Darin,
I will seldom dictate the order when I am judging a double blind. One of my favorite scenarios that I have used about three times in the past 9-10 master assignments is to have a one blind on land and another on water, but the line to both blinds are very close to each other, perhaps seperated by 10 to 15 degrees. The blinds have a loing entry to water, perhaps as much as 50 yards or better, so lots of time for a dog to make a decision, or for the handler to make a correction in the dog's initial line. The land blind staying on land all the way, but perhaps getting within 10 feet or so of the bank, the water blind being tight to shore or in a channel. The decision is for the handler to decide, however I make them tell me which way they are going before they ship the dog. In my mind there are a number of different dogs and the handler must know what their dog will do and make a decision on what they want to do. Perhaps they have a really watery dog so they want to run the water first and get it out of the way and go into the land blind with some momentum, then again, if they put that watery dog in the water might they have more trouble keeping them out of it when they run the land blind? Perhaps they have a dog that doesn't like the water, so do they push them into the water and get it done with and hope they look spectacular on land with a stronger blind there as their dog likes to stay dry, or do they run the land first and again build up some momentum? Then again, if they run the land first with a dog that already avoids the water, do they teach the dog to stay dry? I have had some hanlders wait to tell me until they have the dog on the line, which I allow. They look at the dog and if the dog looks to water and in the handler's mind tell them they have a good idea they need to get wet, then the handler will take water first. If the dog looks to shy away from the water, they elect to take land first.
Like I said, it takes a handler to know the dog they are handling and what is going to give them the best results.
Gordie
I have set some tests where I have dictated the order, and on one test we had a short blind that was upwind of a long blind. The scenario was we had shot two birds and the closer one fell dead but the longer bird had caught the wind and we made a poor shot and it came down a runner. We wanted that long bird picked up first as we knew where it had landed and wanted our dog to get there as quickly as possible so it could to have the freshest trail possible in case it had ran gone far. Of course the dog had to get past of the short upwind bird. Much to our elation the bird had landed in heavy cover, burrowed in and the dog would make an exceptional blind retrieve. This was a lnad-water series and the dogs had to cross a creek up front so we had no other way to get to those two birds without hitching up our drawers and getting wet, thus the requirement to use a dog on a blind retrieve in our hunting scenario.