Putting on a good show

The days of dual champions may be firmly in the past, but there is still working potential in show-bred lines, argues David Tomlinson

THERE’S ONE PIECE of advice for the would-be gundog owner in every book I have: if you want a puppy to bring on as a gundog, make sure you buy one from working stock.

It’s really such an obvious piece of advice that it hardly bears repeating, while I have never met anyone who has deliberately bought a show-bred dog with the aim of making it into a worker. I have, however, met many people with show-bred dogs, bought initially as pets, who have attempted to turn them into workers.

As a teenager, I had a show-bred cocker that I tried, unsuccessfully, to make a shooting dog. Looking back, I believe that I might have succeeded if I’d tried training him as a puppy, as he certainly had some basic hunting instinct. However, I didn’t get my first shotgun until I was 16, by which time Kim the cocker was three, so it was really too late to start.

You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it helps if they have had some basic training in the first place. Kim had been to dog training classes, but he wasn’t anywhere near top of his class, so there wasn’t a good foundation to build on. I did take him rough shooting and he wasn’t gun-shy and nor did he give tongue, but there wasn’t much else to commend him.

Some show-bred gundogs show a lot more natural or instinctive ability than others as shooting dogs. Some years ago, I rather rudely dismissed white, show-bred golden retrievers as something of an abomination and certainly not animals to be taken into the shooting field. I received a number of indignant emails from owners of such beasts, enthusing about their dogs’ ability as workers, with photographs of them in action. I was even prompted to join an owner of show-bred goldens on a shooting day.

It was a humbling experience, as those goldens (there weren’t any white ones) worked impressively all day, retrieving with style and displaying great biddability. It was obvious that their owner was a talented handler, but it proved to me that anything is possible. I’ve since seen a number of show-bred golden retrievers working satisfactorily on shoots, suggesting that if you want to turn a show dog into a gundog, then a golden retriever is a good base.

“The demands of the two disciplines are so far apart there is little common ground”

I’ve seen excellent work by showbred English springers, too, though admittedly from a kennel that made a point of working their dogs, so you could say that the working instinct was bred into them. I used a stud dog from this kennel on my unregistered working springer bitch and she produced a fine litter of 10 puppies.