Gun Dog Forum

Trekmoor

QUOTE …"On a related question.... what do i do about non-bird things he has that I want him to drop -- like dead rotten moles or mice my cat has killed and dog has found. It can't be good to let him eat those...but he goes in to frantic speed-swallow mode when I try to take them. I assume these two ...

Trekmoor

I can't really comment on possible uses of the e -collar when dealing with these problems as I know next to nothing about how to use them. I'd stop using quail though and if no wild game birds could be used I'd use pigeons instead. The hard mouth thing would have me worried though. Dogs that are pos...

Trekmoor

"That end is for $****ing, the front is for pointing!" ! :lol: I was drinking a mug of tea when I read the above and I sprayed out half a mouthful with my guffaw of laughter ! :lol: :lol: :lol: I will try to remember that priceless little quote for future use ! We have got some muppet judges over h...

Trekmoor

I don't think there is such a thing as a generally expected "standard of training" when talking about a started or part trained dog. One persons medium standard might be someone elses low standard. If I saw a "started" pointing dog up for sale I would have to enquire closely about what it's standard...

Trekmoor

As I said in an earlier post dogs tend not to generalise very well. That means the e-collar training should have been done in differing places such as fields, moorlands and light woodlands and preferably on different sheep too. Very occasionally a dog may get completely the wrong idea about why it r...

Trekmoor

Like Polmaise I live in Scotland where there is a ban on e- collars . I am at present trying to train my daughters 8 -9 months old GSP to be a gundog. All was going fairly well considering my very limited mobility . He was starting to point the pheasants he found and starting to hold his points too ...

Trekmoor

Sorry to hear about your dog's continued strong interest in sheep. I assume that when the "certified personnel" man used the e-collar your dog stopped chasing the sheep and you therefor got your non-chase certificate ? I.M.O. the e-collar treatment should have been done over several days in several ...

Trekmoor

Can't claim to have taken in a lot of other peoples dogs for training, maybe only 40-50 over a 40 years period. During that time none of those dogs have been e-collared or hosed down . Some of them did make some noise during the first few days and nights but I used to bring strange dogs into my hous...

Trekmoor

Hi Shags, yep - all good.

I had forgotten that not all people never correct a dog near game and just rushed in with a rather thoughtless answer.

Bill

Trekmoor

Shags is right and I am wrong - -- it does depend on what you have been doing with the dog. The golden rule is --- do not correct the dog in the presence of game. What you consider to be a correction and what a dog thinks it is can be two different things. Thanks for correcting me on this one Shags....

Trekmoor

I don't think you really have any problem . :D If you worked her onto birds that always would fly away if she approached too close then I am pretty sure she would start to point them. I never use quail, I use only wild birds when training a puppy, that is pheasants, partridge , grouse and snipe. If ...

Trekmoor

Hunter participation numbers would drop dramatically if we ran such a scheme in Britain !

Bill T.

Trekmoor

Something in your original post interested me Veggie. I hadn't realised that in Norway a licence is required before some parts of the countryside can be hunted with a dog. Do the authorities send out someone to check the dog is under good control before giving you the licence ? If not, do you have t...

Trekmoor

O.K.--- Where using an e -collar to control a point is concerned ----- ignore this if you already knew it. If a dog receives a correction while it is moving in to a point or when it has pointed it may ,in future, begin to blink birds /blink the point. There is an old saying that goes - never correct...

Trekmoor

I agree, I can hardly begin to imagine how much time and thought and effort and travelling went into the making of Craig's book.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

Are You saying that the great Higgins and crew are wasting their time and it really is just another way of showing what a pointing does anyway ?...but it looks like you are training them in a unique way ? ... You could call this method .. The Wullie way" ? ... Of course I could call "my way" the "W...

Trekmoor

Have you used the Magic Brush Pile .Bill ? Nope, I've never needed to use it and I don't have the pigeons for one anyway. I'd have thought that if the brush pile was used just a little bit too often, any intelligent dog would begin to point the brush pile by sight and not neccessarily the pigeons b...

