Versatile hunting dog federation Natural ability test 5.16.20
- KatieInwards
- Jun 7, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 6, 2020
The Versatile Hunting Dog Federation (VHDF) was established December of 2007 with the help of long time versatile hunting dog enthusiasts including Sigbot Winterhelt, Josef Schmutz, Ed Bailey, and myself. VHDF held their first hunting dog evaluations in the spring of 2008 and currently has active affiliates in Alberta, California, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Saskatoon. VHDF’s mission is to promote ethical hunting practices and conservation of game animals by enhancing the quality and ability of versatile hunting dogs through breeder and handler education, performance based testing, and by facilitating continuing education and information exchange regarding health and genetics. The primary path taken to accomplish our mission is by conducting field tests designed to evaluate versatile hunting qualities of breeds registered by any recognized registry or studbook. VHDF is an all-breed testing organization that exists to serve breed clubs, breeders, individual owners and the dogs themselves by providing a fair, comprehensive testing system. Breed standards, registration, registry and other such matters are the sole responsibility of individuals or breed clubs and not the responsibility of VHDF.
VHDF offers two levels of aptitude testing. The first level, the Hunting Aptitude Evaluation (HAE), is designed to record the level of hunting aptitude in the young dog up to approximately 1.5 years old; however, there are no age requirements. At this age, the dog should have been exposed to game but not seriously trained and thus still exhibit semi-natural aptitude. During the HAE, each dog is evaluated in the aptitudes of Nose, Search, Pointing, Tracking, Water, as well as having Desire and Cooperation evaluated during each of the specific test subjects.
Bone Point's Gambler out of Bone Point Kennels our boy Joker received an overall score of 69/70.
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