I got to thinking about what I said about the puppies eating pigeon poop. I don’t always explain myself very well so I thought I would elaborate on that. Not on them eating poop but me breaking them from eating poop.
When I have a litter of pups I always put collars on them and attach a cord about 2 feet long to the collar when they are about 2 weeks old. These cords catch on things as well as the litter mates see a cord moving and grab it. This teaches the pup to give to the lead and I’m not even there so they can’t blame me. By the time the litter is old enough to go to homes they will lead some.
Can see the collars. The cords are hard to see.
I had a male setter years ago that hadn’t been conditioned to lead in this way and when I started to try to lead him he just did flip flops on the end of the leash. Someone told me to just step off and drag him. He’ll get up and walk they said. Well, I tried this. My kids were small and they came out crying, thinking I was going to kill him. So I waited until everyone was gone and hooked him to another dog with a 2 dog coupler. The other dog would lead so we started around the block dragging ole Scamp. We went 2 blocks before he finally got up and walked. When I read Delmar Smith’s Best Way To Train Your Bird Dog and saw how he had them train themselves I jumped on it. I have never had that problem again.
But back to the poop eaters. There were only 4 pups in the litter that Tur Bo came out of. I have their whelping box in my shed but when they get big enough to get out of the whelping box I move them to the kennels. Usually they are 5 to 6 weeks old before they can get out. With a litter of puppies I have to clean the kennel at least twice a day so I turn the pups loose to play. Also whenever anyone came by to see the puppies I would turn them out.
Usually only 1 or 2 puppies would go to the pigeon coops and eat the poop. Not always the same ones, either. I started off just running them away from the coops. This didn’t work, they would sneak around and start again. One day I was frustrated with them. I grabbed the cords they were dragging and pulled them back to their pen. The pups that weren’t eating the pigeon droppings got to stay out and play. The ones in the pen would howl and cry to get out and it seemed like the ones that were out would rub it in a little. It didn’t take long for them to figure out if they played they got to stay out longer.
One of this litter is in North Carolina but Tur Bo, and the other 2 never bother the pigeon droppings.
Years ago I was in a walking field trial and Lucky pointed a quail in a fence row and the dog that was running with him failed to back. His owner put a leash on him and put him on the dog wagon. I told his owner he could leave him down if he wanted to. At the time I didn’t know the rules were that he had to pick him up. But he said, “no, he’s got to learn. He knows he should back.” I said, “You think he understands why he has been put on the dog wagon.” He said, “He’s a smart dog. Smart dogs will figure it out.”
At the time I thought that was too much for a dog to figure out. At a really young age these pups figured out if they wanted to stay out and play they couldn’t eat pigeon poop. Smart dogs can figure it out.