A friend asked me if I thought I had a pointing problem given the NA scores to date.  While that might seem like the easy conclusion based on the raw numbers, it's a bit far from the truth.

Let's start with Drake.  Phillip planted birds in the snow, and Drake pointed them well.  That continues to this day.

The pups out west (Jenny and Libby) were pointing while the ones in the Northeast took the winter off. 

Roxie, who failed to point at her NA test, was pointing very staunchly at her FDJ (Canadian Junior Hunter) test just a month ago.  She demonstrated a very long nose and solid pointing (20 out of a possible 20 points each test).  I think her recent problem was heat related (temps near 100) and maturity.  I'll bet she was awfully close to the birds when she did find them, and then her teenage brain told her she could catch them.

The other three dogs that have tested so far and had pointing issues are two-fold.  First, all of them, mine included, were under-exposed to birds.  It's not an excuse; it's just a fact.  The timing of this litter could not have been worse from a training perspective.  The second was the weather that weekend.  We got several INCHES of rain.  Scent conditions were awful and birds thrown in the air did not fly.  Almost every dog at the test was docked in pointing.  Diva had no problem finding birds; she caught 6.

I'm happy to put all the facts about my breeding program right here on the Internet.  I'll probably spend more time on the good, but I'm not going to cover up the fact that four of these pups tested NA and got less than a 4 in pointing.  I'm not happy about it, but I am confident I have a training issue, not an instinct issue and that it can be easily corrected (so long as the owners take some time to take care of it).  If you prefer to be kept in the dark and told that every pup produced by another breeder is golden, I'm probably not the guy you want to buy a dog from.  If you want all of the facts, I'm your guy.

All the results of my pups, good and bad, is right here.