I am coming from the field trial world but have a gwp i'm interested in putting a utility title on this summer. I have a question about big running dogs in NAVHDA and how that affects their cooperation score. When released my dogs will make large casts and run forward hunting objectives unless I give a command to make a turn. I attended a NAVHDA training day this past weekend and from what I understand this is not acceptable. I was even reprimanded by the president of the club for giving my dog a turn command because he stated it wasn't a cooperative hunting dog and he should stay close and check in to see where I'm turning.
Is this just one judges opinion and should I plan to run this dog or should I just scrap it? I don't wish to cut my dog down just for a test I just thought it would be interesting to teach thim a water/duck search and see how well he would do. But if him running big basically puts him behind idk if its worth the money in testing.