reflections and redirections

[trekmoor]

It has just been pointed out to me that it was way back in 2014 that I last added to this "little" story. My sincere apologies to all of those who had been following it.
I'll have a bash at adding to it now before my memory gets any worse.
............................................................................................................................................

With my Brittany now in my sons family and never being trained at all I thought I'd better get another dog as Taz my GSP bitch wasn't getting any younger. I thought about all sorts of breeds but decided against another Brittany ..... I was still recovering from trying to train Belle the 'orrible !

My wife and I went to look at a litter of GSP's bred by a friend who lives fairly near me. For several years the GSP folk around here more or less passed pups back and forth between us that were all very similarly bred. The only time I did not do that I'd bought Taz who only had one "line" into our usual stuff. Taz was a very good bitch for me in every way except for her hunting range. She very seldom exceeded 60 -80 yards out from me.
Her pace within that range was excellent but 60-80 yards looks like nothing at all on a grouse moor or on a large stubble field. I have always liked dogs that need to be "pulled" in rather than "pushed" out as they hunt so I went back to the "old" lines.

I bought a dog pup that I called "Buck." This is a favourite name of mine because it rhymes with something rather rude ! I asked my wife many years ago ....almost 50 years ago .....to precede any commands or reprimands she gave to our dogs with the dogs name. I regularly break this rule but my wife has stuck faithfully to it ever since. My wife has a habit of using the word , "You !" as a reprimand so as Buck was always a very naughty puppy I received a lot of amusement whenever she reprimanded Buck !

When Buck was a few months old he had been particularly naughty one evening and had insisted on jumping up on the furniture so-o-o-o ....my wife had responded with a whole angry and loud string of "Buck Off !" and "Buck You's !"
The next day my very nice and very good next door neighbours approached me over the garden fence between us and very diplomatically and very tentatively enquired if everything was O.K. between my wife and me.

They'd overheard through the wall of our terraced houses as my wife got stroppy with Buck and had thought she was yelling ," *uck Off !" and "*uck You !" at me ! I dissolved into tears of laughter on the spot and it took me quite a while to control myself enough to explain what had really been said and to whom.
When I told my wife about this , she, as she seldom swears, was extremely embarrassed which made me start laughing all over again. I got the blame for this as I had insisted on the name "Buck" with malice aforethought ......which was true enough.

Buck was a smashing pup with few real faults. His biggest fault as a pup was his insistence on visiting any other dog he saw at whatever distance he saw it at. I worked hard to "cure" this fault but it never was finally cured until he was taken shooting or at least was given dummy retrieves to do. He loved retrieving with a vengeance and at 4-5 months old was easily doing memory retrieves over short grass of up to 200 yards. He was a fast and fairly powerfully built puppy but as a young pup his enthusiasm for running fast sometimes overtook the control he had over his long legs. He sometimes tripped himself up in his eagerness to get to dummies.

Everything came fairly easily to him , he was a pretty early starter at hunting, pointing and retrieving so when he was 5 months old I entered him for a "natural ability test" held by the Large Munsterlander club down in the Scottish borders. He did just fine in the various tests including the water retrieve but he failed the tracking test . He was supposed to follow faithfully the deer blood scented track but he cut the corner and found the "dead deer" that way. The person running that part of the tests blamed me for this failure and as a result my pup got no award at all for all his efforts.

Even having failed I still drove home very pleased with him as he was only 5 months old.

When he was 6months old and a wee bit steadier to dummy throws I entered him for a puppy test but it was held under K.C. rules which meant he was competing against dogs of up to 18 months old. Buck worked very well that day and he won the test by a very small margin.

I now thought I had a world beater on my hands but trouble came from the direction I least expected it to......his retrieving fell to pieces ! He had always delivered dummies straight back into my hands very happily but now he was playing "keepaway" with every dummy and inviting me to chase him to get the dummy back. I just did not understand this as I had never chased Buck ....or any other dog.....to get my hands on a dummy. It is one of the biggest no-no's in gundog training.

Sometimes, since I would not go after him, he'd bring a dummy back to within feet from me and then very deliberately drop it. If I moved towards him at all he'd very quickly snatch up the dummy again and tear off around the fields with it again.

Eventually I went right back to basics and gave him a retrieve inside my tiny garden. Buck went to the dummy, picked it up and then just stood there to await my next move. He totally ignored the recall command . I got thoroughly p*ssed off and took one step towards him and he at once dropped the dummy but hovered over it ready to snatch it up again .....it baffled me but then my wife's voice came from behind me in the doorway of the house. She very proudly said ......." I taught him that !"
.....................................................................................................................................

To be continued but hopefully less than 16 months later !

