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Chapter XIII - Dual-Purpose Breeding -under construction- The Mental Requirements So much for the physical side, but now to the abstract, the mental necessities. These are intelligence, willingness, steadiness, wish to retrieve to the handler, nose, tender mouth, silence, game-sense, the idea of actually picking up an object (often lacking), and style. These can only be tested by actual work, so many show-dogs never get the tests at all. I have not put them in any order because they are all needed, but I will add that I have learned from experience and also from the wise words of others how to spot some of these things and how to develop them if they are there in the breeding. I will give one or two of these tips in Chapter 14, 'Wise Words'. The willing intelligence would show in the face and eye and in whether the dog will look at you, and by that I do not mean the ordinary glance the dog gives you, but a searching, penetrating look right at you as if trying to fathom your thoughts. This is what I mean by looking at you and a dog that does this is usually easy to train. It knows you are yourself thinking some deep thought and tries to find out by his own brain what you want. Steadiness and biddability are tested from the start. All puppies will 'try it on' in some way or other. Refusal one night to go to bed, or refusal to come up to you, dodging just out of reach, or running sheep. And later on running in on their dummy. but with the right sort, one lesson and they say 'sorry, I was only trying it on' and from then on do right without any trace of sulkiness. If they persist or get worse or sulk or throw obedience to the winds and become wilful then they are not right for the job and will break you before you break them. The reason why I stress good eyesight is of course that they should be able to spot the falling bird, not at all easy when a brace of partridge are dropped out of a covey of fourteen or so when they are still not high above the roots, or when a long distance pheasant drop way out against a background of winter woodland and scrub. Eyesight must be good, but even the ability to mark is something quite apart. However much you breed from good Trial dogs you cannot say until you actually try it out whether a dog can mark. It is something either bred into them or not and unless the dog has the innate ability you almost can't teach it to mark, though with a bad marker you can perhaps improve it. But marking is a definite mental exercise and if you have a dog without this strange combination of observation and memory you cannot teach it. And another thing, the dog must be big enough to be able to see the actual fall and not just the line of fall. I once trialled a bitch, Exchange of Mansergh, who was so small that she could only get the line and not the distance and a great handicap it was. So marking is a very elusive quality, but oddly enough while a bad marker is hopeless in Trials, an extra good marker is nearly as bad, because the dog goes straight as a die to the bird and the judge writes it down as an easy retrieve. Andrew Wylie once said to me when I was running a super dead-eye-dick of a marker, 'Were I you I would try and stop that bitch from seeing the actual fall, so that she has to hunt just a little before finding it. We judges like to see the dog having to hunt and when she makes her birds look so extremely easy she will never be credited with her full worth.' In spite of this I like a good marker, both when handling and judging. I have never had a dog that would not pick up an object but am told by Mr. John Halstead, the leading trainer of the day, that he is now getting a lot of youngsters in to train that will not even lift a dummy, let alone retrieve it. What a sorry state we have got to when a Trainer has to say this. You can't make a dog retrieve if it won't, without forced training, a method not to be encouraged, but often you can 'con' a dog into lifting and carrying, whereupon if it is bred right it will be delighted to do so. But with a wrong temperament even this will not do. I once bought a puppy that just would not lift, neither did it have any wish to please, indeed quite the opposite. It was without exception the most disagreeable, disobliging puppy I have ever met in any breed. Every day I used to walk up the drive to the Pointer and Setter Kennel to let them out and every day this Labrador puppy used to go up with the others and I noticed that it had a large lump of cushioned moss which it would carry up. When we got there and let the Setters out it would carefully put down the moss and leave it till the morrow when after we had put the Setters away it would carry the moss-cushion down again to the House. So I thought the key to getting it to retrieve and one day after it had deposited it but before I let the Setters out, I threw the lump of moss, making sure the puppy saw it. Sure enough it rushed in and picked it up and before it had time to gather its wits I had taken it gently from it and then gave the puppy the usual patting and 'making much' that I always give after a successful retrieve. It turned round and for the first time in its life it really looked at me meaningfully but with the most bale expression I have ever seen. It then turned its back on me and walked away and never again would it do anything for me, and it never again touched the lump of moss. What a horrid puppy and what a bad temperament, because once it discovered what you wanted, it would never do that thing again. So a nice willing intelligence is necessary, and so is a steady biddable temperament. I believe this particular mental attribute is not common in show Labradors, although people will be amused when I say so, because with every litter I sell I get the same thing. People ring or write to me that they have never had puppy with such temperament before, and that not only it is happy, willing, and good with the children and other dogs but it is so good. So obviously they have previously had puppies that they thought to be of good temperament but also obviously they have lacked some sort of