Poland Workshop 2025

Poland Retriever Workshop 2025

You meet some incredible people in the gundog world. And sometimes we get to travel and see some remarkable places.

This is what happened in early June…

A high level friend from the HPR world, who regularly travels to, competes and judges in Europe was asked by a group of Polish enthusiasts for a recommendation for a retriever trainer to help them create a program for working tests. He very kindly put me in touch with them to hopefully work out a plan for a visit.

The remit was to outline the structure, organisation and rules based on our own KC working tests - for firstly the club and prospective judges, then, to help competitors to understand the rules to increase chances of success.

They have a rich history of hunting dogs and pointers which they test and trial extremely well. Retrievers and their disciplines of work and competition though are quite a new thing.

After discussions and proposals over a number of weeks, we finally had a plan for a two-day Retriever workshop in South Western Poland.

Flying into Wrocław airport I was met and taken for a tour of the city before going to the ground to set up tests for the following day. Superb countryside and wild areas perfect for retriever work were available to us. Back to hotel and a relaxed dinner before an early start for day 1.

The first day was mainly classroom type lectures on history, purpose, organisation and judging of tests, with plenty of interested questions from the attendees. A very warm and attentive group - I was impressed.

We then moved off to some fantastic ground and to a test that we ran as a competitive set up, to be judged correctly under test conditions. Two staggered marks was the test, made more difficult by squally rain - after the 12 dogs had each had a turn, notes, results and suggestions were shared from a judges perspective. The second day was some technical training, looking at marking technique and walk up protocols.

The walk-up was run as a friendly competition with dogs being dropped for eliminating faults or failures, with three dogs ending up in a run-off. Based upon the teachings from the previous day, the other competitors were asked to give their opinion of scores from the run-off -  who would’ve won and why. Everyone had a very good and thoughtful reason for the scores they gave and in actual fact were all pretty accurate. We finished up, having a Q and A session back at the hunting lodge. And this concluded a very successful two days.

I’m hugely thankful for the opportunity, for the people that I met and also the wonderful country that I saw. I would very much like to go back and will hopefully get the opportunity sometime soon.

The next planned trip is a judging appointment in Denmark for their national game fair in August.