Wullie

[bollibop]

ooooooooooooooooooooooooh nooooooooooooo



ruth

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Dawnrazor]

The only Brittany I've seen belonged to a bloke from Edinburgh or west Lothian, he had a few labs and did a few demo's at game fairs, the hirsal and the drum, about the mid 80's, it was an orange roan bitch called "Vickey" if I remember, can't mind the blokes name!! I quite fancy seeing one in the field.

[trekmoor]

Dawnrazor ..... That bloke you saw was me ! The brittany was "Victoria of Talwater" ....Vicky , the labs were probably Tessa and Lady. All three of those bitches had won field trials and had qualified or ran in their respective Championships. Back then I had some damn good dogs. Wish I could say the same now but the following is only too true I'm sorry to say ....."The older I get the better I was !"

If you ever want to see a Brittany "in the field" I would be pleased to show you my present one but she is definitely not as well controlled as Vicky was. When you mentioned Bonnyrigg and Penicuik lassies in another thread I wondered if I had maybe met you somewhere . I used to pick-up at Penicuik House and I took gundog training classes there and at Mount Lothian. I also picked up on Arniston estate but only 2 or 3 times.

Small world innit ?
...................................................................................................................................................
........With my wife's voice came the thought in my head that I already knew what had gone wrong. My wife is a dog lover but not a dog trainer. Careful enquiry, think "interrogation," revealed what had happened to Buck's once very good retrieve. He loved to retrieve anything, absolutely anything and when I hadn't been there he'd retrieved every item in the house or garden that he could get hold of to my wife.

Those items had included spectacles, cushions, t.v. remotes, etc. etc. ..... My wife had worried that he might damage some of the articles and so she'd began to try to get him to drop things "on command." Buck hadn't wanted to drop them at distance, he'd wanted to place items into her hands but my wife hadn't waited for that to happen , she'd went towards him fast to take away the article or to get him to drop it.

The pup accepted that this was a new form of the "game" so he began to move away from her in the house and garden. Having become fed-up with pursuing him my wife had then began to train for a drop. She did it by throwing treats near him and when he dropped the article to eat the treat she moved in quick to grab the article. The pup thought this was a marvellous development of the game . He began to run around with the article until a treat was thrown and then drop the article right beside the treat. The treat was then swallowed in an instant and he then snatched up the article again and ran off with it again to await another treat !

I think this had been going on for about 2 months and his "proper" retrieving out in the woods and fields had suffered accordingly.
He'd actually been "treated" for playing keepaway with retrieves and treated for dropping them too. I thought at the time that now that I knew what had gone wrong I would be fairly easily able to put it right again ......but I was wrong !
My wife had done a smashing job of "training" that pup and I really struggled to get him back on course. This caused me to ask around about clicker training "experts" in my area.

I had an accidental meeting with a lady in a local country park. She had with her a Wire Haired German Pointer on a lead. My own dogs happily played around nearby as the lady told me she was a "certificated" dog trainer with a diploma of some kind from a university or a college. She knew all about clicker training she said and would teach me for a fee. She was, she said, setting up an obedience training hall from which to pursue her chosen career as a professional dog trainer.

I was impressed and was about to sign up but I wanted to see her dog doing a few things first since it had won in obedience competitions. I suggested she should let her dog off the lead to have a play along with my dogs but the lady would not let her dog off the lead. Careful enquiries revealed that she would not let her bitch off lead outdoors because it would not come back again !
I hastily revised my opinions of her abilities to teach me and left her, with her dog still on the lead, in the park.

That woman had a damned cheek expecting to take a fee from people for helping them to train their dogs. Her bitch, to my eyes, was a perfectly normal G.W.H.P. but the woman had no idea of the hunting drive these breeds have and C.T. had obviously not been enough to keep that drive under control. That experience has made me highly suspicious of any and all "certificated dog trainers."
Too much theoretical and too little practical training seems to be required to gain one of those certificates.
If a trainer has Field Trial win certificates behind them then I am far more impressed.

This did not stop me from trying to find a clicker training guru however. Plonkers like that woman exist in every kind of dog training.
My next clicker training guru was also a woman and she at least knew her stuff. She was and still is a moderator on another forum and she taught me clicker training over the internet spending a lot of her time writing it all out for me in language I could understand. I will always be grateful to her for that but I think we are no longer on speaking terms because , years later, I did a bit of arguing on a non-aversive dog training forum with her and with several others.

I am not a non-aversive dog trainer , it just does not work for me and it doesn't seem to work very well for others either to judge by field trial results. If these methods of training are actually better than the use of carefully thought out aversives then , by now, there should be more non-aversive trainers winning field trials. Very, very few have won trials especially with the hunting breeds, the spaniels and the HPR's.

