Brad Parkes: Horses for courses with dog training

We haven't  been out since last Tuesday of a week ago. We try to make it out twice a week, during the weekdays, to give the weekend warriors a fair lick of the cake, even if this means a drive around the tracks and then depending on my fitness, an armed shuffle for several hundred metres down a track or across some more open country.
We have been out a massive 22 times so far with eight cocks and 10 hens put up by the puppies - with but one shot fired and nothing plummeting groundwards.
"Puppies" is probably a bit extreme to be referring to Bella and Holly as they will turn five next month (birthday bash with their sisters Fern and Tilly coming up?) but last Tuesday, after the junior dog trial, watching the pair of them "hunting" for birds, I had to ask myself whether in fact I did anything wrong with their retrieving training.
For starters, there is the vegetation I ask them to poke around in. Only on one property in southern Taranaki can it be said that the vegetation is "open" and the fall of any bird can be readily marked by a sitting dog. In every other scrap of cover, the shot is accompanied by a "yahoo" or something similar as the bird tumbles, and "... oo" is hardly uttered before the dog is well on her way. I just cannot get my head around giving a long-legged long-tail any room in which to run, and five to 10 seconds may make all the difference between a retrieve and a lost bird.
And being retrievers, I do wonder if the retriever breeds should be more accurately described - at least in New Zealand shooting circles - as flusher/retriever dogs. I can't see a lab being at heel instead of her usual 30-40m out in front, or for that matter a spaniel flushing a bird and not being allowed to pick up a bird shot over it. Where do we start with pointers? Perhaps a hunter has to have three dogs, or do we start a cat fight with a separate breed referred to as a retriever/flusher/pointer?
No, I think it has got to be horses for courses, each of us training his or her dog to suit our specific style of hunting. This suits me down to the ground, but I'm not sure who is training who at home.
Heather and I spent a week over at Palmerston North last November and returned to find the "pups", thanks to Fiona, thoroughly enjoying that time inside. They have had the run of the place ever since - and they're welcome to it!