Field Trial Dogs and Beyond 03-30-2026

In this episode, Rachann talks with world-renowned field trial judge Trish Jackson, and conformation judge Chip Bondi. They lead us through the teamwork, preparation, and decision-making that defines the Gun Dog Sports. Gun dogs are highly trained competitors, judged on speed, ability, and stamina. Both Trish and Chip breed, raise, and train their own puppies. Trish's passion led her to revive the American Field Cocker Spaniel breed, while Chip's love for training German Short-hair Pointers has resulted in him judging over three thousand dogs. This is a look at a sport where discipline, instinct, and companionship come together.

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Skill Building for Flushing Dogs – Maryland Sporting Dog Association

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Today's podcast is brought to you by Mariah Bellmanor Kennel, offering dog boarding, bathing, and daycare in an eco-friendly environment. Our pet care with a personal touch is not just a motto, it's really what we do. Our touch extends to the food without preservatives, quality and natural shampoos, inclusive boarding, and a green living environment. Sounds like I might want to check in. Visit us anytime on our Facebook page, Mariah Bellmanor Kennel or Mariah Bellmanor Kennel.com. Enjoy your program. Welcome to Raising Connections, connecting your community to others through critters, companions, commerce, and agriculture. I'm Ray Shann Mayer. Let's raise some connections. Here we go. Today, as always, we have two fun and interesting guests, Chip and Trish. Chip, can you introduce yourself and tell us where you're from?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

My name is Chip Bondi. I live in Mount Harry growing up. My dad worked for United Airlines. So we lived in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco. And we always lived 20 minutes within driving distance to the airport because he was on call. So I didn't get a dog until I was in junior high school when we moved to Maryland. And what kind of dog was it? A mutt. Okay. It just walked into our house one day and said, I like it here, I'm staying. And your eyes are sparkling and shining. Yes. That started my career in dogs.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Trish? Welcome and introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from. Thank you. I'm Trish Jackson. I live in Mount Erie, Maryland, also. We had one dog as a child. We had a springer that my dad hoped to be a great hunting dog for himself and a wonderful family pet. And unfortunately, my dad did not understand dogs and took her out and shot a pheasant right over her head. And that was the end of Cindy's hunting career. Oh no. She was gunshine, thunder shy from that point on. But she was my pet. That's an important part. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

The thing that's brought us together today is you are both accomplished judges, trainers, accomplished canine professionals. What is your breed? That's a question that the dog people always ask each other. What's your breed? It's like asking somebody in a bar, what's your sign? What's your breed?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Trish, what's your breed? I have American conquers. I started in the show ring many, many years ago, and decided that really wasn't for me. I really enjoyed the function of the conquer, what it was originally bred to do, but they had not been doing much since the 60s. That was when my focus came in. So when you say show ring, you mean the confirmation ring. Confirmation ring. And that means to breed to a standard? Yes. Breeding to a standard. But unfortunately, the judging was not too standard.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

The confirmation ring and the field ring, if you will, the field arena is very different for you. Yes. Describe for our listeners who might not know, they'll have to go to our Facebook page and see one of your beautiful cocker spaniels that you call an American cocker spaniel. What does it look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Well, they don't look like the dogs in the show ring. They have a little longer muzzle, flatter skull, longer loin, which gives them plenty of space to extend and to work a full day. Also, I was able to breed out the coat in one generation. So they have a thinner coat? Yes. My dogs all work, and a dog would get hung up in the briars if you had that full coat.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

And so that's a good thing in the field because they're not attracting burrs and brush and briars and set. Exactly. Alright, Chip, watch your breed. German short hair pointers.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

GSPs. GSPs. What do they look like? Well, I've been breeding my dogs under Clyde Vetter, sharpshooters, kennels, muscular, very athletic, short coats.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

When you say short coat, it's not like the cocker spaniel where you're trimming. No, no. This coat would feel like what or look like what? The hair length would be about a quarter of an inch?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

