loudiac TAN day

The Anniversary Weekend of the French Club Epagneul Breton was held at Loudeac on 18th and 19th August; with extra events – museum visit, kennel visits etc the two previous days.

We arrived on the Friday afternoon, staying with friends in their caravan locally so as to be in time for the Test d'Apptitude Naturel – TAN and the Raport d'Eau Profond REP (deep water retrieve.)

Arriving on time we spent an age negotiating our way into a field already populated by hundreds, literally hundreds of cars and vans. We parked – we thought cleverly so as not to have far to walk to where the action seemed to be taking place. People milled around and the Tannoy blared – instructions on forming convoys and group lists were being read out. We register and receive our pack with the complete running order, map of the TAN sites a dog lead, bottle of cider and an apple. (note the bottle of cider :-)). The only real problem we found was that the map, although it showed where we had to go did not mark where we were at present and a visit to the Secretaries tent did not help as they did not know either. However someone said all we had to do was leave town, cross the river and follow the signs TAN that were out. All that careful parking was to nought – with five TAN fields and nine FT fields nearly all the parked vehicles now wanted to get back out of the field and on to the road, ideally at the same time. Despite convoys of vehicles forming we decided to go it alone and try following the signs, after about ten minutes of driving we caught up with a string of cars – which turned into the field marked TAN 3 – ours. Pierre Willems was our judge along with an assistant and a man who was placing the dizzied grey partridge. An initial welcome few words from Pierre explained what he was looking for. A dog that worked the wind and did not just run around, a solid point and no sign of gun shyness with ideally a steadiness at flush. We were drawn second. The first dog ran around well, just that ran around, failed to find a bird and finally ran up towards us and went on point. No TAN given.

The wind was quite strong and the birds were not staying put particularly long, getting up and strutting warily up across the field. Topaz had already showed that today was going to be a fast day when I took him out earlier, and with the wind under his tail not much would stop him. Not much did. He ran the field from boundary to boundary with rather large bights. We were called back from working to far ahead by which time our bird had popped its head above the stubble. I cast him off again downwind and away from the now visible bird, turned him, but he did not turn sharply and I feared he would bump the now walking bird. My luck was in, he caught the scent as he ran past and spun on point. I reinforced this by whistle and voice as the bird was now walking away and i did not want him to run in. i did not hear any instruction to run him in to flush and the assistant walked past us to flush the bird and fire the shot. Topaz just sat up more alert and watched the bird away. We were done.

We watched the next half dozen participants and judged that Topaz's performance was far from bad; marred however by the need for quite a lot of whistle and the big bights.

We left the field in search of the REP which was being held back at the main site. Another trip to the Secretary's tent was needed to find out where it was being held exactly. Not much use. Asking a few bystanders did not help either – they thought it had not started yet. Ho hum – it turned out it was the man who looked like he was set up as a 'fisherman' so by the time we got to have a go there was quite a crowd watching. A steady off lead wait and a pretty spectacular water entry raised my hopes of a high quality retrieve. But no he picked the soggy duck up by its wing and when he got to the waters edge put it down.- not happy with the wall of humans. Walking backwards and calling him in made him do just that, sans bird, send him 'back' and he went into the water and started swimming out for another. The judge said he had done enough, 'sufficient'. If I could give him the dog's papers he would sign it off. Sadly in the UK we have no papers to record such achievement! We stayed and watched more. Topaz intent on every bird thrown – much to the amusement of the onlookers. So when any dog failed to retrieve we were asked to do so, even having to put on a demonstration for 'the dignitaries' who came by.

Anyway two certificates was the haul for the day.