Continuing in my series
this issue we will look at
the pointer Senior Hunt Test.
I finished my fourth and last leg of my Junior Hunt Test with
Jenny in late April with the MN Shorthair Club. It took us five
days to get four passes, not bad.
So with a JH title in hand I came back on Sunday to run Senior
Hunter. As with any test I walked the test in the gallery first
to get a feel about what is next. What I found out is Senior
Hunter is a whole different type of test. I very quickly found
out "we weren't in Kansas any more!"
In the Junior Test basically your dog needs to find and point
a bird and have reasonable manners. In the Senior Test your dog
needs to do everything the JH dogs do plus be steady to wing
and shot, retrieve to hand and back. I was telling this to a
few spaniel people and I was asked "If that is Senior, what
do the Master dogs need to do?" I replied: "Walking
on water does help!"
I think the program is a great stepping stone to the ultimate
hunting dog, but expect to put some serious training time in
between Juniors and Seniors. Typically the dogs in Juniors are
about one to three |
years old. Senior dogs are three to five and many people
don't finish there four Master passes until the dog is a very
mature six or seven.
My day with Jenny in the senior field was memorable. I told the
judges and my bracemate: "this is a training day, so don't
let me or my dog hold you back."
As with Junior Hunter the dogs are walked for a few minutes
into the bird field. With seniors it about double JH or fifteen
minutes. I knew we were destine for good times when one of the
judges mentioned,
|
from her view on the horse, she could see
Jenny successfully extricating a gopher from its den and was
munching on it. Her manners being in a the better half of the
canine population, I soon had Jenny back on track.
We were braced up with a seasoned GSP with a pro-trainer. As
we entered the bird field, which for seniors is much larger then
Juniors perhaps a hundred acres, our gunners filed in behind
us. So in the field will be two dogs, two handlers, two judges
with horses and two gunners. That can cause some problems when
you have a young dog and with seniors they shoot the birds.
Jenny found the birds alright but she broke on the shot, which
gave her a fail, so they didn't go any further. When Jenny came
back from Jerry Jordan last summer she was steady to wind and
shot... and someone broke her... this July Jerry will again get
her ready to run. But we will also be working on honor and retrieve.
I expect it maybe a year before I see another ribbon.
In Senior Hunter your dog is expected to honor the other dog
on point. Honoring is going on point when the other dog goes
on point. Which keeps dogs from running in on each others birds.
With Seniors, the honoring situation can be set-up and you can
tell your dog to Whoa! to hold them. So you had better work on
the Whoa! command. With Jenny, as with many Vizslas retrieving
is going to be even harder. But given time and we'll conquer
all.
So if your looking to get your pointer in front of some birds,
put it in Junior Hunter. If your looking to test the advanced
training state of your pointer it's time to run with the seniors.
Dennis Guldan hails from New Brighton, MN by way of Marshfield,
WI |
