I raised this issue frequently this weekend with my FT friends, and this is indeed the answer they each and everyone gave me.
And I do indeed think there is some gray, the dividing line is not hard and fast, black and white. But at the same time, I am
not willing to conceed that it is entirely gray, as my good friends wish to say.
The fact is, it doesn't take any genius, anyone with any bit of experience can often tell --
when a dog didn't mark!
Take the last fall, of the last series, of the Amateur at Midwest this weekend. It was the long, middle bird, across a pond. Throw was from top of levee, landing on front of levee, with the thrower retiring.
Correct line to the fall was to the right of a huge tall mound/island in the middle of the pond.
Nine dogs were called back to run this series, none did this bird well. A few handled. One picked up. But the question relates to the dogs that did not handle, and I would argue did not mark; The dogs that put on long, monster hunt until, I would argue, they stumbled on the bird. As has become typical in FTs, this was the majority of dogs.
A typical example of the work we witnessed: the dog returns first two birds of triple well, and is sent for the long retired mark described above. The dog takes a line left of island. "Ding!" The first sign the dog may not have marked. Before reaching levee, the dog puts up an extended hunt in the water. "Ding!" The second sign the dog may not have marked. The dog reaches the levee now forty yards off-line and downwind, and turns left away from fall. "Ding!" The third sign the dog may not have marked. Then the dog puts up an extended hunt behind the levee. "Ding!" After a good ten minutes hunting there ("Ding!"), the dog decides to hunt a different area -- this time where the bird fell.
According to my FT friends, this work was prefered to how I would have done. When my dog hit the levee, and turned away from the bird, enough alarms would have sounded off in my head to tell me she didn't mark and needed to be handled. And guess what? I would have disturbed less cover; I would have fulfilled my role in the teamwork of recovering the game (One FT friend told me "It is entirely the dog's role to recover marks." Hmmm. But that is a different subject.); It would have taken less time to recover the game, and my dog would be back sooner to continue working; The work would have been "cleaner" and more impressive.
Yet, the dogs that put up the monster hunt were scored higher than the dogs that handled.
The mindset of FTers is as soon as you handle you have admitted your dog did not mark. "Duh." :wink: But do we really need to wait for you to blow your whistle to know that!
FTers say "As long as you don't handle, you can make the argument the dog figured it out and corrected his mistake, and therefore indeed marked." That is true! But is it realistic in even a tiny percent of the cases? Did you witness the dog stopping, and re-orienting himself, or did he just have his nose to the ground for the whole fifteen minutes?
Look, I love FTs more than HTs, and I can't wait until I get to play the game. But there are just some things about FTs that are wrong, and this is one of them. When it is obvious your dog did not mark, you got to handle. And more importantly, the judges need to stop penalizing the handlers that do.
Kevin