dogs 1st time to the field?

[jbonesky]

So as posted before I have recently began (trying) to train my 3 y/o English Cocker house dog.. She seems to be picking up the training fairly well. but regardless we are still in the first few weeks of the program i'm trying... With that being said I'm planning on heading out this comming weekend to see if I can flush some quail and bunnies and break in my new shotgun.. do you think it would be a good idea or bad idea to take her out there with me at this point in training?..
and if yes, should i keep her on a lead or let her free to do her thing?

[campgsp]

If she has been shot over before you should be fine. If not take care of that process first.
If you know you have complete control over her no need for cc or anything maybe put a ecllar on just in case.

[SpinoneIllinois]

I'd buy some quail or pigeons to bring along, to set the dog up for success.

[jbonesky]

I'd buy some quail or pigeons to bring along, to set the dog up for success.

Im glad you said that, i was sitting at the office a couple days ago looking for birds and considering that but didnt know if it was a good idea

[4dabirds]

Have you done a proper intro to the gun with this dog ? If not you are playing with fire. A gun shy dog is useless. Keep in mind that everything you do with this dog is training. If you allow the dog to do something in training that you expect will need remediation later on you should consider it a mistake . An example of this is if you let the dog drop what it fetches you are training the dog to do this. It would be unreasonable to expect the dog to graduate to holding the bird until released if you trained it to drop a tennis ball. Each and every behavior you want to train should be done methodically only moving forward when the dog is getting the basics. You first need to get the dog to present a behavior and then shape that behavior into what you expect. If the books you are reading are not laying out a plan that you can see the progression you would be best served by finding someone with experience. If that is not possible a good dvd can shed a little more light on what a good program is and how it progresses.

[jbonesky]

No I never got to do it the right way.. a month or so ago while at a cousins house he decided to pull out his .45 and unload a magazine on his little "range" with her standing next to her and she never flinched. we ended up shooting 100 or so rounds of clays that day and she just sat there probably 3ft away from me the entire time ( this was all before i ever considered trying to train her)