It's all about the training!

[Naj]

Your dog’s interest in game scents is a breed specific behaviour. There is some learning involved as they perfect their hunting skills through exposure to game and this is where we normally step in and manage their interactions so it fits in with our expectations, otherwise they just make it up to suit themselves. Not sure what you’re trying to achieve with your chin tickle other than training her to fixate on the bird, because that looks to be what you’re rewarding, even if she’s ‘quietening’ down. And that’s assuming she finds a chin tickle to be suitably rewarding. I want my dogs to look at a bird and think … yeah, a pheasant …. then look at me and ask … waddawedo now? I want them to be able to still function and take direction from me under the pressure of game. And that’s what LAT can help with. The marker word could be phessie, or sausages for that matter. Most say Yes or Good or use a clicker but the significance is that whatever you use to mark the required behaviour, in this case looking at the pheasant, has been preloaded through previous association with something highly rewarding, like titbits, to the extent that it signifies to the dog that something good is coming its way. In this scenario that would usually be an edible reward. So when the dog looks at a pheasant then hears the familiar marker it is already anticipating a treat and breaks concentration with the bird to engage with you. Pretty quickly the sight of a pheasant will cue it to look at you for a treat and then you have engagement.

Re the larking about this is more likely displacement behaviour due to pressure from you, or simply because you’ve confused her and/ or been inconsistent. It comes back to engagement. If the dog isn’t engaged with us before we start then it’s not in a mind to be trained. And once it’s engaged we have to keep it in the game, quite literally. If it enjoys what it is doing with you rather than seeing it as a chore it will want to keep doing it and coming back for more.

[Judy]

I think the key is how quickly she would understand that 'working', doesn't mean larking about, and whether she would have enough self-control to take beating. I don't need to worry about retrieving as we are most likely to be beating.

As others have hinted at, have a "go play" command / cue - I use just that, "go play" means do what you like within reason, if I don't say that then they know it's serious stuff (in theory anyway).

[Judy]

So when the dog looks at a pheasant then hears the familiar marker it is already anticipating a treat and breaks concentration with the bird to engage with you. Pretty quickly the sight of a pheasant will cue it to look at you for a treat and then you have engagement.

Would work well in the beating line - see Pheasant, run back to Daddy for a bikky. At least you could then explain LAT to the Keeper... Personally, I think stroking the dog and praising the calmness while it's looking at the bird is good. Then just say good dog and turn away letting the dog hunt in a different direction.

[Naj]

So when the dog looks at a pheasant then hears the familiar marker it is already anticipating a treat and breaks concentration with the bird to engage with you. Pretty quickly the sight of a pheasant will cue it to look at you for a treat and then you have engagement.

Would work well in the beating line - see Pheasant, run back to Daddy for a bikky. At least you could then explain LAT to the Keeper... Personally, I think stroking the dog and praising the calmness while it's looking at the bird is good. Then just say good dog and turn away letting the dog hunt in a different direction.

Aye, we can teach them all sorts of things once we have their attention. Kibble is struggling with that and this is one way of getting the dog switched on to the handler in distracting environments.

[Kibble]

To be honest I didn't set out with the idea of taking Mia to watch pheasants across the field. I just planned to get her to sit calmly. Sitting calmly in the countryside is still hard for Mia and I decided a wooden field gate would be a convenient place to practice. I could wrap the lead and lean on the gate in time honoured fashion.

To start with she would mess about sniffing and digging, but eventually sat. It was only when I saw her 'focus' (ears pricked and trembling a bit) hat I realised there was a distant pheasant.

The stroke reward is calming now, and she leans in, which is nice. She didn't always like this reward. Mia looks at me when we pass that gate now. I still find the species specific instinct amazing, so I suppose I was just enjoying Mia's focus.

The other day there was a lapwing making a lot of noise in a different field, that we were walking past. I was about to take Mia's lead off, but saw she had noticed it, and walked her on a bit. She didn't bother going back for a lapwing, but it would have been different if it was a phessie.

