At what age do you start serious gundog training?  A question I am frequently asked.  To an extent it depends on the dog but certainly not before 6 – 8 months of age.  And even at 6 – 8 months,  a young puppy is comparable to a pre-school child.  It will not be able to maintain concentration for more than a couple of minutes at a time.   So lessons at this point need to be simple, short and if possible, fun.  But you can do more than one lesson a day and once you’ve started you need to be fairly consistent because  somewhere between the ages of 6 -9 months your little darling may wake up a teenager who, like Kenny Everett’s Kevin, will  say, – ‘Don’t tell me what to do – I know much better than you do; in fact, you don’t know anything!’

Now if you’ve already done basic manners training and socialization, you have a good foundation upon which to build – and that’s what training is all about – building on sound foundations.  So now is the time to get a little bit tougher.  From now on lesson time is serious time, like it or not (just like kids going to school for the first time) and you will be calling the shots – not him. [Read More…]