Shooting Times & Country Magazine
THE QUALITY OF MODERN LABRADORS
I finally obtained a copy of Vincent Routledge’s excellent book, The Ideal Retriever and how to Handle Him. This short book (29 pages) should be the bible of all labrador owners and particularly breeders, for it lays out every attribute the ideal dog should have, including the myths of pace and style. You will be interested to note that there is no mention of biddability, as this is down to good training.
The book also confirms the views of one of his peers, Charles EA Alington, who wrote in his book Field Trials and Judging about the risk of reduction of natural ability to find game by breeding from easily trained dogs. Both of these books were written in the 1920s, when trialling was in its formative years.
My question is, how does a dog that will be lauded as one of the ‘best of the best’ get to that position without providing proof that he is routinely picking not just runners but difficult runners? In the shooting field we need dogs of the Routledge stamp, not agility-test dogs.
It should be noted that in the Kennel Club guidance for gundog trials, it states that trials should be run as close to a shoot day as possible. While this is easier said than done, it is essential that dogs are judged on the ideal characteristics and not how biddable they are, thus making it easier to train them to get to a precise location and negating the need for gamefinding ability.
This may be a one-off coincidence but I fear not, for really hard-going, good game-finding dogs are increasingly rare in the shooting field. Unless the trialling fraternity takes the lead and makes trials closer to real shooting days and less like agility tests, then things will worsen, and the quality of retrievers will be all the poorer for it.
Dr Malcolm Berry, by email