Advanced Retriever Training E-Book

Laura Hill

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 315

Beschreibung

In Advanced Retriever Training, experienced trainer, competitor and judge, Laura Hill, takes a holistic approach to training and living with working retriever breeds. Whether your aim is to reach competition level or simply to troubleshoot your training practices, this book is the ideal follow-on to the basic commands and handling skills already established. Insightful and in-depth coverage includes reanalysing the basic pillars of breeding, feeding and training; examining your own behaviour and the effect it has on your dog and identifying your dog's psychological needs and tailoring your training accordingly. Key approaches to successful retriever work with positive, reward-based methods are covered along with training planning and management. An advanced approach to training essentials, including heelwork, marking, blind retrieves and navigating barriers are discussed as well as establishing and maintaining an enjoyable partnership with your dog. This book will improve your handling as well as your overall approach to living and working with retrievers.

Leseprobe

Linda Grinham

First published in 2020 byThe Crowood Press LtdRamsbury, MarlboroughWiltshire SN8 2HR

[email protected]

This e-book first published in 2020

© Laura Hill 2020

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 756 9

Cover photograph: Pip Wheatcroft

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Part One: Knowledge

1 The Three Pillars of Success

2 The Other End of the Lead

3 A Dog’s Point of View

4 Approaches to Training

Part Two: Power

5 Start Indoors

6 At Heel

7 Planning and Managing Training

8 Natural Ability

9 Control

10 Barriers and Bunkers

11 The Devil is in the Detail

12 A Winning Combination

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I have to thank my parents who gave me such a fulfilled childhood and start in life, which made possible all the things that I have achieved since. Their love and support for everything that I have done has been unwavering.

I am indebted to two special gundog mentors: the late Dave Probert, who was instrumental in giving me sound and practical advice from the beginning, and Guy Bennett, who helped me in later years to develop my own style and methods, and who has continued to give invaluable advice with troubleshooting. I am thankful, too, to all my colleagues and friends who have helped me at various stages. I have learnt so much over the years, as well as laughing and crying plenty along the way. And hopefully there is still more to come.

Next I must thank Karen and Colin Rodger at Bern Pet Foods, who believed in me so early on, and who have been amazing with their long-term nutritional support of my team. Using ACANA has been instrumental in ensuring that my dogs are always in peak physical condition.

A picture is worth a thousand words. I could not have managed without the generous and patient contribution of Pip Wheatcroft, who has provided so many of the photographs and diagrams to illustrate and accompany my text. Other photographers and friends in the gundog world have also kindly contributed their images, including: Gary Barrett, Caroline Bridges, Marie-Eve Buchs, Caroline Dell, Barry Dutton, Patrice Fellows, Linda Grinham, George Howard, Stephen Hunter, John Jeffrey, Vanessa King, Sharon Kitson, Greg Knight, John Lupton, Sarah Middleton, Spencer Morgan, Neil Rice, Nick Ridley, Sam Thatcher, Sarah Winter and Sue Worrall.

Above all, thank you to my wonderful husband Derek for putting up with me and my ‘dog habit’, being my sounding board and unerring support. Without him, this fascinating journey would never have even begun.

FOREWORD

‘Hello, this is Laura Hill. Do you have a black bitch puppy available please?’

‘Yes.’

And so the journey began. A journey I have had the great privilege of being part of, albeit from the back seat. Laura named the puppy ‘Pru’, and three years later she was Field Trial Champion Jobeshill Octavia.

I had met Laura several times, had been training with her occasionally, but didn’t know her very well. I kept a litter sister to Pru and so we spent more time together. We went to the same trainers and did much of the same things, but it soon became depressingly obvious that Pru was in a different league. I assumed my dog just didn’t ‘have it’! But in hindsight, I realize that I was watching the beginning of the talented trainer that Laura was to become.

Her attention to detail was second to none. She would think about and analyse everything she and Pru did together. She would log weaknesses when they occurred, and go back and work on them, explore the reasons why they were occurring, and adjust her training to overcome them. By doing this she began to form an instinctive insight into how a dog thinks.