No. Maybe a half an inch. It's tight to the bottom. It's tight. And what color are they? Anywhere from black to white.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Well, there's a lot of colours in between there.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yes. And there are some very dark ones. I have a very black short hair currently. The five before that were mostly white, a dark head, and a patch or two. And then my very first one was brown. So the colors are varied. I think it has very little to do with performance. It's just looks. What drew you to these breeds? My story, I had an Irish setter, and I was teaching a summer school class. I called it the Birds and the Bees. It was actually ornithology and botany. It was a man who did not want to be in this class, but he had to take it. And he asked me one day we were on a field trip, what do you do for fun? And I said, Well, I hunt birds with my dog. And his eyes got big. What kind of a dog do you have? I said, an Irish setter. And he said, That's not a bird dog, that's a show dog. Oh. And I said, Well, my dog will find and point as many birds as yours will. He said, It will and I said, Well, invite me to go with you. So I went with him. And my dog performed well, exceedingly well. We became very good friends. We hunted, and he was the director of the Kingsley Wilderness Project in Montgomery County. And we took the kids hunting. We talked about gun safety. The program has been disbanded. But when that Irish center passed, he gave me a short hair, and I've been a short hair person ever since for the last eight generations of my dogs.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Let me ask a very basic question. You see a lot of paintings with the birds and the dog. The dog's in a very specific pointing position and the birds are flying away. Are they pointing the birds? Are they flushing?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

They are flushing. Okay. Our job is totally different. The Spaniels, all Spaniels, should be working much closer range when they come upon the bird, which you can tell, you can read very easily by that tail. The Santafest of the tail and the whole body quivers, and when they're going in for a flush, usually they plane a little bit, the body kind of goes down a little bit and they zoom in and get that bird up in the air. And then when they're behaving themselves and very well trained, they sit their butts down and the bird is either shot or many times missed. So if I miss a bird or a bird is missed when we're training, they have to just leave that, not go after that bird, and just continue on hunting. And if the bird is shot, we send for the retreat.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

So the setters, is it the setter or was it the training that the dog would go out and just sit down and ask you to pick the bird up? Or was that the function that the dog does because they're called a setter?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

When I had my Irish setter, it was a pointing dog, but it had not, because I didn't know 50 years ago to train the dog. That's where I went to NABDA, the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association, and I was taught how to train dogs. So my Irish setter was a pointing dog, but it had not been trained how to retrieve properly, and it didn't do it naturally.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

So is the retrieval process, either for the GSPs, any of the retrieving dogs, is that something that's an instinct or something that's trained, or is it an instinct that's honed? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

An instinct that is trained.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yes. And some dogs are gonna have a higher hunt drive, where they find, they want to find, they want to find. But when the bird shot, not that I want to, here it is, let's go find another one. So not so interested in picking it up, more interested in the side. Yeah, so you find both drives, retrieve drive and hunt drive, and you wanna for the Spaniards, you want a more balance.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

So you want them to be able to go with you. You want them to be able to be athletic, you want their coach to be in a position that they can go out and go through briars and brush and find birds, flush the birds so they come up or do they point the birds? Help us here because we have a lot of listeners who don't know about this. Do they flush birds meaning they go up in the sky? Do they point birds meaning they're on the ground? How does that work?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

We have two opposite sides of the table. Yes, we do. My side, I want the dog to point the bird. Then I flush the bird. I train my dog to stay steady through the flush, the wing, the shot, and the fall, and I walk back to my dog and release it to make the retreat.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

The other side of the table is my dogs will find, go right in on the bird, sit, wait for it to be shot, and then bring the bird in, provided it has been hit.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

If not, they go to the next one.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

Yes. Why is there a difference? In the end, this is a sport, it is a pastime, and it is a resource. Why did the dogs evolve differently or why is the training different?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

If you go out in a field, the human being probably could not find all the game that is there. Whether you're talking about a rabbit or quail or pheasants, they're gonna see you coming, hear you coming, and they're gone. They're gonna be gone. The dogs, whether they're flushers or pointers, are going to find those birds for you and either point them or flush them, depending upon what you've taught them to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

