# 2022 Tests and Trials



## ArkansasGold (Dec 7, 2017)

Bumping up.


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## PalouseDogs (Aug 14, 2013)

Gorgeous grounds. All that uniformly colored green grass! I have such a hard time keeping sight of a burnt-orange dog in the uneven, shrubby landscape we have out here. A shiny black dog would have been a better choice! Congratulations on your green, even if it wasn't the color you wanted.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

Entered all 4 stakes of the Mid Iowa trial that starts 5/13. Jake in the Open and Am. Lily in the derby and Q. Lily will be 14 months old on 5/14. Her and one of her brothers are the youngest dogs entered. They are pretty smart and mature, so capable of doing well.
I'll try to get good photos and explain the tests. Hopefully we will stay in it for all of them🤞. It is not easy, the slightest mistake or bit of bad luck can eliminate you.

Post some pics from your tests or trials. It doesn't matter what level, the important thing is your retrievers being retrievers.


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

Good luck! Yes, please post photos and explain the tests. This is what I crave to see on this forum. Not another doodle or puppy food thread. My geometry teacher used to say that when the problem is easy, then everyone has an idea how to solve it. Leave food recommendations to someone else. Take a challenge and tell us about field work.


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## PalouseDogs (Aug 14, 2013)

I just saw that Lily got 3rd in the Qual and Reserve Jam in the Derby. Off to a great start!


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

Well I intended to take a bunch of photos of every test last weekend. Didn't happen, concentrating on other things and kept leaving my phone in the vehicle. 
This is the third series of the Derby. The short mark is thrown first. Wind from right to left. By throwing the long bird last the judges forced the handlers to make a decision. Send for the last bird down first or pull the dog back to the short bird? 
Sending for the long bird first there is a chance that the dog comes out of the water, sees the short gun and goes to it. Not a big deal if the bird is found quickly. The problem is you then need to send for the long bird again. The dog may think he has already been there and not want to take that line, that is just how they often think. 
The biggest issue with sending long first is that it makes it more difficult for the dog to check down on a short bird second. Again, just how retrievers often think. With the wind from the right it would not help a dog that got behind the short gun. 
The safe way to run the test IMO was to select the short bird first. Lily did pretty good with just a very small hunt on the short bird. Heavy cover there and right at the edge of the water, probably the trickiest mark of the derby despite being the shortest. 
Sndinf short first was not a good choice for anyone that had not trained on "primary selection"; pulling the dog off the last bird down and sending for a mark thrown earlier. 








As mentioned, LIly manages to get Reserve JAM (5th place). She had a hunt in the first series and in the 4th series. 
That't how it goes with young dogs. Her litter-mate brother and my good friend won!! Way to go Treager and Beth 

Her third place in the Q was cool and she was very close to 1st or 2nd.
She had set the bar pretty high with perfect marks in the first series. Then she lined the land blind which was quite challenging for most of the dogs. For the non field trialers, "lining" a blind means perfect. She took the initial line all the way to the bird. I suppose it was around 200 yards and run right after the 1st series marks, so the gunners and flier station were in the field. The majority of the dogs were pushing off the flier and middle mark to the left of the line. The wind was pushing them right as well.

Great job by the judges and the club with the whole event.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

Southern Minnesota Club Qualifying stake last Saturday. First series triple. 41 entries minus 4 scratches.








Middle retired first, a duck thrown left to tules in water. Left stand out gun second, a hen pheasant thrown to the right into tall cover strip. Flier on the right shot last to the right and landing behind a patch of heavy cover.

Wind was coming from the 7 - 8 o'clock position at 5-7mph.