Understanding the mental process enables her to break down the dog’s schooling so that she achieves the maximum out of the partnership. The training has complete clarity to the dog so it succeeds very quickly. There are no pressures of failure or negative consequences to inhibit the dog’s understanding of what is being asked of it. Again, the attention to detail is foremost in her methods: everything is broken down into easy-to-assimilate lessons, both for dog and handler. The individual elements are learned and practised and then put together, enabling the dog to have a very positive attitude to all its work. You only have to watch Laura with her own dogs to see how relaxed and happy they are.

Communication is Laura’s forte, and she applies her methods not only to her canine pupils, but also to her human ones. She will gently cajole, use her great sense of humour, and in some cases be quite forthright, but she will always ensure that you and your dog learn, and go away understanding so much more than when you arrived.

Laura has been generous to us all by writing this book, sharing her knowledge, and giving us an insight into how she has achieved success. It will be an inspiration to those who want to get the best out of their relationship with their dog, and aspire to improve the effectiveness of their training.

Jane Fairclough, Jobeshill Gundogs,December 2019

PREFACE

Rapport: A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.

Oxford English Dictionary

My early working title for this book was Lab Rapport, which I felt summed up my approach to living with and training my own dogs. But my editor rightly pointed out that this title might cause confusion with distributors – indeed, some might think it was about relationships in laboratories! So reluctantly, I agreed to change it. She was correct, of course, and my new title is much more appropriate, in that it simply says what it is. Furthermore it is rightly inclusive of all retriever breeds, and not just the ubiquitous Labrador.

Advanced Retriever Training uses a holistic approach that will help owners think about and enhance their bond with their retriever, improve understanding of how their dog learns, and make training more effective and polished, using techniques that work. In it, I set out to provide a philosophy on living with, and training, your dog – a mindset, if you like. It is a compilation of my experience and knowledge from teaching, competing and handling. I have also brought in my learning from studying animal behaviour, psychology and communications to inform the retriever training process. The book contains supplementary information from areas outside gundog training, which provides additional insight, as well as personal anecdotes and case studies. My aim is to help you to build your understanding and enjoyment of retriever training, and help you to improve the relationship that you have with your dog.

Although my experience is primarily with Labradors, I have trained and judged every retriever breed both here in the UK and throughout Europe. This has given me additional experience of the various breeds, further insight into the distinctive ways they work, and different methods and approaches used in training them. Much of my own personal experience is through training retrievers (and handlers) specifically for competition, but this is just an extra layer of producing an excellent retriever for the field. I also enjoy picking up, beating, and, when time and funds allow, shooting locally on the farms and estates around us.

The very first gundog book I bought was Retriever Training by Susan Scales. It helped me get started on my gundog journey, and it now feels a privilege to produce a book that might be regarded as a worthy follow-on book to this and other introductory manuals. Advanced Retriever Training doesn’t repeat the basic mechanics of retriever training that you will have gleaned from other books or materials. In it, I will not reiterate the elementary commands or handling skills that should already be familiar, except where I have a different approach to them, or where we need to look more critically at elements that are sometimes glossed over.

Some readers may want to enhance their bond with their gundog or develop their understanding of how their dog learns, some may be looking to improve their confidence as handlers, and others may be looking for more beyond – to move their training to the next level, and take those additional steps into competition work. If you want to ‘professionalize’ your handling and your overall approach to living and working with retrievers, this book will help you get the best from your gundog and also from yourself as a trainer. It will help you make a ‘champion’ of your dog – whether that is literally, with the aim of training towards achieving Field Trial Champion status, or simply through training to the very highest level – pushing yourself to become a better and more thoughtful trainer.

Part One looks at the background knowledge that will help you to become a more thoughtful and effective trainer. This includes not only analysing the dog in front of you, but also looking at yourself as a pivotal point in the equation, and then in turn at the different ways to approach training. Then in Part Two we will apply that knowledge to inform and empower the retriever training process. We will be working through the strategy and some of the techniques that will be of benefit in training the retriever to a more advanced level.

Our own dogs have enhanced our lives and are now very much our ‘way of life’. I hope you enjoy your training journey as much as I have.

INTRODUCTION

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.

Jesse Owens, athlete

EARLY YEARS

My gundog journey is far from a traditional one, with no family roots or ties to a shooting background. I grew up on a pleasant suburban housing estate near Romsey in Hampshire. Both my parents worked full time, my mum as a school teacher and my dad as an electronics engineer. And whilst I always enjoyed being outside playing, roller-skating, cycling and exploring nature, due to my parents’ work commitments I was never allowed any household pets other than a pair of goldfish and some stick insects.

