doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gun dogs; Braque Francais (French Pointer)

Geo...I'm glad it's starting somewher, we had a break the last couple of days it warmed up to about 10C and it started to melt
but last night the wind picked up again and this morning we woke up to -14 C and a whole bunch of new white stuff....I think we're not quite done yet

CJ

Chuck I think going to field trials is an excellent idea. Beside NAVHDA try to find some NSTRA trials too. And the AKC trials would be helpful. Talking to the dog people at the trials will be very helpful. I think you would get good information about both about breeders and breeds.

Best,


Mike

Thanks Mike.
I was going to call the NAVHDA chapter Pres, Bob Worrell (CJO's link) because when I was speaking with a breeder of these dogs, he indicated that Bob had trained a few of these. Bob was the handler for Hi-Desert Hunt Club and apparently still guides on that club/Tejon Ranch occasionally as well as trains commercially for this area. Bob sounds like he'd have a perspective worth hearing.

George,
That is just plain mean. I get the same weather as Claudio. I'm not sure I know what 70 feels like. February is one of our coldest months. My brother said the daffodils are blooming where he lives.
Chuck, I hope you find a good dog. Nothing like having a puppy around the house!
Chris

Chuck, sorry your little girl is having problems; that's one great dog! Not sure you CAN do better for an all-around hunting dog than a smallish Lab [censored] bred and trained for upland hunting....

You might contact member Mike Cross (I'll shoot you his email email if/when I find it) for some perspective on hunting with Brits in CA; unless my memory is failing me he hunts a pair of French Brittanies here and also in Baja--"sticker city." Maybe he has a solution to the sticker/foxtail/cactus problem in longhairs.

Good that you're paying attention to the "house dog" side of your perspective new hunting partner; as we discussed in the truck, you have to be able to live with the critter about 340 non-hunting days a year, as well as in the field. I've met both Vislas and GSPs that were bird-finding machines, with all the personality of a machine....COLD dudes.

Somebody mentioned Italian Spinones. My old friend the Pasta King of Portland has a couple. Nice pets but really big for a truck/house dog, and would definitely need a buzz cut in SouCal. And they labor under some genetic difficulties; just not enough of them left in the gene pool after WWII, which was pretty hard on the scarcer breeds of dogs in rural Europe.

Hunting for a hunting dog is almost as much fun as hunting with one!

Sorry about the "censorship" above; my tendency to use the Anglo Saxon for female canids shows my age and conservatism, I guess. I can only plead that I NEVER have used it to describe humans of either sex....

In regard to burrs in the hair of the French Brittanies - I hunt four of them and it takes 10 minutes to deburr all four with a steel brush and scissors at the end of the day. I do cut hair out with the burr but it doesn't seem to hurt their looks.

I enter the NSTRA field trials and dogs that cover ground AND stay in sight seem to do well. Almost all the people in NSTRA in my region are amatuers. By that I mean they don't make their living guiding, breeding, training or handling dogs. I don't mean the other associations aren't amatuer and I have no NAVHDA experience.

Several years ago I took two of my Brittanys down to the cactus country. The first night I spend an hour and a half pulling out cactus needles. The second 10 minutes - they had learned quickly what to avoid.

Best,

Mike

Well, I went out to Santa Ynez and met the breeders. They are an older (well maybe not as old as AM or even me) couple and like all owners, love their breed.

Saw their sire and dam and one of last year's (April) pups. We put them out together in a local field of about 100 acres and took a stroll while we talked about the breed. He had a training dummy and the dogs worked it well. The pup hadn't been force fetched and would retrieve and drop it at his feet. Still not bad for a pointer that had not been trained to retrieve. We watched some video of the three dogs hunting a few weeks ago. They looked like they had good range and speed, not big E-pointer horseback stuff, just looked right for a foot hunter and they had great dicipline, even the pup. Although the male looked just like a E-pointer to me but for the docked tail. He was 60lbs of muscle. The female dam was 37 lbs and when not pregnant.

When I get home, I'll see about posting some pics I took today of them.

Pics
The skinny one is the pup and the other is the sire.

The pup retrieves enthusiastically and moves like mercury .

Chuck, the reason I suggested navdha in the first place is what you said about being a novice at it.... the whole navdha philosophy is to teach people to teach their dogs

Nice looking pup, looks like you're on the right track.

CJ