Trekmoor

If you don't know much about bird dogs take someone with you who does but see the dog in action first. I couldn't agree more . Assuming that a "Started Dog" is much the same as it's equivalent in Britain ..."The Part Trained Dog," the question I always ask is ..."which part was trained." The variab...

Trekmoor

Neither have I. We tend to get what we give where personal comments are concerned. Things escalate from there as I know only too well. It is far too easy to make an enemy , not so easy to make a friend.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

The amount of game exposure needed to persuade a pup to point varies a lot from dog to dog. I've had a couple of pups that began to point after as few as 6 -10 birds had been found and chased. With that sort of pup they have very quickly come to realise that they cannot and will not catch a flying b...

Trekmoor

You have my sympathy Veggie. In Scotland where e- collars are also banned, dogs still do chase sheep ! We have had to fall back on older, not so nice to use, "traditional methods." I had dogs long before e-collars became available and my very first dog, a border collie, did chase sheep but she only ...

Trekmoor

The only thing about a gsp or Brittany is I don’t know how natural they are and I really prefer more natural pointing at a young age and good noses. I've never had a brittany or a GSP that did not point very naturally. I do no training at all on pointing but my pups still pointed wild game from as ...

Trekmoor

I think I'd get a GSP. I've worked brits and GSP's for about 35 years and both breeds are good hunters either in cover or out on open ground and both breeds would retrieve the geese I shot but the GSP's extra size and strength made carrying a goose a bit easier for it. Both breeds are good house dog...

Trekmoor

I can't help at all with your search but I do think you have chosen the right breed. Brittanies are a really good hunt - point - retrieve breed. My own experience of training this breed showed me that although they hunt and point very readily, not all of them like to retrieve quite so much. A great ...

Trekmoor

I've used Mars Bars several times as an energy boost during long hunts over the grouse moors with my brittannies or GSP's. I have no idea if doing this helped the dogs at all but it did help me to think I was doing my best for the dogs. The main problem I had while doing this on a hot August days wa...

Trekmoor

I never even imagined that someone would use barbed wire to contain a dog in a run or in a yard which is why my earlier reply was about fences encountered out training or hunting.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

Ah ! Je comprehende noo !

I don't do F.F. and if I do "hold" then it is usually done as part of a " Take - Give" game with a puppy.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

polmaise wrote:Perhaps You have just started on a few things ,without finishing them .
A genueine Muscadine wine ...made by a Black woman in the Bayou , and bottled ..costs money . If You like that taste .
Bitter/Sweet.

Eh ??? Sorry Robert , that's too deep for me

Bill T.

Trekmoor

So far I've never had a dog dig it's way out of my garden although I have had a couple that jumped out. If my dogs are in the kennel or run then they cannot dig out through the concrete slabs the run is floored with. If the dogs are in the garden then I watch them and at once interfere with any sign...

Trekmoor

I have no experience whatsoever of ruffed grouse , we don't have them here. They seem to behave very like the wild bred pheasants I often hunted in woodlands though , they were infamous for running from points ! I allowed my dogs to follow up on them by tracking their footscent through the cover whi...

Trekmoor

When I was younger I used to train my dogs to jump over fences, including barbed wire ones. ! Now I train my dogs not to jump over them ! I lift the dog over or I walk to a gate. My dogs got several barbed wire injuries including a torn nipple on one of my bitches and a torn penis sheath on one of t...

Trekmoor

Garrison wrote:Sounds like a smart dog that remembers catching a poor flying quail a while back?

That was my thought too.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

Ditto the above. Do not chase after her during retrieves ! Move away from her or even run away from her as soon as she has the retrieve article in her mouth, try taking it from her on the move, keep backing away from her .....or...... set up a "retrieve lane" on your land and use that to funnel the ...

Trekmoor

I agree with the previous post, he may be teething . I am in this phase at present when training a GSP pup belonging to my daughter. He is fine when I throw a soft feeling dummy (bumper) for him but isn't so keen on firm canvas dummies. Try using an old , cloth stuffed sock or a rolled up and tied p...

