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mastercaster wrote:Let me ask you this: Why should I or you care about someone else's written standard for physical conformation, if it isn't relevant to you or I?
Personally, I take a rather dim view of the conformation standard's importance. For a lot of reasons. What's important to me as a hunter might be irrelevant to you as a hunter. Someone that does a lot of late season duck hunting and mostly takes shorter, flatter pheasant or grouse hunts is going to have a different ideal than someone that mostly chukar hunts.
If size were important to me, I wouldn't buy a dog that comes from big parents. I think that one thing that attracts folks to Griff's is their shorter stature, and if its important, than they shouldn't buy a dog from big parents.
The other reason, is that the show world can lead to some totally useless dogs. Because they "conform" to some standard or another, and ignore other more important traits. I've seen some really nice "looking" dogs that have the right proportions, etc, but you see them run or whatever and it doesn't add up. And one only needs to look at Cocker Spaniels or even Show Ring Labs to see what the awful consequences are.
The other thing, is that some dogs just get big despite having normally sized parents. I know one such 80 lb Griff. She's never been bred though and won't be.
I do care to a certain extent. When I did all my research on what my next bird dog would be one of my considerations was the size of the dog. I hunt the entire bird season but I spend just as many months of the year up here in BC fly fishing lakes out of my 9' pram. I wanted my dog to go with me at all times. There's not a lot of room in the front of the pram behind the middle seat once I throw my fishing bag back there but there is enough room for a fifty pound dog.
The things that were most important to me when contacting breeders is that the dogs were bred to hunt, had good temperament, had no genetic health issues, and would be a medium size dog. Everyone I ended up speaking to only sold their pups to hunting families which I felt really good about. I also wanted a pup from a repeat breeding so I could get a real good idea about the size of the dog when it became an adult. My pup came from the third breeding of its parents,,,,all females from all three breedings were between 46-50 pounds. My griff is 20 1/2 months old and is 47 lbs. so I'm happy with her size,,,,,lots of room in my pram, her stamina is excellent, plus her prey drive is through the roof!
I don't mind seeing larger griffs out there. I just hope if they are ever used for breeding that they get bred to a MUCH smaller griff in hopes that the pups will be within standard in terms of size. I don't want this breed of dogs to be re-classified one day as a Large breed dog. Just MHO.
Some really good responses here,,,,would like to hear a few more to see what other hunters think.
orhunter wrote:Griff websites aren’t places where a person researches hunting dogs. You’ll find everything except hunting dogs on them.
My issue with oversize dogs is, they wouldn’t be what I consider to be do it all dogs. A dog should be able to go from the duck blind to the Chukar hills, hunt day after day without breaking down. I have doubts the big dogs can pull this off. I wouldn’t have a clue where to draw the line on what is too big so this is open to debate among us all?
Personally, I don’t want anything to do with females over about 52 lbs or males over 60 or the dogs that produce such offspring. Griffs must have the physical structure that says, I can run all day. Living in the west, my personal needs were certainly different from those living in other parts of N. America. If all I did was hunt pheasants and waterfowl, I’d probably be happy with whatever.....long as it was a hunting Griff. Something we don’t find on a Griff website.
flitecontrol wrote:I had WPGs for almost 30 years. My first dog back in the early 1980's was Cacei de la Cote. IMO, at around 54-57 pounds he was a good size for a hunting dog. Not so small that he couldn't bust or worm through heavy cover or take on any game I hunted, or so large that hunting him here in the South resulted in a dog that got too hot too quickly. At the Griffon tests I attended, I saw some very large dogs (IIRC, the largest was around 80 pounds). While I never hunted over any of them, I always wondered how well they would do in hot temperatures, or very thick cover.
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JONOV wrote:flitecontrol wrote:I had WPGs for almost 30 years. My first dog back in the early 1980's was Cacei de la Cote. IMO, at around 54-57 pounds he was a good size for a hunting dog. Not so small that he couldn't bust or worm through heavy cover or take on any game I hunted, or so large that hunting him here in the South resulted in a dog that got too hot too quickly. At the Griffon tests I attended, I saw some very large dogs (IIRC, the largest was around 80 pounds). While I never hunted over any of them, I always wondered how well they would do in hot temperatures, or very thick cover.
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That's a good point. Someone could live in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Dakotas, Iowa, and never have any idea. And presumably, most of his dogs would sell to hunters in a similar climate...
People comment that my GWP is "Big." Well, he's tall...but has never come in over 74 lbs. Usually he's about 70. I like it, I've never been concerned about him overheating (though he does pace himself) and I live in NC.
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