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Test Planning..... from the February - March, 2006 Judges Corner by Tim Gibson Inadequate test planning causes problems at the hunt for this club and judges.
Scenario: The club decided they would have two flights of
Finished dogs and take the maximum of 30 dogs in each flight.
The Finished water site was a large shallow pond with lots of running
water. Finished land was nearby.
The club was confident the judges would get through all the dogs.
On Saturday, everything went smoothly on the land series and the judges
Finished well before lunch. A lot
of dogs had done well on this test. The
water was a different story! The
pond had deep mud in places, with lots of snags and stick-ups and logs to go
over which proved physically exhausting for the dogs.
There were some problems with the new bird boys the club was using which
resulted in several no-birds. Wingers were pulling loose in the soft shoreline.
Birds were sinking and dogs were having extended hunts on a couple of the
marks. The test was very technical
and proved difficult for some younger dogs.
Several handlers elected to call their dogs in which necessitated getting
a pick up dog out to clean up the marks. The
series was not completed until 2:00 p.m.! Having
finished their flight hours before, the morning land judges had spent the last
two hours watching the water series drone on, wondering how they could possibly
get through the considerable number of dogs they had to run.
Question: What advice would you give the land judges? Answer: First let me say that I hope this discussion will help
both clubs and judges that find themselves in a similar predicament.
Secondly, this scenario is not about callbacks so I won’t discuss them
at this time. This scenario is about meeting the goal of setting up tests to run
in a timely manner such that every dog entered gets an opportunity to run and
it’s not necessary to resort to our callback procedures. It’s a composite of
a lot of things many of our field reps have told me they’ve seen occur on what
were supposed to be test sites where the judges could easily complete the
flight. Let’s look at what went
wrong and how this fiasco might have been prevented, and then we’ll give some
advice to our anxious afternoon judges. I think the first misconception we need to address is
that if a club has a shallow water site everything is copasetic. For you young
folks, that means, cool. Running
water in and of itself does not necessarily guarantee a large group of dogs can
be run in a timely manner on a test. A lot of the problems with the scenario
above could have been solved before the test began.
This water site gave the judges a false sense that they had plenty of
time but proper planning and preparation on Friday would have shown them
otherwise. The club and judges
should have considered the muddy conditions and run a couple of set up dogs
through the areas of the pond they were going to use.
They would have observed that the dogs were fighting the mud and
obstacles and noted the actual time it took to run the test.
They should have considered the difficulty in finding ducks that might
sit low in muddy water. Perhaps a
shorter bird or one hitting on shore would have been in order.
If the club had wingers that needed to be staked on a wet shoreline, the
judges should have considered that they might wiggle loose and need
re-anchoring. The might have found
different wingers or moved them to firmer ground.
Even if a bird boy had hip boots or waders, it should be obvious they’d
tire quickly trying to pick up ducks. A
good pick up dog at the ready can be as important in certain shallow water areas
as deep ones. Thinking they had
plenty of time, if these judges didn’t get the test started in a timely
manner, I’m sure they soon realized their mistake.
A very experienced hunt test chairman once told me, “If you’ve got
daylight, you’d better be running dogs”.
Hindsight being 20/20, we’re still facing a big problem.
So what sage advice can we offer our judges in waiting? First, don’t sit around for a couple of hours waiting to see when the first flight will finish before starting on a solution to a problem you know you’ll have, i.e.; getting your own flight done. It might be necessary in extreme circumstances for these judges go set up another water series somewhere else and start running their flight on it. Hopefully another site is available. Wingers or other needed equipment, perhaps even bird boys, can be scrounged from another test that has already finished. If there is no option but to stay at the current site there are still things that can be done. The new judges can look hard at logistics and choke points and perhaps find some areas where time can be saved. Examples might be in re-birding, moving holding blinds, changing where and when dogs enter or exit the test or how or when the blind is planted. The hunt marshal should be alerted to have enough help standing by when the flights are switched so time is not lost changing birds, getting some food to the bird boys, etc. In some circumstances it’s possible that some minor changes to the test itself might yield some dramatic timesavings without compromising the quality of the test or the judges ability to evaluate the retrievers. Of course the hunt committee should have already been alerted to the fact that the test was running late and be available and ready to work with the judges on a solution and to approve changes. You’ve heard the old saying, “he didn’t see the forest for all the trees”. I would have hoped that before this test got so far behind, somebody would perhaps have noticed the problem or a major bottleneck and offered the struggling judges some help to speed the test along. Often stopping to take a few minutes to fix logistics problems early can pay big dividends later on.
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The Judges Corner - copyright
2006 All Rights Reserved Last modified: February 18, 2008 |