| Subject: the hunting poodle/from longwoods board |
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dominic
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Date Posted: 17:19:52 11/14/08 Fri
Standard Poodles: Foo Foos No Longer!
By M.J. Nelson
Gun Dog - August/September 1999
Quick-what's the first thought you have when someone says "poodle"? A prissy pooch with a ridiculous haircut and polish on its toenails, prancing on the end of a rhinestone lead, right? A dog that obviously could not find its own food dish, in other words...the ultimate "foo-foo."
Until a few years ago, for the most part that picture would have been accurate. Oh, here and there the odd poodle was still being used to hunt waterfowl and upland game, perhaps, but for the most part they had pretty much vanished from the hunting scene. I recall about 25 years ago, while hunting ducks with Ruffian, the great-grandfather of my current number one Chesapeake, on a dike that bisected two fairly large marshes in Saskatchewan, I was approached by another hunter who asked if it would be okay if he hunted on the other end of the dike.
His four-footed hunting partner was a big black standard poodle. When the hunter walked over to the other side of the dike I laughed a little under my breath and quietly told Ruff that he was going to get to fetch a lot of ducks that day. It turned out that the only ducks he got to fetch were the ones I shot. The poodle matched him retrieve for retrieve on a miserable day- northwest wind, spitting snow arid sleet.. .perfect weather for a Chesapeake. It was also perfect for a standard poodle, as it turned out.
There was also a group of people loosely connected to the Greenspring Poodle Club in Maryland who continued to use their standard poodles for hunting. But these dogs were very much the exception. They still are, for that matter, but they are becoming less so with each passing year. Like the Airedale people who have been trying to bring back the hunting ability in their breed, a dedicated group of poodle lovers are returning to the field with their dogs in hope of restoring the poodle to its former luster as quite possibly the original waterfowl retriever.
A comprehensive history of the poodle does not exist. The same is true of the breed's cousins, the European water spaniel types, although it is likely both existed and were used for hunting prior to the use of firearms. Poodle-type dogs have shown up in sporting art since the Middle Ages. Until the end of the 19th century, the poodle was one of the favorites of the market hunters along the English Charnel, the North Sea and the Baltic Ocean. They were also extensively used by market hunters in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Northern Germany and Russia.
In North America, water dogs, many of them poodles or poodle- type dogs, were among the first dogs brought from Europe from the time of the settlement of Newfoundland in 1583.
With this kind of history, how did the poodle get lost as a waterfowl retriever? A fair amount of the blame, said Grace Blair, M.D., a poodle breeder from Diamond Springs, California and the person most responsible for the American Kennel Club's decision to include the standard poodle among the list of breeds eligible for AKC hunting tests, rests with the breeders themselves as well as a decision made in the late 19th century.
"The American Kennel Club followed the lead of the British Kennel Club and put standard poodles in the non-sporting group. No one seems to know what the rationale was for that particular decision," said Dr. Blair. "The Canadian Kennel Club, which started in 1888, had the standard poodle in the sporting group originally but moved them to non-sporting in 1938 when the CKC recognized miniature poodles. The United Kennel Club has always viewed poodles as a sporting breed. What this means, however, is that for roughly 150 years, poodles, for the most part, have not been selectively bred for their ability to hunt."
Poodle folks who hunted with their dogs were unable to even begin addressing this prob~m until the mid 1980s when the Canadian Kennel Club permitted standard poodles to start participating in the retriever working certificate program. According to Dr. Blair, much of the credit for this move by the CKC must go to Jacqueline Harbour, a poodle breeder in Ontario. And because they had always been part of the UKC's sporting group, poodles were also automatically eligible for the UKC-affiliated Hunting Retriever Club's tests.
In 1993, the Poodle Club of America started a retriever working certificate program, which was a prerequisite for becoming eligible to participate in the AKC's retriever hunting tests. In 1996 the CKC started retriever hunting tests (which look very much like the AKC's tests) with standard poodles permitted to run. The final step came in September of last year when standard poodles became eligible to participate in the AKC's retriever hunting tests.
"It has been a long process," Dr. Blair said, "But the 'proving grounds' are now available. Ml we have to do is find the dogs who have retained the ability to work in the field and put titles on them so we have some way to identify these individual animals. After that, it becomes a matter of selective breeding. Of course, when I say this is 'all' we have to do; I say it with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. No matter how you look at it, poodle breeders have a pretty big job ahead of them."
So how do the poodle folks propose to go about doing this job with a breed in which field ability has been neglected and ignored for so long? According to Dr. Blair, "In almost every litter there will be a
puppy that is a driven retriever. You will see this with pups at five weeks of age carrying around toys or anything else they can pick up. Unfortunately, when you check on them later, many of these 'driven retrievers' do not like water. The trick is to find a driven retriever who loves the water. Then we try to eliminate those with health and temperament problems.
"Besides the usual problems you see with most breeds regard- mg hips and eyes, bloat is rampant in the breed. Much of this is due to the deep-chested, keel-chested conformation that has become fashionable in the show ring. We also have some serious temperament problems in the breed. There are a lot of standard poodles with iffy temperaments, and many of these are show dogs."
