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Close Working
Foot Handling Gun Dogs that find
Game
Many of us talk about natural Point, Back
and Retrieve. But we feel there is another important trait that
is often over looked. In developing the lines that we have identified,
we are selective about using lines that hunt for us.
This means that when we are walking our dogs
through a CRP field and decide to turn and walk up a waterway
connecting to the field, our dogs should naturally turn with us.
We call this "natural quartering". You can train a dog
to quarter but you can not train a dog to hunt for you, there
is a difference. Our line of dogs hunt for us and not for themselves,
they don't run lines or hunt the section over the hill, they are
constantly looking over their shoulder as if to say, "Where
are we going next boss?"
Have you ever been in a trial or hunting
and for whatever reason you could not produce a bird with your
canine partner, however your brace-mate or hunting partner's dog
continues to be standing on birds. We feel that some dogs just
know how to find birds better than others. Our line seems to hunt
the cover and objectives where the birds are and use the wind
to help pin them down at a safe distance. Most will agree that
our dogs have the drive and desire to search for game aggressively
without leaving the county you started in.
In the AKC hunt test and National Shoot to
Retrieve your dogs are judged on finding birds while staying in
a forty to fifty acre field. You are scored on how well they handle
for you without a lot of verbal commands. We have selected these
tests to help us measure our progress and believe that both tests
are set up like a real hunting situation.
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