Gun Dog Forum

RickB

You can't ruin a dog with an e-collar. You can set your training back a long long long way though. Right now, I'd say you seem to not really understand the training you are giving. I'd suggest you get a training recipe (something in print or video or both). Obtain it. Understand it. Follow it. If th...

RickB

I've never needed an e-collar for a dog in the house. The e-collar is good for correction at a distance. Pup in the house can be corrected with cheaper/non-electronic means. A spray bottle set to "stream" and spray the dog in the face when he is misbehaving is a lot cheaper and is age appropriate fo...

RickB

The 1825 has a config setting which may help you. You can program the thing to half step. You have two buttons, yes? You can configure it so that the bottom button is a half step between two adjacent numbers. As for losing juice...you also got a device in the box which indicates if the thing is deli...

RickB

A common adage is that once the dog learns he cannot catch the bird, he'll stop chasing. But two things are happening with your dog. 1) he likes to chase and/or 2) he's learned that he can catch birds. some dogs chase to chase, because chasing is fun. Some dogs chase to catch. I have no idea what is...

RickB

...There most definitely is a medical advantage to spaying a female. The rates of mammary cancer, which is a fairly common cancer in female dogs, is GREATLY reduced in spayed females. That is a fact... RayG I actually read somewhere that a review of the science behind the "mammary cancer" study is ...

RickB

He's your dog and you are free to do what you want... However, can I ask a question: Why do you feel the need to neuter him at all? What issues are you trying to avoid or fix by neutering. There are pros and cons to neutering, and those change based on the age... A dog before 2 will grow abnormally ...

RickB

The most important thing to wrestle with is there are other rewarding things than treats. My dog will ignore treats in the field. The birds, the run and the hunt are the reward. Same with "fun bumpers" for a lab. A lot of retrievers love to retrieve and retrieving is the reward. As for weening off t...

RickB

Talk to your vet to be sure. Sounds like a routine skin infection. A course of antibiotics will clear that up.

RickB

Training can be a confusing thing, esp with your first dog. Getting a recipe plan like Sharon suggested is a great way to take the confusion out of it. If you've never trained an animal before, a recipe is the best way to do it. I may be confused, but it kind of sounds like you need a plan. You want...

RickB

I had a dog that was a barker. I have guests over every Monday. I like the fact that the dog will bark at strangers outside, and will bark when the doorbell rings. But, when *I* invite the stranger inside, I wanted the barking to stop. Here is what I did. 1) isolate the behavior: This dog is clicker...

RickB

Your vet or the manufacturer would be a good source for potential side effects. Any maybe some here had some sort of reaction. I gave it to my dog a few years ago. There were no issues. I live in the midwest...finding a way to do snakebreaking nearby was about impossible (as rattlesnakes are very ve...

RickB

Of course it is. The ear pinch (or toe hitch) pressure during FF does not arrive 'cold', at least not as done by the many top trainers I'm associated with. The pressure used is applied to support a known command, "Fetch". Teach, force, reinforce. Evan: I mean no disrespect, as you have forgotten mo...

RickB

The using the collar as a "command" is, when you get down to the brass tacks, no different than most force fetch programs. In college speak, it is negative reinforcement. In short, the dog learns to turn off the stim by complying with the command. - The dog learns that whoa-ing/standing turns off th...

RickB

I find *training* with the alpha a serious hassle. If the dog is already trained, and you need collar stim only rarely, then its fine. but, when you are training, when you are trying to get a good timing between the offending behavior and the stimulation, it is a hassle. My buddy has an alpha, and t...

RickB

Obviously all dogs are different, but both of mine would knock down walls and steal money from old women to get at their "regular" food. I've had dogs in the past that weren't quite so food driven so I understand the need to use something different for some dogs but if you've got an extremely food ...

RickB

I would NOT recommend simply using kibble. It has to be special and fairly rare in order for the dog to work for it. Kibble is the same, day in and day out. As for messing with the digestive system, you simply will not know until you try. Get a variety of treats and switch between them. Things I hav...

