Video clip from training "pointing"

[marjolein]

Well, that's what I meant. But you still have to prove me wrong Allyson. I really think they need this extra bit to be able to compete at the highest levels. I'm not only talking from experience here, all the others competitors say the same.
My dogs are steady on point too and won't chase. That's just normal obedience and not too difficult to teach a dog. It's covering the fields that I'm talking about.

[smokeybear]

But why is covering field "disobedience"?

Surely that is what you WANT them to do?

They are using their initiative, brain, nose, skills and knowledge to cover the ground to find game AT YOUR REQUEST, are they not?

You may ask them to cover a bit of ground they have not covered.

I still cannot reconcile the word "disobedience" with what you suggest. Being disobedient is deliberately ignoring someone or refusing to do what they ask.

If your dog IS disobedient then surely he cannot fulfil his function and achieve what you want?

Disobedience is very different from initiative, the latter is making choices based on skills, experience, knowledge on the day ie not relying on the handler to direct it.

If a dog has no initiative at all then it is useless for hunting or tracking.

A disobedient dog is also pretty useless it appears to me.

[marjolein]

smokeybear said:

A disobedient dog is also pretty useless it appears to me.

Yep, that's why I want to balance between being obedient and disobedient.

[anne]

Smokeybear,

Well I certainly admire anyone that can train without the tools that we rely on. I am curious though, what kind of range do your dogs hunt at? And is speed desired there? I get the feeling (but have no idea) that the style of dog there and here are very different. Field trial dogs here, because of the terrain, need to cover a lot of ground and groundspeed and style come into play in competition. A "bootlicker" is usually very controlled and obedient but not necessarily desired here. My Field Champion's natural range is about 100-200 yards+ and what they call "all age dogs" here will range even bigger. Mind you they are run on horseback so you can see better. On foot, he will range about 100 yards. My female on the other hand will never be competitive in field trials because her natural range is 50 yards tops. It's nice for foot hunting. Due to her personality, even though she WAS trained with an e-collar (at age 4 much much later than most people would put a collar on their dog), she probably could have gone through a training session without it. The reason many peopel like e-collars here is because it is a communication tool (IF used correctly, which I admit, most people don't use it right) when the dog is 100 yards out. As I mentioned my girl was trained that the tap on the collar is an obedience command to stop. It's NOT used for punishment. But again, I admit, most people use it for punishment, and consequently I have seen many dogs lose a LOT of style on birds because of trainers will fry a dog for busting in on birds.

I understand the comment about the balance between obedient and disobedient, if the anaology of disobedient is that the dog is independent and thinking on its own and covering ground. It's the initiative that the dog has, what we call DRIVE, that sets apart the top field contenders from the run of the mill hunting dogs, at least that is the way it is here.

Anne

[anne]

<<I'm just wondering when she will be able to overcome the puppy in her and get serious about it. >>

IMO you can't really have a timeframe. I know what a perfectionsist you are Irena, and this is something that I struggle wtih too, but every dog is different and matures differently. You can't push the process. She will overcome the puppy stuff, when she's ready. :-) Not the answer you wanted, I know. Pushing a dog before she's ready is probably the worst thing you can do. I learned that the hard way with Riley. Pressure around birds is never a good thing.

<<That is why I wondered about trying it in shorter grass, so that there are less distractions and she can really focus on the bird (that way she would hopefully catch the smell sooner and connect it with the idea of searching and successfully finding something interesting?) >>

I don't really think the length of grass has much to do with anything. If she's scent pointing then whether the cover is long or short shouldn't matter. She wouldn't scent it sooner because of shorter grass. It's a matter of the wind and if it's early and a lot of dew, for instance, she will catch scent sooner than if it's hot and dry and with no wind.

<<I think this Saturday I will try her on leash and off leash, and see what works better. >>

Let us know how it goes!

[Irena]

Anne, not at all, I got exactly the reply I needed... Thank you very very much!
Unfortunately no birds tomorrow (just found that out), will have to wait for another chance.

[Ingvild]

I've been wondering the same thing Anne..( Quote: What range do your dogs run at? )

It sounds like your dog's hunt like ours Anne (but of course there is great variation with in the weimaraner population in Norway to). Although I'm not exactly sure how long a yard is. As I've mentioned before the Weimaraners compete with all breeds and they have to have a very good range and speed or they will be thrown out within 5 minutes (I'm not exaggerating). They do not take to account if it is an English Setter or a Weimaraner. They are expected to do just as well. (But the rules are very different all over Europe). I expect of my dog that he will adjust his range according to what kind of terrain he is in. In thick forrest I don't want the kind of range I want in the mountains.
I've just come home from hunting in the mountains and on a normal day he had a range of about 150-180 meters to each side. Some days more and some days less according to how his bad leg is. . I'm not exactly sure what that is in yards, can anyone help me with that(?) In the forrest he will range out according to how thick it is. I'll try to get some video clips from the mountains if anyone is interested.

[marjolein]

Holland being a tiny country, dogs cannot range really wide here. The Weims belong to the continental II dogs, which means they have to cover the field within range of the gun, which is max. 40 mtr's on both sides. I haven's seen a lot of dogs actually doing this though. Daan ranges from 150 to 200 mtr's wide (75 to 100 left and 75 to 100 mtr's to the right). It really depends on the field I think.
Irena, whenever you fancy a holiday, you're welcome here for some FT training. Not that I'm really good at it, but I can teach you the basics.

