Posted By pixie bee on 10/03/2009 4:12 PM
Do you have to flush the bird in JH?Can you collar to prevent a chasing dog? How long does a dog need to hold point to get the highest score? If the dog is pointing for say 5-10 seconds and the dog, for whatever reason, breaks what score does the dog recieve in pointing?
JH can be nerve wracking. Last year when I was running Ringo the weather conditions were not favorable to the dogs and many of the JH candidates were not finding birds (very high winds). We were also next to last to run so the temps had gone way up as well. So, I have to say I was worried about my boy. His nose was fine though in those conditions. He still needs one more qualifying leg. The problem we ran into was at the end of the season he discovered he could catch pen raised quail. So, he did. At least he retrieved them to hand. I guess his logic was why make mom carry a gun and waste a shell if I can do it all. So, we are working on the pointing portion.
As to your questions:
Do you have to flush the bird in JH? Yes, and you also have to cap your pistol.
Can you collar to prevent a chasing dog? Only if the judge allows it. That said, it is not a ding if the dog chases and most JHs do chase when the bird is flushed and sometimes before.
How long does a dog need to hold point to get the highest score? Only a few seconds normally, but the judge has to see the dog on point. So, when your dog finds a bird it is important to holler out point. If the dog moves after establishing point and flushes the bird, that is ok, but you have to cap the pistol at the flush of the bird (whether you flush, the dog flushes, or it flies on its own). The dog can chase with no penalty. However, if you are yelling for your dog to come back and he is not responding then you can get dinged in the trainability category. So, keeping your mouth shut in this situation is actually better. Also, I find that continuing to move on the course works better than chasing the dog as well. It doesn't usually take too long for the dog to realize the game is progressing without him.
If the dog is pointing for say 5-10 seconds and the dog, for whatever reason, breaks what score does the dog recieve in pointing? The score is really dependent on the judge, but there is no deduction for chasing at the JH level. Again, the only requirement at the JH level is to establish the point, holding comes later.
The best two pieces of advice I got when preparing for JH was keep my mouth shut and trust your dog. I already mentioned why talking too much can get you in trouble, but the trust is just as important. Ringo in his first JH run pointed into a cedar tree. Now most dogs don't find birds in cedar as the scent of the cedar masks the scent of the bird. However, Ringo had found birds in cedars during practice several weeks earlier. The judge said probably no birds in there as there were none planted in that area. I trusted my dog, went in to flush, and we produced a bird and got the leg (it was probably a bird from an earlier brace that had moved, but it still counts). That was the only bird found by that brace.
The categories a dog is scored on for JH are Hunting, Bird finding ability, Pointing and Trainability.
In order to receive a Qualifying score a dog must acquire a minimum of not less than 5 on each of the categories of ability with an overall average of not less than 7 (which means that have to score higher than a 5 in some of the categories). Judges (there are 2 judges) must agree on which dogs will qualify and which dogs will not qualify before scores are turned in.
If you want more info on the scoring or the rules in general, here is a link to the rule book:
www.akc.org/pdfs/rulebooks/RHTPNT.pdf |