that we either evaluate marking (did the dog reach the area of the fall, etc.) or control (how well does it respond when the handler uses whistles, voice, hand signals, etc.). Understanding that, we’d have to say that in this case the dog met the marking requirement when it found the bird initially. It “handled” well (went directly to the bird) when it was sent back for the mark. What about the re-cast rule at Seasoned? Here’s where the scenario becomes especially interesting as this seems to be where at least a couple of the reps felt the dog was in trouble. The Seasoned re-cast rule essentially says the dog can be cast from the line two times to retrieve a bird. It goes on to say if the dog is “unproductive” after the second cast, it fails. One of our very well respected reps has postulated a theory that has gained some support: “The second cast option only applies until the dog picks up the bird. Once the bird is picked up, the dog is considered to have been "productive", and now must return the bird to hand.” In other words, if it picks up the bird the first time, but does not return with it, it should not get another cast. While that sounds plausible, and certainly shows some very creative thinking (hey - if I had thought of it, I might be trying to sell it), upon closer analysis, I don’t think the rulebook supports it. Like a lot of terminology appearing in our rulebook, the word “productive” is not defined. However, in the broadest sense, one cannot argue that the re-cast rule gives the Seasoned dog 2 chances to leave the line and return with a bird, i.e., to be productive. I understand there are different levels of productivity (ask any employee or their boss how they each define productive), but as respects any retriever in any level hunt test, can we really say the dog was productive if it did not return with a bird? All “theories” and discussions aside, I can’t see any of the reps failing this dog if they were holding the clipboard. Speaking of Finished and diversions, would you want to guess what our next scenario involves?
Scenario:
The afternoon Finished land series was straightforward, consisting of a
triple mark with a diversion as the dog was returning with the last bird.
Running the blind completed the test.
The day was extremely hot and humid, with the temperature hovering
around 97 degrees. The diversion
bird fell short, landing in waist high cover.
The dog saw it and did not offer to switch.
After an extended hunt for the diversion and upon realizing the dog was
getting very hot, the judges had the handler stop the dog and call it out of
the cover. One of the judges went
out, found the bird, and tossed it to clear ground.
The dog picked it up, then came in and ran the blind.
Question: Is this how the judges should have handled the situation? Answer:
There’s an old saying that goes something like, “Plan for the
worst, hope for the best”. In
hindsight, especially considering the extreme heat, it’s easy to say the
judges probably should have had a better “plan” for test problems, such as
the errant diversion. When it
landed out of place and in tall cover, it’s clear they were hoping the dog
would pick it up with no difficulty and move on to the blind.
A lot of us would have hoped for the same.
To their credit, the judges 1) recognized the dog was beginning to get
hot and 2) did something about it.
I’ve stated before that when the wheels start to come off a test,
stop everything correct the problem, then move on.
It’s always the best thing to do.
To learn something from this scenario, let’s look at what mistakes
these judges made and what they could have done better. As I alluded to earlier, good planning goes a long way toward problem prevention in a test. Judges should ask themselves all the “what if” questions they hope handlers don’t try to ask in the test briefing. We seem to understand that when a mark falls out of our “target area” (a term I’ve used in discussing no-birds in previous articles), and/or where it falls might substantially change the test or cause difficulties for the dog, judges should declare a no-bird. There’s no reason not to apply that thinking to every bird in the test. Had the judges declared a no-bird on the diversion, we wouldn’t be discussing this scenario. I would also ask in this case, was this dog tested on switching the same as the rest of the flight? In addition, judges often drop a bird in a particular spot to affect another portion of the test. If I were to fault these judges for any one thing in particular, it might be for throwing the bird into the clear for the dog. There’s a little statement in our rulebook that the founders felt strongly enough to include at every testing level. In Finished it appears on page 40 under Immediate Failure: “The hunting retriever shall immediately fail the test if a Gunner or Bird Boy is required to help or assist in any way”. I realize it does not say Judge or Marshal, but don’t you agree the intent is the same? Did it not appear that a judge helped the dog get a bird, then let it continue the test? It would have perhaps been more appropriate for the judges to stop the dog, admit they should not have accepted the diversion and offered the dog a re-run. I was going to also mention that it might not be necessary to re-run the entire test. The last mark and diversion could be repeated, and then the blind could be run. I was going to suggest that until one of the reps reminded me that the diversion must come with multiple marks. The rep offered a better solution. Forget the dog picking up the diversion altogether. Run the blind, and call the test complete. This would work because while the rulebook requires that we test for a diversion, it does not say the Finished retriever must pick it up (it does in Seasoned). Someone mentioned that they believed this to be a rulebook omission. I think not, and prefer to call it “giving the Finished judges flexibility” as to who picks up what in their tests. The dog in our scenario passed the diversion since it didn’t switch to it. If where it was supposed to land was not critical in “setting up the blind”, I say great – continue. This would save making the dog re-run on a very hot afternoon when the judges should have called a no-bird to start with. I don’t want anybody to say every scenario in this article was about diversions. Join me in the gallery as we watch a test and discuss how we think the judges should evaluate the dogs in the following short scenario. Scenario:
The judges at the land test had the long mark landing at the crest of a
hill. Some of the dogs
disappeared over the hill while hunting the bird.
Closely observing the test, the folks in the gallery quickly divided
into two camps. The majority
concluded that the judges must have certainly been giving markdowns to dogs
that got “out of sight” because those retrievers were “out of
control”. A small, but
determined group said the judges couldn’t possibly be looking at it like
that. Question:
Who’s right? Answer: As good as our HRC judges are, it’s always amazed me that there is usually a couple of people in the gallery at every test that are much better judges. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. All kidding aside, it can be fun to spend some time in a gallery with experienced handlers and “unemployed” judges trying to figure out what the real judges are thinking. It’s also interesting to see how someone with strong convictions and a forceful personality, although perhaps dead wrong, can persuade everybody they’re right! Getting back to answering the question posed, let me explain it this way. We all understand that when going for a mark, the retriever needs to get to the Area of the Fall and establish a hunt, then stay in the Hunt Area while looking for the bird. While there are factors that might influence the size and shape of these areas (the full scope of which I don’t have time to cover in this article), in general we think of the AOF and the HA as concentric circles around the bird. Picture the bird in question falling on the crest of a hill. Draw the AOF as a small circle around the bird, and the HA as a larger one around that. Draw a line through these circles representing the hillcrest. As much as half of the circle, i.e., half of the Hunt Area, might be over the crest of the hill. The same would be true of a bird falling closely against a backdrop of tall cover. A dog that has marked the bird well, made the area of the fall, and is staying in the hunt area might at times be over the hill and out of sight. We can hardly say this dog is out of control. That’s it until next time. I’ve got a list of some “hot button” judging topics I’m planning on discussing face-to-face with the reps and some of our more famous (or infamous) HRC judges at the national meeting. I hope to come up with enough material to make the next few installments of this column both entertaining and educational. Stay cool and have a great summer.
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The Judges Corner - copyright
2006 All Rights Reserved Last modified: February 18, 2008 |