But they tend to work closer in proximity, usually about 25 yards either side. We work the dense cover, pointing breeds, tend to have a more open pattern, cover more ground much quicker than we do, certainly. They all have their merits in their places.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Are you looking for the same type of birds?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Well, when I was in Maine, I used to love grouse hunting, is my very favorite. Grouse and woodcock.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Woodcock in Maryland right now are one of the few remaining wild birds that we can hunt. The quail population has been decimated. Pheasants are basically gone. And woodcock during migration, whether spring or fall, they're here. I bought my house standing in the front yard. My wife said, this doesn't have a dining room. And then I could hear the wild quail calling, I could hear the wild roosters calling. I said, no, we can make this work. Absolutely. And for 20 years I had wild pheasants and wild quail in my front yard, and now there's nothing. It's still a farm, but the birds are gone. The farming practices have changed. No-till farming, articulating mowerheads to cut the ditches so there's no cup. It's different, and it has affected the wild bird population. Absolutely. That's why we go to Montana and North Dakota and South Dakota and Kansas and New England. Yeah. Because there are still places to go.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Oftentimes there's a meme out there that says people look like their dogs. Is that important if you're following behind your dog on foot? Because Chip, you have very long legs, and you could probably follow those GSPs quite well. My legs are quite short, and I'm not sure I could follow along. I might be a more cocker spaniel speed. Do you find that one of the reasons you enjoy these dogs is you can keep up with them in the field?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Unfortunately, at 80 I can't keep up anymore. But there was a time that the answer to that is yes. I love being outdoors. I love hunting. Some people that haven't hunted out west don't understand how vast they can be. And I enjoy it. I still go for a walk almost every day with the dogs.

SPEAKER_03 12:25

What about yourself? Do you you walk behind, or are the dogs bringing the birds back so you stay in one spot?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

No, they're covering ground. I have no idea where the birds are in the field. If it's a hunt test or trial, I know they're in front of me. We always want to move forward. How we use the wind also depends on how to move. But the dogs move forward and they'll use a pattern which will change with the wind direction because they want to cover a certain parameter. If they would have run straight down a field, they could miss anything everywhere. So they do what we call quartering, going back and forth. It's not like a windshield wiper, but it's more like a figure eight, but that can change. Yes. It's just working with you. You know, they go out if the wind is at your back, and the bird could be right in front of you until they go out beyond that bird, they can't smell it. So they have to know what the wind is doing, and you have to be aware. Feel the wind on the back of your neck, the dog's gonna go out a little further and come back in. Out and come back in. So they can smell what's there. If it's the wind is in your face, they can smell what's right in front of them and the pattern will be different.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

So it's not just going out for a walk, flushing the birds, shooting the birds, and coming home. There's so much more to this. Is this a relaxing sport for you or is it a tension-building sport? Stimulating for me.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

I get excited when I'm ready to go. You can plan all year the trip to Montana, the trip to South Dakota. Yeah, it's exciting. I look forward to going training. That can be just as exciting.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

With that training, in the beginning we talked about your setter and that setter hadn't been properly trained because you didn't know what you didn't know. And a lot of folks listening probably don't know what they don't know. How do you learn what you don't know if you don't know to ask?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

How do you get into the sport? Almost 45 years ago, I went to an AKC training day, and one of the gentlemen said, You ought to go to Navda, you want to be a hunter, this is for field trials. And I went to the first Navda North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association, and their goal is to train you how to train your dog. I've been with that group since 1984. You've been president of that too, haven't you? Oh, the chapter, yeah. But I was also the national secretary and the national director of that was a long road to get there. Currently, I have judged in Navda more dogs than anybody ever, over 3,700. And on a normal day, you can only judge ten puppies or six utility dogs. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 15:18

