Gun Dog Forum

Another lice-getter is a small handful of Twenty Mule Team Borax in the birds' bath water. Pigeons love to bathe, and the borax whacks their bugs.

Hey, at least it's been quite a while since I've seen a dog with plier-scarred ears - which was pretty common twenty years back. Still way too many unhappy dog campers, though.

My advice to folks asking about trainers has long been to watch the pro's dogs and see what they think of him.

I'm afraid you've lost me with both the "Escalon Shuffle" and "galumping," but the former sounds like what I have in mind. "Tentative," "fearful" and/or "confused" might be layman's descriptions for what I meant by "pig". Pig was actually a poor choice on my part, as it's probably unfair to the dogs...

You have to excuse poor Gone, if someone does something differently than he, he thinks that's because they believe it cruel. Or maybe it just suits the argument he'd like to make. Gone, you'll be tickled to know we/I blew out of this morning's test. The coyote essentially one whistled the blind, tho...

How 'bout I cut the "twenty questions" game short with a short, though certainly not complete, answer: revisit our foundational steps.

Seems to me that most training problems come from lack of sound foundation and/or trying to take too big of a step.

Here's the thing that drives me crazy about some people. This is not against you Trek, but against any that say they don't use the ecollar and don't need ropes. Most of us old guys used ropes to make it easier for the dog to understand and for no other reason. I am interested to find out from Rick ...

For the record: I'm not anti-e-collar. Though many jump to that conclusion when they learn I don't use one in retriever training. Fact is, I've been using an e-collar to what I think good pointing dog purpose for a bit over ten years. (Much of which has to do with being in direct supervisory range o...

But if one looks to the very top of the retriever training world, he'll find those guys and gals less e-dependent than our current rank and file pros and amateurs. Really? Who would that be? Mike Lardy, the greatest of them all is, and always has been, an ecollar trainer. Just who is it that is tra...

Bill, e-collars have been incorporated into virtually all phases of training here, in one manner or another, and many of us seem to have forgotten there are other means of accomplishing the same goals. (Much like our force-fetch dependency.) But if one looks to the very top of the retriever training...

Butch Goodwin's "Retriever Training from the Inside Out" isn't e-dependent, nor is any of the British Stuff. You can also find some free on-line training articles in the newletter section of http://www.uklabs.com.