Cindy H, that's what I'm getting at. Sure there will always be some jerks that bend the rules and buy dogs like that, but will there be that many?

What about people that buy a dog from 6 months to say 12-14 months and do all the work on dogs that have been essentially stuck in a kennel with no training?

Hate to break it to you, but that describes a HUGE portion of people that buy dogs for training. What about those people? They don't deserve to be called HOT even though they did every single bit of training with a dog?

That's why I like it. There will always be a few Jerks that bend over backwards to buy dogs and "cheat", but I think there will be far more real deal people that can now take part.

I just bought a 7 month old female. . .totally green. . .I'm going to do all the work on her myself, but that isn't HOT?

I think the new rule serves the most people well. The minority may import totally trained dogs "ready" for their titles, but is HOT that interesting to those types? They usually buy BSP winners and take them to the Nationals. . . .

I see your point, but I still like it. I wonder what that handler proof part is all about. Maybe you have to promise you trained the dog? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

I knew this would be a HOT topic.

Laura wrote: "And then add a rule that the high scoring SchH3 GSD from the H.O.T. Tournament gets a spot on the WUSV Team."

What?? :rolleyes:

Lee, isn't the six month rule an insult to people that raise a puppy from scratch?

I don't have a real problem with the six month rule. You have to have a cutoff somewhere; that's pretty darn young. Usually a pup has almost no bitework at that age, maybe has some tracking, and some play obedience, but all the "hard" stuff can't have been shaped yet. But geez, cutting it off at the B leaves dogs up to 2 yrs old in the running. Kind of a huge difference there! And I agree with the idea of putting the winner of the Sch3 HOT "championship" automatically on the World team, as long as the score was, say, 270 or above, or maybe higher. The World team is allowed to drop one low score, if I remember right with the new rules, so what's the big deal? If the HOT dog is the weakest member, they just drop his score for the team results. Besides, I'm just about sick of watching European-trained dogs being touted as the American team and everyone being so proud of America respresenting itself well at the WUSV. We should send the trophies back to Europe where they were earned by the real trainers of those dogs.

Ok, and seven months?

Oh no, seven months? NO way! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> You have to cut it off arbitrarily somewhere and six months sounds as good as any. If I had my way, the cut off would be 10 wks.!

I think it's like always. Who has the money can rule. And it seems that this is now also the case in our sport. Very sad!!!