reflections and redirections

[Strathcraig]

Most of the dogs on the wee shoot I beat on are like your first couple, I think the guys have so long between dogs that they forget to train pups and just let them do what the almost retired dog does. Which is usually, as described above.run about the place when beating and if standing, run in to anything that falls.

[cuda]

About bloody time you got your finger out and started a thread like this - probably the nearest we'll get to you writing a book

Now you've started - you'll have to keep going.

Brilliant read, and having heard a few of your stories first hand definitely looking forward to what's to come

Don't forget to mention HM the Queen and steam from under a tweed skirt - 2 of my favourites plus "are you some kind of feckin idiot"

Keep it up Bill (Not easy at your age )

Charlie

[trekmoor]

quote ...." p.s.... was the show-bred springer the one that yapped when on a bird in cover and the guy who bought him liked it?.."

Nope that dog came about 7 years later, he was another one of my false starts in the gundog game. I will get to him ....if I should live so long !
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My lab and I continued to learn together how to train a gundog and I learned far more from him than he ever did from me. One of the things he taught me was that handsome is as handsome does , for he was most definitely not a handsome Labrador. He was small for a male lab , he had a tail that curved up over his back and he was undershot. He was also one of the best working dogs that ever came my way. He lived to work and wasn't too interested in being petted and disliked being cuddled. He had a very bad start in life , he'd been bred by a keeper and was still unsold at 12 weeks old , probably his undershot bite caused that. The other pups and his dam were all gone from him and he lived in a little kennel being fed and presumably cleaned up after but receiving no socialisation from 7-8 weeks until I bought him at 12 weeks old. I think he cost me £8.

I never did get to tests or trials with that dog. For one thing I had no car and for another thing he still ,often ran-in. I never did stop that completely, maybe because as a mainly lone rough shooter I never had any real need to. His running in suited what I was doing and I'd have hated to lose his incredible abilities when it came to somehow recognising I'd hit a duck in the darkness and at once running-in to go and find it.

He also taught me about water work. I'd noticed that if I threw a dummy into water or if he saw a bird fall dead into water he'd often stop and put down the retrieve at the waters edge as he came back out in order to have a shake. If, however, I was some distance from the water he'd come quickly back to me without shaking or dropping. I was to remember that with future dogs and have stuck to keeping back from the waters edge for the rest of my life always with good results.
I also noticed that if a bird was still very much alive as he emerged from the water he did not put it down or stop to shake. I think a live duck or three had taught him that if he dropped a live bird it would try to escape and maybe one or two ducks did escape in that way. I was to remember that in later years too but used that knowledge for a different purpose.

The vizsla bitch I train was a dummy and a bird dropper. The "cure" was simple , I sent her for very lively running pheasants. Doing that "cured" the dropping of both dummies and of birds. It is a "cure" I have used a few times on a few dogs through the years. It does not always work but, for me, most of the time it does.
One of the other reasons I sent Rosie for strong runners at 9-10 months of age was that she fiddled about with dead birds. Live ones taught her she didn't have all the time in the world to get hold of them, they bogged-off again smartish if she didn't take her chance while she still had it.

Doing things like that would horrify any normal, decent gundog trainer with a pup to train but as my wife is forever telling me , I am neither normal nor decent ! They worked for me so I continued to do as my lab and my other first dogs had taught me years before. I freely admit that I seem to get away with doing things that would cause others worries about hard mouth etc. But not one single dog of mine's has been hard mouthed. I will qualify that statement. Two of them became hard mouthed much later on in life due to "circumstances."

to be continued.
Wullie

[trekmoor]

My computer is playing up. It only allows two or three paragraphs and then it goes very "sticky" or even ceases to type. It's probably busy watching pornies over on another channel or sumfin.....wish it would either stop doing that or share them with me.
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My lab and I sort of muddled on learning together since nobody else I knew back then did I know well enough to approach for help. There were two trialers who also lived in Forfar but I never asked for help and it was never offered. My mistakes were of my own making but so were my successes....I rather liked not having to feel gratitude to anyone else and I also liked having nobody to blame for my failures but myself.

One Friday evening I got a message from one of the farmers whose farm I regularly shot over. He was insistent that I should come to his farm on Saturday morning and to be there sharp , with my gun and dog, by 9a.m. I did exactly that and found the farmer who was also called "Wullie" waiting with his gun. He had never came out shooting with me before then so I wondered what was going on. I soon found out. I was being taken to my very first "pukka" driven pheasant shoot.

