Gundog Training Forum

I'm confused so I'm on the dogs side here. If I understand you correctly your putting four "marks" out at the beginning. Sending the dog to one and letting it pick it, then sending it for a second but stopping it and redirecting it to a blind. If that is correct, there in lies your issue....

Hi team, I have an odd quirk with one of my labradors. I'll set the scene below. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. She is 2 years old, and I have been building her training around working tests and hopefully trials in the future. I try to train a few times a week alongside my 9-5 and my other...

Sorry I realize I misread and gave my favourite training exercise not tracking. I have watched some fun exercises for retriever pups where they drag a duck through cover and the encourage pup to find it but I have never done so for my own dogs. I can see it helping a pup with low prey drive find th...

My biggest problem is a lack of creativity.

What is everyone's favourite tracking exercise? How do you set up retrieves?

I don't want to become too reliant on a few scenarios as they start to lose their training benefit.

To build her confidence you could always create a blind ladder (as newf said) in your new training ground. Put a dummy down every say 15/20 yards to so (can tailor distances between dummies to suit) as blinds. you want the dummies right at the edge of her confidence. Then send her and let her come o...

I try to cut our dogs' toes every 4-6 weeks, otherwise I see them becoming slightly pin toed, which not only leads to problems with their walking but also increases injuries when working. As others say, I nibble the toes back until I feel I am close, I then also use an electric toenail grinder (basi...

I've been looking into this and found, although I could go and buy everything separately, I found a company that offered good value dog first aid kits. I now have 1 or 2 in each truck, so I can take one picking up and have one in the car. Has everything that Judy mentioned as well as wound powder (c...

some really useful information. seems my gut is right, let her have some time. Hopefully, she will come back keen and punching like she did before. I guess it follows the saying 'every dog is different'. Fingers crossed this issue doesn't persist past her season. On a side note and a slight tangent ...

Judy is 100% right. My dogs know when I am smiling and when I am frowning. I do look like a manicly happy person when training, regardless of what the dog has done, as long as it's coming back, I look like the Cheshire cat!

Hi Sarah! Welcome to the Lab world! I havent used a clicker before. All thumbs here! I use a verbal reward alongside a treat. This helps when they are older as they will have associated the verbal reward with a treat