free running

[millie]

Hi all, I am feeling a little confused the best way to go. I have a 5 month old springer and new to this. I am hoping to use her for rough shooting and beating. I have a 2 year old lab who is relatively well trained and I found I could follow books etc and find advice on forums and overcome any real concerns. However all the books I have read seem to have very conflicting views on spaniel training. My question is how do you keep a pup exercised without finding game etc( I live in the middle of a shoot) without keeping it on a lead and make sure it stays within the 20_30 metre radius now that she has discovered hunting is fun. Up till now all was well. Recall good to whistle. I use treats but Sammie is finding her independance and I have to be very careful where to take her and the recall has been ignored on occasion. Do kenneled dogs just come out for training in controlled areas until their recall is 100% ? I need to address this sooner than later or I will have a bogoff dog .With my lab I was always able to be one step ahead and hunt drive not so strong as a pup.
I walk and change direction and hide so she has to watch where I am and she is pretty much around me but if she scents game she naturally thinks it much more interesting than seeing where I am. I have looked for previous topics on this but been unable to find any. All help greatly appreciated.

[trekmoor]

If you live in the middle of a shoot then there will always be the possibility of game being around. You will have to develop your own powers of observation and anticipation . In other words watch your dog at all times to note any quickening of interest given by your dog when it encounters a hot scent and then do a pre-emptive strike on the dog by stopping it or by turning it away from the scent or by recalling it.

You may have to do the opposite of what I have to do to train pups. I have to travel from my own area which is virtually gameless to an estate where my pup can work among game scent and encounter a few birds. You may have to travel to game free places to train until the discipline you need has been instilled in the pup. Once you have that discipline in non-game places you can begin to apply it and enforce it where you live.

You could perhaps attach a 20-30 feet long check cord to your pup and let the pup trail it behind it . If the pup does not recall you could then stand firmly on the check cord then recall the pup using the cord ?
Another thought is that if the pup likes retrieving you might be able to get it's attention back on you by tossing a dummy off to the side away from the scent it is interested in ? This could be done by using a vocal command or a whistled one as the pup turns to go after the dummy .

Wullie

[millie]

Thank you so much for your reply and ideas covering the issue. I think your idea of travelling is the sensible way to go until I feel confident on recall. I have certainly found out what a time consuming all encompassing world dog training is. I so admire all those who have well trained gundogs realising the time you have taken to achieve it! I avidly read your posts on Edge and try to pick up your experiences. You have no idea how much it helps me and keeps up my enthusiasm. Thanks wullie

[Naj]

I agree with Wullie re the anticipation of problems & being careful what you expose the pup to. Your pup is just entering a developmental stage that every pup goes through, a natural process of independence where it begins looking away from your protection &, to a certain extent, cutting those puppy ties. It's also becoming sexually mature & its 'nose' is beginning to kick in so it's a bit like hitting adolescence. Just as well or we'd never have gundogs with the confidence to work independently of us. You just have to manage the relationship to maintain the partnership.

I live in a similar position to you in that the fields where I exercise & train my dogs are the same fields that I shoot over so we have game in them, although not in the densities that you might find. I find this a good thing because then the pups eventually grow up, with a bit of management, habituated to the presence of game so it just becomes a bit of background noise & far less a distraction in training than with a dog that never encounters game until it is much older, so try looking at it as a bonus! Bet Wullie would have given his eye teeth to live in a place like that.

As you're finding out it's all about engagement with the pup - if you can't easily get the dog's attention focussed on you & retain it there then you can't train it anything. How you do that depends upon what methods you use to train, so you either make it rewarding to engage with you &/or unrewarding to disengage from you. You also need to manage the environment so you have fewer competing distractions. Forget about teaching a 100% reliable recall in isolation (no such thing, dogs aren't machines) and concentrate on learning how best to engage with your dog and, if using rewards, how to maintain motivation, then the training part will be easy. There's loads on U-tube on this but if you prefer the more traditional approach of making disengagement with you unrewarding by introducing corrections then I'm sure others on here will advise you on that.

