Was looking the results from the Tejas SR test on Saturday. 12 passes out of 42 with 5 scratches. That sounds like a brutal test. Less than 1/3 pass. Can anyone who was there comment on what made the test so challenging?
Tejas SR test
somewhereinhouston
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Was looking the results from the Tejas SR test on Saturday. 12 passes out of 42 with 5 scratches. That sounds like a brutal test. Less than 1/3 pass. Can anyone who was there comment on what made the test so challenging?
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I didn't get to go, but my pro told me that neither of my two dogs were able to see the walk up bird go down. I also heard from some others that it was pretty rough.
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I wasn't there but have run in tests with similar results. Seems there is always one facet of the test that is difficult. My judge friends tell me that senior is the hardest to set up and judge. In one test, in talking with some fellow participants, that were coming out of junior, they were not prepared to be there. Some amateurs had never shot a flier for their dog or had seen bird crates in the field. So a blind on the back side of a flier station threw them for a loop.
Some of the pro trained dogs just had a bad day.
Some of the pro trained dogs just had a bad day.
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I wasn't there but I find with many senior test that about 50-60% of the dogs are not ready for that level, or at least that test. Of the remaining 40-50%, 5% are ready but lose their minds, 5% miss seeing a mark, leaving 30-40% able to pass a test. It is hard to call a senior test difficult/bad because there are so many different levels of "senior" dogs. You have some ready for master, some just entering senior for the first time, some running blinds like champs, others that are running their very first blind in a HT. There are just far too many factors to analyze to blame it on any one thing. Mostly it is the dogs though
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I have very limited experience with hunt tests. I just have Started, JR from the spring and two days of SR from last weekend. I have just noticed that it seems to be one thing that tends to get most dogs to fail (not all).
I only have experienced one test with a high failure rate (JR. test < 45% pass) and it was one water mark that got 90% of the dogs to fail. I was wondering if this test had something like that or was it just the overall setup with the rainy weather thrown in.
I only have experienced one test with a high failure rate (JR. test < 45% pass) and it was one water mark that got 90% of the dogs to fail. I was wondering if this test had something like that or was it just the overall setup with the rainy weather thrown in.
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I didn't see many of the dogs running on the land, but it was my understanding that a lot if them had handles on the marks. I did see almost all of the water test and can say that the dogs who had trouble had huge hunts and eventually handles and/or pick ups on the marks.
I think while I was there only one dog who ran the water blind was dropped for its water blind work.
It was a hard set of marks both on land and on water. I understand there were many dogs with handles on the land test. Even when the dogs got to the go bird area on the water, they had a tough time actually finding it in the deep thick grass and aromatic weeds.
I think while I was there only one dog who ran the water blind was dropped for its water blind work.
It was a hard set of marks both on land and on water. I understand there were many dogs with handles on the land test. Even when the dogs got to the go bird area on the water, they had a tough time actually finding it in the deep thick grass and aromatic weeds.
I ran the SR test Saturday at Tejas. Beauiful ranch and great club! Land series was tight a double(with a live flyer) with thigh high thick bermuda cover. The line of the blind was behind the memory bird station by 10 yards but the mark was 30 yrds past the bird station. The bird was placed on the left back of johnson grass mott. 98% of dogs had trouble picking the bird up. Once you got the dogs to the Mott of grass they wanted to go around it to the right. Then most of them would wind it and jump in for it. If you picked up the marks and the blind with CONTROL you where called back. The water series was tough. 38 Yard walk up(thrown left to right) straight in front of the line with maybe 20-25 yard swim. Go bird was 75-85 yards (Thrown right to left) into some thick cover of bermuda and sunflower and some type of snow pea looking cover. Lots of hunting and handling on both marks. Wind was left to right. Blind was angle left to a point and 90% swim. If the dog got to the point then they found the bird. If you had a poor land series and then had to handle a bunch on the water marks then they did not let you run the water blind. Lots of dogs where lost on the water series. Judges were straight forward and fair just a tough water series. I was one of the fortunate to get a pass....My first senior pass.
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Congratulations on your pass, Clint!
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Clint
That's what I was looking for. So overall a challenging test.
That's what I was looking for. So overall a challenging test.
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If the judges set up a test where nearly 70% of the non-scratched dogs failed, hard to see how that is "fair." Maybe the judges had something to prove?
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It was a difficult test, I also had a dog in that passed but she is very close to master level in training now I just looked at it as one of the harder tests one runs into in this game and dont really think of it as "fair" or not "fair. Some judges have more difficult tests than others, the contestants are either ready or not. Kick some grass on it and move on.
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Sometimes when judges set up tests they don't think it is going to be difficult. I've been in those where only 8 dogs passed.
Sometimes in training I do a setup and the dogs crash and burn. Sometimes it hard to visualize how dogs will see things.
Just move on to the next one.
Sometimes in training I do a setup and the dogs crash and burn. Sometimes it hard to visualize how dogs will see things.
Just move on to the next one.
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For starters, what should the pass percentage be to declare it a "fair" test? I'm looking for something out of the rules here.
How many times have we all set up something in training thinking we should not have a big problem and the dogs just have a hard time? Or the opposite, where we set up something we think should be hard and the dogs crush it?
You also don't know, as another person pointed out, whether you had a bunch of dogs/handlers just out of Junior and not quite ready for Senior (sounds like it may have been part of what was going on here). You don't know if the wind shifted or what the other conditions were. Finally, you just can't always tell what is going to really mess with a given group of dogs.
As long as all the dogs were able to run approximately similar tests in each series, how much more fair could you really be?
How many times have we all set up something in training thinking we should not have a big problem and the dogs just have a hard time? Or the opposite, where we set up something we think should be hard and the dogs crush it?
You also don't know, as another person pointed out, whether you had a bunch of dogs/handlers just out of Junior and not quite ready for Senior (sounds like it may have been part of what was going on here). You don't know if the wind shifted or what the other conditions were. Finally, you just can't always tell what is going to really mess with a given group of dogs.
As long as all the dogs were able to run approximately similar tests in each series, how much more fair could you really be?
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Wasn't there but see BBG's post above. A SH test with a very low or very high pass rate never surprises me. Fair and the standard are two different things as 'fair' is often in the eye of the beholder. Setting up and judging SH to the standard can easily lead to such results.
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Maybe the level of dog work was not to a senior standard. Should the judges have to adjust the test to allow a certain percentage to pass, even if they are not to a true senior level? I don't think so. You can't put a percentage of how many should pass or fail on any level of test. The best that can be done is, set up a challenging test for the level to be tested and hope that all pass according to the standard.
Russell
Russell
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