Gun Dog Forum

Well, I have a young French Brittany, my first pointing dog since I was a teenager, and I made some errors in judgment. My biggest error was thinking that I could train this dog without pen-raised birds, and could get things accomplished with a constant exposure to grouse and woodcock, like some guys I know have done. I started by running him for weeks in birdless fields, and eventually I started firing a .22 pistol into the ground with subsonic rounds. I did this from a greater distance at first, and always when he was preoccupied with chasing after the next smell. I continued this at shorter and shorter distances and the dog didn't seem at all bothered.

He was six months old at the start of the Wisconsin grouse season, and I desperately tried to kill a bird for him so he would know what he was after. The combination of few birds, thick cover, and bad shooting kept me from killing anything. I did get off a couple shots here and there when the dog was anywhere from 15-25 yards away. The dog never saw a bird flush, but the sound of the gun didn't seem to phase him, so I figured the gun shyness hurdle had been leaped and I was good to go...bad mistake. Then one day I flushed a woodcock and cracked off two shots with my 20 gauge, when the dog was only about five yards away. I thought the dog saw it but I'm not real sure. Next thing I know, my dog is creeping behind me about twenty yards, walking in my tracks, stopping when I stopped, and moving slowly when I moved. I immediately thought I had done some damage because the dog was clearly not frolicking around anymore, so I ended the hunt. A week later, thinking it might have been a fluke, I took him out once more, and once again, I shot and missed at a grouse. And, once again, the dog started creeping along, keeping his distance from me, acting a little like he had seen a ghost. Obviously I now confirmed I have a problem and haven't hunted him since. He is a little over seven months old now.

I also noticed that as brave as my little dog is in harassing our cats, when he was presented with a dead pheasant from another hunter, he is real skittish and nervously sniffed it, ready to jump in the air if need be. Same thing around a pigeon, creeping up on it real slow until making a quick grab at it with his mouth to grab a feather out of it.

I decided to order a pigeon trap and I'm waiting for it to arrive. I realize that I didn't give my dog a proper introduction to birds or guns, and although my gun introduction has worked for the few dogs I've had, I've got a bit of a nervous Nellie in which the plan didn't work. My new plan is to start all over, slowly introducing a dog to a hobbled or carded pigeon, then give it constant pigeon exposure over the next few months. I'm not going to hunt him anymore this season. I hope to get him crazy about pigeons before slowly introducing gunfire, and eventually moving toward killing a pigeon over him in the coming months. I've got no time table now, and will just work him all winter and spring on pigeons.

Unlike some stories I've heard about dogs running off, hiding in or under a truck, etc..., my dog hasn't flat out bolted or cowered under anything at the shot. It's more like he didn't know why I was cutting loose with a cannon and it unnerved him a bit...enough to kind of shut down his interest in anything else and only creep along, at least for the short term. Does this sound like full out gun shy or does it sound more like gun sensitivity? And regardless, does this sound like a dog that can still be salvaged, and if so, does my plan sound like the right way to go, or are there modifications I should make in my planning to make sure I don't screw this up anymore than I already have? Bear in mind, I fully recognize gun shy dogs are made by their owners, and I am the one who screwed up royally. I'm just wondering if there is any hope I can save him, so that he's just not a high energy house dog for the next 14 or 15 years, but my hunting partner as well.

Your paragraph one is exactly like many folk train their dog - wild birds only.
You had an unlucky moment when shooting at 5 yards . Don't be so hard on yourself.
The experts on here will give you good advice on your next steps. ( Go to the skeet club and get some practice. )

I would go back to the very beginning and restart him as if he were 4-5 months old. Go for some walks afield without any birds down and let him chase snowflakes or whatever. Then put down some birds, just one or two and let him do what he does. I've never used carded pigeons, but have used tethered birds on pigeon poles; right now I think I'd keep it as simple as possible since the dog is skittish. Would a square of cardboard trailing after a bird be scary to him? No gun, keep your mouth shut except for a little bit of 'atta boy' when he returns from the chase.