biddability. Nose is hereditary and is largely linked with the size and wideness of the nostrils. You must have a generous outside area and also plenty of room for scent to enter and be savoured inside. A small pinched nose is useless, as is a naturally dry one and you do sometimes get them. But given the correct wideness, openness and generosity of nose and nostrils even then there is an abstract ability which you cannot test except in the field and that is the ability to 'get' the nose's message and to act on it correctly. Some dogs have this, some haven't. When you come to think of it a rabbit bolts from its seat or bramble bush leaving a line and is then shot, lightly touched and runs on. How does the puppy know which way to take the line from the 'fall'? Some don't, which is called hunting a line heel-way or running heel. But a sensible puppy learns some slight message that the nose gives it and it goes the right way of the line. Again some dogs have very good noses, some exceptional. I think this may depend on the amount of space inside the sinuses, and the moisture on the membranes. So while noses can be bred for by getting the right nose-shape, it has to go with a brain that can interpret the message received. Hard mouth is a bad fault very common in Labradors and many a good old dog becomes hard either through an outside factor such as being scratched by a live bird or not being able to hold a strong running cock in thick covert. It is very hereditary and I call it the bugbear of the Labrador as a working gundog. Lady Hill-Wood put her finger on it when we were running in a Variety Stake and having just watched a Labrador put out for a very hard mouth, a real bite, we were then watching a Golden Retriever with too soft a mouth, muffing its retrieve, mouthing the bird in an attempt to pick a heavy cock pheasant without tightening its grip. She pointed out that this was the difference, the Labrador as a whole are very keen to grab the bird and so very fast that they bat right into it and snatch it up, so that they bite with eagerness, while the Goldens, who are not so violently keen and speedy into their retrieves, pick up more slowly and feeling the loose feathers do not really relish it and therefore have very much more tender mouths. I'm sure she had a point there because you seldom see a hard-mouthed Golden, but you often see them being extra careful about actually lifting their birds and not liking it if the feathers come into their mouths. Silence is golden in a Labrador and you will quickly get rid of any dogs that have a tendency to whine because it is not only very hereditary but also catching. It is of course one of the cardinal sins which enables a single judge to discard you from a stake without a further run, so is a must. Nothing is more annoying in a grouse moor than to hear a low warning whistle from the next Gun to tell you the Grouse are approaching, to look all around and then find it is the next-door dog whining. Time and again you are alerted and time and again it is the dog, and then 'Wolf, Wolf' when the gun does whistle to warn you of approaching grouse you think it is the dog and wake up too late. I hate a whiner and so does everyone else who either judges or Trials. Common sense is essential in any dog that is out working by itself when sent for a bird in cover or woodland. He must remember where you are, usually on ground that is strange to him, he must know to go back to the place where he entered the wood if he can't find another way out. If away on a long runner he must remember the way back, or he must know to back-track on his own scent. Lots of things come under common-sense and lots and lots of dogs have little or none but if they can't find their way out of the wood will stand and wait and put their bird down and whine and yell, rather than think how they got in. And here with common sense I must slot in the ability to take and understand hand-signals, yet another reason why you need both intelligence and good eyesight. I have however elected to put it with common sense to know when it is 'beat' and cannot find the bird on its own resources. Then it must come to the open where it can see the handler and actually look and ask for help. A wave in any direction starts it off again on the right line and direction. Like a sheepdog, it is easy to train it to go further away from you but a difficulty is when the bird is lying nearer to you by only a few yards to get the dog to come just those few steps towards you and then get its head down and hunt. If you call it towards you it may just come straight back to you and then, if the judges let you, you have to start all over again. But once the dog come back you are lucky if a judge does not call you up and send the next dog. So to get those few steps without breaking the hunting routine you have to give the most difficult signal for the dog both to see and understand. The usual method is to press your hand down in front of you as though you were pushing something down with the flat of your hand, but unless the dog has both intelligence and common sense you will find this one of the most difficult signals to give and the dog finds it one of the most difficult to understand. Lastly style, and this is hard to define. For style you must have balance so that the dog works from its hocks and looks light and happy, which a dog driving into the ground on its forehand can never do. It must have tail action and here if I see one of my puppies rotating its tail when hunting like a propeller instead of lashing it I know it will have light, happy action. I think the three keys to style are love of work, happiness and light action off the hocks. If you can get all these things to a show-dog and be accepted as a breeder and Championship show judge by the show people, and as equal competitor and Panel A judge in Trials then you are indeed a top breeder. As I say in 40 to 50 years these people are to be counted almost on the fingers of two hands, if not one. But this is the crux of this book, the Jewel in the Eye of the Lotus, the true art of breeding. |
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