It seems he had fallen out very badly with the neighboring sporting estate over whether he could fish in the boundary river between part of the farm and the estate. The estate had won the argument but Wullie was not a happy bunny ! Wullie knew that a couple of the estates best drives often saw some of the birds fly over the boundary and over his farmland. We were going to do some driven shooting on those birds.

Wullie deliberately positioned us to be clearly seen by the gentry next door as they shot from their pegs. I was instructed to load up my 5 shot auto (those guns were lawful back then) and to shoot ..... " Every feckin burd that comes ower here !" Even a newbie like me knew this was "not quite the done thing." but I was indebted to Wullie for the shooting I had there and I wanted to continue to shoot on that farm so I complied but with a face red with embarrassment .

Both he and I shot rather a lot of pheasants and my dog was here, there and everywhere bringing them back. My 5 shots were coming in very handy. The thing I remember about my own dogs work was that I was awful glad I'd put some stop whistle and recall whistle into him for he was minded to jump over the boundary wall to pick up the estates pheasants too !
I saw a big cock pheasant get shot by the gun nearest the boundary wall over in the estate but it curved off and landed near Wullie in his field. The drive ended and the gun and a keeper arrived at the boundary wall to enquire about that pheasant.

I can't really remember now but I think they were 60-80 yards away. Wullie shouted back that none of their shot birds were in his field and was told in reply that they would like to send their lab over the wall to look for it. The keeper and the gun knew where the bird was to within a couple of yards ....but so did Wullie. The lab they sent over knew his job and handled well.
Wullie noticed that and quickly planted one of his big boots on the bird. The lab went around Wullie in circles but wasn't daft enough to come within range of his other boot ! Wullie was murmuring endearments to it like...." Gerroot o' here ya fecker " and other such pleasantries. The dog was recalled minus the bird.

My face must have been scarlet with embarrassment but like it or not I had now been introduced to formal driven shooting with the very best of society taking part. Wullie was delighted, he showed that by inviting me out to poach the estates salmon and sea-trout in the boundary river ! What a trouble that estate planted for itself when it decided the neighboring farmer should not fish, with a fly, for two or three small salmon and sea-trout per year. It was very short sighted of them.

Wullie

[Louise]

These tales are great, fascinating reading, thank you

[Stacia]

Definitely a book in the making. I hope you are copying and saving it

[trekmoor]

My time with that lab was fast coming to an end due to house moves back to a top flat in a tenement in Gorgie in Edinburgh. I had no shooting at all in the Edinburgh area and Forfar is a long way from Edinburgh with a dog and a game bag and a pair of muddy boots and a shotgun when you don't have a car. I'd managed by bus in the Forfar area but in that area 40-50 years ago nobody was at all worried by a rough looking bloke carrying a gun if he looked like he was going or had been out rough shooting.
My lab lived for going shooting and I could no longer take him shooting. Not even wildfowling. I was now working as a postman and postmen did and still do, work a six day week including Saturday mornings. My new job was a sod if your sport was going shooting or beating or picking-up and was absolutely useless as a job if you had any inclination to go field trialing. Between having no car and having no shooting and having not enough time on Saturdays to get to shoots I was snookered !

I sold my dog for a paltry amount but I knew I'd sold him to a good home, a crazy keen shooting home. I hope he was happy but I wasn't. I missed my dog and I missed going rough shooting. I took my dog training in a new direction. I got a rescue collie dog from the local cat and dog home and began to train for the Obedience ring with him. He had many "faults" one of them being aggression to other dogs especially big ones and spaniels. He hated spaniels with a real passion, he'd been attacked by two of them while attached by lead to me in a café.
His other huge fault was chasing traffic of any kind including railway trains !
I went along to the Obedience training hall and signed on . I was told I'd have to start at the beginning and work my way up through the bottom two classes to reach the top class where all the fancy stuff went on for the obedience arenas. The bottom two classes consisted of training elementary heelwork , sits, downs , stays and recalls. The only problem I had was controlling him among maybe 20-30 other dogs of all shapes, sizes and breeds. I did control him and he was one of the most intelligent dogs I have ever owned. I'd already taught him those elementary things before taking him to the classes so he sailed through the classes and ended up in the top class all in the same evening.

He was very good even by the top classes standards but for one thing........he had no interest whatsoever in retrieving. About the most he would do was to move towards the thrown article. Nobody then among the trainers had ever heard of clicker training and none of the trainers had a clue about F.F. training either. I was left to my own devices to train the retrieve with the advice being given that I should enter him for "Pre - beginners" where no retrieve was required and stop there happy with what I had taught him.

I took part of that advice and ignored the rest....... I don't give in easily. I entered him for my very first ever dog competition in the "pre-beginners" ring at a show and he won it first time out.