That's an incredible record that you have. Yes. I I would really like for our listeners to understand that that's like a jaw drop, mic drop moment, because not many judges reach that level or have that level of impact and patience and training to help bring those novice dogs in. How many novice folks do you see come in?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Well, the Potomac chapter just had a training day, and I would say the really new people were half a dozen. That's good. And there was maybe 45 people there first training day. People come and go, but there's some gentlemen there that have been there longer than I have. You know, some people just want to get their dog trained a little bit and others want to compete and they want to get the prize one on the utility score to qualify to go to the national invitational.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

That's a little competitive spirit. What's the first thing that you teach a GSP or a dog that you're working with in NATO?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

If the puppy's born in my house after they're fully weaned, I start teaching woe when I feed 'em. Woe meaning stop. Stop. And people say, you started that at eight or nine weeks old? Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Trish, what's the first thing that you train your dogs?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

I use a little puppy dish, put a few kebbles in it, and rattle it, and they learn to follow me right by my side. When I lift it up, because they want to see it, they have to sit. So when they come in, I use the food dish to rattle and come into me. And when they approach, I raise it up and they sit and they get a replay. These are things we want every day. Without force. You're shaping behaviors. Yes, shaping.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

And so the repetition, the relationship, and shaping the behavior is how you're building the relationship to go into the field.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

I introduce my whistle right from the get-go. I don't think I've ever seen you without your whistle. No, you probably haven't. It's the first thing I put on when I get up. So when I want them to turn, it's a pip-pip. So you're whistle training them to turn. Yes. Two pips to turn, one to sit, and they've already associated that sit with the food just going up, so they already understand the sit whistle. It also becomes a stop whistle. And multiple pips to come in excited. The pups at a young age, you're the center of the world. So just by looking one direction, they're going over here. You try to catch them when they're not looking at you, and pip pip, and turn and go the other way. Then they're like, oh, where are you going?

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Again, just shaping them, letting them know what you're looking for, and just giving them kind of the guide of the road. Yep. When folks come into training, ship the way we started this was they were coming in to do training. You had six folks coming in out of a group of 45. Trish, do you offer training classes? Are you involved with an organization that helps training?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yes. I have a training group that I do with Maryland Sporting Dog, myself and Janet Sirico. We do a skills building working group that we will be starting up the 28th of the month. I guess is our first session. We're doing a six-month session. Our goal is to get them ready, hunt tests. I also do private lessons. I have a number of small groups that I do, anywhere from beginner to polished work.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

The conversation we've just had are very young dogs, four weeks, five weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, maybe up to fourteen weeks. And you're talking about taking them out into this big, wide open space without colors, maybe, without leashes, definitely. How do you teach that retrieve, that return?

SPEAKER_01 18:57

If you were talking about the retrieving aspect of it, the return to you with in that little puppy down the hallway, when you throw a favorite play toy, it'll pick it up. And if the doors are closed and that rest of the hallway, it's coming back to you. It's fun, it's coming back. And then when you start to do the formal training, you've already had all that play. All that foundation. And then hold and carry on the table. Eventually you're going to not hold it here where he can get it. You're going to put it on the table where he has to pick it up and then move it further away and he has to go get it and bring bring it back to you. It's just training, little steps. Instead of waiting till the dog's two years old and now you're gonna pinch its ear till it screams and do the toe and all that stuff, or the e-collar to open its mouth and believe in that. That's not my philosophy.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Absolutely, everybody has a philosophy. And what you're doing is you're working with them from a young age, which actually means that the breeders, you're talking about the time and the effort and starting the pups and having a purpose-bred dog, having knowledge already in that dog. It doesn't have to be just a trained event. So using those instincts that are already there, bringing them forward, encouraging what you would like, discouraging by not perhaps rewarding the behaviors you don't like. Sounds pretty straightforward. It sounds like the method's been successful for both of you in two different areas.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I think animals, almost all animals, if you respect them, if you're trying to teach a dog something, you have to show them what you mean. They don't understand the parameters of what's right and wrong in the beginning. So you discourage what you don't want. You really encourage what you do want, and it clarifies.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

And in the end, you have a dog that you can take out in the field, flusher point the birds, walk along beside, have a really stellar day, do the test, do the hunt tests, and build a relationship not only with your dog but with your fellow colleagues, and those lifelong friendships develop. When we come back, let's go to that point. Welcome back to Raising Connections. So let's go back into here. Let's talk about judges and the faults and what you're seeing, how you got into judging, what you like about it, and the breed recovery, because you've done a lot of breed recovery. Are there reasons that you would want specific lines?

