Money Made or Real FC?

[bucks better beagles]

Each year, I pour over my beagle magazines looking for the latest FC possibilities. I notice that some of them that approach this status have been at it for 3 or more years and some for less than a year. If you have a pretty good dog and the money to keep taking him to trials, I think it is possible to make him a FC. My question then, is there such thing as a real FC or a journeyman dog that just hangs in there until he gets the right opportunities to win? Which would you breed to? I have no field champions, never owned one but I admire them and the people who compete. Just wondering what you all think on this very hot day.

[Salzer mtn]

My concern is what do some people do to compete and make FC. ? If i see a field champion advertised in a book and just go on the good things that is wrote down not knowing all the tricks to the trade of what i have heard and read about people running them all night before the day they enter and the drugs that are given to them, just to mention two things then i have been decieved into thinking i will get pup's from that dog that might make field champions by not doing all this.

[bucks better beagles]

Salzer: You said, " tricks to the trade of what i have heard and read about people running them all night before the day they enter and the drugs that are given to them".

What are more of the "tricks of the trade"? I have never heard these things. It would belittle the achievement if they are true and possibly, be illegal. Why would running them all night the day before give them an edge? Seems like just the opposite.

[bfoster]

My question then, is there such thing as a real FC or a journeyman dog that just hangs in there until he gets the right opportunities to win? Which would you breed to? I have no field champions, never owned one but I admire them and the people who compete. Just wondering what you all think on this very hot day.

Of course there is such a thing as a "real FC". Every hound with that title is a real Field Champion!! Every single one of them EARNED it. Yes, you're correct in that some individuals are trialed more, but that doesn't take anything away from the ability of the hound.

Which would you breed to?

I would bred to the one that I felt best complemented the bitch I was breeding him too.

[upstatenybeagler]

I go for the consistently placing hounds first and foremost, but with that said, dogs dont achieve the FC title by mistake.

What is the problem with running the night before a trial? Every dog has its own quirk to be able to go out and put up his best performance. Mine doesnt run for 7 days before the trial, but on the occassion of his first win, he was run the night before for an hour. I was doing that not to give him an edge but to see if he still had remnants of kennel cough. He looked healthy, 30 days past the time he had kennel cough, and so i took him to the trial the next morning. The next week didnt run him at all, put him in the trial and he won. My belief is if a dog has it, he has it.

[fasttrackpa]

I am a bit biased but I truly believe that 99.99% of FC have earned it, whether it takes 3-4 years or less than one. The most successful people in this game are the people that learn what it takes to win trials and then trains his hounds accordingly. All hounds are different. Some hounds need the edge run off, some need to sit. The biggest thing is to bring your best. I do not believe there is as much cheating/buddy judging as I had heard there was when I started competing.

I have been blessed to have some very nice running hounds that I am not afraid to show. No drugs for my hounds, lots and lots of rabbit tracks though. I run my dogs when I am dead tired or just may not feel like it, because I like to win trials. No matter the weather, no matter what time I need to get up in the morning I am running hounds at some point. This is what makes FC.

The better the hound the faster they will finish that is for sure, but there is no shame in taking 3-4 years of placing consistantly in a tough class of hounds.The 3 wins are hard to come by, if not impossible, with a so-so hound. I have one big male that took all of 3 years to get that 3rd win. He is a very nice hound, very consistant. I have a half brother to him I just finished with 4 wins in less than a year....the difference? the younger male is a bit faster. In my opinion the older male is the better of the two...

[Joseph J Murphy]

I think that the vast majority have earned it.That 3 wins that it takes to become an AKC Field Champion can be mighty hard to come by.

[Ron Conroe]

buck, there is fc out there that i would love to own,then there is some i would like to cull. yes you got to have money to trial, so i think there is some money made fc. lol

[dog]

i think there is a huge difference in a dog that made it young , in a handful of trials and a dog that it took 3 or 4 years and countless trials . law of averages says if you runem enough their going to make it ! thats why the title means nothing to me , kinda the same as registration papers !

