From student to trainer
Allen Vincent learned how to produce champions from one of the best. And he's good at it.

By Kim N. Price
Covey Rise Publisher

Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series on dog trainers who work year-round to produce field trial champions. The first series explores how Allen Vincent, a relative new-comer in the training area, learned from veteran Gary Pinalto, who has two national champion trophies for his efforts. The following is how Vincent has risen to success in a remarkably short time. Pinalto, who was undergoing another treatment for liver cancer when this article was written, will be featured in June. Our prayers are with Gary for a speedy recovery and with his wife Margaret.

Allen Vincent literally got hooked after entering his first field trial, and winning. Some 20-plus years later, he's still at it at age 42.

Vincent, five years ago, switched from doing it for fun to producing champions for a living. He has trained and learned from the best. His trainer and mentor is former national champion trainer Gary Pinalto.

Vincent has moved from student to trainer, putting champion field trial dogs in the winner's circle.

"I grew up quail hunting with my dad and brothers. I started about the same time I started walking. I first heard about field trials years later. I saw a little deal in the newspaper outside of Tulsa and said, "man I can do that.' The next one I went to I took a dog and entered and won. It's been downhill from there. They hooked me."

Vincent entered trials as an amateur for 15 years. Along the way he had trained horses and worked with lots of dogs.

"Gary Pinalto called me and said he needed some help and wanted to know if I'd come help him in the Hobart Ames and Mississippi Championships. "

Going from an amateur to a professional, that relationship strengthened as Vincent worked dogs with Pinalto, including scouting for him during the 104th running of the 2003 National Championships of the National Field Trial Champion Association at Ames Plantation in Grand Junction, TN. The dog he scouted was Texas Trailrider.

This year and last he entered one of the dogs from his own kennel he trains for some Oklahoma owners and along the way picked up the coveted Joe Hurdle Top Dog Award.

Bodacious Boone is presently owned by Robert Rankin from Oklahoma, but when the dog won the Joe Hurdle his owners included Dr. Barry Gray and Alex Jacocks. That award is presented for the most points a dog wins in a season before getting to the nationals.

After his derby season, including winning the Oklahoma Amateur Derby of the Year(he was handled by Jacocks then), Vincent took him to the next level.

"The major circuit is like the major leagues. It doesn't get any stiffer than this."

Boone as he is commonly referred to by Vincent and his peers, won three championships this year, and a first place in the D.E. Hawthorne Border Classic in Columbus, N.D.

The North Dakota run is an obvious one since Vincent and Pinalto work up there in the late spring and summer before field trials start up there in September.

"He pointed sharp-tail grouse three times in an hour. That country is more open. It's vast up there with no fences covering thousands of acres of prairie. It is something to see."

Pinalto has too used these grounds to train national champs for more than 20 years - first Lipan in 1995 and then Texas Trailrider in 2003.

He and Vincent train there with some 40 dogs in the beginning until they keep the hopeful champs and then all the trainers up there come South. They enter trials as they come South, working their mature champs and their hopefuls.

Bodacious Boone won in Hell Creek, MS, in the spring of last year, one of 10 major circuit wins he had en route to the nationals and prestigious Joe Hurdle Award..

Vincent says he learned from Pinalto what to look for in a dog and Bodacious Boone has those winning traits.

"He is a strong runner. He has a natural ability to find game and handle it. He has the ability to run to the limits of the course and remain in contact. He knows where you are at all times. Most dogs than run that much get lost. He doesn't get lost. It's like he's got his own GPS.

"He has the natural ability to find the front. When you show up he is in front of you."

Winning is not new to Vincent. Since his first win as an amateur, he has since won as a professional trainer over the last five years.

"That first spring I placed four times and went north that summer with Gary to his training grounds. He took me under his wing - more like a mentor - and showed me the ropes. In turn I scouted for him and helped him quite a bit."

"He has been a key to my success. I do not know of many people who have ever been this successful just starting out. I would not have had this much success without his guidance."

Vincent trains for others now with some 28 dogs presently in his Oklahoma kennel. His kennel includes 14 puppies in his puppy program, what he describes as "evaluating them and working puppies with one and two year old dogs."

Vincent says he likes a puppy "that is easy to look at and that is bold and classy. Once you get them out and run them you know more. You might look at hundreds before you get one that will hit a lick like Bodacious Boone. It is truly few and far between good dogs like that. You might have a real brag dog but you can't cash a check in my game.

"We're all out there trying to make a living, looking for the best of the best."

Vincent points out that every dog a trainer gets from an owner is not a Bodacious Boone.

"When you are just starting out, nobody is going to bring you a good dog. There are too many established trainers. You get what you can get. You have to develop your own young dogs. You need good luck in developing young dogs."

Vincent has had good luck with young dogs, placing four times in four years at the Quail Futurity. He has qualified for the Derby Invitational every year, having won somewhere in the top 12 in the country.

One derby dog he trained, a white and orange male setter called Jetsettr, is a champ too. The setter won the 2004 Herman Smith All-Age Setter Derby Award, as the number one setter in the country. The dog is owned by Jim and Sheri Michaletz from Arkansas.

Jetsettr and Bodacious Boone had to be developed from young dogs.

"When you are starting out you pretty well have to develop your own dogs. He (Boone) required training. He was not a broke dog. He did not have much experience. He is really a good dog and has a lot of natural ability, which is what you have to have. A lot of us can play basketball, but not all of us can play with Michael Jordan.

It has been a lot of miles atop a horse since that first field trial, but Vincent says he has not looked back.

"I hunted with my dad but he died when I was only eight. My older brothers once had dogs and I got my own at 10. They got rid of theirs and then they started coming to get me and took me quail hunting to get the dog."

"The day I quit my job I didn't have any intention of doing this for a living. It gets a little better every year. The key to all this is the owners.

"Without good owners, the best trainer in the world will not do anything unless they have an owner that will support you and trust your judgment.

"I would say this is far and away the main ingredient to be successful in this business."

And he points out the formula for success is still the same too.

"Not much has changed in the training end, the people who are successful still do things the way they did it 30 years ago.

"You just need a good bred dog with the natural instinct to point birds."

You can reach Allen Vincent by calling (918) 371-4233 to learn more about his training program and field trail experiences.

You can reach the National Field Trial Champion Association, Inc. by writing to the Secretary, P.O. Box 839, Grand Junction, TN 38039, or by visiting www.amesplantation.org. By e-mail at amesplantation@amesplantation.org.

The 2005 National Championships will begin February 14 at Ames Plantation. Please review rules for spectators before attending.