> It's not 'KC official' but it's completely valid.

No, I don't agree that going on a shoot is as 'completely valid' as a form of assessment as entering a test or trial.  Here's why:

1)  In a test or trial you are not assessing your own dog.  Someone else is.  Someone else will determine if your dog meets or does not meet that standard.  Assessing your own dog is innately flawed as an assessment method - whether conformation or trial.  Sure, some highly experienced people people ARE honest and CAN assess their own dogs fairly and make very educated breeding decisions which may involve not breeding to tested dogs - but the vast majority of people are not that experienced and cannot.  Certainly the vast majority of people on shoots are not experienced and knowledgeable enough to be assessing their own dogs.  To encourage people to assess themselves, when they are inexperienced, is unethical.  See all the points above regarding people favouring their own dogs, how un-valid it would be for people to assess themselves for A-levels and GCSEs and so on. 

2)  You yourself said above that your only requirement would be that a dog makes things easier than not having a dog(!).  Someone with that low standard, assessing dogs is going to be deeming an awful lot of dogs suitable as breeding prospects.  I, on the other hand, would want a dog which shows real exceptional ability and excels before I would want to consider producing yet more puppies for an already saturated market.  What, then, is the 'assessment' you are talking of here, when it can have such widely differing standards dependent on what different individuals decide is 'acceptable'?  It surely rubbishes the idea of an assessment if everyone is assessing to different standards?  (And when some of those standards are so low as to effectively be 'has 4 legs and a head'!).

3)  What many breeds do on shoots is not what they are bred for.  HPRs are not bred to quarter small beats.  If they point on a shoot, spaniels often steal that point and flush the bird so they often stop pointing.  How, then do you propose that HPR owners assess their working ability purely by turning up and being present on a shoot when that will not provide the right circumstances for them to be seen performing the role they should be bred for?  How can this be a 'completely valid' form of assessment if it differs so much from their original role? 

4)  The point of an assessment is that there are specific different criteria which are being assessed.  The KC J regs stipulate exactly what these are for each subgroup.  Dogs are assessed against known criteria.  It is easy for someone 'assessing' their dog on a shoot to miss things out.  It cannot be said that 'day to day practical work is no worse in this respect than a KC-run trial'!!  Honestly, it's one thing to attempt to say that it's possible to form an assessment of a dog on a shoot - it's a completely different thing to then further that by claiming that it is EQUAL to a trial!!!  As I said above, why do those of us who compete bother then??  Let's just assess our own dogs on shoots.  Do you honestly think standards nationally would not fall at all, were we to stop all trialling??

5)  How can you on the one hand say that people are capable of assessing their own dogs, and then on the other hand say that dogs which are out of control would, in your eyes, 'fail' your assessment of being on a shoot?  If you have given the power to the owners to determine if their dog is a good gundog, and they decide that their out of control, running amok dog, is a good labrador which should be bred from, then you cannot tell me that they have 'failed' the assessment.  If the assessor decides they have passed, then they have passed.  And you have just made them the assessors.  You cannot have it both ways.  People will not assess to 'your' standards, they will assess to their own.  Which will frequently be extremely low.

>In fact if you limited breeding to dogs whose owners were interested in competing the breeds would very quickly be so inbred they'd become unviable and be lost.

Not sure where you see that I am saying that under no circumstances can any other dog be used..  In fact, on several occasions here I've stated the opposite and have repeatedly said there may be situations where experienced folk want to use dogs which have not been assessed.  What I began (many pages ago) by saying is that these are few and far between and should not represent the vast majority of breedings.

>In a test or trial you are not assessing your own dog.  Someone else is.

On shoots there are all the other people as well, of course.

>As I said above, why do those of us who compete bother then??

Because you enjoy competition, presumably. Not everyone does - and that's no sin, and certainly doesn't mean their dogs are beyond the pale.

Again, you haven't addressed half the points I've made.

>On shoots there are all the other people as well, of course.

Of course, and they are there to assess your dog, are they?  No, they are there to get on with their own day and frequently have their own dog to worry about and to consider.  If you think that asking your pals who you beat with what they think of your dog is an impartial and comprehensive form of assessment - when their own dogs are frequently less well behaved than yours - think again.

>Because you enjoy competition, presumably. Not everyone does - and that's no sin, and certainly doesn't mean their dogs are beyond the pale.

No, I dislike competition and find it quite stressful.  I compete because I want to determine whether my dogs are worth breeding from and what their strengths and weaknesses are - there is no other way. 

It is quite possible to own a working dog and not to breed from it - millions of people manage to.  If you can't assess your dog's working ability in competition, do not breed.  Buy in another dog from a litter where both parents have proved themselves and save yourself the trouble.  There's simply no reason to breed your dog if you are not able to assess it.  We are not suffering from a shortage of working dogs.

> It is quite possible to own a working dog and not to breed from it - millions of people manage to.  If you can't assess your dog's working ability in competition, do not breed

I'm not sure that anywhere on this thread - or indeed this site - you'll find any poster who advocates breeding from any or all working dogs without some level of assessment.  Quite the contrary in fact.  In some ways you are already preaching to the converted :)

The element that, despite some discussion, we seem to disagree on is the level of assessment required.

