It’s been raining most of the day. I wanted to work some dogs today but it’s not to be. I’ve been thinking about some of the things we do to train our dogs.
A friend, Bob Eades, lives on several acres and had some chickens that the raccoons were killing. When they got into his hen house they would kill most of the chickens but eat only a few. The hen house was far enough away from the house that he didn’t hear anything when the raccoons got in.
Betsy pointing a pigeon.
Tur Bo watching a pigeon fly away.
Sally after the pigeon has flown away.
He took some cans, put rocks inside and tied them to the fence. He had a couple of Labradors that ran loose on his place. He took some treats to the chicken pen, rattled the cans and called his dogs. When they got to him he fed them some treats. The dogs learned to come when the cans rattled.
A few days later when Bob went to take care of his chickens he found a dead raccoon near the pen. The dogs had learned the lesson well.
A few days ago a friend, Stan Arnold and his grandson Jake, came over to work Jake’s dog on my pigeons. As we worked around the kennel area and pigeon pens Stan asked how I kept my dogs from barking. I have put it on the blog before but it may be time to do it again.
I have 6 dogs in my kennel from the age of one year to thirteen years old. If most of the dogs are barking there is something for them to bark at. If just one dog is barking I take anything that will make noise and walk to the kennel and start beating on the chain link. I scream and shout, “hush”, at the dog.
The dogs bark because they want to see you but they don’t want to see you when you’re crazy. When you first do this you must go to the kennel each time that a dog continues to bark. After a while you can yell, “hush” and they will quit barking. If you have to go to the pen because of a dog barking you can always tell the guilty one. It will be standing with it’s head down and the other dogs will be standing looking at him like they are saying, “see I told you he would come down and he would be crazy.”
A few years ago I had a dog barking about 2:00 am. I yelled at him a couple of times and he wouldn’t stop. I was about half asleep as I grabbed a dust mop and went to the kennel. There was a full moon and it was almost as light as day. The guilty dog didn’t even slow up barking, as he stood in his house barking.
I hit the chain link fence with the dust mop and yelled, “hush”. I thought, in my half awake state, that the head of the dust mop came off and went through the chain link. It went all of the way to the other end then started back to me. When it started over the top of the six foot chain link it dawned on me that this was an animal. A young bob cat was eating out of the dogs self feeder. He was afraid to come out of his house so he just stood there and barked.
When I first started bird hunting my dogs wouldn’t load in the dog box very well. Most of the time the dogs weren’t ready to quit when I tried to get them in the box. I just caught them and forced them into the box. After a few years I saw a guy say, “load up” to his dog and it jumped onto the tail gate then walked into the box. I thought, “I can train my dog to do that”.
Before I started training them to load, Dennis Garrison and I were hunting in Kansas. We hunted a small place and decided to go to another. I called my dog and he came close but saw that we were going to load up. He went back to hunting. I went after him. When I got a few hundred yards away he came right to me. I grabbed his collar and started back.
He was pulling back when we got close to the truck. Dennis was standing by the box and the dog’s door was open. I picked him up by the collar and a hand in front of his back legs. I had him heading for the open door at about 90 miles an hour when Dennis reached over and shut the door. The dog hit the door really hard. Dennis said he didn’t know why he shut the door. The rest of the day that dog would try to beat Dennis getting in the truck.
If your dog is doing something you don’t like or if you see someone’s dog doing something you would like for your dog to do, train for it. My dogs now load when I tell them to, “load up”. I spend quite a bit of time teaching, here, heel, whoa and up. The dogs don’t always do them when I give the command but they do most of the time.
Luke on point and Lucky, on the left, honoring.
Tur Bo pointing a single quail.
Sally on pen raised quail.