Scott Linden Outdoors

It’s been seven years since I ran a dog in the NAVHDA Natural Ability Test. And that one was worth forgetting thanks in large part to “operator error.”

But part of my “by the book” approach to bringing up Flick includes testing – not for the score itself, but for the discipline of meeting a set of test criteria that are designed for hunters, by hunters. Knowing what’s expected, and training for those expectations, you will ultimately have a good hunting dog no matter what your score on test day.

So, I signed up.

Even though NAVHDA tests are objective, with dogs scored against a standard rather than the other dogs running that day, a test is not without its angst. There are plenty of witnesses. Judges and those standards are demanding, even at the Natural Ability level. And to that point, “natural ability” is not quite as simple as watching a puppy romp around in the field.

As many (including me) have learned the hard way, showing up at an NA test with a young, untrained dog is a guarantee of disappointment. Many of the components are really about a dog cooperating with a human, albeit at a basic level. But on a rainy day when birds only fly a few feet before being caught by the pup, and the chase that ensues while the bird is parted out by the puppy … well, it’s not all beer and skittles when scores are read that afternoon. (Don’t ask how I know this.)

Much of the natural ability being tested is also about how a pup handles various situations: water, running birds, (hopefully) pointed birds, interaction with other people. And while the bar is set low, it is not lying on the ground. Only because I’ve experienced them all at one time or another can I bring up some of the faux pas: not teaching a male to stand quietly as judges count teeth and testicles, not doing enough swimming before being asked to jump into an icy pond in the rain, a gallery of people and dogs watching every move of every test component, not enough exposure to birds – let alone following the track of a running pheasant. All are hard-earned lessons I hope to have learned from.

It may sound intimidating, and it can be. But don’t let that discourage you from trying a test, of any kind. The right attitude helps a lot. At another NA test, I’d realized a few days before that we had “overtrained,” the stress at red-line levels for dog and human. On test day, I loosened up, he got the message, and we aced it. So can you.