Trekmoor

The dog would be on point, locked up. The owner would get into the best possible position for a shot and command... "Inky...ADVANCE", whereupon Inky the dog would take precisely ONE step and resume point. If the bird did not flush he would repeat the command and the dog would once again, take preci...

Trekmoor

In some woodland situations it is just about impossible to take a shot no matter what you or the dog does. I found though, that if I took a good look at the cover all around the pointing dog then I could often place myself in a good spot to shoot from. Since the dog "knew" where the bird was , I did...

Trekmoor

You could send the dog into flush instead of doing that yourself maybe ? I've done that many times in thick woodlands when pheasant or woodcock shooting . Why buy a dog then bark yourself ?

Bill T.

Trekmoor

Welcome to the forum. I can't help you with books etc. ….. "Over the pond" has different ideas to those of us on this side of the pond (Scotland.) I can say that brits are a terrific hunting and pointing breed. Some of them aren't too keen on retrieving though so make sure you get your pup enjoying ...

Trekmoor

I don't work to any kind of timetable with young pointing dogs. I try to let my pups find/bump birds from about 12 weeks old and I do this using wild birds. Eventually I can usually get to a point just before the pup decides to flush the bird and I then gently and quietly praise the pup , I avoid us...

Trekmoor

I completely agree with the above. Pups have to learn by experience how to best find and point game. I always expect a pup to bump up birds as they are learning this.

Bill T.

Trekmoor

MG , I fully accept that British retrievers would be very unlikely to handle well enough to win trials in America. They do , however, handle well enough to win our kind of trials which are , I think, a little bit more "natural" or more similar to an actual shooting day than those in America. I certa...

Trekmoor

[quote="crackerd] "Much of Europe is getting what they want from their retrievers" largely because "their retrievers" - FT retrievers - probably never pick up a duck in their lives. Certainly not if they are running British field trials, which are conducted about 100.1% of the time on terra firma - ...

Trekmoor

I am not anti F.F. , I'd use it if I had to . I do get "mouthing issues" ….like a pup that holds a buck so loosely that it slips out of it's mouth. Sometimes I can "cure" this by changing the type of buck used . A softer buck or a buck with an old sock pulled tight and then tied over it sometimes wo...

Trekmoor

If you have friends who have seen your dog working and liked him maybe one of them would take him ? If that happened you would know the kind of home he was going to. I did something like this a while back. I became too unwell to work my 3 years old Brittany bitch or even to take her for long walks d...

Trekmoor

Why do we treat Retrieving as a subject that automatically benefits from using force on dogs which are already displaying a great deal of joy and natural ability for the task?! I have asked about this in the past and was told that while F.F. may not be needed if a retriever is not going to be field...

Trekmoor

My first attempts at dizzying pigeons were pretty disastrous. I did too much dizzying and the birds remained dizzied for too long. My 8 months old Brittany bitch was already a very good pointer of wild game and she had nothing but utter contempt for the dizzied pigeons. I think she detected my hand ...

Trekmoor

I agree with both Sharon and Garrison. I also don't think pointing dogs actually need to catch birds in order to become "birdy." I train using only wild birds and my pups chase them but never catch them and the pups still become birdy. I agree that the shot from the starting pistol might be the caus...

Trekmoor

If the dog is a fetching machine; why would you want or need to force fetch? That was my first thought on this too. I fully accept that F.F. may be needed if a dog is to compete in retrieve tests or trials but have never managed to get my head around why it would need to be done with a dog that is ...

Trekmoor

Quailroost, have you any idea of the initial cause of the dog's hard mouth ? It can be just an individual dog's unfortunate trait , or it can come through from one or both of the parents ….. or the trainer can cause it during the pup's training. Sometimes a bird, like a pheasant can start it off by ...

Trekmoor

I can only think that Reba didn't read the bit about e-collars being banned in Haggisland ? In any case I wouldn't use an e-collar set at "Fry" on a 7 months old pup. As you know, although I am not anti -collar I believe in using them only if the user has a very good understanding of their correct u...

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