If you got a puppy this spring, it’s probably about time to start building her interest in birds. I like to start with numerous positive experiences on birds. Pigeons or quail are about the right size for a puppy. Quail are often hard for most folks to come by, so pigeons are the best solution. I start with a small frozen pigeon and toss it out for the dog to retrieve. Build lots of excitement around the bird. Toss it out and have them retrieve it to you. If they want to run away with it, do it in a more confined space or have a check cord on the pup.

Another incentive for them to bring it back is to start turning and moving back, often they think you are leaving and will want to come with you and will bring the bird along. When they bring it back, stroke them down the back while they have the bird in their mouth; stop petting (stroking not patting) the instant they drop it. After just a moment of them holding the bird take it from them with praise. Don’t let them chew up the bird, and don’t over do this. Keep it to 3 or 4 times so it is a super-treat for them.

This will both get the pup excited over birds and help develop their retrieve. This method will help any gun dog puppy, spaniel, retriever, or pointer. This is the first step to preventing gun shyness (gun sensitivity).

Next, starting with wild birds…

If you are interested in really learning about training pointing dogs, Dave Walker, author of “The Bird Dog Training Manual,” is presenting a pointing dog seminar this Saturday and Sunday in Salt Lake City, UT. I am really excited about this event. I use a lot of Dave’s techniques in my training. Dave has been very helpful with my training and some specific issues with certain dogs I have been working with, so I am looking forward to meeting him in person and seeing him apply some of his techniques.

I believe they still have some room for additional participants, so if you are interested, look up Dave’s website at www.davewalkerdogs.com on the Seminars link on the Training dropdown menu for the contact information. The seminar is being sponsored by the Wasatch Front Brittany Club. The seminar is at the Lee Kay Center and starts at 9:00 each day.

     This weekend Julie and I attended Evan Graham’s Transition seminar hosted by the Northern Utah Retriever Club at the Lee Kay Center, just west of SLC, UT. Evan is the author of the Smartwork series of retriever training materials (Rush Creek Press). The training was excellent. I am a die-hard upland game hunter, not a field-trialer, which this seminar was geared toward, nevertheless, it was excellent, because I learned about how retrievers tick, what kinds of drills you can use to help them learn to mark falls and handle into blind retrieves, and just what you can expect at the highest levels from a dog. I have a lot of respect for field trialers. In order to win, they have to demand the utmost from their dogs. Therefore, they train and drill accordingly.
     A couple of the key principles I took away from the seminar were the following: You cannot expect a dog to be more exact than you are (Rex Carr), therefore you should set high exacting demands on yourself for training and expect them from your dog; accept nothing less.
     A solid basic foundation is critical for higher success.
     Your dog must find lots of yes’s (positives/successes) in the field and few no’s (corrections/failures). Set the dog up for regular success and build his confidence. Make him believe that he will succeed every time he charges off the line and he will; you build his expectations for success.

     I really enjoyed Evan. He was very personable and a great teacher. I liked his methods, because they were well reasoned and stepwise, moving from one phase to the next to build a winning dog step by step.

     I felt like I got a whole year’s worth of training experience in one weekend. I was really impressed with the level of dogs of all of the participants there. We have some great trainers here in Utah. It got me jazzed up to take my training to a higher level.

I have consistently been impressed with Dogtra electronic training collars. I just had an opportunity to test Dogtra’s newest upland collar, the 2500 T&B and really liked it. It is a training collar and beeper/locator collar all in one. The awesome thing about this collar is that the training collar and the beeper are built into one single small unit, rather than two separate units like most upland training collars.

Dogtra e-collars have consistently been of excellent quality, have great features, and best of all, come in small packages (both the transmitter and the receiver), so it is comfortable on the dog’s neck and in your hand. It has three beeper modes: running/pointing, where the collar emits a sound at regular intervals then emits a faster signal when the dog is on point; point only, where it only sounds when the dog is on point, and the Locate button, which emits a sound when the button on the transmitter is activated. I also liked the rheostat dial with the digital readout.

What I was most impressed with the collar was the small size of the unit. It will make a comfortable, durable training tool. It will be really nice to run the dog with this locator collar in the thick CRP grass looking for ringnecks this next fall. Check it out at the Dogtra website.

(Photo from Dogtra.com)

Our roading rig wasn’t up to snuff when it came to the dogs we currently have; a couple of BIG labs that love to pull. The chain link fence top rail pipe wasn’t strong enough. Last night we loaded up to go, I started slowly and they shot off like we were in a race. The pipe just folded. Today I’ll be looking for a heavier duty pipe. Otherwise the outfit is working great. The kids love to hook up their sled behind and go for a 4 mile sled run in the dark with all the snow we have.

I came across a great quote in Gun Dog magazine the other day about consistency with our dogs, “Corrections are consistent when canine misdeeds are always corrected appropriately. If misbehavior is sometimes ignored, the dog must experiment every day to see what the boss currently permits.” Pro Tips - Spaniels - Gary Breithbarth G&D Kennels, CA. Gun Dog Oct 2007.

The idea is to be consistent with correction and what behavior is acceptable and what is not. Otherwise we have dogs that need to test us on everything all the time. Additionally, I think this make for a more unstable dog, because they don’t ever know where they stand.

I just bought a new training pistol (starter pistol, blank pistol) from gun dog supply (http://www.gundogsupply.com). After visiting with them about the different options they have, they were very helpful, I decided on the Kimar 209 primer pistol Made by Traditions. I couldn’t be more happy with it. It has a solid feel to it like a real pistol, is loud without being too loud and fits nicely in an Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Also, the 209 primers are cheap and easy to come by. It also comes with a nice plastic case. (I can see that the latches won’t last too long on the case, but it’s a nice touch.) It was a great buy for the money.