However, my grandparents always had a dog and a cat, and I used to relish my visits to them in rural Sussex, where grandma would take me off on long woodland walks, often foraging for mushrooms and berries, and generally teaching me about life in the country. Grandpa was an estate agent and the cattle auctioneer at Hailsham market. So I think my love of the countryside definitely had its roots with them.

I was fairly academic at school, and as I moved into the sixth form my enjoyment of language and communication began to grow. I took A levels in English Literature, English Language Studies and French, and considered university places reading either Applied Linguistics or Communications. Eventually I decided on a course at Brunel University (in west London), which included work placements giving me practical experience; in 1991 I graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Communication and Information Studies.

After graduating, I worked in central London as a trainee in Corporate PR for Guinness PLC, and after a few years moved on to a role in Consumer PR for Viners of Sheffield (also based in London). From there I decided to take a sabbatical to see a bit more of the world, and embarked on a year of independent travel, back-packing around the world, before eventually ending up in Zimbabwe in 1996. There I met my husband, Derek.

Photo: Caroline Bridges

OUT IN AFRICA

Derek was born and bred in Zimbabwe, and had always had dogs, owning his first Labrador bitch at the age of eight. She was from working lines, and later Derek went on to breed two litters of his own under the ‘Cobber Hill’ affix. I really bonded with his two old black Labradors, Sasha and her daughter Tammy. And it wasn’t long before we decided that we should have a Labrador of our own.

Phoebe was my very first dog. She was a dual-purpose Labrador, imported from South Africa as a wedding present from Derek’s brother, and with her I started to do a bit of competitive obedience, and showed her at a very amateur level. Only later did I find out about a small, keen group of people doing gundog work. So one day I drove into the bush in my open-top Sunbeam Alpine to go and see what went on at a gundog test. I watched in awe as one competitor lined up their dog and sent it away from him (on an unseen retrieve), and my jaw dropped. I thought it was incredible. I wanted to do that, but didn’t think I would ever be able to achieve that skill.

The only gundog club in Zimbabwe held occasional meetings at the local vet’s house to watch imported videos from the UK, and they would also meet every so often to train or do a test. I remember that on one such occasion I attended my first test as a competitor. It was a cold game test, and I really didn’t have much clue of what I was doing. I sent my dog on a blind retrieve into some long grass and just began calling after her ‘seek, seek, seek’, as this was the hunt command I had picked up. I was still calling nervously as the dog started to emerge from the cover, and the judge piped up behind me: ‘I think you’ll find she’s sought’! Those days were a lot of fun, but I really felt out of my depth without any formal training or structure.

BACK HOME

In 1999, with the political situation deteriorating rapidly in Zimbabwe, we left the country and returned to the UK. Initially living in rented accommodation while we found our feet, it wasn’t until 2001 that we were able to think about owning a dog again. Having had a dual-purpose Labrador in Zimbabwe, we looked to find something similar here, and ended up buying a black bitch, Slievemish Turtledove (Gaby), whose dam was a working bitch and whose sire was a show champion. She was the most beautiful looking dog, and very nicely constructed. She had plenty of working ability and a bomb-proof temperament. But she was a challenge to train, lacking the willingness to work as an equal partner.

Slievemish Turtledove (Gaby), our first Labrador in the UK, was an enthusiastic worker but proved a challenge to train. (Photo: Nick Ridley)

Gaby definitely had talent, but very much on her own terms! She was strong willed, if not belligerent, and being a novice trainer I was not equipped to deal with her many quirks and weaknesses. She definitely wasn’t the easiest dog to train. But I learned a great deal in my struggles to mould her into some sort of working competition dog. She fulfilled a function as a good picking-up dog on our local shoot, and was retired from competition on finally winning an open working test. Her eliminating faults were, however, numerous, and working with her was mostly deeply frustrating. She lived to the ripe old age of nearly seventeen, and is now buried under an apple tree in our garden. Gaby taught me a lot, not least how to have humility!

Subsequent dogs were definitely ‘easier’, but all came with different challenges, which is part of the fabric of gundog training. Even with similar breeding lines behind them, no two dogs that I have owned since have been the same to train. It is learning how to adapt to each dog’s individual learning style, and understanding their motivations and drivers, that is critical to successful training.

