Who Should Own Our Dogs?
Britishlabradors.com breeds Labradors that are kind and
biddable (trainable), make excellent family pets and excel in field and obedience tests.
These dogs are best owned by people who desire obedient companion animals that are controllable both at home and in the field, whether in quest of doves, ducks, geese, pheasants or other upland game.
Many of the kennel's customers run their dogs in AKC and other hunt tests. Master titles and other honors are common for these dogs and their handlers.
Relatively few of the kennel's dogs are run in American field trials, and for various reasons.
One is that British Labradors tend to be smaller and less physical than their American counterparts. This argues against their chances of winning American field trials, which have grown to be very physically demanding.
British Labradors, to their credit, also are significantly "softer" than American Labradors and other retrievers. For this reason, their ability to thrive in the very rigorous training regimen required of American field-trial retrievers is compromised.
In part this is because many, if not a significant majority, of British Labradors can't withstand the challenging electric-collar-training environment that plays such a large role in developing winning American field-trial retrievers.
So central, in fact, to American retriever training has the electric collar become that today many American trainers, professional and amateur alike, either cannot or will not train without the collar.
Most of these people should not own or train a britishlabradors.com retriever. Or, for that matter, any of the kennel's springer spaniels.
This is not to say that a britishlabrador.com retriever cannot be trained with the collar. Many have, and have become very successful companion-hunters and hunt-test dogs and even field-trial winners.
But in almost every instance, these animals have been trained by handlers who are keen observers of individual dogs, their characteristics and temperaments. These trainers tend to adapt their training methods to each dog, rather than require each dog to adapt to them.
Having said that, the best use of our dogs remains in a positive, patient training environment, in which expectation parameters are established for the dog, the animal is set up to succeed within those parameters, and then praised for it.
It should not go unnoticed that in England these very animals are trained to be steady and quiet in the face of extreme gunning pressure.
Not uncommonly in England, 100 or more pheasants are shot during a drive before a dog is given his or her first retrieve. During that time, the animal must remain alert but absolutely quiet, with not even a whimper made.
When finally sent to retrieve, the animal is expected to ignore flushed pheasants, grouse, rabbits and hare while continuing its quest for a downed bird.
This sort of control is achieved without use of the electric collar, resulting in a dog that not only is obedient and alert to hand and whistle signals, but extremely lively in the field, with nose down and a "happy" tail.
This is the kind of retriever the American shooting man or woman should own--dogs with great noses, great athleticism and even greater desire to please.
