What does this mean?

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duckn66

Well-known member
I'm a retriever guy and when someone says their dog will handle I think blind retrieves, stop on the whistle and take hand signals.

In the pointing dog world what does it mean exactly when someone says, does he handle or this dog handles?
 
Handling in the field trial world of all-Age pointers and setters, means you have a scout which rides a fast horse, pall mall over the hills in order to find said pointed dog, and then gather the gallery to witness it, or keeps the dog making judicial casts forward, giving a breath taking glimpse, barely, in the general vicinity of the course the judges/gallery are on. That way he is recoverable when time is up. Otherwise he is "lost from judgement", (meaning over the hill), not eligible for winning, and may be recovered at some other point, down range, relocated on a GPS, (no I'm not kidding), or 3 days later when another field trialer going down the hiway find him jogging along 7 miles away, and thinks he looks familiar. a lot of these dogs are lost from judgement within the 1st hour of a 3 hour stake. Others find 17 coveys in that time. Now that is extreme handling! If your pheasant hunting buddy come with a scout and a horse trailer it's a bad sign.
 
Often dogs are described as handling kindly, which in case means it is very easy to turn them or they stay to the front.
And, yes, I've had to pull the GPS in a trial to find a dog as he was out of judgement for too long. And I've barely found dogs before a garmin was pulled out, and after time has expired. After time has expired, you usually have 20 minutes to produce (find) your dog. (Time amount varies on trial, venue, blah blah blah)

A scouts job is to find the dog on point, or try to find the dog and get them back to the front. The scout can not technically scout in front of the handler.
 
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