The weather and my life hasn’t allowed me to train dogs lately and it is raining this morning. We need the rain but the quail need it even worse than we do. I checked the weather channel and Pratt, Kansas has already got .8 of an inch of rain. Reydon, Oklahoma is only showing .1 of rain. It was still raining in Pratt but I don’t think it was in Reydon.
Sally
Tur Bo pointing a pigeon.
Sally
I have been seeing a few puppies on face book that the owners were saying were steady to wing, shot and fall at 8 months old or at least less than a year old. In my opinion, puppies need to be puppies for a longer time than this.
A lot of years ago I raised a litter of pups and kept a male dog out of this litter. Rusty was a natural retriever and he started pointing wild birds his first year. Back in those days we mainly just worked the dogs when we were hunting. He was a classy dog running and a classy dog on point.
When he was about a year and a half old, before the quail season opened, a farmer friend let me put some call back quail on his farm. I worked Rusty on these birds a couple of times a week and he was doing really well. I heard about a shoot to retrieve trial and decided to run him.
I had run one other shoot to retrieve trial before but that was my total experience. When we took off the other handler went to the right side of the field and Rusty and I went straight ahead. He pointed a quail and I flushed it. It wasn’t a very strong flyer so it dropped right in front of Rusty. He brought it back in a dead run and dropped it in my hand.
We started on and he went a hundred yards and went on point again. This time he moved and the quail flushed before I got to him. He chased it, caught it and brought it to me in a dead run. The judge said if he had of seen the bird running on the ground it would have been a good point.
We went on around the field and the other dog pointed. He was a two or three hundred yards away but Rusty saw him and honored. I held him until the guy flushed his bird and it was retrieved. I don’t remember him finding any other birds but after his run the judge told me that he was the most exciting young dog he had seen in years.
I didn’t place in that trial but it gave me something to shoot for. I decided on the way home that all I had to do was make him steady to wing and shot. Simple enough.
I had never trained a dog to be steady to wing and shot but it couldn’t be that hard. I had a lot more confidence in my training skills than I had any right to have.
Sally on point.
I don’t remember what all I did to that poor dog but there was a lot of screaming involved. Luckily, I didn’t have an e-collar at that time. I had the call back birds and I worked him several times a week. I didn’t really know how to do what I was trying to do but I worked hard.
The only thing I accomplished with my training regimen was a dog that was afraid to make a mistake. When it finally dawned on me that he wasn’t going to be the next Johnny Crocket I let him be a dog. But he was never the dog he could have been. For the rest of his life he was afraid of making a mistake. He was a good dog but never the dog he could have been if I hadn’t put this stress on him.
In my opinion, and it is worth what you are paying, a puppy should be allowed to hunt and make mistakes for at least it’s first season. If you live in an area with lots of birds you might be able to break a pup with lots of exposure before the first season starts.
I put the e-collars on my young dogs and hunt them with my older dogs during the open season but I never, short of a life and death reason, hit the e-collar with the exception of chasing deer. I want any time they chase a deer for it to be a bad experience.
Dolly
Also, dogs see all of this in a different way. My dogs move when the birds do in the field but here on my training grounds they are mostly steady to wing and shot. None of them are steady to fall. Tur Bo, even on the training grounds, will have the bird if it has any trouble getting off the ground. I’m working on him.
The last session, I put a rubber band around the wing on a pigeon and dropped it in front of Tur Bo and Sally both. They were both tied to a tree, with a half hitch around their flanks, with a check cord. Sally didn’t move when the pigeon had trouble flying but Tur Bo hit the end of the check cord hard enough to do a flip. I set him back where he started and threw another pigeon with out the rubber band and he didn’t move.
Sally on point.
But having these dogs steady to wing and shot on these training grounds doesn’t mean they are steady when we are out hunting. I do think that it makes them steadier on their birds to train them to be steady at home. They get used to having birds walk around in front of them.
I worked Sally and Dolly guiding for a group of hunters a couple of weeks ago. Dolly has been used as a guide dog before but this was Sally’s first time. After the first few minutes Sally settled down and did a good job. Several of her points were birds that she saw walking around. Had I not worked her on birds that she could see, here at home, she might have thought she could catch those and flushed them before we could get to her.
Almost, every time I see someone say they have a young dog that is steady to wing and shot, I think about Rusty and what he could have been. If your dog comes steady to wing and shot as a puppy that is one thing but I think putting that much pressure on a young dog takes something out of them. Once it has been taken out you can’t put it back. Just my opinion.
Tur Bo after the check cord flipped him.