A very wet start to a partridge day. Yet a fantastic memory with Joas first ever marked retrieve and he did it on his own instincts. As the landscape was being swept after the final drive an injured bird got up and flew into the bracken where Joa had marked it. He jumped into the culvert, swam across to a steep embankment to then hunt up the bracken. It was one of those moments I thought what the hell are you up to as I hadn’t seen the bird go into the bracken. When he came out of the bracken he returned the same way he went out but with a partridge in his mouth. What a great season he is having. So many days already under his belt.
Here’s the start to finish of our very first 1-1 session in the conventional sense of training. We just grabbed a spot on my friends farm. The view is looking over to Guardbridge and St Andrews. This is a popular track for locals and their dogs so we could have been interrupted at any point. But that’s just part of the day to day. Rather than doing it in a stale garden we’re doing it in an area we frequent pretty often. So for Peter rather than this a training session it’s just another interaction whilst being out together. This is the first time we’ve done any 1-1 with each other. There’s always been Joa, or Maura or SJ and on most occasions them all together.
#takeaminutechangealife #countryside #onthefarm #listentothebirds #gundogs #germanshorthairedpointer #cockerspaniel #balmullo #cuplahillsfarm
Ironically whilst on Autocad I was listening to David Gilmour I can’t breath and this bellows through 😂
Teaching a dog shouldn’t be just about teaching it a certain way. What we should be teaching is transferable skills. Here we’ve got seasoned gun dogs with those who have no idea, yet they will learn those same skills. Steadiness no matter what the stimulus. Another dog, a goat, a rabbit or a pheasant it doesn’t really matter. One thing people who train gun dogs do is get sucked into this or that and then have trouble transferring onto another stage. For instance retrieving a dummy and only a dummy and they do this for the first 9 or so months of their dogs lives, conditioning it to only dummies, then they ask, how do I get my dog to pick up feather. They then go down the route of dressing dummies in fur or feather as if this smells or looks like the real thing. Instead it’s a retrieve they are after. I’ll ask my dogs to pick up my phone if I drop it at times and now that I’m of age of wearing glasses I can get them to pick up them when they fall off my head if I want to. It’s not that I need them to or is too lazy to do it myself, but I use it as an opportunity to teach it doesn’t matter what the item is, it’s ok to pick up when asked. Teaching should be about just another day comes with more experiences. Giving our dogs the confidence to carry them out. Not so that you’re a gundog so will only do what gundogs do. Or my dog can’t do that because they are a gundog. What we want is life skills that can help us at home at work or at play. For me that’s what makes a better companion. Being able to take them where ever, and they can fit it.
#cute #foxredlab #germanshorthairedpointer #gundogs
Day 2 and the dogs are nowhere to be seen near the goats. Respect given where respect is due.
Don’t panic if your dog doesn’t show signs of what you want as an end result. It’ll come through in one way. A few spilt cartridges was stimulating enough.
This won’t be positively taken by many. Yet many love how my dogs behave. Many comment on how happy my dogs are. I’ll never say I’m Force free in my teaching as I teach to prevent rather than waiting to reward good behaviour. Our voice and how we use it can have so much power. Teaching isn’t all fun and roses. Yet it results in positive behaviour.
Are you wondering which whistle is best.
As the page title says, these are some of my thoughts, not conclusive but some. so here I’m giving you my rambling thoughts on whistles.
For me it’s never to early to introduce them to other animals. Joa here has been with me for around 3 days here and all he wants to do is be will me. I am more of a stimulus to him now than than in the coming months when he starts to find his nose and is more inquisitive. Knowing that I am a stronger stimulus than the chickens I am getting the result I’m after so I can give him the praise for what he does naturally. Later on, chickens won’t be new to him so he won’t be as inquisitive. Less of a battle if any later on in life. Fast forward nearly a year and he’s again around these animals and he’s just not bothered about them. We’ll be doing the same with Peter. We did it before with Maura and many of my other dogs I’ve had.
A bit of learning for both of them at the same time.
It’s so easy to allow your dogs to just run and have a good time. Because of the two extremes of breeds when it comes to Gundog work we need to be careful in what we allow as it can cause ourselves problems. Take the trio in age order of Maura (GSP) Joa (Cocker) Peter (GSP). Various degrees in their learning and different styles of hunting. The Joa we want to be working close, and the Two GSPs working at range. But we’ve got the young non experienced and the experienced. If I run Joa with Maura, Maura will encourage Joa to range far more than is wanted. Running Peter with Joa and it encourages Peter to range too far ahead for what’s she’s ready for at her time of life. Thankfully though as much as Maura in her age has been allowed to become her own dog, Joa has a great foundation that we work from. As much as Joa loves hunting he also is happy to be close by, yet something I don’t ask for much because he’s so good. But today I thought hold on. He’s been running with Maura and ranging way way to much now. As For Peter she’s starting to find her legs so we don’t want to be encouraging this yet because we need the more basics of recall and being close etc in place before we allow to range. It’s far easier to give them more later than giving it now and then asking them to reel it in later. So today Joa was walked to a loose heel location where he can happily go from side to side. A bit of good self control for him, and it also helped reinforce the closeness for Peter. Peter staying close yet freely moving around was a good stimulus that Joa had to contend with also. These are all important tasks out in the field. Steadiness.
Nothing like taking your Black Face for a walk #blackfacesheep #tups #cockerspaniel #petlamb #walkingthedog
Spur of the moment off the cuff stuff. I had no idea what condition the pigeon was. I’d gone past it but decided to turn around and give Joa his first opportunity to retrieve freshly dead pigeon. Not the easiest of animals to retrieve for many dogs and their handlers, but as I don’t fix myself to dummies when teaching, I go by a retrieve is a retrieve.
I’ve not done any real training in regards to gundog work so to ask him out of the pickup. And straight into a retrieve, he’s not done at all bad. You can understand the little confusion of what’s going on at the start.
Another little note. Some worry that a raw fed dog will eat the animal it picks. I’ve never had that issue ever. I’ve witnessed a few kibble fed dogs eat a pheasant partridge and even a grouse on a field trial but I’ve never had any of my dogs eat game they’re to retrieve. They are fed pheasant etc, and on some days where they’ve been working hard and the weather ain’t too great I’ve given Maura and others say a leg of a badly shot bird whilst picking up.
A little flashback to last August when Joa was just 12 weeks old learning the stop whistle and reinforcing the recall. It’s never to early to do things, but like everything else I generally do, it’s done as part of the interaction during a walk, which means I don’t really just take them for a walk. We’re always doing something.
This girl will learn far more than any training can ever do. There’s 24 hours in a day where our dogs will pick up certain things. The “20 minute” training sessions are really about fine tuning what they already should know. For me, putting a dog into the field shouldn’t be a black and white issue. It should just be like another day. For example. I won’t ever present my dogs to gunfire to get them used to it. Instead, gunfire like today is just background noise. Today I popped into Cluny to the Falconry Centre where across the road there were those out shooting clays. It’ll be a common thing for her and the others. So the sounds and scents won’t be anything unusual to them later on in life when they go into the field to “work”
