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Friends We Make Along the Way
Balancing a cell phone to his ear while talking to a client and walking to the kennel to check on a litter of 6-week-old pups, Chris Goegan is a busy man. Tagging behind is 3-month-old “Josie,” the lone Labrador Retriever among a bunch of superstar German Shorthaired Pointers.
This year’s winner of two National Championships and the National Futurity, not to mention placing the Futurity Runner-Up Champion, Chris is back home at Hi-Point Kennels in Alliance, Ohio. A two-month break that falls between spring circuit and summer camp allows time to sharpen the skills of dogs already broke and to start developing young ones.
One Shorthair stands out above the others. Gracing the open prairie with powerful range and intense desire, GK’s Nuke It was the 2006 National German Shorthaired Pointing Association (NGSPA) All-Age Champion. A noble veteran among versatile dogs, “Nuke” long ago learned to use his smoothly chiseled muscular body to achieve his goals.
Undeniably one of the most magnificent All-Age dogs on the circuit during his day, Nuke, now 6 and semi-retired due to a sports injury, is the kind of dog that makes your heart stand still as he covers the land in pursuit of game. His steady, streamlined movement is poetry in motion. Always to the front, Nuke’s pointing style, the proudly held high head and high tail, speaks volumes.
As luck would have it, Nuke also has proved to be a stellar sire. He is the only Shorthair in history to produce back-to-back National Futurity winners, a feat akin to winning the lottery. His daughter, Hi-Point Express (“Snapp”), was the 2007 National Futurity Champion, and his son, Hi-End’s Dodge This (“Dodge”), won in 2006.
Having just returned from a morning of running All-Age dogs, Chris, tan and lean, looks like an avid outdoorsman. Wearing field boots, blue jeans, rolled-up shirtsleeves and an ever-present baseball cap, this professional bird dog trainer makes it a habit to simultaneously multitask.
Besides training clients’ Shorthairs for the major field trial circuit, he also trains English Setters and English Pointers for Southern plantations. He teaches owners how to develop personal hunting dogs, and trains bird dogs for people living out of state. When time allows, he breeds, whelps and starts puppies, and once the plantation dogs return home, he opens Hi-Point Kennels to boarders. Did we mention he also trains Tennessee Walkers for horseback field trials?
Traveling the German Shorthair circuit hauling a 35-foot trailer with 18 to 20 dogs and four horses is not easy. After winter camp, which Chris spends in southern Georgia from early December through February, the season starts in March at the NGSPA National Championship in Boonesville, Ark. The circuit concludes each year after the Savannah River and Continental Championships, which are held in December in Georgia. The National Championships run about two weeks, allowing time to fit in the Futurity, Amateur Shooting Dog, Shooting Dog and All-Age competitions.
Along the way there are stops in Illinois for the National German Pointing Dog Association (NGPDA) Championship, open to German and European breeds, and at numerous locations for NGSPA regional and species championships and AKC weekend field trials. The Sharptail Championship is held in Montana, followed by the Chicken Championship in Nebraska and the Pheasant Championship in Maryland.
Only one event, the AKC Nationals, held annually in October at Eureka, Kan., and sponsored by the German Shorthaired Pointer Club of America, has eluded Chris and his impressive kennel of German Shorthaired Pointers. It is one feather he would like to add to his cap. Maybe this will be the year.
Meanwhile, plenty of work needs to be done. The Final Four contenders at the AKC Nationals must prove their ability to retrieve game. Retrieving is definitely a skill set of German Shorthaired Pointers, but it is not a tested skill at NGSPA or NGPDA championships.
Staying Between the Lines
Depending on a dog’s ability, Chris trains dogs for both Shooting Dog and All-Age competitions. The difference is defined by the distance covered. Both events are horseback field trials. Shooting dogs run about 100 to 250 yards in front of the handler, while an All-Age dog covers from three-quarters to a mile in front. In both stakes, dogs are trained to locate and point birds. The brace mate who comes upon the find honors the pointing dog, or backs, without edging too close.
“An All-Age dog is like driving a Ferrari versus a Yugo. It’s hard to stay between the lines,” Chris says.