Early on we joined Dove Valley and East Midland gundog clubs, where we took part in group training sessions, and eventually worked our way up to trying working tests. At the time I enjoyed training the dog, and Derek and I took it in turns to handle Gaby at the training classes. But I was far too nervous to actually compete myself, so I would send Derek out with the dog to have a go at the tests, and I would stand cringing on the sidelines as she found new ways to embarrass his efforts. On more than one occasion I remember the judge asking him to call the dog back, to which he would give a pained look and say ‘I’m trying’, whilst turning puce with blowing his whistle!

Early days at local working tests gave us an introduction to competing.

My first real mentor into the sport was Dave Probert, a local ‘A’ panel judge. He ran a popular Wednesday morning training session at a local ground, and here a group of us became ‘regulars’. When the ground lease lapsed the group dissolved, which was very sad, as it had become a bit of an institution, with many a lively discussion over coffee afterwards, and a putting of the world to rights. Whilst Dave’s methods might now be considered ‘old fashioned’, they gave us all a very good grounding in how things could be perceived from a dog’s perspective. He was very ‘black and white’, and this enabled us to think about consistency and getting the basic foundation and obedience work right, in a way that made sense to the dog. I later found out that it is this early work that is critical to success.

After some years I graduated from Dave’s, and went on to develop my own style in training, with the help of another mentor, Guy Bennett. I adapted my methods largely as a response to the type of dog that I was breeding, a dog that was more sensitive and biddable in its approach to learning. I will always be grateful to both Dave and Guy, who in very different ways were instrumental in developing my understanding of gundog training.

My next dog after Gaby was a fully working-bred black Labrador bitch called Donnanview Floss (Nellie). She was still fairly ‘hard-headed’ in her approach to her work, but did go on to be my first field trial winner when she and I entered our first novice stake in 2005 and won it. But she lacked the calm temperament needed to trial consistently, and after giving her a couple of additional runs I realized that she was not going to be successful in open stakes.

The winning ‘Team GB’ at the Euro Challenge 2013, where Stauntonvale Story took top retriever.

FOUNDATION BREEDING

The seeds were sown, however, and I soon became ‘serious about gundogs’. With more knowledge under my belt, I was careful in my choice for my next Labrador, and I approached a local trainer, Jane Fairclough, who was about to breed from her very consistent field trial winning bitch, Collaroybanks Willow. I was lucky enough to be able to pick a black bitch from her first litter, Jobeshill Octavia (Pru). She was much easier to train, with a strong desire to work with me, which came as a bit of a novelty after my experiences with both Gaby and Nellie.

I was methodical in her training, and this paid off, and she went on to become my first Field Trial Champion just three years later, and double qualifying for the IGL Retriever Championship 2009. She was also later selected for the England Gundog Team in 2011 and 2013. Pru’s work ethic was phenomenal, and each season Jane used to borrow her back whenever she could to join her picking up team, when I wasn’t working her. Picking up with either Jane or myself, Pru did the work of several dogs right through to her eventual retirement in 2017.

In 2008 I registered my own affix, and Stauntonvale Gundogs was officially born. It was in this year that we also acquired Jobeshill Lotta (Bea), again from Jane. This powerful yellow bitch, a half-sister to Pru, went on to become our second Field Trial Champion in 2012, qualifying for the Championship three times in total, and in turn herself produced two more Field Trial Champions for us, her daughters Stauntonvale Fastnet (Aida) and Stauntonvale Tic Bean (Kitty). Aida qualified for the Championship four times (twice with me and twice with Derek handling), and at the time of writing Kitty has qualified twice, and was a member of the England Gundog Team 2018. As well as these yellow girls from Bea, we also kept a daughter from our first litter from Pru, Stauntonvale Story (Maud), whom in turn I made up to Field Trial Champion in 2015.

Our five Field Trial Champion bitches (left to right): Jobeshill Octavia, Jobeshill Lotta of Stauntonvale, Stauntonvale Fastnet, Stauntonvale Story and Stauntonvale Tic Bean.