Be careful with the 'constant pigeon exposure' idea. Flooding the dog could be dicey, especially since you are wound up yourself. A couple of birds every couple of walks will get him and keep him interested.

If all goes well over the course of weeks/months then redo gun intro as if it's the first time - cap gun, blank gun only while the dog is in full chase. You want the dog to associate gunfire with birds, not to experience it as random noise as done previously. If he does well with the shots, move on with an established breaking program that suits your needs until you can shoot to kill over him.

Don't rush him, don't overdo it, take the pressure off him and yourself for now...it will take as long as it takes. Best of luck.

This is a loooong post and was written for a guy with a gun shy retriever, but it will work for any dog. A French Brit. Can be a very soft and sensitive dog so you have to tread carefully with them (some of them). A pheasant is a BIG bird so start introductions spall er, like with a quail, then pigeon or chuckar, finally pheasant. Wait until he is bonkers about each bird before proceeding to the next. I don't think you'll have much luck trapping pigeon; I never have. One thing I'll tell you is to put a pigeon in the trap to start. I'd simply go to a game farm and buy the. Wolf River sells all birds, pigeon, quail, chukar, pheasant, mallard. Just go buy some and forget the trap.




CURING GUN SHYNESS

A dog is very much like a person. Your fear of one thing can be so great, it outweighs
your desire to do another thing.

In this instance, your dog would love to retrieve, but something about that loud noise
(gunshot) has him so concerned, that the retrieve becomes secondary to his fear of the
noise.

So how do we counter this? There are two ways really, one using birds and the other to
just subject him to the loud noise in a pleasant surrounding over, and over, and over, and
over until he learns not to fear the noise. Goose/stoli uses one method, I use the other. It
doesn't really matter how he was gunshyed, my guess is the 4th of July, either method
will eventually overcome his fear of it.

Your dog is a BIRD DOG. He was bred, born, made, to hunt and retrieve birds. That IS
his life. It isn't being petted, watching TV, or eating. It is getting a bird in his mouth and
retrieving that bird. That desire overcomes every other desire the dog has, the desire to
eat, the desire to breathe, nearly the desire for life. It is the most powerful driving force
the dog possesses. Don't believe that? When the dog is eating, yell mark and throw a bird.
I guarantee he'll bolt from the food dish and grab the bumper. Same if he's on a female
breeding her and you throw a bird. I guarantee if he hasn't locked up yet, he'll jump off,
get that bird and return to his other favorite past time.

So what does this mean to us? It mean that we channel his most powerful drive and use it
to cure his greatest fear. By first throwing clip wings with no shot and letting that drive
surface and grow, and letting the dog have fun, we enhance the drive God has given him
then cure him of the gunshyness by using it. It is the fastest method I know of to cure a
dog of gunshyness yet build that incredible desire. If you get impatient and rush it, it
won't work. Here are the steps in order. There is no time sequence. You proceed only to
the next step when the dog is completing the step he's on at 100%. If you proceed too fast,
you can lose all of the steps and have to start all over.

1). Get the dog birdy. With no gun involved, have a helper throw a clip wing pigeon and
let the dog retrieve it. Start short at 50 yards and work out to 100 yards. Never throw the
birds so many times the dog wants to quit. About 10 times a session is fine. If you don't
have a helper, throw them yourself.

2). Good. He's birdy now. You have to restrain him and when you let him go, he goes flat
out for each pigeon, grabs it and comes back. He is insane to get the birds. Now we add a
gun and a helper. Have a helper stand 100 yards out in a BARE field with a riffle and .22
blanks. Start with a .22 crimp then go to the regular .22 blank. Have the helper throw the
bird in the air without firing and send the dog. Have the helper yell MARK before
throwing the bird to get the dog's attention. After the dog makes a couple of retrieves,
have the helper yell MARK, fire the riffle in the air with the muzzle pointed away from
the dog and send the dog while the bird is still in the air. You use a riffle because the
report is softer than with a pistol. A pistol directs the sound out each side and they're so
loud they even hurt your ears. Use a riffle. Did the dog do it OK? Did he show any
hesitation? If all went well, throw another six birds, firing a shot when the bird is in the
air and sending the dog.