Dogs learn in context so I stick to one or two locations for exercise where there is only light cover & less chance of meeting game. If it's fenced in all the better. I use grass fields or stubbles. Concentrate on not going anywhere but keeping your pup within 20 - 30 yards. Then when its expectations have been changed & it no longer wants to bolt off following its nose but is responsive to what you're doing you can wander about the field a bit, but if I stop I want the pup to migrate back to me. This type of 'lesson' is as important as any heel or sit lesson because you're learning how to motivate the dog & the dog is learning how to focus on you &, when using reward based methods, gets a lot of reward simply out of the process of interaction. You'll be using plenty of recalls during this process but when the dog has learned to engage with you then you can introduce other behaviours, like sit & heel. You teach behaviours in the least distracting environments first so I would start these in a yard or garden and at meal times. Once you've got reliable behaviours in your exercise/training fields then you can gradually proof them by going to different areas & starting from scratch until the dog will perform them anywhere, then you begin increasing the levels of distraction a bit at a time. It's a long process where you make progress in baby steps, often having to go back to earlier lessons when you've misjudged & put the dog into a situation in which it isn't yet ready to cope, but whenever your pup is too distracted to concentrate on you then it's telling you something & you need to take it out of that environment & gradually build up resilience to it again, whatever methods you choose to train with.

Naj

[Cass]

If you are concerned with her following scent I would just let her run where there isn't as much like a park or soccer field or something of that nature. Regardless of where you go, she is going to pick up scent. Sometimes you just have to let a pup be a pup. If you're hiding and changing direction she'll figure it out. She may go off on scent for a bit because she's distracted but when she realizes you're gone or far away from her I guarantee she'll come running back. All this would be just "free running". I would not give commands or anything during this time - you're just letting her burn off some steam. If you are working on actual commands like sit and recall, I wouldn't go to all that trouble. Scent acts as a distraction, and distraction is the key to a well trained dog.

[millie]

Some great advice here. I need to change my thought Patten as regards 'going for a walk' and as you say stay in one place. Baby steps are I realise are key here and I must not be wanting to rush the basics. I prefer the idea of rewarding when engaged so will continue on this track .The rain has stopped momentarily so I shall go and put some of this into practice...... I hope. ! Thanks Naj

[trekmoor]

Bet Wullie would have given his eye teeth to live in a place like that.


Naj

You'd win your bet ! I'd like to live with game all around. It is much easier to find a place with no game where a dog can be let loose than it is to find a place with game where a dog can be let loose. I probably drive , at this time of year and again during September/October , about 100 miles every week just to try to find game. These are the only times of the year when I can take my dogs onto the estate to give them game experience.

I have a few thousand acres of virtually game less woods and fields all within 5 -10 minutes drive from where I live ! Some of it is good training ground but it's lack of game makes it almost useless if I actually want a pup to find game .....and most of the time I do want that. I could count the number of pheasants my spaniels have found on the fields and in the woods near my house on one hand. That is over a time period of about 8 years !

My GSP's and my Brittany do/did far better near my house. They have had a good few finds on pheasants but they are covering far more ground as they hunt. They sort of "cut the birds off at the pass" as the birds try to sneak off as I approach.

Yep, I'd like to live on a shooting estate but it would have to be within four miles of lots of shops or my wife would refuse to live there !

Wullie

[Naj]

Sounds like you've set the groundwork as in Cass's recommendation, Millie, but the pup has mentally moved on so you need to adjust your methods accordingly because the fear of losing you is now being countered by the reward of following game scent. All that good puppy conditioning will not be lost, though, & the habit of keeping one eye on you & returning to make contact with you when lost will be stored away in the memory banks. You now just need to learn how to manage the dog under increasing levels of distraction.

Naj

[EssGrouse]

I once read an article written by John DeMott with regards to working for Talbot Radcliffe. I recall him saying he used to let the pups out every morning to free run and they would run down the field hunting for game, he was never phased by this as the pups never caught the game they flushed.....

I wonder how many folk would do that now.

[AlandJake]

I once read an article written by David Jones with regards to working for Talbot Radcliffe. I recall him saying he used to let the pups out every morning to free run and they would run down the field hunting for game, he was never phased by this as the pups never caught the game they flushed.....

I wonder how many folk would do that now.

There was a discussion a while ago (and perhaps several over the years) about introducing pups to game when they are too young to be able to chase and catch the furry/feathery varmint, so that they self-learn not to bother chasing once flushed.

I think your average owner would be particularly brave to try this, especially if they did not have ready access to game. Perhaps someone with a portfolio of youngsters might try this with one of their pups, and if it worked out well then great, but if it over heated the dog then at least they hadn't ruined their one and only dog.