07/05/2025
Birds first, control second ?
Control first, bird second?
Disclaimer: I'm all for thoughtful bird exposure for very young dogs and when I mean thoughtful I mean literally helping them to learn the rules of how we would like them to handle birds responsibly when they are trained.
But.
If you pay any attention at all to the videos I put up, the posts I make, the podcast I've been on, the article articles I write or speaking to me in person you know I don't believe in the "you gotta run them on birds when they're young , develop drive and hopefully watch pointing desire develop and then when they are older and by the way you've inadvertently classically conditioned them to do things you probably don't want them to do, you change the game and use pressure, sometimes high level, to show them how you want things done.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
Yeah but you say, countless tens of thousands of dogs have been successfully trained using that method so it must be correct .
How many phone calls were made using a black rotary phone hooked to the wall with a 4 foot cord? It worked really really well for probably hundreds of millions of calls but I doubt many people in develop countries are making calls like that anymore.
The same with training. Many of the long sanding methods are really a hands off approach based on attrition. The dogs that figured it out on their own and then could tolerate the "breaking process" were successful and those that didn't or couldn't were sidelined or discarded blaming the dog not the program.
I don't use a black rotary phone hooked to the wall with a 4 foot cord anymore no matter how wonderfully it might still work because it's an anachronism of a bygone error and I have moved on to more efficient and effective methods.
Here is Blue, 11 months old and less than three months of training, a dog many people would've tried to use as evidence of the failure of my program and the need to let dogs learn in that old school self developmental process.
Blue went through my program like countless other dogs over the past three decades and after control, recall/change of direction and whoa were formally solidified he then transitioned to birds.
It was during this exposure people would've been clutching their pearls telling me he needed to have been run on birds and develop naturally before training.
His hunt was somewhat ambivalent, his pointing desire and intensity was lacking and would've had many people questioning the depth of his pointing instinct or quality of his nose.
He would frequently run through odor a couple times before establishing a lackluster point but from literally the first bird he pointed he has been under a high degree of control both before and after the flush.
Having seen this countless times, especially with young dogs that had either no or extremely limited exposure to birds when they were very very young, he didn't phase me whatsoever.
After a few weeks exposure to birds in that somewhat lackluster style, this is what suddenly appeared yesterday.
He stopped on point as soon as he encountered bird odor, remained staunch but would have been easily controlled had he advanced towards the bird, greatly increased intensity and a short easily controlled break in his newfound enthusiasm to follow the bird.
Obvious control both before and following the flush was done with no formal breaking process but my standard protocol of formalizing control first then gradually adding environmental distractions at a progression rate where high amounts of pressure or tools such as whoa posts, place boards, 55 gallon barrels on their side, tables or flank collars we're not employed.
Yeah, many people would've freaked out that he was on birds without some prior uncontrolled or barely controlled development process and then try to rein in that enthusiasm in what frequently is a perilous balancing act between control, pressure and attitude.
This, for the dog, is a much more low pressure approach that doesn't risk some of the unwanted or aberrant behavior that may manifest itself with dogs that have been allowed to run amuck on birds for quite some time in the name of development before before using pressure to change behavior we have not only allowed but in many cases encouraged.
