A lot is talked about steadiness and soundness to shot, however, in the German working tests (VJP, HZP, VGP), soundness to shot is tested on land and in water.

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This video shows several of my dogs being tested by me. In a VJP the test would be on a dog between 6 and 18 months old, in an HZP about 6 months later and in a VGP at any age.

Basically the test is that a dog hunts up a field and the handler is instructed to fire the shotgun when the dog is busy hunting. This is repeated a second time about 20 seconds later. The dog must not show fear, if it returns to the handler for reassurance or even worse, runs away in fright, it would be considered gun shy. The severity would depend on how long it took the dog to return to normal hunting. Over 60 seconds would be a problem and the dog would be banned from breeding and further testing if it failed the test.

In the first part of this video, a typical HZP style shot soundness test is demonstrated with Kasey. As you can see he looks to me for instructions but continues to hunt as soon as commanded.

In the second part, just by way of demonstration, I show Kasey’s reaction when a gun is fired inches from his head when his concentration is elsewhere. As you can see it startles him, but again, he looks to me for a command. I would not suggest you do this with any dog that is not 100% sound as it would ruin the dog – I just did it here to show the extreme soundness can go to.

Finally I show an example with Joker (GWP) and Kira (Deutsch Drahthaar) and a shot fired suddenly at the edge of a conifer wood. This makes a resounding echo, but actually the dogs look to me but drop to my whistle. When commanded to hunt on they do so immediately as they should.