In reading that interview with Judy I'm struck by a number of things, first she is just so matter of fact about the outstanding success she has had with many, many dogs over a number of decades. There is no bragging or ego showing, she just states how and what she did with her dogs. Along those lines, she doesn't make excuses for Goldens, just states facts, when asked what kind of dog makes for a good field trial dog, I found the following quote from the article to be very truthfull,
"If there is a bias in this sport, it is towards compliant dogs with lots of desire. Compliant and desire do not seem to go hand in hand with Goldens. This has been the curse of finding competitive Goldens. High desire dogs don't want to handle and compliant handling dogs don't seem to want the bird enough to go through hell and high water. Then if you do find the high desire compliant dog, you have to keep that dog healthy.
There have been a large number of prominent field trialers who started with either Chessies or Goldens, and then switched to Labradors so they could have better odds of being competitive. This gives the impression that the sport is biased toward Labs. But again, this sport rewards high desire and tractable dogs... traits that are more easily found in the Labrador Retriever."
Having owned and run a number of Goldens in field trials over a number of years, I can tell you Judy is right on the money about this. Couple that with the fact that most of us Golden people stick with our puppy for life regardless of where they fall on this drive-compliant scale, and you can see why Golden FC-AFCs are relatively rare. That said, I find it interesting and remarkable that people like Judy, Jim Pickering and John Gunn so routinely buck the odds. Just a short while ago Judy had three titled Goldens and one titled Lab all competing at the same time. That kind of success is based on more than just getting lucky with the right dog, they know how to breed, train and handle.
John