[anne]

I had to use a converter to figure out yards:meters. 200 yards = 182.88 meters. So we are talking about the dogs hunting about at the same range. Here we run the dogs in desert, where it is very flat and spread out, lots of room and LOTS of ground for the dog to cover (and very few birds). I undersatnd that on the East Coast there are more forests, and of course the dog would adjust his range appropriately. We also compete with all breeds (although some stakes are closed to Weims only) but the AKC clasifies Weimaraners as "Pointing dogs" not "Versatile dogs" therefore, they are expected to keep up with Pointers, Setters as well as other continental breeds. Many of the Shorthairs here are very wide-ranging dogs that Weims cannot compete with.

I've always thought about our field trials like showing. Here, a good well-constructed dog can finish a show championship, but the true "greats" are "showy." They are the ones that have that extra sparkle. It's the same in obedience competition too. A dog is allowed to heel with his head straight, but the ones that really do well are the ones that heel with his head up and looking at the handler's face. Not that one is better than the ohter, but one is "showier" than the other. So too is it with the field trial dogs. The ones that put on a great show, are fast and flashy and stylish are prized as the "elite" but when it comes to real hunting, it doesn't really matter.

[Irena]

So today we had no "proper" birds, but the instructors decided to put a shot duck in the cage and use that instead. Audry started again with repeating the duck retrieve (land and water) which she again performed without a hitch several times (I think she really LOVES it), and then it was time to go into the field. She of course had no way of knowing we would be looking for a duck there, the two previous times we had quail. Well, she was literally PULLING me into the field, and when I let her off the leash, she went like crazy, not yet in a perfect zig-zag pattern but one could see she was very obviously searching for birds, and searching FAST. I am sure it is still awfully chaotic and she probably leaves a lot of ground uncovered, but she definitely knew what she was there for!!! When she found the cage, she didn't point, just stood there sniffing at it and then took off to run around some more. I came up to the cage (Audry had been much faster than I), called her to me, praised her and told her to "down" which she immediately did. That was it. Compared to the very first training session 1,5 months ago, this looked awesome to me, the way she really pulled me into the field and started searching when I let her off the lead. Any comments and advice will be much apprecited, as always!!
My feeling is that indeed she needs an un-caged bird to have a chance to stalk it and point it, I think she would be much more surprised to see that than something in a cage?

[Alkemist]

You are very welcome Ingvild

Nina and Jensen

[smokeybear]

Yep, that's why I want to balance between being obedient and disobedient.

Well Mar, I don't want my dogs to be disobedient at all. And they are not; I would hate to think that my dogs made a deliberate decision to ignore my commands and do something completely different, that would demonstrate that I we were not a good team and our partnership was lacking.

I DO want my dogs to use their own initiative where I cannot help them, for example in nosework where I have no clue where the track is or for air scenting when again I cannot help them as do not have their nose (if I did I would not need a dog)

Sometimes, in the early stages my dogs may get confused about what I want and that is a training fault on my part, but the do not look at me and say "up yours" if I tell them to do something.

I expect this is something we may have to agree to disagree on, certainly I have not heard anyone in any discipline from any country state that they want their dogs to be obedient and disobedient before; I discussed this point of view at a training course I attended on Saturday with a HPR gundog trainer, and they have not heard of it either.

I thought it may be a term peculiar to Holland but again, the two Dutch people that I relayed this two could not quite come to terms with it either.

Perhaps one day if you are over here you will be able to demonstrate what disobedience you want and how you go about achieving it? That would add to my learning.

[marjolein]

Balancing between being obedience and disobedience doesn't mean I want a disobedient dog Allyson. Noone can compete with a disobedient dog.

[Alkemist]

Maybe a better way of describing things would be an independent dog versus a dependent dog??

Seems to fit in with everyones posts. And I understood without asking anyone else hehe


Nina and Jensen

[smokeybear]

I don't want a disobedient dog either Marj, hence why I do not understand wanting a "balance"; this indicates that you do want some disobedience.

Nina is almost there, but I still think the correct terminology is initiative, dogs that do scent work MUST have a degree of initiative whether it is for bird work, tracking, drug searches, bomb dogs, arson dogs etc; they CANNOT be totally dependent, and they cannot be totally independent ie do their own thing, but they must be able to work without specific directions apart from the odd interjection in case a dog may have overlooked an area etc.

Language can be so important and the wrong word can change the whole nuance and/or meaning of things.

[aktyson]

This is an old thread but I found the discussion of obedience/disobedient very relevant and think I might be able to help explain.

My dog is three years old an AKC Obedience Trial Champion so he is, indeed, very obedient and biddable. He also has 9 of the 10 points required for his AKC Field Championship. In training for obedience we are scored on every slightly crooked sit or slow drop or mouthed glove. I certainly train in that venue for exact precision and proof for every possible distraction (and even for those that would be impossible to happen during a show). That way he is ultra prepared for every occurrence while we are trialing and gains confidence when the trials are easier than the practice.

In training for field, IMO, I would have to put undue amounts of pressure on him to proof for every occurrence that might happen. In AKC, field trial dogs are judged not only on hunting, range and manners but on style and intensity on their birds and on their honors. I don't want his left-brain engaged at all during field events so I train for the likely scenarios - stop to flush, running birds, honoring, etc. and do that realizing that he won't pass 100% of the time. I allow these occasional "disobediences" because I feel if I eliminated them entirely it would detract from his performance on the whole.

Anne Tyson
www.regenweimaraners.com

[anne]

Interesting Anne! I know how bullet proof Diesel'd be if you did train for perfection... (Obedience Champion at 3, for those that don't know, for a Weim is practically totally unheard of here!!)

[Irena]

aktyson said:

This is an old thread but I found the discussion of obedience/disobedient very relevant and think I might be able to help explain.

Absolutely, please feel free to respond to any post at all, most discussions here are timeless! ;D Welcome to the board.