Retriever trials give non-aversive trainers the best chance of winning. A very large part of retriever trial training happens with the dog right beside the trainer at heel . The last part of retrieves always happens in close to the trainer too which makes those parts of training more suitable for clicker training.

It was that "last part" of retrieves that I wanted to learn clicker-training for and my new guru helped me a great deal .....which takes a bit of doing over the internet. I did as instructed and "primed" the clicker and then began to click and treat for a hand touch.
..............................................................................................................................................

To be continued
Wullie

[Dawnrazor]

I was under keeper at Penicuik house, worked under John Laming, I know who you are now!! Small world!! I'm headkeeper on an estate on the Lanc's/Cumbria/North Yorkshire area, a long way from my Rosewell roots, you did have good dogs back then. Reading you're posts about your health problems, it's no wonder, you must be about 137 years old by now!!!!!
I used to go to the classes but by that time, I was about 15, I'd seen the light and got a springer!! I always was a sharp cookie!! It was John Mckay and, I think Stewart Gilchrist(?) that took the spaniel classes, that was about 1985!!!!

[trekmoor]

Not quite 137 years old but I often feel that age ! I remember John Laming very well and was sorry when he left Penicuik House. I stopped picking up there shortly after he left.....I got on very well with John.

I palled about with John Mackay and Stewart Gilchrist , John lived just 1/2 a mile along the road from me and we went dog training and shooting together a good few times. John made his springer "Dax" up to F.T.Ch. and Stewart had a good springer too but he sold him and gave up on gundogs altogether as far as I know.
John had a health problem and sort of slowly dropped out of gundogs , I heard he is now dead but don't know if that is true.

My happiest memory of John is of him throwing a full can of beer at the head of a keeper who was an obnoxious git. That keeper used to wait until the guns who had not tipped him had chosen their braces and then left them on particular hooks on the gamecart . He'd then batter the shit out of those birds with his stick !

He didn't like John or me and when he made snidey remarks against us one lunch time John threw the can of beer right at his head !
That keeper never troubled either of us again and not long after that he went to prison for sexual offences against minors. He was the most offensive keeper I ever met.

Wullie

[Dawnrazor]

Dax would be Kirdford Ryan?, a black and white dog. I worked with John for 3 1/2 years, I lived between Rosewell and the bothy next to the kennels!! John had the first "trained" spaniels I ever saw, I was amazed!! Bramble, Kim and Pepper and a Lab at heel, a top class dog man, keeper and Man. Give me a clue about the other keeper, I can't place him. John was badly treated by that syndicate, apart from Sconie and Kenny the rest were a shower of ignorant bastards that never deserved a keeper of John's quality, they got who the deserved!!! I told a story about a GSP retrieving a beer can, that was there, I bet you know the woman also!!!!!

[trekmoor]

The "other keeper" was an underkeeper on an estate very near Edinburgh. The keeper shot the lairds wife's cat and ended up losing his job and in court. It was later on that he went to prison for sex offences. The cat shooting incident was covered by the local papers . I have no idea if he is still living or not but I think he is a few years older than I am.

That estates head keeper was a gem of a man but he didn't have much luck with underkeepers. The man who took the obnoxious gits place also got sacked but this time by the headkeeper. He was bogging off work too much and not feeding his pheasants.

I'd heard John Laming was treated like shit .....that was the reason I stopped going to Penicuik House. About a couple of months ago I went to a spaniel trial held on Penicuik House's ground (I think.) I liked the present keeper and his Mrs. and might have gone picking up there again but that bloody big, deep, steep glen gave me second thoughts ! If I went looking for a bird down in there I'd never get back up again nowadays !

John Laming helped me quite a bit with my Brittany and with one of my labs. He allowed me to hunt the Brittany in a turnip field to give her experience of working on pheasants in that sort of cover and he also went out with me to shoot rabbits for my young lab. I heard he is now a keeper down in England somewhere ?

Wullie

[trekmoor]

Continued .....
.............................................................................................................................................

The hand touch click and treat was very easy to achieve but in my usual impatient and experimental way of doing just about anything I sort of ignored my guru and missed out on a few of the retrieve links in the chain. I went straight onto the recall with the dummy and the present. I have no patience at all for doing intricate and thoughtful things if the "thinking" needing done takes more than seconds. I have a feeling that this is why I am so useless at doing jigsaw puzzles (my wife is brilliant at them) or doing anything remotely "techie."