RickB

Illinois has pheasants that people hunt. But it is far from a destination state. Last numbers I saw kicked around were like 24,000 roosters shot in a year. I do not know what goes into that number...I hope it is not the put-and-take hunting that the DNR provides around the state. The problem is acce...

RickB

You really need to get the dog tested. More common than food allergies is inhaled allergies (atopy). You are jumping through some hoops and it may not even be the food. Or it could be a combination. I had a dog with both food allergies and inhaled allergies. With the test, you immediately know what ...

RickB

Hunt Des Plaines a lot. Note that these are pen raised birds, but they seem to place these birds the day before, so it is pretty good hunt. If you are willing to wait in line early (5 a.m.), you can get the choice fields around the check in station. Nice cover and easier walking. If you are not will...

RickB

I've seen the following done with good success: You have two sets of commands. You have house commands that the entire family uses in the house and yard. Compliance is fair to good, and everyone tries to apply these in the same way, but things are variable, so it takes a while for pup to learn. Then...

RickB

The vets wanted to put my dog on steroids, but I said no. When he was a pup, he (also) got a disease called "steroid responsive meningitis". The treatment (as you might expect) is heavy dosages of steroids. Cleared it up, but the pup had some terrific runs during that time. So I said no to the 'roid...

RickB

My 4 year old intact male brittany has inflammatory bowel disease. When he was first diagnosed, he was on that Hills z/d stuff. I was able to transition him off. I was convinced that it was actually contributing to his problems. His current plan: He is currently taking half an Azathioprine tablet ev...

RickB

I roughhouse with my dog. I play bow and pull on his ears. I roll over and offer my belly. My dog pulls on my ears, play bows, and offers his belly. Basically, I watch how dogs play in daycare or the dog park and emulate that. It hasn't hurt anything that I can see in his training.

RickB

Short version: Is there any books or videos one can suggest for giving the basics of quail hunting. What to look for in habitat in particular...but anything for someone who has never hunted quail before. Long version: I have a plant shutdown between Christmas and New Year's. Was thinking about takin...

RickB

Hey...one other thing...talk to a vet about it. If it is a male dog and intact, an enlarged prostate can affect defecation.

RickB

My dog is diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. Like rheumatoid arthritis, the body is attacking itself...in this instance, it is attacking the small intestine. As a result, my dog has less small intestine to absorb nutrients. Untreated, he is pretty runny. In the process of figuring out a good...

RickB

I have a single dog (brittany).

Looking for all y'all's opinion. Is there a right time to add a second dog to the mix. Is there a better or worse time for the current dog?

All opinions welcome. Thanks

Rick

RickB

Loose stools and vomiting are so common that most vets won't really talk to you about it. Your starting course of action is correct: fast the dog for 24 hours, then feed a bland diet. Then slowly introduce "real" food. Move slow and change only one thing at a time. Remember that it takes about 12 ho...

RickB

There is just not a lot of good reasons to neuter a male dog. There is a growing corpus of evidence which may indicate there is reason to not neuter. One study compared early neutered dogs with late and non neutered dogs and found a risk in early neutering. Since your dog is 2.5 years old, you've cl...

RickB

I do not like a dog learning the same command from two different trainers. I fear the subtle differences and expectation differences can confuse the dog. Here are some things that I have done to work around this: 1) Give certain commands to the wife. Have her solely responsible for teaching commands...

RickB

I agree with KwikIrish...Even as a pup, my Brit was square-ish, meaning shoulder to hip length was about the same as the height to shoulder. What do the parents look like? Are they square? Shoot, even a Welsh Springer (which is longer than high) doesn't look like this. I know nothing...but based on ...

RickB

Hey Miss... Welcome. I know nothing of such a cross. Personally, I fear that everything that makes a Chessie great might be diluted and, likewise, everything that makes the GSP great may be diluted as well. But I really don't know. If the parent stock comes from strong hunting lines, the pup will pr...

