In keeping with this month's WCA Magazine's “Field” theme the BEC‘s guest columnist is Marilyn C. Horn, who has been successfully breeding Field Champions in New Jersey, under the “Von Horn” prefix for many years. We know you'll enjoy Marilyn's words of wisdom. Also included in this issue is Part 2 of Dr. Susan Lauten's excellent series on nutrition.

How To Breed Field Champions
By M.C. Horn

I have been heard to facetiously suggest that the first step to breeding Field Champions is to get out on horseback and watch dogs run in field trials. This has been an important element of my own success, (9 or 10 FC's,) but this is a major simplification of the process.

In breeding for the field you must acquire an appropriate bitch, i.e. one that embodies essential field instincts with a pedigree rich with the field talent and sound genetic health. In Weimaraners, as most experienced breeders have discovered, this is almost impossible. I must admit that in my own breeding program I have at times sacrificed genetic health, preferring to breed for extreme field talent.

Before observing dogs at trials in an attempt to selecting breeding combinations, a good judging seminar (not the AKC's rules re-hash) is certainly helpful. I was fortunate to attend Delmar Smiths' exceptional training seminar early on (the early 80's) which then included an evening devoted to judging. What you have to know before you select a stud dog, is the strengths and weaknesses of your bitch.. In the field these are less tangible than in show breeding; being such things as natural bird desire, pointing instinct, run and also the hunting pattern the dog runs; using the terrain, the wind and knowledge of objectives. Some of these things can be taught; such as run can be extended by proper training, inborn pointing instinct can be trained to complete staunchness on point and pattern can be learned to a certain extent, by the experience of being run on different grounds. An even less tangible factor is what field trainers call “handle”, which means how easily and how much the dog co-operates with the handler. Some will only handle for their trainer, others who are more dedicated bird dogs, will do it for anyone who knows the basics of handling and has at least a bit of acquaintance with the dog, and the last, most frustrating group are those who have to be forced or coerced to even give a minor amount of attention to the poor soul trying to handle them.

It is necessary to know which of these instincts and traits are equipment the particular individual was born with or that were trained into the dog the hard way and may not be passed on to future generations. To really evaluate field dogs it is preferable to watch them through puppy and derby stakes and up to broke stakes. Natural talent is, of course, most obvious in the juvenile stakes and if it is properly handled, carries over very well into the broke stakes. It can be confusing to just watch dogs in the broke stakes as it is hard to distinguish what comes naturally, as opposed to what is trained into them. And, as an extra dimension, it is very interesting to watch how a dog does in open stakes with a professional trainer as opposed to performance in an amateur stake with an amateur handler.

By the end of this lengthy process of selection, a stud for your bitch is finally decided upon and the breeding takes place, puppies come in due time and grow to an age where they can be tested for basic temperament by some of the old tests that were originally formulated for seeing eye dogs. These should include interest in retrieving to a human, tests for dominance or submission, pain sensitivity, etc. Test pups with a bird wing on a fishing pole to determine if they have pointing instinct. Don't overdue on this test, as it encourages sight pointing too much.

My own personal test for good hips is based on watching for the first puppy to scramble out of the whelping box. I think this works fairly well, as I did start with dogs having less than ideal hips and have produced several from this beginning with OFA excellent hips. I don't place high importance on OFA ratings. It doesn't seem to correlate to the best running dogs in the field. That seems to depend on the inborn desire to find birds. If there is doubt about an individual's hips, Penn Hip provides specific evaluation of any impairment and the degree of such. A final thought on hips in general; if puppies are started early in the field and allowed to run free with supervision, and trained up through their first two years with exercise on a graduating basis of stress and skill, this will condition their whole bodies. As a result hips rarely fail OFA. For those that do fail, they rarely suffer serious problems during their lives, but are not really competitive runners for field trials.

Now comes the hard part! Until field pups are anywhere from 3 to 6 months old it is almost impossible to pick the best one in the litter and sometimes much later, long after you have sold the best one as a pet and it has been neutered. Still, it is the best idea to try to keep at least 2, if not 3 from a litter for as long as possible until they can be exposed to field work, such as the NAVHDA beginning training or if you have the availability of hunting space with birds, turning a whole group of pups loose at once where they can have, as Delmar Smith calls it “happy time”. His book on training bird dogs is one of the best you can read in this regard and will take you through the whole process better than I can in a couple of pages.

It is easiest to evaluate field trial dogs from horseback, although it is still possible to run dogs in walking stakes at field trials to determine if they have the necessary talents to go on further than the walking puppy and derby stakes. If one waits until a dog is past this crucial age for introduction to the sport of trialing and may only go to an occasional hunt test, the dog rarely emerges as a competitive field trailer, unlike the WCA Shooting Ratings. In my opinion, Junior Hunter stakes are a negative beginning for any pup that is expected to graduate to the real thing. Being allowed to point, grab and re-point birds is not the way to start a competitive field trial dog, as the youngster develops very bad habits that are next to impossible to break

Probably the most important step is to test each puppy in each litter for hunting abilities and to further expose the promising pups to early experience in the field. So take your kids to the field trials and run them in the Puppy and Derby Stakes. Most clubs have AWP & AWD just for this purpose. Get out there!