1. The most common deficiency in the average hunter’s gundog training program is lack of obedience and lack of steadiness.
If I could persuade the “average” gundog owner to
do one thing better as a
trainer/handler, it would be to spotlight obedience and emphasize the
non-retrieve.
The non-retrieve occurs when pup sees a bird or dummy fall, but he doesn’t get to retrieve it. The trainer or another dog retrieves it while pup watches. I emphasize obedience with the trainer rather than the dog picking up most of the birds and dummies. We took a wrong turn somewhere in the evolution of training and go about the retrieving and steadying processes in totally illogical manner. We take a young dog and give him hundreds of retrieves with no restraint. For the first thousand retrieves we encourage the dog take off at will after the falling dummy. Then after we have him well trained to break, we change the rules and decide to make him steady. This now entails a certain amount of punishment to counteract the breaking behavior we have just trained.
The sequence should be reversed. Train him on obedience first, and train him to be steady by teaching him to “expect” to be steady. This is done with non-retrieves. As soon as he is proficient at basic obedience, the “stay” drill should include some falling dummies. While he’s sitting, toss out a dummy or two. Then the trainer picks up the dummies, not the dog. If the trainer is picking up 75% of what pup sees fall, then pup doesn’t expect to retrieve every time something falls out of the sky, and he becomes steady with little effort from the trainer, and no punishment required. Additionally he develops into a calm, pleasant hunting companion.
The same principle applies to the older dog in
hunting situations. If you send the dog immediately every time a bird falls,
then you are training him to break. Make
his life easier by making him wait.
If you are duck hunting, wait till you have several
ducks on the water before you send pup to retrieve. Unless wind or current is
carrying off the ducks, it won’t hurt them to float for a half hour.
If you are shooting doves, pick up the short easy ones yourself. Let
pup sit for 10 or 15 minutes before he is sent for the difficult retrieves.
The exception of course is the crippled bird, for which you send pup quickly
to reduce the odds of escape.
The practice of
delayed retrieving also pays dividends in making it easier for pup to
learn hand signals and blind retrieves. If you have four or five dead ducks on
the water that have been there a half hour, then pup is not going to remember
exactly where they are. He knows they are there and will eagerly cast off in
their general direction, but his certainty will waver, and he will be prone to
take some help from you. Conversely, when you engage in the practice of
immediately sending pup on every fall, then you are training him in self
reliance. When he’s launched on the splash, he knows exactly where that bird
is and will quickly pick it up. After
he’s found several hundred birds all by himself, he is going to be difficult
to convince that he needs help from you in the form of hand signals.
In short, the practice of the trainer picking up most of the dummies, coupled with the field extension of delayed retrieves is the one most valuable activity a dog owner can engage in.
2.The most common single fault that the average hunter seems to incur is a
failure to come on command.
The most common fault that I’ve been asked to correct is “not coming”
in young green dogs, and breaking in older hunting dogs. Both problems stem
from a lack of obedience. If a dog is well trained to heel, sit, stay, and
come, then he will do nearly anything you want. The problem lies in the
definition of “well trained”. A dog is well trained in obedience when he
is obedient in the face of any level of distraction. That means he will
respond properly even when the neighbors cat walks by,…. even when another
dog is playing next to him, …..even when shotguns are shooting and ducks are
falling.
3. A large contributing factor to unruly hunting dogs might be that the average hunter appears to be “overdogged”, or to have a dog that is too hot for them to handle.
I think that the typical hunter tends to be “overdogged”, and I
place the blame on our field trial system. Our retriever field trials were
brought over from England in the early 1900’s along with Golden Retrievers
and Labradors. The trials were small, they were very representative of a day’s
shooting and the behaviors evaluated were those of value to the hunting dog
and hunter. The trials emphasized game finding ability, softness of mouth,
calmness of demeanor in the dogs, and quietness on the part of the handlers.
The typical Labrador retriever of 30 or 40 years ago was a gentle calm dog.
Today an unfortunately large number of Labradors are hyperactive and difficult
to train. The basic reason for the shift in breeding selection goals appears
to be our field trial system.