This was a tough first series. Big entry and they really needed to get it done in one day as the derby was scheduled for Sunday and was also large.
Every bird was challenging. The flier landing behind a patch of tall cover caused a lot big hunts. The right standout thrown into cover and being a hen pheasant made it tough. Hen pheasants put off less scent than ducks and the dogs had just picked up a duck flier. Young dogs often "bounce off" rather then dig into a cover strip. There was also lower terrain that caused the dos to lose sight of the gun in route.
The middle retired really ate them up. Thrown into tules growing in a neck of water perpendicular to the main body the dogs had to cross. There was a large mound in the direct path to the bird. The majority of the dogs went right of the mound, and ended up behind or very close to the retired gun blind, blew past and hunted deep. Many attempted to handle but without success. I don't think any that handled were called back. When a dog gets deep of a mark the handling gets ugly.
Only 15 dogs were called back to the second series. Lily was among them and finished the trial placing third. We wanted better but can't be too disappointed. She was the youngest dog entered, she will be 16 months old next Thursday.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

SRW that is very good work and it looks like a real tough setup!!! Beautiful grounds. Congrats on 3rd place in a big Q.

We just got back from 3 weeks in northeast Ohio. The weather was spectacular. We ran 3 master tests with Isla (golden), Jurnie (golden) and Cuda (lab). Mixed results. The first test, Isla and Cuda earned their first master passes which was very exciting. Test 2 and 3 Isla came off the rails. Too many tests in a row. She is just not stable and can't keep it together. Cuda picked up on the LAST BIRD of the second test (my bad...shoulda just ran it like a blind to begin with, but I gave him a chance which was the wrong move) and FINISHED the third test only to have the judges tell me my last blind wasn't good enough. Gotta say, never had that happen. Soooooo close. Jurnie has seriously declined in her handling and it was a handle fest and/or pickup on blinds each test. Not sure what happened, but back to the drawing board with her. The good news is she absolutely stomped every mark, so go figure. 

Now looking toward the golden national. I was up and out in the field at 6:45 this morning doing drills. Done by 8:30 and had enough of the outdoors for today.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

K9-Design said:


> SRW that is very good work and it looks like a real tough setup!!! Beautiful grounds. Congrats on 3rd place in a big Q.


Thank you, it was a very tough test. I think it was tougher than the first series of the last amateur stake we ran.
The “safe” way to run the test was to pick up the flyer than the left stand out and the middle retired last. This is how lmost ran the test or at least attempted to. One problem was that the left mark was the longest. Anyone with any field experience will tell you, it is difficult to get a Retriever to check down on a short retired after running a long mark. That is of course exactly what happened to the majority of the dogs, blowing past the retired bird and hunting deep.
When I got to the line with Lily I took plenty of time to let her settle in, find and focus on each gun station. I signaled that I was ready and she watched the middle bird splash in the water. There seem to be an unusual delay in throwing the left mark and she swung off of it just before it was thrown, never saw it. Could be that the middle retired gunner was walking back to the blind. I don’t know for sure because I was watching Lily. She watched the flyer and picked it up quickly when sent. Since I knew she had not seen the left bird Thrown I lined her up for the middle retired next. The mark is fresher in her memory but the stand out gun to the left is a big Temptation. The fact that she had not seen that bird go down made it less so. When I was sure she had focused on the middle mark I sent her. She took a route to the right of the mound then turned and quickly picked up the bird. Now for the one she didn’t see. I took my time lining her up and sent her. She drifted over close to the gun may have went behind it I don’t recall, but quickly looped around and found the hen pheasant.
Something many people don’t do in training is send the dog on Marks knowing they did not see them thrown. I nearly always do. It teaches them to pay attention and also prepares them for a situation like this in a trial when they didn’t see a bird either from looking away from it or poor lighting conditions, whatever. You can do it intentionally in training, often called “ghost marks“. 
Set up a double typically with a longer go bird. The first thrower simply does an arm motion without throwing a bird. Then the go bird is thrown and the dog sent. The first bird is then tossed out when the dog cannot see it. This gives a dog confidence to run and hunt near a gun station where the bird “should be“.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

