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bwjohn wrote:I would find more and larger places to let my pup run in open space and less time on a lead. I was not in the best situation when I first got my dog, but have since moved to a much better situation where he gets to run for an hour or so, 3-5 times a week off leash. But I feel that he has just now come around to a distance that I like and consistently runs there, were as before he was to close and I feel that was because of his lack of free running earlier.
bwjohn wrote:The other thing is that I jumped the gun on fetching. He loved it when I first got him and I encouraged it and then try to get to serious with it. He has just now come back around to loving it again, so nothing forceful all play.
natetnc wrote:newbies like us get so excited to see our pup doing something right so early on we want to see it again and again, show all our friends, and then go back to make sure they can still do it or haven't forgotten. oh yeah and we do it all in the same dayits so hard to just let it be and not over-do it.
DGFavor wrote:I would have to say...teach 'em that my bed is off limits.
mtlee wrote:I would have bought my launchers sooner. I don't see how anyone (who lives in an area without a large wild bird population) trains without them! My shorthair caught way too many pen raised quail when she was young. Once I got the launchers, they turned her from a catcher to a pointer in a matter of daysI would also have built my coop and got my homers sooner...they are worth their weight in gold.
LISTEN to my mentor on every single thing he said and not go my own bullheaded way on most things trying to prove him wrong. ONLY wild birds when he was a pup and NO pen birds. If I had to use pen birds, only great flying, hard flushing ones that he couldn't catch. Only put him on a bird or two every few weeks instead of lots of birds that caused him to flag. Saying nothing when he yo yoed back to me, put the proverbial duct tape over my mouth. I wouldn't have read all the books I read, but would have taken even more time to get my hands on more and more dogs at my mentors. DOING is the only way, not reading.
natetnc wrote:as a first timer i have not just 1 but a list.
1) not so much wing on a string - i used to play with this one way too much. i used to hide the wing and let her find it, great nose work but not so good for holding point. i still think she looks for the wing on every point. she will creep in hoping to get the wing but now a bird flushes and then she is like, "darn it" i thought it would be the wing for sure that time.
2) no tone on the e-collar - i used it way too much eventually having to give the command two or three times before she followed it. when i started to break her of this she would look at me like, "hey that wasn't fair, you didn't count to three".
3) training with crappy flying birds - i should have started with pigeons and she would have never caught one.
4) too many situations to catch birds - her prey drive has always been on high so there has never been a need for her to catch birds. there were times i would run her without a cc which would give her a chance to catch some of the weaker birds, if i had another chance i would alway run her with a cc.
Karen wrote:I would have taken my very 1st Brittany and deposited him with a trainer when he was a year old. He was my son's 8th birthday present and just turned 8 today. Every single time I run that dog, he runs bigger and faster! I made too many mistakes with him when he was younger (including neutering him), but he had all the potential in the world to be something really special. My trainer just shakes his head and tells me how he wishes he'd had Courage when he was younger.
I would have taken riding lessons way sooner than I did and I would have followed my trainers advise and bought a nice 8-13 yr old experienced field trial gelding (not a 4 yr old green horse from a sale barn).
OR I'd have gotten a non-sporting breed 8 years ago. I'd have $$ in the bank had I chosen to do thatOh well, you can't take it with you, and you might as well have a ball spending it.
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