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By the way, our interlocutor here hasn't yet addressed Bill's question about *his* (or her) experience in competition, in either the US or Britain. If either.

But his denigrating remarks about American retrievers, specifically Labs, seem to have answered overwhelmingly against it.

Noted by someone whose dog--from the very same North Dakota he decried, incidentally, Devils Lake, specifically, and sired by a National Field Champion from Minnesota--ran an entire campaign of open stakes last spring and fall as a 2-year-old. But it wasn't the NFC so much that was the attraction to a pup, it was the Swiss mountain rescue team leader who came back for seconds from the dam for pups to use as cadaver dogs in the Alps. As in visiting for a week at a time with the breeder before making her choice. Wonder if it had anything to do with "biddability," soundness of structure, gamefinding ability, or more than a little of each?

MG

....but from a training perspective, whether for trials, tests or work, isn't it desirable to train the dog to handle accurately (the proverbial sixpence at quarter of a mile) but also train him to use his natural abilities to find shot game? So maybe we are talking here about working practices rather than training regimes.

Talking here that your last comment is more than semantics from the US side, Eric, which I'm sure you appreciate. A little training setup, or "working practice" today: A triple retrieve, the first bird shot is a live duck at about 350 yards. That's called an out-of-order flyer, reason being the flyer is usually the last bird down and thus first picked on multiple retrieves. But this one is shot first, thus "out of order." Second bird is a dead duck at about 225 yards thrown from the bank of a pond across a channel up on high ground. This is called a "bridge bird" because it bridges the expanse of water. Third bird down is a seemingly easy mark thrown down the left side about 150 yards out with no water but with the suction for the dog in wanting to blow past it to get to the "exciting" bird, the live duck that was shot first.

You as handler in training determine which order the dog will pick which bird. In this case, "working practice" as you put it, calls for the easy bird first, then the "bridge" bird because marks are picked in order of distance when training as "short, long, longer" (and "longest" if it's a multiple of four birds). Of course, the dogs still want the exciting bird that has been seen wingbeating away till its demise. But they must abide by that working practice which entails a long swim and figuring what side of the water the bird fell.

Once accomplished, that saves the out-of-order flyer as the last picked. And you can bet Michael Schumacher couldn't get there any faster when the dogs know there's only one bird left and it's the bird they've wanted all along.

Turns out this duck flew well out of sight over a ridge, so about 50 yards tacked on to the 350. It was impossible for the dog from its vantage to see where it fell. But as it's a "working practice" and not a trial (which would've resulted in a call of "no bird" and a do-over), you carry on. And the dog carries on...and on...hunting a pattern--with its nose--of any likely place and some not so likely where the duck went down. Two minutes, widening the pattern with every cast, not once going on the "wrong side" of the gun but working deeper and deeper away from it. Now would that be valued as gamefinding ability in a dog or maybe a "dependency" on its nose? They don't forget a flyer's out there, they may overrun it, they may not see where it fell, but when the guns report that it is in fact (or was) a live bird, they will stay with it till the crack of a new century's dawn before giving up on it.

MG