Bird Dog Training
March 26th, 2008 by admin
The entire job of training a bird dog is a rather time-consuming exercise that, if properly done, will bring the dog’s owner not only pride and joy but also fruitful hunting adventures. Due to the fact that it is a rather long and complex procedure, not many hunters embark on this great adventure of training a bird dog for hunting purposes.
The most important thing to do when starting to train a dog for bird hunting is to devote a decent amount of time every single day to teach the pup three simple commands: “come”, “heel” and “whoa”. Work on these three basic commands until the pup will unfailingly obey them and you will have the best dog training start. From these three simple commands, the “whoa” is the most important one and it simply means “stop, don’t move until I release you”. The young pup must always obey this command when you give it to him, no matter how far away you are from him or what he is doing at that moment. The command is essential when the dogs are working birds.
If you can accomplish this, you will have the possibility to go to the dog and correct any errors the dog will make, for example: if he is hunting way too far ahead, you can use this command to stop him. Another example would be in the situation in which he flushes some birds out on his own and by using the “whoa” command you will stop him and train on that offense in the exact same place where he made a mistake. If the dog is stubborn on goofing around with a shot bird he picked up, the advisable thing to do is to “whoa” him and get the bird because he will now understand that bringing the bird to you is way better in comparison with dinking around with it.
Moving on to the next command: ”come”. This command simply means: ”stop whatever you were doing and come in where I can get my hands on you”. Some situations in which this command is very useful would be: when the dog will come unfailingly when called, retrieve training is a snap. If the young bird dog dawdles off with a bird, it is advisable to use the “whoa” command first so that he will stop from going in the wrong direction and afterwards tell him to “come” so that every bird you shot will be personally delivered by your own dog.
The “heel” command means: ”walk by my side until I tell you to do something else”. This command is useful in those situations in which you want to go to a certain place with your dog and to keep him under strict control in the same time. If the dog is trained properly, he will heel unfailingly without a lead so that the hunter will have both two hands free to carry different things. A hunter mustn’t forget about a release command like “ok!” for each of the above mentioned basic commands. This will “tell” the dog that he has done a good job and he can hunt for you again.
All things considered, bird dog training isn’t as hard as many people assume. The most important thing to do is to spend a great amount of time with the dog and have a lot of patience because he can’t learn all the commands in just a few days. Another crucial aspect when training a bird dog is to stroke and praise the dog in a pleasant, relaxing voice when he does things right because as many experienced hunters say, good hunting dogs are born waiting to please the master and if you show a little appreciation, he will do the exact same thing for you.
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