SRW I did just that intentionally with my old guy Slater (he is 13 now) but for a different reason...he was born with cataracts and if a bird was thrown in difficult lighting situations, even at hunt test distances he could not see it. He only ran hunt tests. I would put out a holding blind, have a bird on the ground at a throw's distance and would line him up and send him. He got rather good at it and it saved us many a time in tests.
I KNOW at big distances our dogs are not actually seeing the bird in the air, but going off arm movement or just the presence of a gunner.
MANY times Bally has looked off a long gun as the gunner was swinging back to throw, only to absolutely step on the mark. He knew the guy was going to throw it, and if the test was set up in a conventional way, the dog also knew which direction the bird "should" be thrown. Of course we try to combat looking off in training but in a trial you gotta just roll with it.
Sounds like you made the right decision and knew your dog!!!! Great job


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

K9-Design said:


> I KNOW at big distances our dogs are not actually seeing the bird in the air, but going off arm movement or just the presence of a gunner.


That is a school of thought however I don’t buy it. I’ve seen too many dogs mark birds perfectly at extreme distances. I watch my dogs follow The arcs of thrown birds at four or 500 yards. I’ve had experienced waterfowl dogs spot incoming flocks of ducks long before I could see them.
Jake is agitated by anything walking across “his property“. That includes anything he can see from any window of a house which can be over 1000 yards.

Dogs have an extremely good vision and are particularly good picking up movement.


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## JerseyChris (10 mo ago)

@SRW do you ever find yourself out in mid to eastern PA for anything?


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

JerseyChris said:


> @SRW do you ever find yourself out in mid to eastern PA for anything?


Never been there


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## PalouseDogs (Aug 14, 2013)

Our weekend was not as successful as Stan's or Anney's, but it had a few good moments. Pinyon was entered in both Master tests, run concurrently, in McCall, Idaho. 

Master A, series 1, was in a forest clearing with tall shrubs. No photo; I couldn't get an unobstructed view of the setup from behind the line. The dog was at the same level as the marks but couldn't really see them land through the shrubs. Marks were thrown high from wingers, so they were visible in the air. Pinyon picked up all three birds without a handle but I couldn't see him most of the time behind the shrubs. On the middle bird, he took a long time and I wondered if he'd switched, but he finally appeared with the bird. I think a lot of dogs, including Pinyon, had trouble judging where they were in relation to the bird once they left the line and got into the shrubs. The blind looked easy: It was through the shrubs, and not very long (70 yards?), but the bird was in a hole and the line to the blind ran parallel to the trees and shrubs bordering the clearing. I watched several dogs veer right into the wooded border. I have no idea why they kept getting pulled into the woods. Pinyon did the same thing. I stopped him before he vanished into the trees, but couldn't get him to hold any kind of a cast through the shrubs. I stayed cool and got him to the bird with a whole lot of whistles. It was a hack job. I think it would have been okay if his marks had been better, but we got dropped. 

Master B was out in the open grassland and sage. Marks were roughly equal distances, 100 yards or so. The dog sat at the level of or higher than the marks, so he had a good view. It was HOT and without a breeze for most of the day. I took the picture when there happened to be a fair amount of clouds, but many of the dogs ran under little cloud cover. At 5,000 ft elevation, the solar radiation is intense. There is more terrain, in the form of swales and rolls, than is apparent in the photo. We had a wet, cool spring and the grass was taller than the dogs in much of the field. 

A lot of dogs had really big hunts; many had to be handled to one or two birds. Several were picked up. Handling was difficult because the dog could disappear in the grass in a swale. I was super-anxious about Pinyon overheating. He was way down in the running order, so we had a long wait. While I was waiting my turn, I kept the truck covered with Aluminet shade cloth and took periodic trips to the Payette River to swim him so he would be wet and cool when he came to the line. I took him to the river 3 times while I was waiting and worried a lot watching dog after dog go on long hunts. 

