Bravo Flurry's Broken Halo, call name Shine.
Showing a little style for a 9 week old.

That's a very good question. We didn't require steady to wing and shot in NSTRA. Chet competes in the broke dog trials. Maybe he can enlighten us. It's been discussed several times on bird dog forums. It's one of the best trolling questions out there.

Bill - I have a question:

Reading about field trial training dogs and a famous trainer who won all sorts of awards who retired from competition and now trains for Grays Plantation in South Carolina. I know next to nothing about dog training or field trialing. But just reading about it, it seems there are a lot of requirements that don’t really matter and/or aid in actual hunting though. Example: training the dogs to “hold their points” and remain stock still after the birds are gone until the trainer “releases” them by a command or touch.

I get “steady through the shot” so a dog isn’t jumping or running into the line of fire. My Jenny is pretty good in that regard, but when the shooting’s done she breaks in the direction of birds that have fallen (if she sees them) to retrieve them or where they went to await my command to find dead if I hit one she didn’t see.

There are other examples (I’m sure you know them better than me.)

Question: What’s the point of training a dog on “style traits” that don’t actually relate to finding birds and/or bringing them to bag?

(Please go easy on me as I don’t know squat about bird dog training.)