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yes. All my dogs that I have bred, they're house dogs. In the good weather, they'll be in an outdoor kennel, but they're all in the house, but they're phenomenal hunting dogs. You know, I'm sure there's some fat ones out there, but that's because the people who get them don't exercise them, overfeed them.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

So you have a continuing line. Yes. Yes, that's what I have also.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

And so that continuing line is very consistent. It's giving you good genetics to work from, and it's giving you what you would like for that training to move forward. Do you find that you have folks coming to you asking for a well-trained dog to be a pet? They can hold things, they can do the tricks, if you will, they can come back. You started these pups with love and you started these pups with care. Do you have folks coming to you saying I would like a GSP because I like the looks of the GSP?

SPEAKER_01 22:35

I'm so involved in the working dog aspect of the German short hair that it wouldn't be my answer, may not be anywhere near what the truth is. I don't know. But I know in my field, the German short haired pointer in Navda is the number one breed. The second would be the German wire hair. But there's tons of them out there that the other breeds that when people get involved with Navda, they're breeding, they bring out characteristics that'll help them succeed, whether it's a visa or a wine.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

So you're keeping the working dog spirit alive.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

And the pet dogs may not have that, they may have the roots of that, but they have a very different function.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

I don't sell my puppies to just pet homes. They have to be a member of the family. I put an awful lot of work into my puppies. Before they go, they're all trick-trained, separated out. They're used to sleeping by themselves, and my rule is you have to call me the next morning. And everybody says, hey, fuss at all. Well, that's what I expect. They've all been separated. They're comfortable. If they're gonna be stressed, I'm gonna do it. It's not so stressful with me. I want them to go to a home and have a great beginning, not have people be stressed, not have my puppies be stressed. But all my puppies go to homes where they are definitely a part of the family, but they have to be hunted. They have to be hunted, and I don't mean one or two weekends in the season. I love it when they're competing in hunt tests, but I have a number that are just great gun dogs. But they all have to go to working homes.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Do you find they have the need to do that work and have that drive to be satisfied and balanced?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

I think they can be a little bit of a pest if they don't get enough work. I believe that. Most of mine have a pretty good off switch in the house, obviously, because I want to be able to live with them. I want to have my life, I want them to be a companion. When I go out, I want that switch to come right on and they go to work. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Many times I've seen the dogs come out of the truck, line up, and you ask them to sit in a line and you release them one at a time by name. Is that going to work for them? Is that what you're calling going to work? Yes. Trish, you've really been instrumental and almost single-handedly brought back, re-established whatever word you want to use, the American cocker spaniel line for field. Yes. Why was the passion to do that burning inside of you?