Laura handling Field Trial Champion Stauntonvale Moose Milk at the IGL Retriever Championship 2019 at Glenalmond, Scotland. (Photo: John Lupton)

Derek Hill with Field Trial Champion Stauntonvale Fastnet at the IGL Retriever Championship 2016 at Ampton, Suffolk.

In addition, we have two young dogs out of Aida, Stauntonvale Moose Milk (Moose), who double qualified for the Retriever Championship 2019 and is now also a Field Trial Champion, and Stauntonvale Lemon Posset (Sybil), who is an exciting novice prospect. So it’s a truly ‘family affair’. Unlike many competition kennels, ours is a little different because we mainly keep bitches, whereas the majority of people who compete seriously in field trials run male dogs, which is more practical because they don’t come into season or have time off to have pups.

We now own five Field Trial Champion bitches that are all related – two mothers with their three homebred daughters. This is unusual, and possibly unique, in the history of working retrievers.

A FRESH FACE

With my unorthodox start into dog ownership in general, and particularly into the shooting and gundog scene, some might consider that I am not traditionally qualified to give a full insight into living with the working retriever. I certainly wasn’t ‘born into it’. From our early forays in Zimbabwe and then England, dabbling in working tests, we then joined a local shoot to learn the ropes and start picking up with our dogs. We also both applied for shotgun licences, and learned to shoot. Derek is now a keen shot, shooting regularly for field trials too, and had the honour of shooting for the IGL Retriever Championship 2018, held at the local Packington estate in Warwickshire. I am still an ‘improver’ in terms of shooting, as I will always prioritize working the dogs over shooting. But I do enjoy it when I can, and being able to shoot, and understanding shooting, has given me a much more rounded picture of training and judging a dog for the field.

Despite all this, we are well aware that both of us are still relatively ‘new kids on the block’ compared with some of the sport’s stalwarts, who count their experience in decades. I feel grateful to have reached many milestones since setting up my Stauntonvale kennel just over ten years ago, including winning several field trial awards, qualifying for the Retriever Championship more than ten times, being a member of the England Gundog Team, and making up our six Field Trial Champions.

Success has been relatively rapid for us, but by no means accidental. We’ve worked determinedly, and my background in communications has stood me in good stead, not only through thinking about interaction at the level of the animal, but also in being able to communicate effectively that understanding and learning to others. Combining this experience with a naturally analytical mind has helped me to problem solve and to think ‘outside the box’ when it comes to training retrievers.

Handlers waiting in the gallery at the IGL Retriever Championship 2018 at Packington, Warwickshire. (Photo: Marie Eve Buchs)

PART ONE: KNOWLEDGE

1THE THREE PILLARS OF SUCCESS

Breeding, training and feeding are the three crucial building blocks of our kennel. Without the right starting material, you can only go so far. We are constantly trying to improve our breeding, to give us the very best starting material, but you still need the right training. And feeding is important, too – using good quality food that supports the development of muscles, bones and joints at the same time.

Producing a ‘champion’ gundog is underpinned by these essential elements. If one part is lacking you are never going to have a dog that wins consistently or is outstanding. You might obtain the occasional win or placing, but you will struggle to be successful year in, year out.

Let us look at each element in turn.

BREEDING

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Coco Chanel, fashion designer

As I shed a few tears in my former mentor Dave Probert’s training cabin one day after a particularly frustrating session with Gaby, he turned to me and said: ‘You won’t get a donkey to win the Derby.’ In his typical manner he was being honest and to the point, not unkind. Other less kind sayings also spring to mind, such as: ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

Gaby was sired by a show champion out of a run-of-the-mill working bitch. In my mind I had perhaps hoped for a genuine ‘dual purpose’ Labrador from this combination: the best of both worlds. In reality she turned out to be a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. She was a nicely constructed dog, with a lovely temperament, had plenty of drive and ability, but lacked any desire to work with me as a team. She also had a stack of eliminating faults, although some of these, admittedly, may have been exacerbated by my lack of experience.

Dave’s point was a pertinent one: with the best training in the world you will only go as far as the capability of the individual dog. You can try as hard as possible to get the best out of it, but generally there is a ceiling beyond which you won’t progress.