Pinyon did a fabulous job on the marks. The setup was similar to the setup we run at the Espanola training grounds, where the line is usually on a mound and the dog is looking down on or level with the marks. It was good thing he didn't have any trouble, because once he was in the grass, and into a swale, I could not see him. He would just vanish and reappear with a bird in a short order. 










The tall grass made the blind a serious challenge. He disappeared on me when he went over the swale and into the grass. I did a come-in whistle and, with binoculars, relocated him. I could barely see his head through a screen of grass. I'd give him a cast, his head would disappear, and I would have no idea where he was!!! Short handlers, I heard, had an especially hard time on this blind. The dogs that did best were the ones that would hold a good line for the period when they were out of sight. 

Only half the field got called back from this series. Pinyon was one of them. I'm sure it was because his marks were good enough to make up for the mess of a blind. I didn't watch too many of the dogs run but, of the ones that I watched, I thought Pinyon did better on the marks than any of them. Possibly, I am a tad biased. 

When Pinyon was finished with the series, I made a beeline back to the river to let him cool down again. Series 2 was scheduled to start the next morning, so after we checked callbacks, we went back to the hotel and A/C. I was eating dinner when I noticed Pinyon was rubbing his head on the rug and batting a little at his face. Water in the ear, I thought, but then he looked at me and he was squinting his right eye. I couldn't see any obvious foreign body, like a grass seed. I applied artificial tears. It didn't seem to be bothering him too much, but the squint didn't go away. McCall is NOT a good place to have a dog emergency. There were no vets open at 7 pm on Friday night (no surprise), but there were also no nearby vets open on Saturday morning. 

I decided that if he still had a squint Saturday morning, I would scratch him from Master B and head back to Pullman where I could get a vet to take a look at his eye that day. He looked a little less squinty Saturday morning, but I thought maybe that was because I wanted him to be less squinty. I wasn't going to take any chances with his eye, so I called the test chairman early, scratched, and headed home. 

By the time I got home, the squint was nearly gone. I had his eye checked out anyway. No foreign bodies, no scratches, no ulcerations. Whatever it was, he'd recovered. So, it was kind of a bummer that we scratched, but I was more relieved that he didn't have an eye injury than disappointed about scratching. He picked up all his birds, had a good time, and I have a list of things to work on next spring, starting with holding a line through shrubs and alongside a line a trees. 

We had a nice drive from Pullman to McCall down scenic Hwy 95, which runs along the Salmon and little Salmon Rivers for much of the trip. I stopped at Winchester Lake on the way down to give the dogs a travel break and a swim. 
Hawthorn, the youngster, was not entered, but came along for the ride. 









The next break was the little city park in Riggins, Idaho. Every time I go through Riggins, I think what a strange place it would be to live. It is at the confluence of the Salmon and Little Salmon Rivers, blazing hot and dry in a steep walled canyon. The economy is based on catering to rafters and fisherman. It is entertaining to eat lunch at the park and watch the rafters go by, but I do not think I would want to live on a narrow strip of flat land between dry, steep canyon walls. 


















While I was eating lunch with the golden boys, I got to chatting with a bicyclist taking a break in the park. It turned out, he was bicycling from Spokane to Denver during his summer break from teaching high school science. He was, I would guess, in his late 40s, early 50s and, no surprise, as thin as a whippet. So many hobby sub-cultures out there besides dog training. 

So, that's the end of my very brief immersion into hunt training for the year. I would have liked to end it on a high note but I am also relieved to not be using up my weekends on marathon drives to the hunt training area.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

What a report, and loved the photos especially of the river!!! WOW!!!!


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## chelseah (Dec 8, 2020)

Can people who haven’t entered a dog ever come watch these events?


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## PalouseDogs (Aug 14, 2013)

chelseah said:


> Can people who haven’t entered a dog ever come watch these events?


Yes. You can find a list of hunt tests (non-competitive) and field trials (competitive) on Entry Express entryexpress.net

AKC Junior and Senior level test have 2 series and are normally completed in one day. Master tests have 3 series and normally take two or three days to run. Master tests usually have a land series first. Land series usually take less time/dog than water series. The first land series usually reduces the field by a third or a half, which makes the water series more doable with fewer dogs. 