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Well, I bought into them because of this book here called Champion Dog Prince Tom that I read when I was in grammar school. Okay and it charmed me so much. It was a dog that learned how to do everything and uh had all these obedience titles, and it was just such a part of the family. And one time the owner's friend said, Hey, I've got a farm, seeing as Prince has done all this other stuff. Let's just go take a bird hunting. There's some pheasants on the farm, and anyways, the dog had a propensity for that. So he went to it is a true story, by the way, a hunting club, because he wanted to learn, and he learned he got laughed at. Anyways, the dog became a national field champion. Wow. And it was such an inspiration to me. I mean, this little dog does everything. They're just the cutest pictures in here. But this book was just everything for me as a kid, and I thought, oh my god, I want that. I want that. And I heard about the English Conquer Club of America was having a working test or a training session, and I just hounded them until they finally said, Okay, you can come if we have a bird at the end of the day. Well, they did. And my Captain Jack was by far the better dog of the day. I knew he had good instincts because I could throw a stick into a pile of sticks and he'd come out with the, you know, if I marked it, he'd come out with the same one. And, you know, if I pointed, he went that way. And, you know, he just learned. I didn't know much. So he got to be the pickup dog for any of the little working tests we had. They would say, call Captain Jack to the line, go get that, because a lot of the dogs would not do a water retrieve, and they're trying to teach water retrieves. And so he became my first hunting dog, and then my dad and I would go out. And so my pickup dog, that meant at the trial when the dogs didn't pick up or they didn't go in the room. Well, we didn't have trials back then. We had intro stuff, like working tests, but not even that far. But people were trying. But these were all English conquer people, and well, we were looked at poorly at first, but he was always good, and I'd always studied obedience and this and that, and I just admired the connections with dog and handler. Captain Jack would go pick up what the other dogs wouldn't pick up. Yes. He was in theater and he was in a play uh for the College Light Opera House. Oh fun. In Robert and Elizabeth, he was flush the cockpaniel. Oh my. And he knew his marks very well. I had very personal, you know, dogs that were parts of me. But anyways, my dad and I would go out hunting, and we did go out duck hunting in the canoe, and uh my dad had a bird, and um we sent Jack and I took a little bit because it was crossing on a peninsula with a lot of canine tails and all, and he jumped up at this cat nine tail that was kind of exploding and uh brought it down to the ground. Evidently the duck had hit it when it came down or brushed near it, the scent was on it, and then he was able to trail it out and bring it in. But that was his one duck hunting adventure. But through him I got very excited, and all my dogs have hunted since him. But he was my beginning of hunting.

SPEAKER_03 28:28

That's the passion to bring the breeds back to the field. What did it take to actually bring the breed back to the field? Because one amazing dog doesn't do what you've done over the past 30 years, 40 years?

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yes, plus you can put the dates on it. It takes a lot of work. I became the field chair for American Spaniel Club, which is my parent club. I forget what year it was. I declared it the rebirth of the American conquer. We were having a national in Marlborough, Mass. So we set up a hunt test, an actual hunt test up there, and I had everybody. People came from Georgia, I did an education thing, I had friends that had the history of the last field trial champions. They put up posters and boards, we did a raffle. I contacted a lot of the club members and arranged for busing so they could come up and actually see. So I was a pretty strong presence and I can be very persuasive. And I had a wonderful president then who was very, very supportive of it, of getting the conkers back in the field and working them and what they're supposed to do and why the structure and the um function. It was quite a success. But because I had been doing that, I had friends from distant lines and just people from all over come, and they ran their dogs, and so that spread it out across the country, and other people helped out and you know learned as much as we could, and then I used to set up seminars, training seminars with Jerry Cashio, who is a very well-known dog man in the Spaniard world, Hall of Famer, and I would set up clinics for him, specifically for mostly cockers. Any Spaniard could come, but my goal was to get as many people involved in it, and I did that for four or five years, and I ended up having the first master hunter of the breed, and she in turn produced the first and only field trial champion since 1962, I think it was, and her record stands today. We did that in 2001. And did she become part of the foundation for the lines that you work with today? Her mother, Ruby, was my foundation. Everyone came down from Ruby, and I have a continuing female line. Everyone descends from those dogs.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Did it bring you, both of you, does it bring you a sense of pride and a sense of fulfillment to see those dogs that you've bred, that you've worked with, that go out into those fields and do their job? Yes, definitely. I love the quiet, yes. But the eyes were like, whoa, you had to ask that?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