[johns03272008]

i think there is a huge difference in a dog that made it young , in a handful of trials and a dog that it took 3 or 4 years and countless trials . law of averages says if you runem enough their going to make it ! thats why the title means nothing to me , kinda the same as registration papers !

ya they might make it in little pack or ukc but not AKC, point system is like comparing a polar bear to a porcupine!!

[fasttrackpa]

i think there is a huge difference in a dog that made it young , in a handful of trials and a dog that it took 3 or 4 years and countless trials . law of averages says if you runem enough their going to make it ! thats why the title means nothing to me , kinda the same as registration papers !

I am speaking strictly AKC SPO format. I agree that a hound that finishes quickly in less trials is probably a better hound but there are lot's of reasons it might take longer to finish one dog over another. Money, time and health come to mind first....the only way to tell which is the better hound is throw 'em down together. You are not going to put a title on a hound that doesn't deserve it by just entering the trials, not a chance in the world. I believe the averages say that way more hounds compete and do NOT earn the title, than do. There are a ton of hounds that lack that 3rd win having had enough points for a few years and all of the sudden they are too old to hang with the young strong hounds. Doesn't mean they are junk.

The single best hound I have ever seen run a rabbit was grade, but I enjoy AKC competition and would not breed to a grade hound no matter how good he is. I am a rabbit hunter first, it is the sole reason I was introduced to beagles 40 years ago. If for some reason it was to all stop and there were no trials, I would still run my dogs, and registration would not mean anything to me, but trialing is about hanging with guys that love it like I do, seeing what is out there and showing off what I have.

[Steve Mikkelson]

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[dog]

I said 3 or 4 yrs and countless trials , if that dog was run regularly in trials and it is to old to hang with the younger dogs to get that 3rd win then it is not the same quallity of dog , sorry . i dont trial , never will but i know enough about it to know that guys judge their own dogs , guys judge buddies dogs , dogs get wins and places because a particular judge liked that style of dog , they get them because of all the hipe surrounding them , i hear on these boards all the time about people being kennel blind and i agree to an extent , but some dogs get wins because of all the hipe and what others have built them up to be so they had to be the best dog that day too , just another form of blindness , i have watched some videos on these boards of what i thought was terrible hound work , dogs i wouldnt feed for a day that had an FC title , seen one on here one time of an FC that was running a rabbit in corn , watched the rabbit come out and run straight down the edge of the corn , the dog over run that turn by 40 yds acrossed ankle high grass , barking the whole time , the owner was complimenting him on how well he cleaned it up and recovered , lol . have heard numerous times about a dog that was picked up because he was running too much rabbit , dominating the pack ! have heard judges say that their job is to put together a well rounded pack , in other words if you have 5 dogs in a pack and you can cover 4 of them with a blanket and the other one was constantly 40 yds ahead it got picked up . never understood that one , imo, if the other 4 could keep up they should have been picked up , as long as there are judges that like different things in a dog , and judges that try to put together a good pack and not judge the dogs individually , judges judging their own dogs , guys that enter their dogs in every trial they can , pick out trials with low attendence or trials at certain clubs then a title's beauty is only in the eye's of it's beholder ! rabbit hunters have been breeding good dogs for years without the help of trialers , a good breeder can breed good dogs with out titles , they look at the dog and not the hardware that is attached to it ! like said earlier , i think we all know what AKC trialers did to the beagle years ago and i believe it was the rabbit hunter that straightened that mess back out because he didnt breed to those titles

[fasttrackpa]

Dog, you sure have heard alot of stuff... No doubt about it. What have you seen first hand? I don't see anything like you mention but then I only trial after hunting season. April to September so I do miss quite a few trials.

[upstatenybeagler]

Dog you seem to hear a lot or know a lot about trials yet you dont trial? Makes as much sense as the guy who once told me he hated the style of dog i have, yet when i asked if he seen my dog ran he said no, he heard about him from someone.

You are looking at trialing in a negative way. Try looking from another point of view, the one most of us have.....We do it for fun, to hang with friends and meet new friends and talk about the thing we love most, and run different dogs against each other for the fun of it.