To go to the top, you need to have the very best starting material. If you look around in training groups, you will often see a brilliant dog with lots of natural ability that is only being hampered by an inexperienced or inept trainer. Conversely, you may see an established trainer getting the best out of a dog that would be very poor, or at best average, in a less able person’s hands. Ultimately, neither of these examples is going to go all the way, but either may make a passable dog to take into a shooting field. But if we want to go further, and strive to do and be the best we can, then we need to look critically at our ‘starting material’.

In all types of animal breeding, whether it is for a sport, such as horse racing, or for showing, such as pigeons or dogs, a great deal of time, effort, thought and money goes into breeding programmes.

It is best to do a lot of homework and research before selecting a potential breeder and eventually purchasing a puppy to be your new working gundog. More often than not, once you have found the breeder that is right for you, you will have to ask to go on their waiting list for a puppy, as they are likely to be over-subscribed.

So, how do we characterize successful breeding, and what are the key elements to producing the best working dogs? It is not just a case of looking through the pedigrees of potential puppies and picking the ones with the most ‘red’ in them (Field Trial Champions are traditionally shown in red on breeders’ pedigrees). There are some people who seem obsessed with collecting as many champions as possible in a pedigree, without any knowledge of the traits behind them. In turn, there are some breeders who will also put their field trial winners, award winners, or even in some cases working test winners in red too, just to make the pedigree look good to the uninitiated buyer. Interpreting a pedigree can therefore sometimes prove tricky.

A breeder pedigree, with Field Trial Champions marked in red.

It is unlikely that an initial study of a pedigree, or of the parents themselves, will provide an inexperienced puppy buyer with a realistic assessment of the probable inheritance of certain characteristics that they may desire. Without in-depth knowledge of the names in the pedigree, and whether these dogs are known for passing on their traits with any consistency to future generations, it is impossible to interpret potential outcomes accurately.

Good breeders are those who consistently produce superior dogs, time and again, from different couplings. They have a good eye and sometimes some intuition, but more than anything they have a vast knowledge of the working breed and have put a great deal of research and planning into their litters. They are well aware that it is not just the innate qualities or traits of the dog himself (phenotype), but what he is passing on (genotype) or adding to the mix on a variety of dams which is important.

As a potential puppy buyer, you would do better to ask the owners of the sire or dam what the characteristics of any offspring have been, rather than what the parents themselves are like. Obviously this is only possible with older, seasoned stud dogs or bitches that are on their second or subsequent litter. But it will give you a more rounded picture of the sort of traits that you might be able to expect from your new pup.

OUTCROSSING VERSUS LINEBREEDING

Another thing to bear in mind when looking at pedigrees is the method the breeder has used to put the proposed mating together. This will be either an ‘outcross’, where the two dogs are totally unrelated, or ‘linebreeding’, where the parents share some common ancestry. The third method, which we will disregard in this discussion, is inbreeding, which is defined as a breeding of a parent to a son/ daughter or a brother to a sister. This is specifically forbidden by the UK Kennel Club.

Reputable breeders are looking to improve the quality of the dogs they breed, whilst also acting as custodians of the breed as a whole.

Let us look at what these breeding methods mean for potential litters. In an outcross, the two dogs are not related, and their combined Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) is around the breed average, or lower. (You can check this out on the Kennel Club’s excellent online MateSelect tool.) For Labradors, the UK COI is currently 6.5 per cent, for Golden Retrievers it is 8.8 per cent, and for Flat Coated Retrievers it is 6.2 per cent. Puppies from an outcross mating will have no common ancestors in the first four lines of their pedigree, and so their pedigree is a mix of two non-related gene pools. This sort of mating brings diversity to the mix. And breeders will periodically outcross to bring ‘fresh blood’ or new traits into their lines, and to mitigate any faults that are provoked by homozygous recessive genes – that is, cancelling out a negative trait. It can, however, also weaken or diminish positive traits.

The reasons to do an outcross are to bring in a trait or characteristic that was absent in the breeder’s lines, and to improve ‘vigour’ where there has been a demonstrable lack of disease resistance or some infertility in a line. It is thought to be a means to an end by some, and ultimately results in less uniformity in offspring as the genes are more random and diverse.

Linebreeding is a term used to describe a mild form of inbreeding, whereby breeders will choose matings where one or more relatives occur more than once in a pedigree. Jay Lush, a student of Sewall Wright (who devised the coefficient of inbreeding), describes linebreeding as a system that pairs animals that ‘are both closely related to the admired ancestor but are little if at all related to each other through any other ancestors.’ Lush made an important contribution to the scientific breeding of animals with his book Animal Breeding Plans (1937), much of which is still valid for today’s breeders.

