GUNDOG TRAINING MANUAL
Sample Drills
Fundamental Principles, Procedures, and Drills
The three types of information in this manual are fundamental principles, procedures, and drills. They are designed to help you develop, in your dog, all the desired hunting behaviors of a successful gundog.
The principles, procedures, and drills were distilled from personal interaction with seasoned trainers; over thirty years of amateur trial and error training; and review of hundreds of dog training journal articles, web articles, videos, and training books published over the past eighty years.
Sample Principle
Teach First Then Train
Teach first by demonstrating exactly what you want the dog to do every time you introduce any new idea, concept, behavior, command response, procedure, or drill. Successfully teaching an action first will develop the dog’s self-confidence and his trust in you. The alternative would be to set up a training situation and hope that the dog performs properly. Training, by setting the dog up to potentially fail, is a bad approach. You cannot expect the dog to know what to do, or what you want him to do, without teaching him first.
Sample Procedure
038 Procedure: Come Whistle Command
The come whistle (also used as a draw whistle to draw the dog towards you while field quartering) is one long whistle (2 seconds) that tapers off at the end. Do not cut off the finish of the whistle by stopping the flow of air with your tongue, as you would do with a sit whistle. Some trainers use a come whistle that consists of five or six sharp toots in rapid succession. The theory is that the excited tone of the toots encourages the dog to come in. The sharp toots, however, may cause confusion with the single sharp toot of the sit whistle or with the sharp, double toot, of the turn whistle. Decide on a whistle and stick with it—forever.
Step 1. Months of repeated basic training sessions teaching the verbal come command, using positive reinforcement, should have taught the dog what “come” means, and he should be very compliant with this command; he should respond immediately and without hesitation.
Step 2. Teach the come whistle command by chaining the whistle with the verbal command. When the dog is running around or distracted, blow the come whistle, and verbally command “come” immediately after the whistle.
Step 3. Eventually, stop saying “come” and draw the dog in with the come whistle. Practice the come command via the come whistle at random times and in different situations. Once the dog understands the meaning of the come whistle, then issue the whistle once, and if he does not comply, issue the command again followed with a correction.
Sample Drill
140 Drill: Obstacle Penetration
The goal of this drill is to train the dog to drive through obstacles without hesitation. Jurney (2001) suggests that when you repeat a retrieving drill through obstacles (water, vegetation, terrain, etc.) often enough, the dog will eventually ignore the obstacles as he goes through them. Repetition helps to increase his focus on the fall location to a point where the dog no longer notices the obstacles he is penetrating. Do not do any water or wetlands work until he is retrieving well through upland obstacles.
Step 1. Start with a low shrub thicket as an obstacle. Set up a pile of dummies (with a visual aid such as a black-and-white flag) about 5 yards away from the edge of the thicket. Set the dog up on the side of the thicket where you placed the dummies and near the dummy pile. The dog should be sitting somewhere between the edge of the thicket and the dummy pile. Walk away from the dog and out into the middle of the thicket. Call the dog to you with a come whistle.
Step 2. Heel sit the dog next to you in the middle of the thicket obstacle. Turn the dog around and face toward the dummy pile, throw a dummy onto the pile, and line cast the dog from the middle of the thicket back to the pile for a retrieve. Use the come whistle to make sure he comes straight back into the thicket and delivers the dummy.
Step 3. Walk the dog to the outer edge of the thicket (that is on the opposite side of the thicket from where the pile is located), and cast the dog back through the thicket to the pile for a retrieve.
Step 4. Walk the dog about 10 yards further from the outer edge of the thicket (that is on the opposite side of the thicket from where the pile is located), and cast him through the thicket for another retrieve. Use the come whistle to make sure he comes straight back to you. Cast the dog from this location to retrieve the remaining dummies.