Working tests are the accessible end of gundog competition, and their scoring is where most written accounts go slightly wrong. The rule is not that a test is marked out of twenty. The rule is that the judges must agree a common scoring system and tell everybody what it is before the test starts.
The actual rule
Judges must agree a common scoring system, and all competitors should be informed of it at the start of the test. Whatever system is adopted, failure to complete an individual test results in a mark of zero. A multiple retrieve counts as one test, and a dog that fails or commits a serious fault in any part of a multiple exercise scores zero for the whole exercise. Only then does the regulation add that working tests will typically be judged on a points system with individual tests marked out of twenty, though on occasion, when the organisation is more like a field trial, letter gradings may be used.
Typically is doing the work in that sentence. Twenty is the usual scale, not a required one, and a club is free to weight a hunting exercise more heavily than a retrieve. One British club publishes a test of two land retrieves, one water retrieve and one hunting exercise, with each retrieve worth twenty and the hunt worth forty. That is a club scale, published by the club, and it is a perfectly legitimate reading of the regulation rather than a departure from it.
Who judges
Since February 2026 each working test day must have a minimum of two judges. In an open test at least one Royal Kennel Club field trial panel judge from the relevant sub-group must officiate; in every other test a panel judge should officiate if possible. All judges are required to have considerable experience of dog work under shooting field conditions and competition, and the officiating judges must be announced to the competitors, which is also new in 2026.
How the exercises are set
The design rules are more interesting than the marking. Tests are to further good gundog work and not to inhibit dogs from marking or showing natural working ability. Distances and difficulty must be achievable and relevant to the standard being run, whether puppy, novice or open, and since February 2026 organisers may set the tests in advance using non-competing dogs of the same standard to check exactly that. A dog retrieving must not be required to pass too close to another retrieve.
When dummies are thrown with gunfire, the shot must always precede the thrown dummy, with the gun pointing where the dummy is to be thrown, and the gun positioned a plausible distance from the retrieve. That last clause is the February 2026 change: the older text said within shot range, and the amendment sheet prints the two side by side, the old wording struck through and the new one inserted. For unseen retrieves gunfire is optional. Get that sequence the wrong way round in a description and anybody who competes will know you were not there.
The classes
- Open. The senior class, and the one that requires a panel judge from the sub-group.
- Novice. Confined to dogs that have not gained an award or a certificate of merit at a field trial, been placed in the first three of an open test, or won a novice one. The field trial award is the condition most often forgotten, and it is the one that moves a dog out of novice without it ever having entered a working test.
- Puppy. Confined to dogs under eighteen months on the day, whatever awards they hold. Note that this is a different threshold from the under-two-years puppy stake at a field trial.
- Novice dog or novice handler. The entry point for people as well as dogs.
- Unclassified. Which includes water tests and team tests, and can bring together dogs from different sub-groups.
What a result is worth
Inside the working test world, a great deal. A win in novice, or a place in the first three of an open test, changes the class a dog can enter and gives it preference when an open test is oversubscribed. Outside that world, nothing formal: the regulation states plainly that no titles are to be used for the winners of gundog working tests, and no working test result opens the Stud Book. Working tests are also limited to members of the club running them, which is why they are less visible from outside than field trials.
A change worth knowing
The Royal Kennel Club’s own national gundog working test, run since 2002, is no longer being held. The organisation reviewed it and concluded that continuing was no longer viable, and the announcement says it will not be held for the foreseeable future. Club working tests are unaffected and continue as before, but any account of the sport that describes a national KC test as an annual fixture is now out of date.
Where this comes from
The scoring rule, the twenty-point convention, the judging requirements, the test design rules, the gunfire sequence, the classes and the titles rule are in the Royal Kennel Club Field Trial Regulations including Gundog Working Tests 2026, read on 5 September 2026, which also lists the amendments effective from 2 February 2026. The discontinuation of the national test is announced on the Royal Kennel Club gundog working tests page. The example of a club scale is published by the German Wirehaired Pointer Club and is a club document, not a regulation.