How To Drive Field Handlers Over the Edge

If your dogs compete in the show ring, it’s a good bet that, sooner or later, a judge will have you shaking your head in bewilderment or, on occasion, furious. 

Then again, that someone would strongly disagree with a conformation judge’s decision is not exactly shocking, since, in the show ring, all judging is subjective, and you are paying for someone’s opinion. 

So, while owners and handlers of show dogs might be confused or angered by what a judge puts up, they also have a pretty good idea what they’re getting into when they pay the entry fees and their handler, if a pro handles their dog.

However, in field tests or trials, just as in most performance activities, the results are, or should be, pretty cut and dried, with the only opinion area being the numerical scores assigned for the work. When you get down to basics, especially with the hunt tests — which were designed to be a pass/fail event with no placements — a dog either does what’s required to pass the test, or it doesn’t. 

But the devil, as always, is in the details. With entry fees topping out at more than $100 in retriever hunt tests, for example (and that’s not counting travel expenses or handling fees, which almost always exceed another c-note if the dog is being handled by a professional, owners and trainers believe), rightly, it would seem, that they’re entitled to competent judging. That they’re not getting it, in numerous instances, is both exasperating and infuriating to many participants in field sports. While what follows deals primarily with judges for field events, specifically hunt tests, people in other performance sports have also voiced many similar complaints.  

It’s necessary to immediately insert a caveat here so as not to tar all judges with the same brush. There are, in fact, a lot of very fine judges doing what can only be described as a thankless job. It’s always too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too buggy or a combination of these weather miseries to be comfortable exposed to the elements from early morning until sundown, as judges usually are. Often, with retriever or spaniels tests/trials, there is inadequate staff to do a proper test, and it also definitely takes a certain type of temperament to be a good judge. 

All field judges shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush. There are a lot of very fine judges for hunt tests who are doing what can only be described as a thankless job.

But, putting all this aside, there’s really no excuse for some of the things we see from judges in the field, and I say this as someone who has seen the problems from both sides, having successfully trained and handled both retrievers and pointing breeds at the Master level as well as having judged all three types of hunt tests at all three levels for more than 15 years. 

So, based on my experience, if you are or want to be a field judge, here are some of the judging “sins” that drive field handlers bonkers:

Judges who don’t know the rules or deliberately ignore them. If someone doesn’t know the rules or, worse yet, knows them but chooses to ignore them, they have no business judging. Yet it happens, and all too frequently. My dog’s trainer numerous times has had to correct a judge’s misinterpretation of a regulation at a retriever hunt test, and he’s not alone. Numerous other trainers have voiced the same complaints, and in virtually all instances these were people handling their dogs at the Senior and Master levels, where judges should be expected to know not only what the rules are but what they mean.

One major problem in trying to eliminate faulty judging is that the people who would be the best candidates to be judges are not the ones who are actually judging.

Interviewing people who have pointing breeds over the years, I’ve found their biggest complaint has been judges who refuse to give a dog a qualifying score if it doesn’t point with a 12 o’clock tail. These judges apparently are unfamiliar with breeds — setters, for example — for which “setting” rather than a classic point is a more natural way of indicating the presence of a bird. 

In any event, the last time I checked, the regulations for AKC pointing breed tests were crystal clear on this particular point. They state, “A dog with a low stance should not be scored lower than a dog with a high stance if it demonstrates staunchness and intensity, particularly in difficult pointing situations. Some breeds may not carry as high a head and tail as others, and this should be weighed in determining a score. A 12 o'clock tail is not necessary and, indeed is not found in any AKC Pointing Breed standards.” 

It’s difficult to see how that section would leave any room for doubt or equivocation. But if the number of people complaining about their dogs being dumped for pointing birds with something less than a 12 o’clock tail is any indication, there are a number of judges doubting or equivocating or maybe just plain not having bothered to give the regulations a careful look.

Pointing-breed handlers’ biggest complaint are judges who refuse to give a dog a qualifying score if it doesn’t point with a 12 o’clock tail. These judges apparently are unaware that there are breeds — setters, for example — for which “setting” rather than a classic point is a more natural way of indicating the presence of a bird.  

A spaniel owner told me that her dog failed to earn a qualifying score in Master because he didn’t sit when the bird flushed.

“He stopped immediately when the bird flushed, was steady as a rock and never moved until he was sent for the bird,” she says. “I have a half-dozen witnesses who will attest that’s exactly what happened on both birds, including the gunner and the marshal. When the judges told me why he didn’t qualify, I demanded that they show me in the rules where it says the dog has to sit on the flush. It only says they must be absolutely steady to wing and shot without excessive handling. I never said a word or even blew the whistle for my dog when the birds flushed, as he stopped instantly on his own, so I could hardly be accused of ‘excessive handling.’ But despite showing them every section of the Master regulations where it says nothing about any requirement that the dog must sit on the flush, they refused to change their minds.” 

That brings up another issue:

Judges who refuse to admit they’ve made a mistake or that a test isn’t working. The worst example of both that I ever saw in 15 years of judging was at a senior retriever test in Canada with a judge who did both. She insisted on setting the water blind retrieve directly into a near gale-force wind, despite my telling her several times that wouldn’t work, that dogs really have trouble taking a cast into the wind, even when it’s a fairly mild breeze — to say nothing of the mini-hurricane we were facing. 