Nuke is a Ferrari.
“He has desire like none other,” Chris says. “Nuke is very personable but all business. He is pure power and very focused on his work. The biggest factor about him is that he is reproducing himself through his offspring.”
Co-owned by Robert Reynolds, D.V.M., of Canfield, Ohio, and Mike Josehan of Lake Nehagamon, Wis., Nuke arrived at Hi-Point Kennels in 2003 as a 2-year-old Derby. At the time, Steve Mendenhall of Wadsworth, Ohio, had just bought Nuke from Stuart Whelchel of Cordele, Ga., where Chris trains dogs in the winter.
It took Chris two years to gain control of the powerful young male Shorthair. “Lots of birds, lots of control work went into Nuke,” Chris says. “I didn’t know how hard, how tough it would be to get a handle on all the work.”
The finished product was worth the effort. “Everything began coming together, and when it did, there was nothing in the world like Nuke,” Chris says. “He won the Region 12 NGSPA Championship. Then, he won the NGSPA National All-Age Open. He’s had several fabulous performances, and he knows it.”
Besides siring back-to-back National Futurity winners, Dodge and Snapp, Nuke sired Whiskey Run’s Star is Born (“Star”), a 4-year-old who won this year’s NGSPA Shooting Dog Championship in March at Boonesville, Ark.
Nuke was sired by GK’s Ramblin Danny out of Liebmeister GK’s Chely, a powerful breeding that also produced 2XNFC GK’s He’s A Trip (“Rocket”), Nuke’s littermate brother who won the 2007 and 2006 NGPDA All-Age Championships in Pinckneyville, Ill. Danny also sired this year’s Futurity Runner-Up Champion, Whiskey Run’s Scalp This (“Scout”), out of AK’s American Woman.
Quality breeding is a big part of producing a fleet of superstar German Shorthaired Pointers. “Dogs will definitely develop the skills, but you’ve got to have the right animal and genetics to begin with,” Chris says. “It helps to take time to get a well-bred animal. You want to research the lineage of both the sire and dam to be sure they have proven themselves in the field and they produce quality animals.”
Born and raised in Alliance, Ohio, Chris got his start as a professional bird dog trainer while honing his skills for nine years as a trainer of killer whales, dolphins, sea lions, walruses and river otters at Sea World in Aurora, Ohio. He began as a trainer at Sea World the summer after his sophomore year at Mount Union College, where he studied developmental psychology and political science. Two years later, right before his senior year, Sea World offered him a full-time job.
He took it.
“At Sea World, we basically applied child psychology, or developmental psychology, to animals to modify their behavior,” he says. “We used behavior modification based upon positive reinforcement. The key to training involves placement and timing of reinforcements. In dogs, it is like taking a snapshot of desired behavior and applying reinforcement at the exact moment.”
At about the same time, Chris bought his first German Shorthaired Pointer, a female named Lady Von Kana, whom he found in a newspaper advertisement for a litter of Shorthairs. He drove to Pennsylvania to see the pups and picked her out.
“I had no idea what I was getting, but it turned out she was out of field trial lines,” he says. “She was an incredible dog. We took second at our first Open Derby championship. I learned with her.”
A couple of years later, Chris bought Hillhaven’s High Point Kapri, a bitch who was among the Top 10 gundogs in the country for several years. After “Kapri” came Devine’s Tasmania Shedevil, one of the top All-Age champions for many years.
“‘Shedevil’ started my program in All-Age dogs,” Chris says. “She produced ‘Luke’ as well as several other top dogs.”
Kyle’s High Trailing Luke, a 6-year-old, won the All-Age Pheasant Championship in Maryland in 2006 and 2004, was Runner-Up Champion at the 2006 NGPDA All-Age Championship, and winner of several NGSPA championships. Luke also is the sire of the recent litter out of “Jen,” Nuke’s littermate sister.
Charmed with his German Shorthairs, Chris determined “this is the breed I enjoyed the most, though I like a good bird dog no matter what he is. Style has a lot to do with it. I like a high head, full choked nose and high tail at the 12 o’clock position. I like a dog that has good ground speed and long range and shows a lot of interest on point.”
