Dog Munching birds

[romeo212000]

Worked my Female GSP today on three birds and she did real nice but on her retrieves today she decided she was going to much the crap out of her birds. She has never done this before so I tried the hold command which didnt work, then I tried nicking her while ordering the hold command, which were suggested by the trainer. She did this on all three birds. She has been FF'd and I have a call into her trainer but this is something she just did today and she really munched them good. Problem is if she does this during NSTRA trials (this weekend for one) she will get docked majorly. I am going to work her again tomorrow morning and hope things go better. When i get her home I got a frozen bird out and let it thaw for about 20 minutes and worked on it in the yard but she did fine back there. Any suggestions would be very helpful.

[hustonmc]

I recently had this same thing a month ago. You could check out my post and look for "dog munching after porci encounter." It was pretty much verbatim what my trainer said as well. Hope it works out for ya.

[luke0927]

Are you commanding here and making her get to you. If she is FF here should mean hold and get here now....may just need to do a few sessions with the frozen bird then go back to fresh birds.

[romeo212000]

Thats the problem. She handled frozen birds perfect so I had no opportunity to correct her. What do you guys think about not letting her retrieve the next few birds I shoot over her?

[snips]

If you are running in a trial you better get this handled before you get in the trial, as you cannot fix it there. Better shoot a few birds and work on it. Give the Here command and if she chews give her a Med nick to get in to you. Dogs that chomp will have to slow down generally, and this is time to correct. Once she gets to you praise... If your retrieve does not go without a correction, I will throw it again and have her do it right. Did you blow up a bird or something that started this? Frozen birds are fine for the teaching process, but I think she is beyond that and needs to do it on fresh killed. Did your trainer apply the FF in the field on fresh killed birds?

[Don]

I don't know who forced her but I'd get her back there in a hurry, put her back on the table and refresh her memory. You keep shooting birds and at this point she'll probably keep munching. Get her on the table and lean on her.

[romeo212000]

I contacted the trainer about this and I think I may know what started it. I did blow a bird up for her and made an incorrect correction at the wrong time. I tried tapping her under the chin and had a brain fart about the whole thing, rather than just getting her back to me and the bird in my hand. I talked to the trainer about it and he reminded me that is the correction you make when the dog is dropping the bird not when munching it, and that may have been what started it. He recommended I put her on the table and wrap a fresh killed bird in a strand of barbed wire to teach her to hold the bird gingerly. I killed a bird over her this morning and she chomped again so i did what the trainer told me to with another freshly killed bird and did some work. At first she tried to get around the barbed wire, then didnt want to take it, and finally accepted it and started holding it softly and following me around holding the bird, finally I would throw the bird and she would retrieve to hand nicely with a soft mouth. So now I guess its just repetition. The trainer told me that is what would happen when I first tried it and told me how to take her through the phases which went rather quickly, about 15 minutes actually. He also recommended I have her retrieve a fresh killed bird a couple of time before her braces tomorrow with the barbed wire to remind her.