3).Step three is exactly the same as step two, but shorten the helper to 90 yards. Each time
you progress to the next step, shorten it up by 10 yards. If the dog shows any hesitation,
back up 10 yards.

4). Now 80 yards.

5). Now 70 yards.

6) Now 60 yards.

7) Now 50 yards.

. Now 40 yards.

9) Now 30 yards.

10) Now 20 yards.

11) Now, for step 11, get rid of the helper. Now you take the clip wing, throw it, and
when the dog is in full pursuit, fire the gun with the muzzle directed away from the dog..
He should completely ignore the shot and dive for the bird.

12)Now repeat step 11 EXCEPT don't shoot the gun when the bird is in the air. Wait until
the dog pounces for the bird, his full attention on the bird, and fire the gun. Timing is
crucial and is everything here.

13). The final step with the .22 is to sit the dog, throw the bird with the dog sitting at your
side, and shoot the gun when the bird is in the air and send the dog. Did everything go
OK? Then we're now ready to introduce the shotgun.

To introduce the shotgun back right up to step 1 and do the whole 13 steps over again.
Sound boring and that it will take you a long time? It is and it does. That's why you pay a
pro so much to cure a gun shy dog. If the dog is not a bird-a-holic, you won't cure him by
this method. If he isn't a bird-a-holic, dump him because that isn't the dog you want
anyhow.

With a new pup, you don't have to be this careful, this is how a gun shy dog is broken. If
you get a new pup you break him to the gun differently, but that's for another thread.

You sound like an impatient, young lad to me. Patience. If you have no patience and
aren't willing to follow a plan, you'll never train a dog. Patience, common sense, a
progressive program, understanding, discipline, a good dog. That's dog training.

I would suggest that you continue to hunt the dog this season, but without shooting. Carry the shotgun but carry it empty.

Bird contacts will help your dog to overcome its fear. The dog was born and bred to hunt. Eventually the genetics will overcome the fear...if you have the patience and persistence to work through it with the dog.

We have all been there. If you mess with enough dogs, you will screw up. It ain't about making mistakes. Mistakes happen. It is all about how you fix them.

Here's my tale of woe, FWIW.

Years ago, I screwed up a dog with gunfire. After a training run, I put the dog in the car and my brother and I went on the other side of the barn and shot a couple boxes of shells at clay birds. When I got back to the car, I realized what I had done.

I took the dog out hunting with the other dogs anyway. After the first shot she was at my side, almost glued to it. I decided to hunt as if I was dogless and I went though every piece of cover like a bulldozer. Multiflora, autumn olive, Osage orange, greenbrier...it didn't matter. I waded through it with Cindy at my side. I tore up a brand new pair of boots and pair of leather faced hunting pants. Shredded them both. My face, hands and body took a beating too, but I made the mess and I was going to fix it. If I flushed a bird, I shot and typically, one of the other dogs would retrieve it. Cindy never left my side.

Towards the end of the season, the other dogs were on point and the bird(a cock pheasant) was flushed and shot. As the bird fell, Cindy took off like a rocket and got to the downed bird before the others. She retrieved it to me.
I took the bird, loved her up and gave the bird back to her. She carried that bird for about ten minutes and then I took it. She went out in front of me, started ranging out and hunting and pointed the next bird. One shot, a kill, and she again beat the other dogs to the bird and brought it back.

Ever after that, Cindy would deliberately go into the nastiest cover she could find, with zero hesitation. Most days she started the day out as a white and orange pointer, but ended it up pretty much Pink from head to tail from blood.

