FenlanderGundogs.co.uk

NEW BLOOD WITH ENGLISH MUSTARD(and French dressing)

Digby, pure bred English Pointer, from great working lines of Irish, English and continental blood and titles had to be bought so to help with the gene pool of my Fenlanders as I didn’t want to risk any more Weimaraner or Springer blood, also he was a double gift horse!

I was going to get Beth, a sister to Hugo, mated to a good quality working English Pointer and keep a dog pup to use for the sire to make the third generation. I looked up an advert for pups in Huddersfield and quizzed about the stud. Two weeks later the breeder phoned back to offer me a dog pup that hadn’t sold as it had got a scab on its head and as all the others had gone as pets he wanted him to go to a shooting home. He was asking little over half price and to top it off he had a work convention in Peterborough not thirty minutes from me, and was prepared to bring the pup with him! I found the money and made the time!

At twelve weeks old I could tell his quality breeding. A couple of days after I brought him home I took him for a walk with a couple of the others that I wanted to find a few pigeons I’d just shot in the coppicing out the back. I sent the others to find the pigeons and walked on. Digby impressively came on point near a few pigeon feathers, he held the point so I went up to him to give him gentle encouragement only to have a cock bird erupt a few feet from him! The bird fell to my gun and was retrieved by one of the others with Digby still firmly holding his point, unfazed by gun or commotion!

Digby has grown up to be a very handsome, faithful, tuned-in dog with eye-opening take off speed, endurance and agility; stylish to say the least. Only Myrtle could match him. A great exciting dog to follow with gun but there’s only room for him in the field as he needs so much space to work! I usually take him to start with to a heavy beet field in which I expect the game to be sparse and spread out. This takes the edge off his explosive performance and then I can take him to smaller fields where there’s a mixture of dykes and crops.

It’s a challenge to gear him down when walking up dykes but we’ve got a system of sorts that works for both of us. I trust him to come to point but flighty Fen birds don’t lay-up readily and can flush way ahead of the dog let alone me! Interestingly once I noticed him come up on point to switch his position forty-five degrees to hold again, two birds flushed each from where his indications had been.

An avid, insistent retriever and he will take to water if not too cold, traits expected on the continent for their perception of having a second dog, a lab or spaniel, to do the retrieving is low! Although I can see both sides, as a pointer that never retrieves is easier to keep steady and hold a point longer, but then true quality between dog and handler is most evident with more temptations and situations that can pull it off!

Digby (Ericeit Saxon his kennel name) has been put to Fennel and Myrtle and also to Beth, I’ve selected a bitch from each Dolly, Muppet and Maya. These half pointers have so far at two years old shown great talent, at being fleet but not so explosive as Digby and easier to work closer to gunshot range, having good noses and pointing instinct, retrieving naturally to hand, responsive obedience, a sweet nature and full of fun and faithfulness. Most of the litters have a had great endearing look and lines of quality about them. Most of them unfortunately have gone as pets and some have been making an impression in smaller fun dog shows. But here we have a conundrum: my strain rather than breed is still in the mix a bit and I feel only a working man of working dogs and knowledge should have any scope to judge or show; for this matter I feel applies to any breed of dog, pastoral or working etc.

Here lies a problem again of indiscriminate breeding and ideas totally against the original concept and use. This had already been evident in the early years with a supposed gun-dog breeder breeding Fenlanders! Well the pictures of the Dam, a full black and white English Springer of such diminutive field trial type that begs belief, as this is exactly the sort of blood I was trying to eliminate, and black only came into my strain with the pointer blood, so the pups are at best a first cross! The pups in the pictures were petite, light-boned and had thin heads looking like a whippet cross!

It’s a shame people have to try and jump on the bandwagon and trash what others have worked hard for but like the labradoodle the first breeders did a carefully controlled program only for multitudes to go nuts breeding this with that and put that with this. I could understand someone having a pup from me and then breeding it to a decent Springer or Weimaraner and having their own line, at least the original blood and concept is there. What the answer is I don’t know but maybe now with the pointer blood it’ll be harder to replicate but then again there are plenty of show pointers about the Gods forbid!