Do you breed Rabid?  I don't but each of us can exercise choice in our decision making: you to only use bitches, and stud dogs, who've passed your strict criteria, me to only buy puppies from breeders and parents that meet mine. 

There may be small gaps between the criteria we use but we, and the majority of posters I've read on this thread, are a far cry from the indiscriminate breeders you appear to be most cross about

>It is quite possible to own a working dog and not to breed from it - millions of people manage to.  If you can't assess your dog's working ability in competition, do not breed.

Remove the two words in bold, and we're in harmony. :-) Working dogs have been successfully bred for far longer than there have been formal competitions.

dogs a babe, many people besides those contributing to this thread may read it, since CD posts often come up in search results.  I'm not just writing this for people on this forum, I'm writing it for anyone who happens to come across it and I make no assumptions about who they might be.

>Working dogs have been successfully bred for far longer than there have been formal competitions.

JG, in the days of old when we really did hunt with dogs, we depended on them to find food.  There would no way anyone would consider breeding from a dog if it was inadequate at this basic task and those which were good would be bred from more.  Of course we did not need tests and trials then.  We don't live in that world any more.  NO one who shoots depends totally on what they shoot to feed themselves and basic food in supermarkets is cheap.   

Your perception of the world of working dogs is outdated and based on something from many moons ago.  Most people on shoots these days are out for a day in the countryside in lovely scenery, and why not bring the dog too?  The dog may not even be a gundog!  During the week they may well be working busy jobs in the city, not out in the country training their gundogs.  If their dog is a useless dog, there are so many birds put down that the dog is going to put something up, so any dog is better than no dog - and the dogs which are really awol can be kept on the lead. 

Sorry, but standards are not the idealistic ones you seem to think they are and everyone on a shoot is not there because they are hardcore gundog enthusiasts.  The world of shooting and gundogs is nothing like the world of coursing or terrier work which some small dedicated bands of country folk are committed to - instead gundog work has boomed in popularity and become much more mainstream of late and the number of people who are 'hardcore' enthusiasts - whether or not they test/trial - are few and far between.  Nevertheless, plenty of folk fancy having a litter from Molly/Flo/Gertie before spaying her.

To give the message that it is acceptable for people to breed from their dog on the basis that they turn up and work it on a shoot and it meets their own (variable and very low) standards is to promote unethical breeding practices. 

Yes, I agree that we are disagreeing about what constitutes an adequate form of assessment - it's been very clear that's what we're disagreeing about, all along.

>Most people on shoots these days are out for a day in the countryside in lovely scenery, and why not bring the dog too?  The dog may not even be a gundog!  During the week they may well be working busy jobs in the city, not out in the country training their gundogs.  If their dog is a useless dog, there are so many birds put down that the dog is going to put something up, so any dog is better than no dog - and the dogs which are really awol can be kept on the lead.

Yep, that's it. :-) There are one or two snobs who look down on the terriers doing a terrific job bustling about in the undergrowth, but on the whole people are pleasant and out to get the job done; they're being paid to do it after all! They don't care whether the dogs are pedigree or crossbred, gundog or not.

>Your perception of the world of working dogs is outdated and based on something from many moons ago.

And it's clear that your experience of current shooting practices isn't as complete as you like to think. It's a big wide shooting world out there!

I'm tired of your continued rudeness and personal remarks, instead of simply debating a topic, so I shall bow out of this, put you on Ignore and leave you in your bubble.

>many people besides those contributing to this thread may read it, since CD posts often come up in search results.

And you really think they are going to read your posts and say.. " Oh yes before I breed from my cocker I have to train her to the gun, get up at 5am and drive hundreds of mile to compete with her and only when she is a FTCh I will breed from her.

If all your pages and pages of idealistic opinions could achieve that - Ill eat one of my lazy, only run and play for fun type, spoilt but incredibly healthy, little champion lapdogs!

>There are one or two snobs who look down on the terriers doing a terrific job bustling about in the undergrowth, but on the whole people are pleasant and out to get the job done; they're being paid to do it after all! They don't care whether the dogs are pedigree or crossbred, gundog or not.

You now appear to be saying that people on shoots are paid.  This is simply not true.  Occasionally there is a core team of beaters who get a nominal fee of about £25 - which just about covers petrol and expenses.  No one gets paid more than that except for the keeper.  The vast majority of people are unpaid, and are beating or picking up for the fun of it.  It costs far more to kit you and your dog out for a shoot than you will ever earn.

Are you now saying that it's acceptable to breed crossbreeds and terriers for gundog purposes, on the basis that they perform adequately as gundogs in your assessment method of 'turning up and being present on a shoot'?  I give up. 

I'm not really sure what 'personal remarks' you think I've made.  The only ones I can think of is my questioning whether you have the experience to be able to make the statements you make, since some of the terminology you have used and your understanding of what goes on, on a shoot, suggests otherwise.

