advice on 2 dogs, housing+working

[liftboy1]

Hi, i have a gsp who is a year and a half old, and is coming on well, and i am a rough shooter, as living in wales, i have loads of farms that i shoot on, putting down game too, and also note i shoot alone, If i have shot with other people on the ground they have it has been with they`re dog. My question is, i want to buy another pup next year as my dog would have done a season, I would like to buy either another gsp or a korthalls griffon. Would it be advised to keep them together in the kennels? I do have a reeves kennel, with 2 separate kennels+runs, which i bought because i thought it was handy to have a double for friends dogs when on holiday etc. Also working them, obviosly it would be say winter of 2013 where the new dog would start to work, is it do-able to work them together on alternative whistles, or should i work one at a time? Work one and say leave one in a car, then swap half way through the day? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, also note that the dog i have now has slowly started to work on 2 farms, hitting the pigeons, foxes, and rabbits as this is the deal with a farmer i have that if i control pests etc i get to put game down, and he copes well, yesterday we had 2 pigeon, and a fox delivered to hand!!!! That was his 3rd outing.

[Lloyd90]

Sounds like a good dog, where in wales are you mate ?
I know you can train pointers to "honour a point" where one is on point and the other comes up and points based off the first one, I was speaking to a guy who does alot of spaniel trialing yesterday and he said when training never take 2 dogs out together, leave 1 in the car and take them out seperately

[trekmoor]

I kept worked and trained 3 H.P.R.'s together for nearly 25 years. I trained them separately to begin with but quickly added first one previously trained dog to the pups training sessions and then two until all 3 walked at heel together. Normally I hunted them singly with the other two dogs keeping to heel until it was their turn to work.

Hunting 2 dogs at the same time is a waste of the dogs breath and energy. There is still only the one handler - you - this means that both dogs would be covering the same ground. If you work them singly one dog can be regaining it's breath as the other hunts. This also tends to keep their speed up , they get to know that if they start to potter about they will be called in and the other dog will get to do the hunting.

I had no problems keeping all 3 + a lab in the house at the same time ...... except for when I added a male dog to my team and a bitch came into season.

Wullie

[liftboy1]

Bigthug, im from carmarthen, wullie, I might sound daft to you, but I would like the dogs to keep together at the same time, almost cover the same ground, the only thing i suppose i would have too do is call them back on alternative whisltes and when dropping to shot. The thing is my permissions are quite rough, the dogs do have to work hard, I would like the dogs to basically honour each other points and basically work together, on my grounds there is no point in 2 dogs cover huge amounts of ground on eihter side as my ground is rough with gorse, bracken, hedges, bogs etc.