I have to add that I would NEVER do today what I did with Cindy to break a dog out of gunshynesss. Cindy was Warhoop Jake bred, top and bottom(one generation back) with additional infusions of Spunky Creek Boy. These were two of the toughest, meanest, most independent all age pointers ever bred.

She was one of the toughest(both physically and mentally) dogs I have ever seen, but she lived and breathed to huntand she actually liked me. They don't make them like her anymore, and that is... in some ways...a good thing.

Patience, persistence, positive encounters and you will overcome...if the dog's desire to find birds is strong enough. It sounds as though you dog has what it takes.

RayG

As a follow up, I would encourage you to explore several training options to correct the problem. No one method is absolutely the right one for YOUR dog and YOUR situation. The fact that your dog is staying with you is a huge positive, so don't lose that.

There are lines between pushing a dog, encouraging a dog and "babying" it. Your dog will tell you, by its behavior...where the line is. You just have to be observant to the body language messages your dog is sending you. You want to encourage productive hunting behaviors without falling into the trap of babying the dog. It is one thing to understand that the dog has certain fears and that you must tread lightly, but you must not allow the dog to remain bound and restricted by those fears. Always remember that what you allow...you encourage.

These animals are bred to hunt. It is packed into their genes. That is your best help. Keep that fire and desire to find birds burning brightly and the rest will happen.

RayG

I would definitely call this "gun sensitive" and not " gun shyness." It was "trained" into the dog and not "bred" into it. That being the case the problem could be trained out of the dog but probably only if the trainer starts again at the beginning ...... Finds but no "bangs" for quite a while and then relatively quiet bangs ...... I use party poppers with the ribbon thingies removed. They save me from carrying a gun, save me from taking a chance and firing at a bird before a pup/dog is really ready for it and they save me from the British police who are red hot about apprehending the users of any kind of gun !
Wonder if anyone has ever been arrested for being in possession of a loaded party popper !

Bill T.

Thank you all very much for the things you have written. I am keeping this dog regardless of the outcome because he is so bonded to me I could never give him away. I don’t want to sacrifice his lifetime of hunting by screwing up any further than what I already have, so I will put much of the advice given to me here into practice...namely going back to the beginning, and starting with the proper bird introduction you have all described. Also, I am no longer on a timetable, and only when I can see the dog is bird crazy and his confidence has grown will I start a much slower and more cautious gun introduction.

Unfortunately I already ordered a Safeguard Professional Pigeon Trap, so I’m going to see if I can’t have some success with that before buying birds at $4 or $5 a pop. I have a couple acres of grass and tangles behind me and it would be good to be able to have him find a few birds every week for a while. Not sure I’d want to watch $5 bills fly away a few times a week for months, because I’d like to work him on birds regularly all the way through until next season. Anyway, thanks again and I’ll keep monitoring the thread just in case someone else wants to chime in, both for my benefit and anyone else that might make the same mistake.

I call it "Fishing For Pups". I use a musky casting rod. Put an electric zip tie on each of the pigeon's feet. Hook a swivel from the rod to the ties. Lay the rod and bird in cover. When dog points, have someone pick up the rod and flip the bird in the air. By free spooling the reel, you can let the bird fly 100 yards and land him, or six feet and land him beside the dog for staunchness.

That way you can use the same bird over and over. When you want to catch the bird, put the dog away and reel up the bird. Works like a charm.

thinblueline:

You just got a thousand plus $$$$$$ of advice. Big thanks to all those expert members.

I'll also chime in since I have a French Brittany that is gun sensitive at least.

My dog has high prey drive toward smaller birds like quail and woodcock. She wants to get to them but will point them. So I can put her on those and when they flush, she takes off fully engaged after those birds. It's then that I can shoot and she doesn't care. She will also point pheasant although I think this is a new experience for her. She will chase but when I shoot she will stop and if I shoot more than a few times in an outing, she is stuck to me like glue or even running back to the car one time.

