Pointer. Richard G. Beauchamp
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of the cold as well. However, the Pointer must still be left in the shade when temperatures soar or housed indoors when they plummet.
The Pointer is curious and will want to roam if not provided with a fenced yard, so a fenced yard or other securely enclosed area is necessary for off-leash exercise and training. The Pointer can be trained to do just about anything a dog is capable of doing, particularly if the task includes agility and enthusiasm.
POINTERS IN THE FIELD
For the individual desiring a hunting partner, the Pointer offers many superb qualities, not the least of which is his short coat that requires little deburring. If you plan to hunt in the uplands over game birds, such as quail, pheasant and grouse, then shooting over a Pointer is the way to go. Hunting with a Pointer is an all-day affair, and this breed knows how to last the entire day, expending his energy like a professional athlete. If you are interested in hunting with your dog in the field but have never done so, attend a walking field trial and observe how the dogs work. The assistance of a professional trainer is invaluable to the novice hunter, equally for the puppy and the owner. The first year in a hunting puppy’s life is the most critical time in establishing what kind of hunter the dog will become.
MALE OR FEMALE?
While some people may have personal preferences as to the sex of their dog, both the male and the female Pointer make equally good companions and are equal in their trainability. The decision will have more to do with the lifestyle and ultimate plans of the owner than with differences between the sexes in the breed.
Pointers from lines bred strictly for the field are usually smaller and finer-boned. They also seem to pack more energy ounce for ounce in their physiques. Pointers from show lines are generally larger and have heavier bone than their field cousins. The male is normally larger and heavier-boned than the female at maturity.
Males usually take a longer time to grow up both mentally and physically. Some males can reach a point during adolescence when they could not care less about food, and keeping the young male at a reasonable weight may prove to be somewhat of a challenge. This is not to say that young Pointer females are exempt from these disturbing hunger strikes, but experience has proven that males are apt to take the lead here.
In the field, the Pointer is the paragon of hunting prowess, though not the first choice of hunting novices.
ONE STEP AHEAD
An excellent example of the Pointer’s speed and endurance comes from the field. It is said that the reason the Pointer is so successful in the field is that he covers so much ground in the course of a hunt. Many estimate that covering 100 miles in a full day’s hunt is not unusual for a big-running Pointer. This, combined with the breed’s often unbridled enthusiasm for its work, can result in the dog’s becoming quite out of control. None of these characteristics disappears because a Pointer has been chosen as a house dog and companion. Therefore, the owner of a companion Pointer must always be one step ahead of his dog and always in control.
The female is not entirely problem-free. She will have her semi-annual, and sometimes burdensome, heat cycles after she is eight or nine months old. At these times she must be confined so that she will not soil her surroundings, and she must also be closely watched to prevent male dogs from gaining access to her or she will become pregnant.
ALTERING
Spaying the female or neutering the male will not change the personality of your pet and will avoid many problems. Neutering the male Pointer can reduce, if not entirely eliminate, his desire to pursue a neighborhood female that shows signs of an impending romantic attitude.
Neutering or spaying also precludes the possibility of your Pointer’s adding to the pet overpopulation problem that concerns animal activists and environmentalists worldwide. Altering also reduces the risk of problems including mammary cancer in the female and testicular and prostate cancer in the male.
HEALTH CONCERNS
With a little luck and grace, the well-cared-for Pointer often lives to be 12 to 14 years of age, acting hale and hearty for most of those years. Unfortunately, all breeds of domesticated dog suffer from some hereditary problems, though the Pointer’s problems are relatively few.
HIGH-ENERGY DOG
Pointers are not the best choices as companions for those who live in an apartment. Pointers don’t pretend to be city slickers. Hundreds of years have been invested in making the Pointer a wide-ranging, highly energetic dog, and confining the Pointer to close quarters for long periods of time is likely to produce a neurotic, destructive and unhappy dog.
A chief concern among Pointer breeders is hip dysplasia, commonly referred to as HD. This is a developmental disease of the hip joint. One or both hip joints of the affected dog have abnormal contours. Some dogs might show tenderness in the hip, walk with a limp or swaying gait or experience difficulty getting up. Symptoms vary from mild temporary lameness to severe crippling in extreme cases. Treatment may require surgery. Even though hip dysplasia is not very common in the Pointer, enough cases have been reported to merit breeders’ having appropriate testing done on their stock. Owners should ask to see hip clearances on the litter’s parents.
Some occasions of a relatively rare and unusual disease known as neurotropic osteopathy have been documented in the breed as well. What appear to be skeletal injuries occur somewhere in the age range of three to nine months as a result of degeneration of the spinal cord.
There are reports of some skin problems, including demodectic mange. Regular grooming procedures are important in that they prevent any of these skin problems from progressing to an advanced stage.
Eye problems such as entropion and progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) have been recorded by careful breeders, but not on an alarming basis. Here again, purchasing a Pointer from a respected breeder who has eye testing done is extremely important.
Pointers make great cycling companions, if trained to run safely beside the bike.
The Pointer of the proper shape, balance and proportion creates a picture of a lithe, elegant dog of noble carriage, able to perform in the field with speed and agility for the whole day long if necessary. The question that arises, however, is, what tells us if a Pointer does, in fact, have the right make and shape, balance and proportion?
The answers are found in the breed standard. Breed standards are very accurate descriptions of the ideal specimen of a given breed. Standards describe the dog physically, listing all of a breed’s anatomical parts and indicating how those parts should look. The standard also describes the breed’s temperament and how it should move (gait).
The standard is the blueprint that breeders use to fashion their breeding programs. The goal, of course, is to move one step closer to that ever-elusive picture of perfection with each succeeding generation. A breed standard is also what dog-show judges use to measure which of the dogs being shown compares most favorably to what is required of that breed.
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