Thus linebreeding is used to ‘set’ various traits. With the dogs sharing some common ancestry, breeders have a good idea of what they will get from the mating, and are dealing more with ‘known quantities’. Used thoughtfully, breeders can use this method to fix type, temperament, working qualities or structure into their progeny, with parents producing pups of very similar type. The outcome is less random than with outcrossing. Linebreeding is a means for breeders to establish their own lines within the working breed, and a way of fixing in the characteristics they desire most. However, the tighter the breeding, the more likelihood there is of passing on recessive inheritable conditions, too. So there is the potential for doubling up on both good and bad. If line-bred dogs only inherited the best features of their parents, then that would be fine. But of course, it does also increase the risk of genetic defects and hereditary diseases being passed on to future generations.

CONSISTENCY VERSUS DIVERSITY

This provides a dilemma for the thoughtful breeder. Whilst outcrossing is good for the future of the breed as a whole, to maintain genetic diversity, it is not good at improving quality and consistency in particular lines. And whilst linebreeding improves consistency in our progeny, it doesn’t contribute in a positive way to the longterm future of our breed.

A moderate approach should be adopted, with both points of view in mind. Trying to improve the overall quality of the animals we produce, whilst all the while having the future of the breed in mind, is what reputable breeders should be striving for. We should try to avoid ‘popular sire syndrome’ where one dog is used too much because he is fashionable or the winner of the Retriever Championship. The recessive genes he passes on will inevitably meet up again when descendants and half-siblings are mated, and we will breed ourselves into a corner.

Great breeders will know and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the first few lines of the dogs in their pedigrees, where specific traits come from, both desirable and unwanted. The successful breeder wishing to ensure high quality puppies will also do their homework and look for a prepotent sire, who has a good track record of producing outstanding progeny to a range of bitches, imposing their own characteristics over the recessive genes of their dams. Or conversely, those with strong dams may look for a stud dog that appears to add nothing much to the mix, if they want the qualities of their excellent bitches to shine through.

HEALTH

In addition to producing a ‘type’, good breeders will have a very strong handle on health issues affecting their breed. This is an extremely important part of the mix, because without a sound dog all your hard work (in training) will amount to nothing – to say nothing of the heartache that a crippling or life-threatening condition can cause.

I would not consider purchasing a puppy from a breeder who had not ensured that all the baseline health tests recommended for the breed had been conducted for both sire and dam, as well as understanding the DNA status for some of the recessive conditions that can be passed on. For example, for Labradors this would mean hip and elbow X-rays and scores for both sire and dam, as well as current clear eye tests. In addition, one of the parents should have been tested clear for hereditary conditions such as progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), centronuclear myopathy (CNM), exercise-induced collapse (EIC) and skeletal dysplasia/dwarfism (SD2), to ensure that their progeny is born unaffected by these diseases.

The myKC online service is an excellent resource provided by the UK Kennel Club, and is free to use once you have registered. It provides health-related information on all dogs registered with the Kennel Club. You can use it to find all the relevant information for the sire and dam of your proposed litter, so you can check that all health tests have been carried out, and see the results.

myKC online portal provides health information on UK Kennel Club-registered dogs for breeders and puppy buyers to use. (Photo: UK Kennel Club, September 2019)

Within this vast database is the ‘estimated breeding value’ (EBV) tool, which evaluates the genetic value of an individual dog in relation to the whole of that dog’s breed for hip and elbow dysplasia – arguably the two most structurally debilitating diseases that are known to affect Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Irish Water Spaniels and to a lesser extent Flat Coated Retrievers.

EBVs are intended to help breeders mitigate against the risk of these disorders, by providing statistical information. They are created using the hip and elbow scores not only for the dog in question but for all of its relatives (including sire, dam, siblings, progeny and so on). So it gives a much fuller picture than just looking at an individual dog’s score.

Ideally breeders should be working to reduce the risk of potential joint issues by selecting a sire and dam that have better than average EBV scores – ‘in the green band’ – with a high degree of confidence. (Photo: UK Kennel Club, September 2019)