I'm working on it with the audio series "The Masters Voice" that has a gunshy series that works to desensitize the dog using music and gunshot. I also bought Perfection Kennels' Perfect Gunshy Fix or something like that. Very good information in the latter although I think most of what is said in that video is in posts above.

At the end of the day, the drawback is not having enough birds to really get into the training that is suggested.

You might consider talking to a pro trainer, not to send the dog to for an extended stay, but to get an independent set of eyes on him. If it costs you $50-$100, its probably money well spent in the life of a dog.

I was in the same situation, hadn't had a dog for years, but there weren't any quail here either in Missouri, and I grew up in the late 60's and 70's. I live just down the road from Perfection Kennels, and a buddy gave me his DVD's. I didn't use a .22 at all, just a 28 ga shotgun, had my son fire the shotgun from about 75 yards, then I threw a dead chukar for her to retrieve. By the third or fourth time, just like the DVD, the dog hears a gun go off, turns and is looking at you wondering where the heck is that chukar. We moved in closer, and in ten shots were shooting over her, shot about 50 pen-raised birds over her already, she ain't gunshy, she knows that a gun going off means dead bird.

I also am a firm believer in picking out a bold pup, I'm not interested in the one that drops his tail and head when the stranger walks into the pen, I want one of the two or three that run up to you without fear. They are less likely to be shy of anything.

We have some quail now, not by 70's standards, but it's looking better, haven't gone out yet, since the rifle deer season is open now, and still a heck of a lot of crops in the field. Need a few good frosts to knock down some cover and put them in where you can find them. We still have a farm in NW MO, and I have several friends that called me when they found out I had a dog, cause they were seeing quail, and had kids who were 14-15 and had never shot one, and wanted me to come over, bring the dog, and hunt their farm. That's kinda different!

Jon Hann - of Perfection Kennel, has a DVD on gunshyness. It would be worth the watching. He's the one the poster above references. If you could attend a 4-day clinic, even better!!

Something people might try to understand, dog's are not naturally gun shy, they are noise soft. Dosn't matter where the noise come's from it's the noise that get's them. To get them over that, people get the dog engrssed in something it enjoys and a good way off and then fire a gun. I strongly suggest starting with a 22 rifle fired with the barrel about 6" off the ground, really muffles the sound. Another way is to use a shotgun and shotgun shell and primer. Take a 1/4" drill and drill out the primer pocket. You will be able to put primer's in and take them out with your finger's, the shotgun will be there and the barrel greatly reduces the sound. From there work up through the blank gun and then the shotgun with live loads. Guy shy dog generally recognize the shotgun and the source of noise that scares it. Is your dog gun shy or simply noise sensitive? Find out real easy, put your shotgun in the living room and let the dog in. If it avoids the gun, it's because it recognize's it as the source of the noise that scare's it. Gun shyness is man made! Noise sensitive is natural. In breaking to the gun what we really do is show the dog the noise won't hurt it and can be fun, with a retrieve. It's good fortune that noise sensitive dog's are fairly rare.

The dog doesn’t react at all to the sight of my gun, nor did it ever high tail it for the vehicle or parts unknown. It just cautiously crept behind me, keeping its distance, as if he was nervous about something, so obviously it was the gun going off and he didn’t know why.

I haven’t hunted him since that late October episode. On someone else’s suggestion from another thread I started, I borrowed a blank pistol that fires shotgun shell primers, and with access to a buddy’s homer pigeon coop, I released 7 or 8 pigeons one at a time, firing that pistol each time, with the dog watching or chasing each one as it was released, and he never even looked back at me. I am encouraged because I am reasonably confident my dog is not all out gunshy, and as I continue to only fire a gun when it is engrossed in birds, I think he is going to be ok, so those spooked episodes don’t resurface. Plus, I’m hoping he just gains some confidence as he gets a little older, and I can put the gunshy fears behind me.