Being from California in the states, I was wondering what exactly your
Restricted stake is. I was wondering if it is like our Qualifying. The
Qualifying here, is a place for a dog fresh out of Derby to go, because in
most cases the animal is not ready for all age stakes such as the Amateur, or
the Open All Age. The Qualifying has all the tests the Open and Amateur has,
but not as complicated. i.e., blinds, honors, triples.
FYI, we have opens here that top 118 dogs. Do you use things like, dry pops?
(a gun goes off, but no bird is shot or thrown). This is used for a
diversion. How about poison birds? (A shot or thrown bird, but the dog must
be pulled off that bird to retrieve another.) A delayed double or triple,
This can also sometimes be called a bulldog. (A dog sees two or three birds
go down, retrieves one or two of them, then another bird is shot before he
gets all three. He must retrieve the bulldog before retrieving the final
bird of the double or triple.) Just curious as to how you run things down
under.
Thanks Dave
I'll be glad to answer as many questions as I can, and will be part of your e-mail directory. Currently I run a bitch (just turned two) and am starting the Qualifying next month. She's out of a Lean Mac son, FC-AFC Chena River Chavez. Her mother is a brood bitch, and litter mate to four Field Champions that I know of. One of her mothers litter mates is FC-AFC Dare to Dream (Cosmo). I am retired, and this is one of many interests that I have. I also run Hunt Tests. My female got her Junior, and Senior hunt titles in eight straight passes. I will start on her Master title this year. I must tell you that I'm not a die hard trialer. I'll probably run five or six trials, and four or five hunt tests this year. I bird hunt in western states, and Canada. I went to North Dakota this year pheasant hunting, and did quite good. I really bought "Caly" for hunting, but do the hunt test and trialing in the off season. Her registered name is "Chena River Calypso Callgirl" I've heard of the Eckherts, but do not know them. I've been trialing off and on since the early seventies. The difficulty has increased ten fold since then. Qualifying blinds of today are twice as difficult as Open All Age blinds of the seventies. The marks in the Open can be 400 yards, and that's part of a triple. If you have specific questions about what's going on in trialing or hunt tests, let me know. Do you have very many Goldens, Chesapeakes, or Flat Coats down under? How about Chocolates or Yellows in Labs? Thanks Dave Kirker
>A couple of other things for your information. We used to run what we called "Picnic Trials." back in the seventies. Those were like informal club get-togethers. In those "Trials" we would run Novice, Derby, Puppy, and some kind of advanced stake, either Qualifying or Open depending on the quality of the dogs attending. Last month was our one picnic trial of the year. Clubs just stopped doing them when Hunt Tests came to be. So one rarely sees Novice, or Puppy anymore. They even had Junior and Senior puppy. Up to 6 months was Junior, and 6 months to a year was Senior. In our AKC (American Kennel Club) trials and Hunt Tests, they are required to use either, Ducks, and or Pheasants. Hunt tests add an additional bird. It's called a Chukar, or it's official name of Red Legged Partridge. They are about one and a half times the size of a common pigeon. In California, one of our major problems is getting decent grounds to run trials and hunt tests on. Water training is especially difficult to find unless you travel a great distance. Back in the seventies we had many places, but with the huge population growth, many of those places are now covered with houses. We also had two or three military base, but even before 9/11, those were gone, mostly do to environmentalists worrying about some obscure frog that breeds every ten years losing his swamp. Sorry to ramble, but at my age I had better write this down or you'll never hear about these observations. By the way, what is a GSP? I'm assuming it's some kind of Spaniel (SP). Dave