I am 17 days away from binging home our first GSP. I have owned and hunted English Pointers before and was looking for something more house and family friendly. I wanted to see if anyone on this site was either a GSP owner and get some information and tips.

Thanks

I've owned a GSP/Weimaraner/Labrador (chocolate) mix, female, so can't really comment on a purebred GSP. Will say however, that she was mostly GSP and was an extremely high energy dog and a bit hard to train. Don't know if the hard to train part was a trait of the GSP necessarily though, but do believe the high energy was due to mostly the GSP/Weimaraner part. She absolutely loved going hiking and camping, and never saw her tired one day in her life. She had a sweet temperament and absolutely loved my son when he was born, and ever after. For all her wild streak, she became literally tame and so intentionally gentle with him. In fact she never went back to her wild streak after he was born. She was 5 years old at the time, when she finally mellowed out. She followed him everywhere. With the rest of the adult family, she never seemed to quite understand how to be gentle and not throw herself around and step on our feet or wag her tail hard around our legs. But when my son was born, a transformation took place in her. All of a sudden, she knew what not to do that might hurt him.

I'm sure you're probably already accumtomed to the high energy dogs, but sorry I couldn't be of much help regarding anything else about GSPs.

We had GSP's as hunters and they were wonderful. They were not aggressive, but yet they were not overly friendly either. I will say that the good working GSP's can be a little neurotic. Our dogs all knew when it was hunting season and one female in particular would get pissed if we did not hunt her enough. She would find ways out of her kennel, catch Pheasants on her own and rip them apart on the deck. If we hunted her more than twice a week during season she was fine. The kicker is that she was our softest mouthed dog on the retrieve and she would drop the bird, turn away and sit. She was a different dog.
But they were great around the grandkids and as far as visitors, if they were out they would just check them out and then go on their merry way and lay down somewhere.

I have two GSP's I have a two year old female and a 10 year old male. What are you looking for? Before these I had a female who I lost to cancer. I love these dogs! Our our lovebugs. If you have any specifics, you can send me a message. I will be happy to answer anything I can. You are gonna love that dog. If you would like to see my dogs you can go to http://www.dogster.com and in the search function look up Annie, Jake or Tori in Agawam, MA.

David, I can't believe i looked up your dogs, I know nothing about GSPs' but you sounded so darn excited about them I had to check them out!
Love the colors, now what you call the ones that have more solid brown on them as supposed to the ones that have none but the tiny spots all over.(sorry if I sound totally novice in this breed but I am).
I have always liked hunting dogs , we don't hunt here but a lot of my relatives hunt in Europe where they live.
Anyways great dogs!

http://s141.photobucket.com/albums/r77/cadogancna/

Sorry I have been off line for a while. I do love this breed. They are hunting dogs built to run. They have alot of energy and need alot of exercise. If not they can become destructive. They should be crate trained. They are very bonded to thier family and can suffer from seperation problems. They are good watch dogs. My male sent a UPS guy backwards when I had my glass storm door and he knocked. He would have licked him to death if he opened the door but sounded tough. All in all these are great dogs!