I have misunderstood what you meant by a marker word Naj, sorry. The method you describe (or similar) has been very effective at turning Mia from flushing birds, mostly partridge, from a different hedge and verge. Thank you for that.

I rather think consistency, like confidence, comes with experience. No point in consistently doing something that isn't effective, but with experience you could quickly swap to a better strategy for a particular dog, and be consistent with that.

It occurs to me that for a beating line, you just want a calm dog. No one will know if birds are missed. I might need to give Mia a few more years.

[Kibble]

The field where I usually walk Mia is now a meadow, which is good, because there are no sheep. Mia is proficient at finding dummies in long grass now.
Waiting to be sent and bringing a dummy back to hand is still a bit of an issue in the field, although she does this nicely in the garden. She will also fetch and return a rabbit skin ball to hand, or leave it for me to pick up if told, in the garden. I have not tried a rabbit skin ball in the field.
The field I use is walked by lots of dogs through the day, so the pheasants tend to be elsewhere.

The other day Mia came across a small rabbit tucked into the long grass. It didn't run. I know that a well trained spaniel should stop to flush, but this rabbit didn't run. Maybe it was too small to run. What should a well trained spaniel do in this case?

[Judy]

Currently my "well trained" dogs pick them up and deliver them to hand. There seems to be a load of really dopey baby bunnies this year, they have no inclination to flush so the dogs simply pick them up, never had this issue before. However, we are overrun with rabbits so...

[Kibble]

Thanks Judy
It helps if I know what I should be aiming for.
Mia picks up fewer bits of disgusting carrion now, which is good. I think she is getting the leave it message at last. It's better late than never.
I didn't expect her to find a bunny in the middle of a meadow. I can do some more work with rabbit skin dummies, although keeping her close is my main focus just now.

[Nickheref]

Currently my "well trained" dogs pick them up and deliver them to hand. There seems to be a load of really dopey baby bunnies this year, they have no inclination to flush so the dogs simply pick them up, never had this issue before. However, we are overrun with rabbits so...

Mine would do the same, pick it up and pass it to me, I would then sit them at a distance, put it back and move off unless it was in my garden!! A few weeks ago I was brought a young squab wood pigeon by one of the dogs and I popped it back in its nest with the strict instruction that if I ever found it munching brassicas I would be in a slightly different mood.

I found this the other day and this is not really for you Kibble but it shows how I want engagement from a young pup and how you can build on it. As it says the pup is 12 weeks old but it is having fun doing things with its human. He states he is a complete amateur and as you can see has no special training aids other than a clicker and a place board which are easy to get but he has got the pup listening and interacting with him, that it what we mean by being interested in their owner. It is calm and if it gets something wrong he gently asks again and that is what I meant by enforcing an instruction, just quietly asking again and helping the dog get it right and rewarding that behaviour. This is why if I read (an I am not alone!) that a 7 or 10 month old only does things 75% of the time with no distractions I think it is not going according to plan. I also tend to think people talking about their pups are the inverse of me telling my gp how many units of alcohol I have a week!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXc4qq38Kak

[Naj]

Seeing that the video has a clicker in it I’ll chuck in my two penn’orth. This wouldn’t be what I’d be looking for in an ‘engaged’ pup. The pup is more engaged with the environment than with the handler. This improves as the video goes on but you really want to start with the pup fully engaged with you in anticipation of a reward. Even though this pup was clued up about the click/reward it was more interested in sniffing the ground than in the handler. This may well have been a displacement behaviour due to the pressure being used by the handler on a failed response. There were a few of these at the beginning and this was feedback to the handler that his technique wasn’t what we’d call ‘clean’. If his training technique was clean then there shouldn’t have been any errors/failures to correct. He’d have been better starting with a few familiar tricks, like palm touches or spins, to get the pup in the game. We talk about context and the whole familiar set up of the place board/location/treats should have been a predictor for rewards to come and the pup should have been glued to the handler in anticipation from the get-go. They got there in the end, but pup could have been much motivated and energised.