Pistols are nice to train with because they can be on your side, grabbed quickly when you want a gunshot, then put away so you have two free hands. If you want to train with a pistol, but can’t justify buying one the few months you’ll need it to train just one pup, if you have a .22 pistol, you can use it. Revolvers, like the Ruger single-six work particularly well with blank loads. (Ah, maybe a good reason to buy a new gun!) Simply use your .22 and purchase .22 blanks. Trust me, even though blanks may cost more than loaded shells, buy them so you don’t have to worry about where the bullet is going to end up. You’ll have enough on your mind training the dog. As a side note, if you buy crimped loads, like for a ramset concrete nail gun, there is some debris (probably acrylic glue in the end of the shell) that shoots out, so don’t point it at anything close.

Another is to make your own shotgun popper loads. If you have a shotgun reloader, simply reprime shotgun hulls and don’t crimp them. These work well in an over/under. If you have a pump, cut the crimp off and they should feed through the magazine fine. This works very well, helps the dog learn to look where the shotgun is pointed and it’s not quite as loud as a pistol. This is a great tool, one that I love to use with young puppies, but I often find myself having to lay my nice shotgun down on the ground so I have use of both hands, then it gets stepped on by a pup.

A final alternative is to use your muzzleloader with only the 209 primer or the cap. This will work just as well as the shotgun popper loads, except that you can shoot twice and they are a pain to clean.

Continuing with our previous theme about training during the winter when it is dark, I thought I’d share my roading outfit. Exercising dogs is critical to their overall mental and physical wellbeing, and very important for training. Another reason to get them in shape is that you can take them on a several day hunting trip and they can hunt the whole time, but in the winter when it’s dark before and after work it is difficult to get them out and exercise. When it’s light out, I typically like to take the dogs out on a dead-end back road and let them run free while I run from 2 to 5 miles. They’ll get out a ways from me then I’ll call them back and we all get our exercise, but when it’s dark, I just can’t give them that much freedom.

My solution was to build a roading rig for our 4-wheeler. I saw one advertised for $170 through a hunting dog supply outfit, so I built one for about $25. I made it from the following items:
(1) 10’ length of chain link fence top-rail pipe ($10)
(4) Eye bolts ($2)
(4) Swivels ($5)
(4) Heavy bungee cords ($3)
(4) Brass leash snaps ($5)

I drilled holes 2” and 20” in from each end and installed the eyebolts and swivels, then I cut the ends off the bungee cords threaded the snaps through and tied them in a circle using a zeppelin bend knot. I tied the bungee together so it would be double the strength and so that there were no sharp wires or anything to get cut on. I use 3 nylon straps (NRS) to attach it to the front rack. It holds tight and takes just a second to attach or detach it.

As for harnesses, you have to buy pulling harnesses just for roading. Don’t try buying the walking dog harnesses at the pet store. Trust me on this one, they don’t work. Gun Dog Supply.com has a 1” wide nylon roading harness for $17 that works great. Strap these on the dogs, clip them to the snaps and you’re ready to go.

Most dogs take to it very quickly. Start slowly and make sure the dogs are with you and you are not dragging them. (They will hurt their pads very quickly if they are fighting you and you try to pull them along.)

I find that the dogs do best between 8 and 12 miles an hour. Just this morning (before taking the above photo – notice how calm the dogs are) I ran them a full 4 miles non-stop at 10 miles an hour. When I run them first thing in the morning, they get a great work out, are ready for training and are much calmer all day.

Thankfully we have passed the winter solstice and the days are getting longer.

Another idea for training during the winter, when it gets dark even before you get home from work is to move your training table inside the garage. If you don’t have one, build one along one length of the garage wall. If you like, you can put shelves under it, face it with panneling and have a new storage place for your decoys and other hunting paraphernalia.

By moving the training table inside the garage it provides a warm, lighted place to work on lots of commands, including, hold and fetch (trained retrieve), over, down, whoa, and anything else you would otherwise have to bend over for. Plus, having them off the ground and on a narrow runway helps the dog focus on the task at hand.

My table is 2′ wide and 14′ long. I would have made it 16′, but it was too long for the space I had available. I framed the table with 2×4’s and made 2×4 legs. I used one sheet of 3/4″ plywood, cut in half for the deck. Julie likes to use a piece of shelving as a ramp to walk the dogs up, whereas, I either have them jump up or lift them up.  It makes one more place you can train when it’s dark out.

Wintertime can be difficult when training a dog for a number of reasons. First, it’s cold and it can be difficult to motivate yourself to get out and train. Second, it’s not always fun to stand around outside and freeze your ears off. Also, one’s patience is often shorter when it’s cold out. Lastly, it’s dark. It makes it difficult to get much field training done when you get off work at five and the sun has already set.

One idea for wintertime training is to work on the “search” command. Dogs that have been force fetched or are natural retrievers can strengthen their search effort by planting a dummy out in the dark and sending the dog to find it with a “search” command. For some of the hunt tests, dogs are required to search unassisted for up to 10 minutes. Now is a great time to get them started.

Start by tossing the dummy into the dark to the same spot over and over so the dog comes to expect the dummy in that spot. Then plant the dummy there unseen by the dog. Bring the dog out and give your “fetch” command and have them go out and get it. Do it again, except use the “search” command spoken with exactly the same intonation as you give the fetch command. Do this several times. Then start to toss the dummy a little ways away so the dog has to search for it. Doing this in the dark or into 3 or 4 inches of snow forces the dog to use their nose. Intersperse searching for dog bumpers with frozen and thawed birds. You can gradually make it more challenging, so the dog learns that on a search command their target is out their, they just need to stay out and use their nose until they find it. Then, the next time you down a bird into thick cover unseen by the dog, you can confidently give your dog the search command. I guarentee this training will pay off come next season.