One of my funniest and most amusing times was when I'd first started in the Hunt Test program with my dogs, and people called me left and right and said, Trish, what are you gonna go out there for? They're gonna try and fail you. And I said, Listen, I'm going out and do what I can do. And I said, you know, if they shoot too far, they're gonna miss the birds. I'm just gonna go and do what we do. And when I got there, there were English cockers and mostly springers, and this was a field trial club, not a hunt test club. So everyone really kind of looked down their nose at us, and no one spoke to us. Anyways, I had a little 18-pound cocker, olive. She was on a pheasant and a runner. She tackled it, went to pick it up, and it got away from her. She ran and caught it again, got it away from her again, was starting to go airborne, she caught it. This time she hung on to it. Now she's covered a lot of ground, but she never gave up on this bird. She came in and I let her shove out a little bit. She came in and just sat there. Looked right up at you. Yes. And I took the bird and presented it to the judge. And later, someone who became a friend after that, it was this big man. His name was Duncan. He had suspenders on. He walked up to me and said, You know, we don't generally like to see your kind here. But you can come back anytime you want. You just let us know ahead of time so we can sell tickets.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Oh geez.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

How many years have you been a judge? Thirty-four years. And you had an outstanding number of dogs that you've judged. If I understand correctly, you have the highest number of judged opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

I've judged more dogs than any other judge in NAVT ever.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

That says a lot about the dogs that you've seen.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

3,731. But who's counting? But who's counting?

SPEAKER_03 33:07

And Trish, how many of you judged?

SPEAKER_00 33:09

I don't know how many I've judged. How many have you done? I've been judging for 22 years.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

The both of you, between you, I'm so honored to have you sit here because between the knowledge, the dogs, the training, the patience, the body language that you can read without saying a word of people, of activities, of dogs, is astounding. There have to be some amazing stories.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

Yes, as you should see the body language, they both breathe and release and kind of chuckle.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

What is your favorite story of being a judge and working through an event? I was running in a trial. I was running three dogs: White, Pride, and Elway. And we were running in sorghum, and my dog is on a runner. So the pheasant is running. I can't see the pheasant, but I know the dog is on a runner, that's clear. And so I am moving quickly. My dog produced the bird. It flushed. So he sat. I stopped. The judge slammed into me. My whistle went flying out of my mouth. He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt to prevent me from making a faceplant. And then he's slapping me on the back. Send, send, send your dog. And I'm like, uh, bruh, no, no, no, no, bright. And then I waited, and off he went, made his retrieve. Oh my. But I also know that this judge would always run after his dogs when they were on a runner. He needed to be really close because otherwise he did not trust his dog. I did trust my dog. So he was not expecting me to slam the brakes on. At least it grabbed you by the back of the collar.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Oh my god. And the shirt stayed on. And you can still, after go through the list of names, can still send white.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Oh my. Judge or hand lordship? Well, I was most proud when I finally passed the NAV the invitational. I'm not a versatile champion on a dog.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

And to be an invitational means you have to be invited based on performance to even attend the program.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yes, you have to score a prize one utility score the year before. So I qualified in the past and not past. And the first time I ran it, I was 100% unprepared, unqualified for the dog to run in that level of the test. I had no idea. I'd never seen it before. I heard about it. I knew what I was supposed to do, the dog and I, but I learned. Boy, I learned. And then when I came back and I got the max scores of 200, I got a 197. And that was my first PC. So the journey to get to there. And it also improved my judging because I saw some things on the way. You know, we have a judging manual, a handbook, which I've helped rewrite a number of times. But it was very important to me to make sure some of the things that happened along the way didn't happen to other people. That first one, her name was Sharpshooter's Magic.

SPEAKER_03 36:15

It's a great name.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

And it was magic.

SPEAKER_03 36:18

I am honored to sit here with both of you. I hope our listeners have learned something. One of the questions that we received from our listeners was, so is hunting with dogs like going deer hunting? And the answer I think we're leaving with is not at all. It's sport, it's passion, it's that magic piece, it's the thing to do. Connection with the connection with nature and dogs. And it causes you to see the world differently. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules, all the dogs, all the time to come and talk with us. And I hope you, our listeners, have enjoyed hearing the program, made a couple connections. And if you're ready to start training your dogs, join your local clubs, see what's around you, and find those connections for you. I hope the connections we've raised today stay with you as you engage your community through critters, companions, commerce, and agriculture. Join me again next week. We'll make some more connections. This program is a production of Raising Connections Media Company, hosted and produced by Rishann Mayer and edited and mixed by Robin Temple.