The Pleasure of Working Retrievers

As Ray and I both had Golden retrievers we were interested in the breed and the type of work that they were bred for over many years. Although Ray was most interested in obedience, since that is what he had bought his dog for in the first place, I wanted to partake in all the training that the Golden Retriever Club provided. In order to be able to make up a champion in the breed, it was necessary to gain a certificate as a working retriever. To do this, the dog and handler had to show that the dog could retrieve game. Now, this caused me a very big problem as I would not, under any circumstances, be involved in any activity where a creature was being killed. As a compromise, we finally decided to partake in a cold game pickup on a shooting estate officially organized by the club.

Pouring Rain

The test was to take place in late November in central Wales. We arrived the day before in order to put up the tent and find the venue. On the morning of the test we woke to pouring rain and a very cold wind. After a sketchy breakfast, we arrived at the venue in plenty of time to settle my two Golden’s that were not taking part in the proceedings and assemble at the starting point to wait for the gamekeeper. I was going to work my bitch called Kirsty who had already won a graduate class at a championship show and Ray was working his somewhat notorious Rufus. The gamekeeper arrived at the wickerwork shelter with a pile of large black plastic sacks under his arm. Now those veterans who had done this many times before came clad in wax-coated Barber outfits with matching hats but the rest of us were clad in a variety of dark clothing with various degrees of waterproofing. It is to these people that he offered a plastic sack with holes cut out for the head and arms and a piece if twine to tie it in place around the waist. We gratefully accepted the sack and put it on and when we turned around we had a good laugh as we all looked like the Wombles of Wimbledon Common.

The test got underway and started with all the dogs off the lead and walking through the undergrowth to test their steadiness. The main shoot had taken place the day before and some of the dead game was still waiting to be picked up. Now, for most people, their training had been carried out on dummies covered in rabbit skins, but this test was to be done on pheasants and some of the dogs had never had a mouthful of feathers to retrieve before which became their downfall. Ray and I had been very lucky because the small gundog club where we went for training had their own small shoot, so our dogs had their last training session on pigeons. Each person and their dog was escorted forward in turn and the gun was fired to see whether the dog was gun-shy and if the reaction was good then the dog was sent out to find the pheasant. The owner had already been briefed with an approximate location of the pheasant and it was necessary for him to be able to send the dog out to an area where the dog could wind-scent the game. It was interesting to watch the different types of command and hand signals that each handler employed to work their dog and also how good their knowledge was of wind direction as it changed slowly throughout the day. It was also noticeable that the old fashioned dark, almost mahogany golden retrievers seemed to have a far better instinct for the job than the new-fashioned, very light coloured dogs that seemed to be taking over in the show ring. As I have said before Ray’s dog was one of the very light coloured dogs and was on his best behaviour and carried out the task in hand to perfection returning his bird to Ray without a tooth mark to be found. When my turn came I was a little worried as Kirsty was a young dog that I had bred from my youngest bitch and so neither she or I had the years of training that Rufus and Ray had been through. We had moved into a field of long grass and the wind had changed to being almost straight across in front of me and I knew that it might be difficult to get Kirsty to go out far enough before I could turn her. I decided to send her away to the left so that she could not pick up the sent until I bought her forward. What I did not know is that the grass was longer in that area as the ground sloped away down the hill. Out she went until she disappeared into the undergrowth and I could no longer direct her with hand signals. Now comes the moment that I will never forget. Out of the undergrowth, Kirstys head appeared as she stood up like a Meercat on her back legs looking for directions and I was immediately able to direct her to my right and brought her forward into the path of the wind-scent where she found the bird and raced home with it giving a massive wag of her tail. The gamekeeper apologized after the incident saying that he had not anticipated anyone having to send their dog that way but said he was very impressed with the way that we both coped with the situation.

Our day was completed with each dog having to retrieve a dummy from the lake, a test which our dogs excelled at as we lived in an area where there were large lakes left from extracting gravel for the M3 motorway. We went back to a very wet campsite and decided not to try and cook supper so we looked for a local pub and walked into a bar where there was a small group of local men who made us very welcome, provided a simple but delicious meal and taught us to play cribbage.