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to be continued
Bill T.

[Malfuss]

Another great thread Wullie. Yet another one of yours that I'll be checking daily.

[trekmoor]

My border collie rescue dog was a very handsome lad. He was strikingly tri-coloured ,he was large by any border collie standards and he had totally pricked ears at all times. I suppose he looked a bit like a slightly miniatured version of a very fit rather long haired German Shepherd. I kept him on a lead for a full week after I got him for he had been a street stray and he knew the street-life and he liked it. With his liking for traffic chasing I'm amazed that he'd lived to the 8-10 months he was when I got him.

The first thing I taught him was not to chase cars, bikes and buses. That wasn't too hard , I could train for that on any street or road. His love of chasing railway trains was a much greater problem as I found out when I did let him off the lead in a local park. He saw a train pass by on the track at the bottom of the park and he went after it at once. I was in Edinburgh and the train was heading for Glasgow with my dog chasing along after it.

I was young (about 22) I was very fit and I used to be a very good runner. This seems to be one of my mother's side of my family's inherited genes. My mother and my aunts and my uncles could all run like stink. I saw them win races as a child.
I was never a particularly fast runner but I could keep on running seemingly forever. I should have competed in marathons but I never did. I never ran just for fun. I ran after my fast disappearing dog but he turned out to be the only dog I could never catch. His mental attitude to me and to life in general was different to any other dog I have ever known. He was the only dog I have ever owned that was a real "pack leader" type. Nowadays the notion of "pack leader" is often poo-pood. I.M.O. that is because the people who so blithely scoff at the idea and say there is "scientific evidence" against their being pack leaders have never encountered one of the real ones ! That kind of dog is very, very rare and they take independence to whole new higher levels.

I kept running long after my dog had vanished into the distance along the track. By now I was reduced to a fast jog and about 10 minutes had gone by. Running along a railway track is neither easy nor sensible. Then away off in the distance I saw a train from the Glasgow direction coming towards me. It whizzed and rattled it's way past me and then I saw my dog grimly pursuing it back towards me.

He'd "lost" the train he'd been chasing and when one had appeared on the return journey he'd chased it all the way back again ! I managed to catch him and walked home thinking about how to train him not to chase trains.
It was no use taking him to railway stations to train, those trains weren't moving fast enough to interest him. The best place seemed to be the same park where he'd already chased.
It isn't as easy to stop a train chaser as it is a traffic on the roads chaser. Trains are not as frequent as cars and buses. I took along a length of rope and tied him to a goal post in the park and waited for a train to pass by. A train went by 200 yards away and my dog broke his sit and went from totally immobile to full throttle in an instant. The rope snapped with the force of his lunge and he was gone.

I'd already learnt my lesson about running after him so this time I just walked down to the railway tracks and then settled down to wait. Sure enough a train came past heading in the opposite direction to the first one and a few minutes behind it came my dog still trailing the remainder of the rope. He actually seemed to be quite pleased to see me this time so I settled for that and had a re-think.

Next time out I attached a rope to both sides of his leather collar and to the other ends of those short lengths of rope I tied on an 18 inch long , 2 x2 inch square wooden stave. I sat him with the contraption resting at the base of his chest ,running across the tops of his forelegs. A train went by and he chased with the lump of timber banging up and down against his legs. It slowed him down but it did not stop him. I did manage to catch him however and continued to sit him to wait for trains passing by.

That idea worked and I gradually decreased the size and weight of the stave of wood until I felt I could control him if he was at heel but not attached to me or to a lump of wood as trains went by. The big day arrived for me to test out whether or not I could control him when he was with me but not attached to anything down in the park. Off we went to the park to wait for a train. I did heelwork , sits, stays, recalls and then even more heelwork but no trains went past.

I continued doing bits and pieces of obedience training for at least an hour before the Park Keeper came to talk to me. He'd got used to seeing me there with my dog. I told him what I was doing and that today was the day of my dogs big test so I was waiting on a train. He burst out laughing and said, "Ye daft barsteward ye ! The railway men are on strike today !" Trust me not to know that, I felt a right diddyhead !
Anyway , to cut a long story much shorter, I did eventually manage to train my dog not to chase trains.

To be continued.
Wullie

P.S. I think that nowadays I could dispense with all that very troublesome kind of aversion training and could stop a dog chasing trains with just a few lessons done in different places by using those swearie words ..... the electric collar ! Those things do have their uses.

[cuda]

This seems to be one of my mother's side of my family's inherited genes. My mother and my aunts and my uncles could all run like stink. I saw them win races as a child.

Descended from a long line of poachers ?

Charlie