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Film of the 1963 National Retriever Field Trial Championship!

4K views 13 replies 8 participants last post by  DuckTruk 
#1 ·
FILM OF 1963 NATIONAL RETRIEVER FIELD TRIAL CHAMPIONSHIP: I just got my converted DVD copy in the mail today and finished watching it. It is obviously the raw footage produced for a TV show, perhaps the American Sportsman? It is twenty-five minutes long, black and white with sound. The expert commentator is the actor Andy Devine, who it is known was a regular member of the gunners at National events. Some of the scenes are a little dark, and the flicker can be annoying. But by and large it is very good. Because it is only twenty-five minutes, and the audience is by and large uneducated about field trials, the audience only gets a taste of each series.
 
#3 ·
A little off topic but I have a very clear memory of my first haircut at the barbers shop. It was probably around 1953 or so, and my Dad took me in. I was freaked out thinking cutting hair would be like cutting off fingers. Anyway, my Dad was have trouble calming me down when kindly old Andy Devine stepped up out of his chair and came over to talk to me. I knew him as Jingles on the Wild Bill Hickock show, he was super nice and he did calm me down about the whole haircut thing. Just one of those cool memories, he seemed like a very nice gentleman with that distnctive raspy voice.

John
 
#5 ·
And meeting Gertrude in the mens' room was my childhood memory of a celebrity. Then again, that probably explains a lot if you know who Gertrude was.
 
#12 ·
Hi Aussie.

In my opinion, the "type" (conformation) of the dogs has not changed, in the sense of the dogs of the past and the field-bred Labs of today. They look nothing like the show-bred Labs of today, just as field-bred Labs don't. If anything the Labs of the fifties and sixties might average an inch or two taller than the average Lab of today. (There are too few of the other retriever breeds on the films to draw any conclusions.)

The desire, intelligence, trainability, etc. of the dogs, again, seems identical to today! Nothing about the dogs has changed. They were stylish and loving every minute of it.

The National Am and National Open tests on the films appear very much like a Seasoned-level test from HRC, more than anything from AKC. They do not look like modern field trials, they look like modern HRC hunt tests. The distances are shorter, they have walk-ups where the handler live-fires the gun (in one he even shoots the live flyer).

The dogs are obviously not collar-trained as they grow "independent and rangy" the further they get from the handler, ignoring whistles. We hadn't learned how to effectively "reach out and correct them" yet.

In sum, the dogs have not changed, but the game has changed tremendously as has the handling. The handling is cleaner and more "professional."

But the game and the handling had to evolve, because we still have not found that bar the dogs cannot hurdle. We keep pushing them to learn more and more, harder and harder concepts, we piggyback the concepts, it doesn't matter. As long as we are fair to them in their testing, they learn everything we throw at them, and they do it with style.

Shortly all three films will be available to the retriever community.
 
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