RickB

Both. I am near Chicago. Illinois has pheasant, but finding them is a challenge and it is almost all on private land. Suitable land is often sewed up and secured by another hunter who is local. So, the vast majority that I hunt is preserve birds. But I will still head to Northern Michigan once a yea...

RickB

...I do also find that thinking in a somewhat technical way about my timing and rates of reinforcement, for instance, helps me. Someone with more "dog sense" might find a lot of those timing issues to be just common sense, but they aren't necessarily so to me at first... Technical for technical's s...

RickB

...Don't get me wrong. Obviously operant conditioning is very effective and is the basis of most dog training whether the trainer realizes it or not. I'm just saying it's a mistake to try to pigeonhole every dog-handler interaction into one of the four quadrants. Welsh: I hear ya. Methinks you and ...

RickB

There's a distortion of common sense... Welsh: Let me first qualify my responses by saying that I will use shock collars, negative reinforcement, and positive punishment when it suits me and the situation. As for learning new tasks quickly using R+/N-: I'd have to say that that is technically true,...

RickB

I think an honest assessment of what game you will be hunting the most would be in order. Or, what game is on your bucket list and you want to be able to hunt with this new dog? And, like what was asked before, do you have a preference between pointing breed and flushing breed?

RickB

I think I understand this, but have had trouble with it because in terms of the OC quadrants it doesn't pigeonhole neatly. To take an extreme example, assume a dog that is trained on a very strict R+ regime, so no outward "force" at all, but the dog is crated for several hours before training and o...

RickB

I have to admit that an awful lot of modern dog training phraseology goes right over the top of my head. I get a sore head trying to remember it all and understand it. Bill T. Most of the training theory is just a categorization of stuff that animal trainers have known for centuries. Force Fetch? N...

RickB

1) some of the comments made lead me to come to the conclusion that there is come confusion as to what "positive only" means. This comes from those who advocate positive only. What these people are trying to say (I believe) is that they do not use any aversive techniques in their training. An aversi...

RickB

You write this?

RickB

I view dog training recipes kind of like broccoli. the nutrition is no good if you cannot keep it down. Likewise, with the dog training materials: it is no good if it doesn't make sense to you. I see that you have agility experience. There is a guy named George Hickox. I think his methods would seem...

RickB

No, does there need to be? No, of course not :) I just tend to not offer opinion unless I am asked... just how my folks raised me. You seemed pretty settled on things, so, I figured you got a system that works for you. No need for me to rock the boat if I disagreed. As for shotguns, I am nearly ign...

RickB

Thanks all, Dog did fine. He was in a wire crate in the covered bed of the truck. Covered with polar fleece I bought at a fabric store. Fleece cost around $20 (unlike a kennel cover). I put pink insulation board under his pad in the crate. He did just fine. Wife was a little cold, and I didn't get a...

RickB

I haven't needed the distances that you need, so I cannot comment.

I have been known to throw a feral in with the homers. I wanted the genetic diversity. I also wanted the "street savvy" that I supposed to come from a feral bird. I don't know that it helped. I do not feel it hurt.

Rick

RickB

Sorry...is there a question in there?

RickB

Keep an eye on it. Everything that everyone said is solid (sorry for the pun). My dog has Inflammatory Bowel Disease, so I am too well acquainted with the loose stools. Just a couple of things to add/consider: 1) pumpkin. Performance foods just do not have a lot of fiber. This is why folks are sugge...

RickB

All: How do you camp with your dogs? I am heading to my property to do some turkey hunting. Wife wants to go with and hang out in camp. Dog needs to come with. Dog is an inside dog. Temps are going down to about 40 degrees. Dog cannot be in tent with us (no room). I could put the dog in cab of the t...

RickB

I did a bit of research on this. I spoke to the local master gardeners. They seemed to be of the opinion that the issue is not acid, but salt. They then gave me a list of plants that are at least moderately tolerant to salt. (For those of you from the south, salt resistant plants are needed because ...

RickB

Axel (or Axle)

You can get a lot of dog names by Googling "dog names" or "popular dog names".

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