Razorback wrote:I had a breeder tell me that they will typically stop testing if the dog scores a UT III the first try...mainly because of having to travel so far for the test and the rest of the hunting ability/drive is gauged in the field.
I certainly know that feeling. The nearest NAVHDA group to me is more than 5 hours away, so I don't get to train with a NAVHDA group. When I first started, that put me at a real disadvantage when it came to testing. You can only glean so much from reading the AIMS booklet. Being able to have experienced NAVHDA people evaluate your dog on a training day will go a very long way toward helping your dog get a Prize I on test day (assuming you have the motivation and ability to address the issues they point out). I never had that luxury.
Different people seek test scores for different reasons. Here are two approaches I've seen, and my personal opinion on each:
(1) Some people look at NAVHDA scores as a way to evaluate the dog's strengths and weaknesses - For this to make any sense to me, you need each dog to be tested multiple times (which isn't practical for a lot of people). Running UT once and getting a Prize I tells me that the dog is capable of it, but it doesn't tell me whether the dog had an exceptionally good day that day, whether the dog has inherent problems that just didn't show up that day, whether the dog had any "lucky breaks" involved to get that score, etc. Likewise, a single Prize III or no prize doesn't tell me whether the dog had a bad day, whether there were other variables involved that affected the score, whether the handler screwed up and not the dog, etc.
(2) Some people approach the the UT test like a lawyer trying to pass the BAR exam - Some breed organizations "require" a minimum score for the dog to be considered for breeding. So in some cases people just keep taking the test over and over until they get the minimum score. This really doesn't tell me much about the dog either. You never know whether the dog had problems, whether the training was inadequate, or whether the handler just never got it right. If you see a dog that tested 5 times and failed the duck search every time, you know they have a duck search problem. But you still don't know whether that was an ability, training, or handler issue.
There is no right answer here, but the one thing I will say is that the best way to pick a breeder/litter is to evaluate the dogs in person for yourself. If you don't have the ability (because of time or geographic restraints) to see the dogs in person, the next best thing is to seek the advice of someone you can trust who also knows the dogs in question.
