Gun Dog Forum

My dog run in my back yard backs up to the fence between my neighbor and I. I have a nice concrete slab with a shade structure over 2/3 of it and a nice dog house for my pup all surrounded by a 6' tall chain link fence except for the fence between my neighbor and I, it's a 6' redwood fence made out of 1x6. Here is my problem.......My neighbors boys like my pigeons and the coop I just built which is on the other side of my property. They decided they wanted some pigeons just for fun and so the bought 6 and built a coop for them. They put the coop right on the other side of the fence from my dog run about 4 feet from the fence. So now I have pigeons in a coop 4 feet from my pup only separated by a 6' redwood fence. I can't help but think this isn't good for my dog to be so close to pigeons all the time. She can't see them because of the fence and the solid wall on their coop, but I'm sure she can probably smell them. I get along great with my neighbor, but asking him to move it would probably not go over too well because of the way he built it and where it is in their yard. So what do you think.......am I worried about nothing or should I do what ever it takes to get my pup away from these pigeons?

Don't worry over it shouldn't hurt a thing.My pigeon coop is about 50 foot from the nearest kennel in plain sight.The pigeons fly down in the yard & walk around the kennels,been that way for yrs never affected anything.Some dogs totally ignore them others don't but won't hurt anything regardless.

Don't worry about it.Sort of nice that the neighbors like pigeons.

I wouldn't be concerned at all . It's no different then your coop. IMO

It was my understanding that if you have the pigeons (or quail, chucker, etc) too close to your dog run that the dogs nose will become so conditioned to the scent that they will have a much harder time picking up the scent when out hunting. It kind of makes sense to me because when I was little we lived near a prune processing plant that stunk! Every year when they started the processing I couldn't hardly stand the smell. After a week or so, I didn't even notice the smell and when friends would comment on the odor, I would be like "what odor"? My nose would basically become desensitized to the smell.
Now as far as the coop goes, I mentioned my concern to my neighbor today and he said he could move it over about 30 feet with no problem at all. I told him I would help him move it tomorrow. He's a really cool neighbor and he likes to hunt too, so that's a bonus. Now I just hope that 30+ feet is far enough away, but according to your replies, I have nothing to worry about anyway.

My flight pen is 2 ft from my fenced yard. Most of the dogs ignore it - funny thing is I can take a pigeon and plant it in the yard and get solid points from a dog that ignores them otherwise. I've had quail, ducks, pheasants, and chukar in there too and still get solid points when they are in the field.