Beating with two

[pejay]

Hi all,
I have four cockers, one is an almost perfect beating dog, I’d like to take two at once but is this possible? How do you manage two, how do you do the whistles for instance?
Thanks

[Naj]

You could hunt one and heel one and then keep alternating them. There used to be field trials for brace and team work but if you’re going to hunt a brace or team you need to introduce it outside of a beating day, as you would when training anything else, then when the dogs understand the procedure you can take it onto a shoot day.

Naj

[Naj]

As regards managing the dogs you’d use the one whistle but when I hunted two spaniels together I turned them by name, with or without a whistle command. They soon get used to the routine if you’re consistent and quickly learn which dog you are addressing because you’ll be looking at it. If you’re adding dogs you train them individually in a brace with each of the existing dogs and then all three together and do the same with any dogs you add.

When they used to hunt teams they’d allocate one retrieving dog and the rest wouldn’t be taught to retrieve, or retrieved but knew that they wouldn’t be retrieving when hunting in a team. Read an old Gundog book that covered it in detail many years ago. Talbot Radcliffe did a short chapter on it in his book, Spaniels for Sport, although he preferred that there were no trained retrievers in a beating team.

Naj

[ips]

Nak
Re the last sentence, i consider that retriever training is actually detrimental in a beating dog or at least one that is to be trained purely for beating. From my limited experience the dogs that do retrieve and like to do so (such as my own) are always on the edge looking or rather expecting a retrieve at some stage.

[Judy]

But if the dog is trained to retrieve then it should be steady? I can only go by two or three of my dogs who have been trained as Retrievers either for Working Tests or for picking up but had to go beating instead on occasion, they've been fine, only had one take off after a retrieve, once, when she was supposed to be beating! I do know someone who didn't train one of his Springers to retrieve at all - his wife took it beating, he said it was easier for her to handle that way.

[Springcopse spaniels]

Recipe for disaster.
Rest assured that things will go tits up quickly, because the dog will soon learn your not paying attention and it will be on a DIY.
I work my open bitch and ftaw, with one at heel off lead whilst the other is hunting then swap as needed.
Picking up, I'll only send one dog at a time unless a runner hits the deck.
And the dogs here are pretty well schooled.

[Naj]

Recipe for disaster.
Rest assured that things will go tits up quickly, because the dog will soon learn your not paying attention and it will be on a DIY.
I work my open bitch and ftaw, with one at heel off lead whilst the other is hunting then swap as needed.
Picking up, I'll only send one dog at a time unless a runner hits the deck.
And the dogs here are pretty well schooled.

Aye, but you’ll release the team when sweeping up after the drive when picking up?

I used to hunt one and heel one when beating but when I was on my own would enjoy hunting a brace. When picking up I’d have three dogs. (This was in the days before you took great packs of dogs with you when picking up. ) an older, reliable dog that was beyond ‘spoiling’ and did all the dirty work, an experienced dog that could be relied upon for the run of the mill stuff and a young entry that was carefully nurtured. They’d sweep up after drives but the youngster would be carefully managed. They would all be used for beating and roughshooting and would slip into their various roles. Learning in context, again.

Naj

[PRH]

Aye, but you’ll release the team when sweeping up after the drive when picking up?

I used to hunt one and heel one when beating but when I was on my own would enjoy hunting a brace. When picking up I’d have three dogs. (This was in the days before you took great packs of dogs with you when picking up. ) an older, reliable dog that was beyond ‘spoiling’ and did all the dirty work, an experienced dog that could be relied upon for the run of the mill stuff and a young entry that was carefully nurtured. They’d sweep up after drives but the youngster would be carefully managed. They would all be used for beating and roughshooting and would slip into their various roles. Learning in context, again.

Naj

Interesting. I take both labs if I’m picking up, the old one beyond spoiling and the younger one for development but without being overly fussy. I can’t take them both if I’m shooting as I can’t concentrate and the old one knows it. I won’t let the youngster sweep - look for a specific bird fine, but on small days there is no need to sweep. How many dogs do you see who are up and away when the horn or whistle blows at the end of the drive? On Saturday I was stood well back and watched plenty of bird swapping going on, with dogs picking up dead birds 15m away from guns....just madness.

[Nickheref]

I often have two dogs with me but only ever hunt one at a time the other at heel. If I don't think the one hunting is going well enough to find anything it will be at heel (or at home or possibly not even there) !!!! I have never really understood the benefit of hunting two spaniels (pointers are different) at the same time, you cannot watch two (and if shooting shoot in two different directions at the same time) and the likelihood is they might start competing to take each others ground and rather than hunt the ground for you will race each other forward.
If a dog isn't hunting well enough to cover the beat on its own then I ask why it is there.

[Judy]

Interesting. I take both labs if I’m picking up, the old one beyond spoiling and the younger one for development but without being overly fussy. I can’t take them both if I’m shooting as I can’t concentrate and the old one knows it. I won’t let the youngster sweep - look for a specific bird fine, but on small days there is no need to sweep. How many dogs do you see who are up and away when the horn or whistle blows at the end of the drive? On Saturday I was stood well back and watched plenty of bird swapping going on, with dogs picking up dead birds 15m away from guns....just madness.

I disagree, there's always a need to sweep, there'll often be a bird lightly hit that the picker up didn't notice or even, in my case recently, a stone dead Partridge that I neither saw hit nor fall, good job the dog did! As for bird swapping, thats a training issue of course.

I've only once had to blank in some rough ground with two dogs, I was working with a misogynistic head picker up who told me to blank the field in along with the youngest picker up and the Keeper. He then told me how to do it (stay in line with the Keeper, don't get ahead, don't do this, that, blah, blah) which rather got my back up. Anyway, he drove round to the far end of the field and got out of the Landy to watch me! I asked Miss Reliable to walk to heel and let loose the hunting machine who proceeded to give a textbook demo of how to do it, stopping to flush every time... It was all I could do to resist giving him the finger when we got to the far end! Perfect ending to the drive, the guns and everyone else had to wait at the end because his dog had disappeared and didn't recall.

Anyway, to get to the point, if your dogs will each walk to heel off lead whilst another is working out front then take two. If not things could very quickly get interesting.