When the first eight dogs failed to complete the water blind — nine, if you count the test dog — she still wouldn’t entertain the idea of changing the test. It took some fairly strenuous persuasion by the test chair, the marshal and yours truly, including a threat to discontinue the test and bring in a substitute judge, before she finally gave in and agreed to something more doable.  

Later, when it came time to tally the scores, I discovered that she had non-qualified four dogs — two Golden Retrievers and two Flat-Coats — for “style” where I had given all of them fairly high marks in the same category. They had done the work and had done it with enthusiasm, just not breakneck speed. 

When I asked why she hadn’t qualified the dogs, she said she didn’t like their style. There was nothing wrong with the way any of the four had worked; they just weren’t the crazy speed demons the Labradors had been. When I pressed her for a more complete explanation, she said she had Labradors and if a dog didn’t work the way her Labs did, she wasn’t going to give them a qualifying score.

Both the test chair and I pointed out how grossly unfair that was, but she was adamant that no dog was going to get a ribbon when she judged if it didn’t work like her Labs. Finally, the handlers of these four nice dogs appealed to the entire test committee. When the committee rendered its decision, it also carried the threat that if she didn’t award a qualifying score to the four dogs, they’d make sure other clubs, not just in that province but countrywide, were aware of her bias.

Numerous handlers have complained about judges who, despite overwhelming evidence, have refused to admit they made a mistake by non-qualifying a dog that did not deserve it. These were not even close calls, according to the handlers, and in several instances, they had witnesses to back their contentions. 

A German Wirehaired Pointer owner told me that his dog was dumped because the judges said she failed to stop on a wild flush in a Master test.

 “She was a good 50 yards away, and she never saw the bird flush. Not only was she in fairly heavy cover at the time, but she was looking in a different direction,” she says. “I suppose it’s possible she could have heard it flush, but I don’t see anywhere in the rules that a dog has to stop on a ‘sound flush.’ I tried to reason with the judges, pointing out that there was no way my dog could have seen the bird flush, but they wouldn’t listen, even when the marshal, who probably had the best view of the incident of anyone, also told them that the dog never saw the bird flush.”  

The German Wirehaired Pointer was dumped when judges at a Master test said she failed to stop on a wild flush at a time when the dog was at least 50 yards away from the bird and was not in any position to see it flush.  

Judges with breed biases or who have only a maximum number of dogs they will award a qualifying score. A lady who runs her retrievers in the northeastern part of the U.S. recently complained to me that it was nearly impossible to get a qualifying score on anything but a Labrador from a number of judges in that area.

“I’m a hunt-test judge myself, and while many of the dogs these judges have dumped for style were not hot wired, they were happy dogs that did their work with enthusiasm and obvious joy,” she explains. “They deserved to get an orange ribbon, and the fact that they didn’t, because the judges were so biased they’d only qualify Labradors, is just plain wrong.”

In some areas of the country, according to handlers, it is virtually impossible to get a qualifying score at a retriever test with anything other than a Labrador.

Other handlers have stated on several occasions in interviews that they’ve run into the same problem with pointing-breed judges who give qualifying scores only to German Shorthairs, or spaniel judges who never qualify anything other than an English Springer, and then only Springers that are clearly from “field” breeding. 

One Springer owner says: “Some of those guys would rather walk barefooted across broken glass than give a qualifying score to a Springer that looks like the standard says it should, and if the dog, God forbid, has a Ch. in front of its name, hell will freeze over before you’d get an orange ribbon from these judges, no matter how outstanding the dog’s performance.”    

Almost as exasperating as judges with a breed bias are those who have a maximum number of dogs that they’ll award a qualifying score, no matter what the quality of the work by the entire field that day. Much of the fault for this judging flaw rests with the American Kennel Club, which, for years, said at its judging seminars that only a certain percentage of dogs should earn qualifying scores at the various hunt-test levels. Way too many judges took that as gospel, and no matter how many dogs did qualifying work, would take great pains to find reasons — “style” was always a favorite — to dump enough dogs so as not to exceed those percentages. 

In the extreme, I once judged a retriever test with a man who stated that his ultimate goal was to judge a test where he didn’t hand out a single orange ribbon at its conclusion, and he wasn’t joking. Needless to say, after hearing that comment, I never accepted another judging assignment where this “miser” was to be my co-judge.

While this list is by no means complete, these would be the top examples of judging sins at field events. The problem is, in a lot of areas, there’s no effective remedy simply because there’s nobody better that’s available to replace these judging misfits. The people who would be the best candidates to be judges are not the ones judging. They are running their dogs or, in the case of professional trainers, their clients’ dogs.

Another issue is that way too many hunt-test judges have never actually hunted with their dogs and, yes, actual hunting experience is very useful for a judge because it provides a significant addition to the framework of what dogs are capable of doing under various weather and terrain conditions, assuming a person is reasonably observant. 

So, until someone finds a way to convince the people who should be judging that they need to get involved, owners, trainers and handlers will continue to be bewildered, angry and more than occasionally, a combination of both.