bhennessy wrote:johnnycake wrote:There are a few WPGs in our NAVHDA chapter and I've yet to see one that impressed me in the water, and very few of them have much drive in the field either. Plus, the long coats on WPGs tend to hold the water in more, taking longer to dry. This leads to a cold dog pretty quick when temps are low.
All depends on the kennel I’ve come to believe. These wiry v-dogs are all much more similar than they are different, assuming a great breeding program. Look at Stonyridge griffs - tighter coats that don’t collect burrs, mine’s a monster in the water, has great pointing and retrieve instinct and is super sharp on anything wearing fur besides other dogs. We don’t have any cats so maybe he’d be different if he’d been around one from day one.
That said, I’ve got a pudelpointer in my future as soon as I can convince the smarter half that three V-mutts is are what we need.
We've got about ~15 active WPGs in our chapter right now, and at least one is from Stonyridge I believe, and I know several are from Hun Hill. Besides these dogs, I hunted with or visited with more than 30 other WPGS as I was looking for my dog (my process took 5 years of pretty obsessive researching before I found and decided on a PP). They are definitely good versatile dogs, but I still stand by my statements. While there are definitely outliers at both end of the spectrum as far as field or water drive, the most driven WPG in the field I've seen was still less driven than the upper 10-20% of PPs I've seen. And when I switch to water comparisons, the best WPG I've seen I would place below average for water drive if it were a PP. But the WPGs seem to me to be a bit better/easier to train for house/blind manners than PPs. I think the WPGs I've seen training/working blood/tracking/drags take to it easier than PPs--not necessarily because I think one breed has a better nose than the other, but more because I thing WPGs tend to be more methodical and concentrate on the track better, whereas PPs lack some of that patience and want to break into a search pattern more readily. All things that can be worked through.
And in the interest of "fairness" I would say that the "best" PP i've seen work a field might match the top 10% of DDs or GSPs--but those positions are flipped in the PP's favor in the water. PPs IMO are the most water driven of the versatile breeds. But these are all just my anecdotal opinions. These breeds are all pretty close, but do still have their differences.