11.03.2020

When to start gundog training with your puppy.

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!
So what exactly are we going to do next?  Well, I like to start with reinforcing the recall by taking it outside into the fields and making sure that it is always immediately obeyed because without a recall you haven’t got a dog to train.  For this reason I always reward a smart recall with a tiny bit of kibble when they come back to me.  It’s an easy habit to instill and you would do well to make it part of your daily exercise.

Next I do a tiny bit of heelwork .  Now you may well have started this at puppy class but as dogs don’t generalise,   you will almost certainly find that your puppy doesn’t recognise the lesson outdoors.  So I aim for just  three  or four paces in the right position beside my leg; a little bit of discipline to set the scene.

How do I do it?  I use a longish slip lead held in my right hand and with the dog sitting at my side (and I take as long as it takes to make sure the pup IS sitting as I want it) I then pat my thigh, give the instruction, ‘Heel!’ in a firm voice and begin walking.  As soon as the pup’s tail is in front of me, I stop, let it go to the end of the lead, give it a tug and say ‘No!’ in a fairly cross voice (which tells it That’s NOT what I wanted!)  I try and eye the pup up to let him know I’m not amused and then turn around and proceed, exactly as before, but in the opposite direction.  Do it slowly to give his little brain time to understand what you mean.
 
So for a while I will not make much, if any, forward progress – however it will work, eventually.  What I am communicating to the pup is ‘You don’t decide which way we go, that’s my job!’ in a language he can understand.  I will also reinforce the instruction ‘Heel’ by repeating it only when he is in the right position, and following it immediately with ‘Good dog!’ said in a high tone and even a bit of kibble if he’s tried particularly hard.  He has to know when he’s got it right too.

I don’t labour this exercise – one or two attempts are enough for both of us in the initial stages.  The main thing is to repeat the exercise at least once a day and again, this can easily be incorporated into your daily exercise plan.  It may well be the most difficult lesson you’ll ever have to teach your pup but don’t give up because dogs are empirical learners which means each lesson depends on the success of the previous lesson.  From now on things will get easier.

Teaching the ‘Sit’ is easy just because it is far easier to communicate with the dog what we want than with heelwork.  To make it as easy as possible I start and finish with a very short, easy ‘Sit’ where I hold up my hand in front of him, give the command, ‘Sit’ and then back away from him only as far as the lead will allow, returning almost immediately and praising him.  I tuck the one that is going to become longer in time and distance in the middle.  I always walk back to the dog rather than calling him up at this stage as it avoids him anticipating and creeping towards me.  In this way he sees ‘Sit’ as putting very little pressure on him and is left with the memory of something fairly easy to get right. Though if he does move, I immediately return him to exactly the spot where he was originally sitting and repeat the ‘Sit’ instruction.  This may require lot of patience to begin with.  (Notice I don’t use ‘Stay’ as I consider two words which mean exactly the same to the dog merely complicates things.  ‘Sit ’means you’re parked until I tell you to move.)

Once he can sit for a count of 10 at 20 paces you can dispense with the short start and end exercises  as he should be confident enough to cope, but like all learning, don’t hurry this exercise.  It’s a very common fault to try and hurry up the learning process but too much haste can lead to a lack of confidence and all sorts of unforeseen and undesirable outcomes such as poor eye contact or whinging;  both difficult to eradicate.

I am reminded of the wise words of that great old lady of the Golden Retriever world, the late June Atkinson, who said, ‘A gundog is a finely tuned instrument.  Be careful you don’t blunt it!’