Can you talk the talk?
The gundog world has its own vocabulary, and, in some cases, there’s different commands for specific breeds. So here’s gundog glossary
ast month, while waiting for my run at a local gundog working test, I got talking to a newbie to the gundog world and we were discussing the wind direction. I mentioned that we would have to send the dogs past the fall of the dummy because there was a back-wind, he looked at me as though I was talking total gibberish! After I explained what I meant, it got me thinking about how each sport or hobby has its own particular vocabulary. Golf, for example, uses some very peculiar expressions and the gundog world is no different, in fact, in one way it is even more confusing as in some cases we use different words or commands for the different breeds of gundogs. Spaniel people tend to use “hup” to get their dogs to sit, quite why I have no idea and despite extensive research on the “inter-web” I cannot find out the reason
Lwhy – do any readers have an inkling? The more I considered matters, the more confusing I realised we make things. So, here it is, the Sporting Gun’s glossary of gundog commands and phrases: