Is a retrieve required to have a qualifying score? Here is the purpose of dock dogs...

"Section 1.01 Statement of Purpose
(a) DockDogs is the independent governing and sanctioning body for regional, national and international Dock JumpingTM and Dock DivingTM, dog performance sports. DockDogs establishes the rules and standards of the sport, tracks results and records, supports and promotes the growth of its athletes, events, spectators, and sponsors."

Not sure I see anything that says it is focused towards hunting, but I may be mistaken. Go look at the purpose of organizations like NAVHDA, JGHV, VHDF, even AKC; and you'll see a much different focus.

Not to take anything away from dock dogs, but I spend more of my time focusing on hunting related activities than these games. I have enough venues that I can play in and volunteer enough of my time and my dogs time to help tag waterfowl and improve upland habitat that games like aren't really on my radar screen. They do seem fun though and are really fun to watch. Plus, it is much important for the improvement of the breed that we focus on hunting related activities to identify potential breed stock rather than allowing chance to guide decisions.

Please provide your source on this statistic. I'm still waiting for your previous sources as well. By the way, why do you call it antler hunting? Are you carrying a gun? Seems to me you're taking a walk with your dog trying to beat the porcupines to the sheds.

You're wrong that all hunt tests take place in a controlled environment and isn't hunting. Many of the tests I'm involved with are conducted on wild game in their natural environment. The problem surrounding this is twofold:

1. In most places, it is illegal
2. It takes a lot more time, especially the portions of the test where we are tracking hare.

And more kids are bit, mauled and killed by labs than any other sporting breed as well. Great pets.

I have no issue with labs. If you like them great. Personally, I think they are useless for me and despise them as pets. They shed way too much for me and I have never met a lab that I can trust unconditionally with my kids.

Plus, they are so overbred that there are way too many problems. My brother got a lab from a very well known breeder... Great lines, both parents hunted a ton... all in all a no brainer decision. His dog is crosseyed, overshot and was recently diagnosed with HD. The breeder, of course, won't take the dog back and won't refund any portion of the fee my brother paid. I hear stories like this all the time.

I think you're the guy who got the dog from an Amish puppy mill no? Sounds like you got lucky. I really hope when the dog gets older, it is sound in the joints, heart, etc... But problems in these areas are way to widespread in the lab world and there's no reason for it.

Yes you do. Personally, I have yet to see a lab that can better any well bred continental in waterfowl. I hunt with a ton of guys here that own labs. Whether it's on their boat or mine, it always seems there is an excuse why their dogs don't come with us.

I hunt ducks between 50-60 days a season all over New England, into Canada, and down in Arkansas. I was hunting with Charles Snapp and one of his guys last January. Both of them; diehard lab guys, said they had never seen dogs that are capable of using their noses as effectively as mine and my buddies wirehair. They never bothered to bring their labs out either.

I should probably go play more in some of the retrieving hunt tests, but frankly with everything I have going on right now, I just don't have the time.