I'm sorry if you think I'm being 'rude'; I thought the core posters on CDs supported and promoted responsible breeding practices.  In my eyes, what you are advocating is the very opposite of this.  I'm sure, if you thought someone was suggesting irresponsible breeding, and that person continued to insist they were right, you'd also be peed off. 

>And you really think they are going to read your posts and say.. " Oh yes before I breed from my cocker I have to train her to the gun, get up at 5am and drive hundreds of mile to compete with her and only when she is a FTCh I will breed from her.

No - where, on this entire thread, have I said anything about 'only when she is a FTCh will I breed from her'??  You appear to have missed the post where I explicitly said:

>I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying, if you think my point is that every dog on a pedigree needs to be a champion.  I never said that, so please don't twist what I've said.  I've said only that dogs should be assessed in competition or against standards before being bred.  Being assessed in competition may not necessarily mean even earning a title. 

Very few dogs become FTChs, but even being placed decently in a couple of trials proves that a dog has something desirable.  Trialling need not involve travelling long distances if you only enter the trials near where you live.  The important thing is that your dog has been impartially assessed alongside its peers and found to have desirable attributes.  Just the same as in conformation shows.

And yes, I would hope that someone reading this thread might consider proving and assessing their dog before breeding from her - and for the reasons I've outlined, I believe this means in competition and not just transporting your dog to a shoot ground and asking your mates what they think. 

Really quite despondent that there should be such double-standards on CDs for conformation and for working ability.  It betrays a complete lack of understanding of what's involved in breeding for performance.

It does read as double standards and hopefully future readers will pick up on that

> Very few dogs become FTChs, but even being placed decently in a couple of trials proves that a dog has something desirable. 

Then that would be similar to the conformation ring as few dogs attain their titles, but others are still worthy of being bred from be it by their own achievements or due to their pedigree and their close relatives achievements.

I think many people have misunderstood the minimum levels you consider relevant, for the working lines, and for the breeds as a whole.

I mentioned that we would agree that dogs having their stud book No's would generally be considered well proven dogs.  Can you tell me what working results qualify dogs into the stud book?

So do we agree that a knowledgeable breeder (not just someone with a bitch, who may have bred a litter or two) within their sphere may legitimately choose to use a young stud dog, an unproven one in a pet home etc, when their aims cannot be achieved with an alternative, due to inbreeding, age, unavailability, over use of the best dogs etc..

I think you have also agreed somewhere that some dogs can and should be used for breeding for other valid reasons, where they have something to offer the gene pool be it diversity, clear health results where there is an over representation of a health issue, to continue a valuable lien where more desirably qualified  mates are unavailable etc etc.

Yes, absolutely brainless, I'd agree with all you say.

To gain a stud book number, a dog needs to get at least a COM in a trial.  COMs are less than a placing (1st, 2nd, 3rd), but denote merit and that the dog stood out.  Several COMs can be given out if enough dogs warrant it. 

My very final reply! But only because there are so many outright lies in that post :-( that I can't allow it to lie uncorrected.

>You now appear to be saying that people on shoots are paid.  This is simply not true.  Occasionally there is a core team of beaters who get a nominal fee of about £25 - which just about covers petrol and expenses.  No one gets paid more than that except for the keeper.  The vast majority of people are unpaid, and are beating or picking up for the fun of it.

As you say, beating (whether or not you are using a dog to flush the game or just beating yourself) often earns a small sum - handy to buy a round at the end of the day. So yes, that counts as payment. If you don't do a good job you don't get invited back.

>Are you now saying that it's acceptable to breed crossbreeds and terriers for gundog purposes, on the basis that they perform adequately as gundogs in your assessment method of 'turning up and being present on a shoot'?  I give up. 

Point to where I've said that my 'assessment method' is merely turning up at a shoot!!!! That would be silly, just as saying that merely turning up at a working trial is a valid assessment would be silly. No, turning up at a shoot (or the trial) is the start - the assessment part is ongoing throughout the day, and the next shoot, and the next. If your dog is well-trained but not very efficient, you'll be told. If your dog shows promise but needs more training, you'll be told. If your dog is hopelessly gunshy or picks a fight with another dog or eats the retrieve, you'll be told. And yes, you will be told! That is assessment, and just as valid as any competition. Being there isn't enough - performing well matters.
As for the crossbreeding bit; how many crossbred spaniels will you find out on a shoot? Very many indeed - they're extremely popular with shooting enthusiasts. But they can't compete in any trial because they're not on the KC breed register; but that doesn't mean they're not extremely useful working gundogs.

>The important thing is that your dog has been impartially assessed alongside its peers and found to have desirable attributes.

I agree; and that happens at shoots, whether it's a posh pheasant shoot or a farmer's rough-and-ready pigeon shoot.

Oh, and nowhere have I said I advocate or recommend crossbreeding: but there's no denying the KC registration or pure-breeding isn't high on the list of importance of a large proportion of people who go shooting throughout the season. Their priorities are different to yours and mine.

Think this thread has run it's course now and is getting v long so I'll close it