Trainer suggestions for bird eating retriever

[iahawks77]

I have a golden retriever who apparently feels birds are dinner. She spent some time at a "camp" where it was discovered that a fresh shot pigeon was a delicacy. It was suggested that the excitement/freshly shot pigeon could have been the issue, and I've read that happens. It was also suggested maybe a larger bird might make a difference and if not, then force fetch. Well, we had her at a local game farm for some work. She got up a bird, I made the mistake of shooting it (I was minding the camouflage check cord because I couldn't find my orange one) she got to the bird with just enough time to start tearing at it before I could locate the cord and get her away (of course, she wasn't having any part of giving any of it up, bucked like a little mustang).

We stopped and came home. I guess I've been lucky to have retrievers that have never failed me with retrieving, and have a 7 1/2 year old golden whose only "fault" is he knows that he can occasionally get away with not retrieving to hand, and he knows I know I'll let it go. The problem girl is technically my daughter's dog, and having never force fetched a dog. I know I won't have the ability, and frankly the bird eating thing is beyond me (not like she's hard mouthed, she is actually too soft with objects she retrieves, so force fetch would clean that up).

I'm about halfway between Minneapolis and Des Moines, and any suggestions for a pro who would be a trusted person to tackle this issue would be appreciated. It's certainly worth finding out if it can be solved. If not, she'll still continue to be a great pet, but she has so much other potential I'd hate to give up without knowing.

Thanks. Not the first post I expected to be making when I registered!

[Doc E]

How far along in training is the dog ?
What training program have you been following ?
Why haven't you Force Fetched the dog yet ?
Virtually even a totally 'green' novice can FF a dog if you follow the right program.
Once you have Basic Training well established, you can follow "SmartFetch" by Evan graham and feel confident about FF your own dog.

.

[DonF]

I don't force anymore but if I had a dog like that it would meet the force table yesterday. Stage one the dog will be careful, stage two the dog is gonna go down as force is applied. Ride stage two out or you loose. Stage three the dog will have learned to turn off the pressure and start coming back up. During stage two, as the pressure is applied the dog will hold the training buck loosely, hold it's mouth to hold the buck. if it does spit the buck, grab another right away and back to the pressure to get the buck in it's mouth. You won't believe how gentle your dog's mouth can be! During this force breaking time, suspend all retrieving work other than the force table. Start with a hardwood dowel with pads on each end to keep the dowel off the table/ground. Go from the dowel to a frozen bird, from there to a fresh killed bird. At the end of each type retrieving object, go outside with her on a cc and turn it over to on the ground. Don't do it without the cc. You have to be ready to get her back and force the issue if she balks and she just might the first few time's.

Your gonna have to be harder on her in the beginning as you must make her go through the stage where she's not chomping down on the buck. She just might during that stage grab the buck very fast and chomp on it, take it away immediately and start again. Your not necessarily working on her retrieve, your working on hard mouth, retrieving will be a by product. Go through the entire process.

[Bluesky2012]

Two major issues. One is you haven't done formal obedience properly. Your dog should return to you crisply no matter what, then overlay it with the e-collar. That would prevent a lot of this. Second is force fetch. You have to have formal obedience done right before moving to this, but FF is what you need, and also it is the foundation for any advanced retriever work these days. I'd recommend go back, start a good program and do the formal obedience and collar conditioning (with a pro would be good), then force fetch, and I mean all the way through pile work. You'll be fixed then if you do it all properly.

Lots of pointer folk don't need to FF because it isn't as big or a foundational stepping stone, but you'd be hard pressed to find many retriever pros that train high caliber dogs without force fetch now because of the way it plays in to transition and advanced work.

[EvanG]

You've gotten some good input. If you would like to talk about this I have a treatment for this issue that has been very successful with client dogs over many years. 816-213-9397

EvanG