By Nigel Probert, Kieron Coey and David Logan
When I was asked by the Kennel Club to Captain the UK gundog team for 2022, it felt an honour and a privilege to be asked. My first task was to select a team, so I asked the captains of England, Ireland and Scotland to pick me a dog from their selection process. This was done slightly different in Wales where I asked two independent panel judges to set a course and to judge the selection as I had to take part in running in the selection myself. Fortunately, I was the highest scoring on that day so I was picked to represent Wales.
The Team was picked as follows:
Nigel Probert – Wales
David Logan – Scotland
Kieron Coey – Ireland
Adam Snare – England
Day One of the competition consisted of a walk up with water retrieves included then followed on to a drive scenario picking 4 retrieves at 200 yards plus over a steep bank / valley. This was pushing the dogs due to the extreme temperatures that we had over the two days, but with careful management, wetting the dogs and staying in the shade between retrieves as much as possible, we could keep their performance up.
Anything could happen
End of day one we were in second position, a few points behind Netherlands but all to play for – anything could happen.
Day two consisted of five double retrieves in a variety of woodland and open grassland scenes – memories and blinds.
Our performance stayed consistent but we dribbled points here and there (which was similar to the other teams) but thankfully no zeros!! By the end, the consistent performance of all our dogs then pushed the UK gundog team into first position – it was tight with Ireland only 5 points behind but we did it!
I would like to thank CSJ for the dedicated help and sponsorship that they always provide for gun dog international events. Without sponsors such as CSJ we wouldn’t be able to take our dogs to these events so it is very much appreciated.
Final scores were :-
1st – Great Britain 1048 points
2nd – Ireland 1043 points
3rd – Italy 1027 points
4th – Netherlands 1006 points
Nigel Probert
Llangynidr gundogs
“I want to personally thank you for CSJs support over the last few days, I hope we did you proud. It is refreshing to see a company still prepared to support working dogs of all varieties in these difficult times. I struggled for at least 18 months before finding a food that agreed with Ralph (Int. Ftch Crosstone Trickster) trying everything from the cheapest to very expensive before discovering CSJ at the Moira gamefair and we have not looked back, feeding Fit n Fast! for the last 5 years.
Once again thank you very much.”
Kieron Coey
“Morning Ceri, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to CSJ, Phil and yourself for everything you have done over the weekend for the team. It is greatly appreciated! It was great to catch up on the Wednesday evening and Thursday. Will see you soon at Scone!”
David Logan
