Dr. Csaba Szántay

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First and foremost, I would like to express my thanks for the invitation to judge in Slovenia, it is a real honor!

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I am a research scientist by profession, and I fell in love with the idea of keeping and training working retrievers about 16 years ago when a young colleague came to study in our research facility in Budapest for a few weeks. As it turned out, he had three Golden Retrievers whom he partly trained himself, and with whom he regularly attended working tests. As he kept talking about this topic, I felt mesmerized by the concept of a “working retriever“ and by the techniques he used to train and to build a unique working relationship with such a dog! I decided that by expanding our family as well as my personal “research” in this direction, I must try this myself!

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So, following some theoretical preparation by reading tons of books and watching DVDs on the subject, as well as attending working tests as a spectator, we finally purchased our first dog, Joker, a Golden Retriever with whom I started training actively. Joker was followed by two other Goldens, first Scotch whom we brought from Scotland, and then Guru, sired by Scotch. Especially with Guru we had some great successes in the open class and attended a huge number of competitions both in Hungary and internationally. Before his retirement in 2017 due to an injury, Guru was widely regarded as the most successful working Golden Retriever in Hungary in recent years. In addition, with Guru we also participated in the K-99 system of certification which required a somewhat different kind of training, where he achieved the highest (9th) level in the obedience class. Moreover, he also became a member of the prestigious team of “fMRI-dogs” comprised of the few dogs who could be trained to lie motionless in the fMRI machine as a part of an internationally acclaimed research project on canine cognition conducted at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. The latest member of our dog-family is Prof, a very young fox-red Labrador Retriever who is still only emerging from puppyhood.

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Building on these experiences, after obtaining the FCI judge’s certificate, lately I have started judging in various events both in Hungary and abroad.

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Originally I thought that learning the techniques of dog training would be relatively easy as compared to quantum physics. I was wrong! Now I know that to be a good trainer requires not only a lot of technical experience and knowledge, but a set of special human skills such as intuition, calmness, flexibility, tolerating failure, dedication, a sharp eye for reading dogs with very different temperaments, but most importantly humility. Similarly, I have come to admire the fantastic retrievers with the right physical and mental abilities, the ones who possess the delicate combination of zeal and calmness, creativity and obedience, independence and strong bonding to their handler.  As a result, over the years I developed a huge respect for the outstanding trainers and handlers that we have in Hungary and those I got to know abroad, as well as for the outstanding retrievers. Of course, the real magic is in the teamwork of a skilled handler and a skilled dog. I hope to see this magic occurring over and over again in Slovenia!