In 2001, Chris found himself at a crossroad. He had been training about eight dogs, some his own and some belonging to clients, for about eight years. “I had reached a point where I had to decide what I was going to do. I had been using vacation time to go to field trials, yet my kennel and the number of clients and dogs kept growing.”
He chose to devote himself full time to developing Hi-Point Kennels and his skills as a professional bird dog trainer. He already had a 32-dog kennel on 20 acres in Alliance that included a barn for horses, pastures and training fields.
“It was a good change,” he says. “It allowed me to fully dedicate myself to the animals. I always felt that I could make them better if I had more time. My plan was to get bigger and better each year.”
He has not regretted the decision. “Every day is something new and challenging, and never the same thing twice,” Chris says. “It’s exciting to take a puppy and develop it into a finished dog. It’s all about using the principles of behavior modification and applying it to the dogs.”
Behind Every Good Dog
The key to his success, Chris quickly points out, is the relationship he has with his clients, the dogs’ owners, who also are his friends. “Behind every good dog is a good owner,” Chris says. “I am blessed to have great clientele who have the confidence to allow me to train their dogs. They trust what I see in their dogs and give me the time to develop them to their potential. It takes a lot of time, a lot of birds.”
Bird dogs do not come into their own until they are around 4 years old. Training them for field trials is a slow process that begins with foundation work. At Hi-Point Kennels, the training of young dogs starts around 6 months of age. They learn to stand still, to heel, to whoa. They receive one-on-one training each day that helps to reinforce consistency and promote socialization.
Patterning in the field comes at 8 months to 2 years of age. “We teach dogs to go forward, to run to objectives, or places where birds are likely to be such as a clump of trees or the edge of a field. After a dog is 100 percent on groundwork, we start working him on birds. When you start working with birds, you hope there are few corrections to help maintain their intensity and style around game.”
Not until a dog is broke, around 2 years of age, does a trainer “know whether the dog has potential to be something special,” Chris says. “If it looks like he does, we start running and training sessions two times a week. We make it fun for the dog. We do a lot of planting birds in the woods so they will feel like they’ve found the birds.”
At this age, he also starts training steady to wing and shot. “The thing that is most important is properly breaking young dogs to steady to wing and shot,” he says. Steady to wing and shot entails training a dog to stay on point until you get to him and the bird is flushed, while the bird flies away, and while a blank pistol is shot. It is the ultimate test of bird dogs.
Nutrition also is important. A sign at Hi-Point Kennels reads “We Feed & Recommend Purina,” a testament to Chris’ loyalty to Purina® Pro Plan® brand Performance Formula. “Five years ago when I started feeding Purina, I was not happy with the product I was feeding,” he says. “I started feeding Pro Plan Performance to the competition dogs and began to notice results. It wasn’t long before I switched all the dogs to Performance.”
Among the attributes of Pro Plan Performance, Chris counts low stool volume, weight maintenance and keeping his dogs in top condition and muscle tone. So impressed was he with Pro Plan that he persuaded his friend Frank McGarr to feed Pro Plan Performance to the 30 setters and pointers at Red Pebble Plantation in Cordele, Ga.
Getting ready for the fall circuit, and the AKC Nationals, involves a lot of work. The late spring break in Ohio has enabled time to work on fixing problems and teaching dogs to retrieve. Summer camp at Bassett, Neb., will reinforce patterning on wild game like sharptail, prairie chickens and quail.
Still the star, Nuke is slowing down. During summer camp last year he tore the tendon in his Achilles’ heel. Hobbling back into camp, he required surgery to insert a plate and screws that reattached the tendon to the bone. Nuke spent winter camp last year rehabilitating the injury by swimming in lakes and ponds.
Chris concedes it takes “the right dog, the right judges who like that kind of dog, and a lot of luck” to win bird dog field trials.
Yet with Nuke, it was always different.
“That’s what makes him special,” Chris says. “When Nuke is on, he’s unbeatable, there’s nothing like him in the world.”
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Founded in 1988, the stated mission of The Bird Dog Foundation, based in Grand Junction, is that of “preserving the past and protecting the future for sporting dog fanciers the world over.” Click here for more info
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