Unfortunately, our field trials, mainly because of increasing numbers of entries, have evolved over the years into elimination contests that evaluate behaviors that have little value for a hunting dog. These behaviors are lining, angle entries into water, pinpoint marking, and precise handling at long distances. Gone by the wayside are line manners and obedience, and game finding initiative. Training these precision lining and long distance precise handling requires a great deal of repetition and some degree of punishment. The type of dog that excels at these qualities tends to be hyperactive and has a high pain threshold, and this is the dog we are tending to breed today.
Thus I think most hunters are “over-dogged”
because that is the type dog that we are tending to breed, and that is the
type dog that the field trial community tells us is “good”.
4. A major factor
in the increasing numbers of difficult-to-train dogs is the rise of popularity
of the electric collar. The electric collar is becoming far too predominant as
a training tool. It can create as many problems as it solves.
The electric collar
is a great training tool in the hands of a good trainer. However, there are
astronomically more electric collars than there are good trainers. The basic
fallacy of the electric collar is this: In order to train a dog with the
electric collar, you must be able to train him without it. The collar does not
magically impart to the guy holding the transmitter the knowledge and skills
of dog training. Unfortunately,
most folks buy an electric collar to solve a problem that they have been
unable to solve with conventional training methods. They generally end up
abusing the dog and not solving the problem, or trading one problem for a
bigger one. Nearly all problems can be solved by the proper training in basic
obedience, and you don’t need an electric collar to do that.
5. There
is a basic flaw in the retriever world of the United States. We have forgotten
the basic goals of breeding selection and have embarked on a course of
producing better dogs by training them rather than breeding them.
The labrador is the breed I most commonly work with and I am alarmed at
the trends I see. It has become the general custom to “force fetch” train
every dog. This corrects any tendency to drop birds, mouth birds, eat birds,
or run off to the bushes with birds. It also masks the genetic tendencies
toward those behaviors. We are now masking with training the major trait that
we spent a hundred years developing through selective breeding: delivery to
hand with a soft mouth. If we take a hard mouthed dog and put him through the
force fetch program so that he delivers gently to hand, then he will behave
like a great dog. We may even make him a field champion through superior
training. However, his puppies will still have that genetic tendency to hard
mouth, and we will be going backwards in the selective breeding process.
This is a small part of a greater problem. We have
become a community of excellent trainers. We can train in the most complex
behaviors and train out all types of problems. The real question is, “ what
are we breeding?” Are we breeding a dog that the average hunter can train
and enjoy, or are we breeding a dog that takes a professional to train and
handle? We should be doing more with selective breeding and less with
training.
Some examples of behaviors that have a very
significant genetic component that we mask with training are:
1.
Hard mouth – We “force
fetch” train the hard mouth dog and make a gentleman out of him. However
that hard mouth behavioral trait has a large genetic component. We can
suppress and mask the behavior in the individual dog, but he is going to pass
the tendency on to his pups. Those will pups will be difficult for the average
hunter to train. What we should do is identify that hard mouth dog as hard
mouth, and give him away for as pet to remove him from the breeding
population. Then get a dog that doesn’t have the tendency.
2.
Hyperactivity – We
train the hyperactive dog to be under control and be a gentleman. The electric
collar is quite popular for this. Put a hyperactive dog in the hands of a good
trainer with an electric collar and that dog will make an excellent gun dog or
field trial dog, but his puppies will probably inherit the same hyperactivity.
His puppies will be just as difficult to train as the sire was. That works
fine as long as they end up in the hands of good dog trainers.
3.
“Cooperative nature”
is a behavioral trait with a strong genetic component. We generally
characterize these dogs as “soft” and tend to give them away as pets when
they flunk the electric collar program. Thus we are tending to remove from the
breeding pool the dogs with the most of this valuable trait. This trait of “cooperative
nature” is of extreme importance to the average hunter, because the average
hunter is usually quite low in dog training skills.
We
probably need to look back to England for solutions. They still have the same
field trials they had eighty years ago, still selectively breed for major
traits, and still get rid of dogs that lack the cooperative nature and natural
talents to be easily trained.
I for one, get my personal dogs from England. They are calm, cooperative, and pleasant to live with, and they find all the birds you shoot. I’ve gotten lazy and prefer a dog that has gotten most of the required talents through selective breeding.