If you go, leave your dog behind so you don't have to worry about him. Bring a comfortable portable chair, sunscreen, bug spray, plenty of fluids in the summer (water, Gatorade, etc.), lunch, and snacks. At some test sites, it is best to have a vehicle with reasonably high clearance (but, until this year, I usually scraped the bottom of my low-clearance mini-van on dirt and rocks and hoped for the best). Wear dark or camo clothes. The judge will tell the spectators where they are allowed to watch. Print out the running order from Entry Express before the test so you know who is running, but don't expect that the actual running order will be much like the printed running order. You'll have to be close enough to the line to hear the handler tell the judges what their number is.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

chelseah said:


> Can people who haven’t entered a dog ever come watch these events?


Of course although I have to admit it’s not much of a spectator sport.
Some test can be fun to watch. They’re almost always lots of interesting people to talk to and you make a lot of friends at trails.

If you introduce yourself and volunteer, someone will happily put you to work.😎


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## chelseah (Dec 8, 2020)

PalouseDogs said:


> Yes. You can find a list of hunt tests (non-competitive) and field trials (competitive) on Entry Express entryexpress.net
> 
> AKC Junior and Senior level test have 2 series and are normally completed in one day. Master tests have 3 series and normally take two or three days to run. Master tests usually have a land series first. Land series usually take less time/dog than water series. The first land series usually reduces the field by a third or a half, which makes the water series more doable with fewer dogs.
> 
> If you go, leave your dog behind so you don't have to worry about him. Bring a comfortable portable chair, sunscreen, bug spray, plenty of fluids in the summer (water, Gatorade, etc.), lunch, and snacks. At some test sites, it is best to have a vehicle with reasonably high clearance (but, until this year, I usually scraped the bottom of my low-clearance mini-van on dirt and rocks and hoped for the best). Wear dark or camo clothes. The judge will tell the spectators where they are allowed to watch. Print out the running order from Entry Express before the test so you know who is running, but don't expect that the actual running order will be much like the printed running order. You'll have to be close enough to the line to hear the handler tell the judges what their number is.


Okay thanks! I will check that out.


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## JerseyChris (10 mo ago)

SRW said:


> Of course although I have to admit it’s not much of a spectator sport.
> Some test can be fun to watch. They’re almost always lots of interesting people to talk to and you make a lot of friends at trails.
> 
> If you introduce yourself and volunteer, someone will happily put you to work.😎


That is why I was seeing if you had any plans to come East for anything. Would really like to come see one of these events. And I would be happy to help out as well.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

Big weekend coming up. My clubs trial, Tri State Labrador retriever club of Iowa. Jake is entered in the open and the am, Lily in the derby and the am. Haven’t gotten as much quality training in recently as I would like. We’ll see what happens. Friday is not going to be fun, very short on help. A serious problem and a great number of events nowadays.
I will try to post some pictures of the tests.


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## DblTrblGolden2 (Aug 22, 2018)

SRW said:


> Big weekend coming up. My clubs trial, Tri State Labrador retriever club of Iowa. Jake is entered in the open and the am, Lily in the derby and the am. Haven’t gotten as much quality training in recently as I would like. We’ll see what happens. Friday is not going to be fun, very short on help. A serious problem and a great number of events nowadays.
> I will try to post some pictures of the tests.


Good luck! It seems like all clubs are struggling to find help these days. My husband was a shooter at the last test I ran Cruz in because they were running short on help. He said he knew if he missed he was going to have a long ride home 😂


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## JerseyChris (10 mo ago)

SRW said:


> Big weekend coming up. My clubs trial, Tri State Labrador retriever club of Iowa. Jake is entered in the open and the am, Lily in the derby and the am.


Best of luck to you.. Go kick some Butt and show those Labs how its done 😝


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