As daunting as the job of finding a poodle retriever might seem, it can be done. In Arkansas there resides a rather unlikely duo: a former U.S. Marine, severely wounded in Vietnam, who also was a wildlife biologist and eventually became a goose guide, whose personal dog is a white standard poodle. Johnny "Hoot" Gibson owns a guiding business called Goosebusters Guide Service located near Stuttgart, and his dog-Grand Prairie's Pooh Bear, also known as "Pooh"-is the dog Gibson uses to fetch his clients' geese.
"When I bring Pooh out, I get a lot of laughter from most of my clients," said Gibson. "They all ask me if that's what I hunt with. Most of them also ask me if Pooh isn't really Vicki's [Gibson's wife's] dog. I tell them, 'No, Vicki has a proper waterfowl dog. She owns a Chessie.' I guess they have a hard time accepting that a professional goose guide would be using a standard poodle for hunting. But at the end of the day, the question is usually, 'Where did you get him?"'
Jacqueline Bowman of Hartland, Wisconsin also hunts with a standard poodle. Her dog, Ch. Oak- wind's Time to Bury UD AX JH, also known as "George," was the first standard poodle to earn an AKC hunting test title.
"George made the decision to be a field dog himself," said Bowman. "From the time he was a puppy, he has always been a game driven dog. When he was five months old, he started stealing birds that the guys brought home from pheasant hunting and he carried them around the yard. That made the decision to start working him in the field pretty easy. When he was about a year and a hall, we started working with a field trainer. He hunted for two years before he started running the hunting tests. He's our goose dog because our Labrador hates geese."
Finding a standard poodle that will hunt is indeed such a daunting process, why bother? Gibson said, "I had a 'white' [very light deadgrass] Chesapeake for many years. When we lost him, I was looking for something different. A standard poodle was about as different as you can get. I also wanted to see if there was any hunt left in the breed.
"Pooh is from pure show stock and he was a little slow starting out as a retriever, but once we actually took him hunting at about 11 months old, when the first goose hit the ground he figured out what we wanted him to do and he's been a goose dog ever since. And he really is a specialist. He hates ducks. He'll bring them back but he gags and retches and foams at the mouth when he does. Besides, he's not a very good swimmer. In fact, he's slow as an iron toad in the water, it's a lot like watching a chicken hatching eggs."
Gibson was quick to add that Pooh's shortcomings in the water did not bother him because he is also a goose specialist... "It sort of makes me the number one black sheep in Arkansas because I don't hunt ducks or at least not very often, and I hunt with a standard poodle. I used to be the number two black sheep but then a few years ago, the guy who was number one moved out east somewhere, into public housing so I've been told, which means Pooh and I have the top spot now."
Dr. Blair added that there are people-like Gibson-who simply enjoy the challenge of returning a breed to its historical function. "There is a certain satisfaction that comes from taking a breed in which the original purpose has been lost or neglected for a long time arid proving that there are dogs in the breed that can still do the job. In addition, poodles are really delightful dogs. They have many qualities that make them highly desirable as companions. These qualities tend to make those individuals that have retained a strong predator instinct good hunting partners. Many can hold their own when it comes to protecting you, your family and your property. The odds are also very good that nobody else in the field or the marsh will be hunting with a standard poodle."
Jaci Bowman said training a poodle can be challenging because they are slow to mature, sensitive and very intelligent. "Poodles are incredibly slow to mature. This means you have to delay such things as force breaking beyond the time when you would normally do it with most retriever breeds.
"In many ways, the poodle is much like the Chesapeake. You have to negotiate with poodles. There is no way you are going to win every battle with them and you can't push them around. If you try, they will do one of two things. They will either pout and sulk or they will tell you who is running the show. They also remember everything you teach them whether it is the right way or the wrong way. Once they learn something, it is always there so you have to try and make sure you do it right the first time. I have George, my standard poodle, and I have a Chesapeake. We handle both of them the same way."
Dr. Blair said poodles are excellent markers... if they can mark at all. "Unfortunately, too many people get puppies that they keep in a puppy clip and they let the hair grow over their eyes. This causes the dogs to stop using their eyes. If you get a poodle that you intend to use for hunting, keep the hair out of its eyes. Poodles also tend to have great noses. As a consequence and because so many do not have the conformation to be strong swimmers, there are many more poodles that are good at hunting upland game than there are good poodle waterfowl dogs."
Since hunting poodles are so scarce, where would a hunter who wanted one start to look? Dr. Blair said there are a number of standard poodles in Canada that have earned CKC retriever working certificates and have earned titles for the CKC hunting test program. There are also a few poodles that have earned titles from the UKC/HRC program and currently two hold hunting test titles from the American Kennel Club. She said that poodle seekers should not overlook dogs form obedience-titled parents or agility- tided parents because those titles are an indication of athleticism and bidability.
"I would hope, in a few years, that hunters looking for a standard poodle will be able to find quite a number that are sired by or produced from dogs that have hunting test titles," Dr. Blair said. "But the problem is that about 90 percent of the poodle breeders in this country care nothing about the poodle's ability to hunt. These are the 'nail polish' dogs.
"This is an attitude that we have to overcome, and we have to change what is fashionable in the show ring. Many of the dogs that are show champions are not structurally or temperamentally sound enough to be field dogs. The sensible thing to do at the moment is talk with people who are doing something with their poodles in the field. They are your best source for finding a hunting poodle."
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