Buck very readily took to placing the dummy into my "target hand" inside my house and in the garden. I then experimented with not clicking for having the dummy placed into my hand. He replied by "free shaping" his behaviours in order to hear the click he wanted.
He tied pushing the dummy further and harder into my hand. He tried offering me a sit present and then he tried sitting up in full "begging position" to give me the dummy.

I clicked for all of these things but only for a short while each before witholding the "click." Buck became frustrated and offered me an even more "spectacular" behaviour. He came in front me , sat and then pushed himself totally upright to place his paws on my chest or almost onto my shoulders and then he did his very best to stuff the dummy into my mouth ! The "trick" with freeshaping is to click/treat for only the behaviours that you want. I certainly did not want dummies or birds stuffed into my mouth so I allowed that behaviour to become extinct and went back to clicking for the sitting present. That went very well but once more I let my impatient nature get the better of me and tried out in the woods and fields far too soon , before the behaviour was firmly enough embedded in him.

He at once reverted to playing keepaway so I at once reverted to using brute force ! With most other dogs what I did next would not have worked but Buck wasn't really wanting to drop the dummies. He wanted to tease me into a game of chasey for them and I refused to do that. I did a few 20 feet retrieves with him attached to a check cord .....or with the dummy attached to a checkcord !
He refused to drop that dummy so he got gently pulled in along with it but as soon as more distance was involved and the check cord was not attached to him or the dummy he played keepaway again.

This is where the brute force enters the picture. I did something with him I'd never done before and have never done since because I don't think it would work with the great majority of dogs. I put a collar on Buck and attached heavy fishing line to it .....shark fishing stuff ! That was in turn attached to a big game rod and reel and off we went to the local park where no cover would get in the way.

I sent him back for a memory retrieve and when he reached it I recalled him and reeled the bugger back in to me ! That took him by surprise. He had never imagined I could control him physically at distance .....but now I could ! To cries of encouragement and many questions about the size and fighting abilities of my "dogfish" from the parks interested spectators I reeled him in and he came readily enough until he reached his usual distance for playing keepaway. That was when the fight really started and if I say so myself I made a superb job of playing my dogfish ! A lesser rod, reel and line would have been in a lot of trouble but that heavy sea angling gear did the job.

A few repeats of this and Buck was "sorted" ......almost ! I still had a few more problems with his deliveries.

While all this was going on I was asked to go picking up at an estate that was new to me. I took 3 dogs with me and Buck was one of them but he was only really "there for the beer." I intended giving him a couple of retrieves with birds that had been picked earlier by my other dogs but no more than that.

The drives were all partridge drives and they took place on what had been a rather unproductive grouse moor . The partridges were fed by the keeper up on the hill tops among the heather but they were driven over the guns who lined up down in the bottoms of very deep, steep gulleys or "cleuchs." The partridges flew over the cleuchs to land on the opposing hill tops. It was all very well done and from where the guns stood way down below those birds looked like little flies passing over.
There must have been a couple of thousand partridge up there for they came over in big numbers.

The cleuchs very steep sides dictated that we pickers up had to stand in between the guns down in the bottom of those V shaped cleuchs and that we had to wait until each drive had ended before sending dogs up the sides of the cleuchs to find the fallen birds among the long, rank heather and the scree slopes. It was very hard work for a dog and I began to understand why one or two of the other pickers -up had 5 dogs with them !

A few times I felt it necessary to climb up those slopes myself to help my dogs and the first time I did that the hill was so steep I had to go down onto all fours to use the heather to pull me up as my feet pushed from below. No wonder the dogs were tiring quite quickly . A lot of partridges were being shot, probably about 40 -50 per drive, so the dogs were going up and down those slopes like yo-yos. I'd climbed upwards for a while and when I thought I was about level with where a few birds had fallen I stood up and looked down to get my bearings.

I at once had a vertigo attack. The hillside was so steep I felt I was going to fall off the edge ......in fact I felt I was being pulled outwards and downwards. I at once went back down onto all fours and handled my dogs while in that undignified position.

Lunchtime came and I'd already given Buck two dead bird retrieves while down in the bottom of a cleuch . He did fine and I was pleased with him , if I remember right one of the pickers up offered to buy him on the spot.
Then came the afternoon drives and by then our dogs were all completely knackered , the steep slopes, the thick, rank heather and the shifting scree had all taken their toll on the dogs energy when combined with the number of retrieves each dog had to do. After the last drive of the day we could hardly get our dogs to try anymore and the guns , a bunch of really great guys from Ireland were noticing this .

Every dog there was exhausted ......except for Buck. He had seldom been off the lead all day but the guns hadn't noticed that. They would notice it now though since the other dogs weren't doing too well so I felt duty bound to at least make it look as if I was trying.
I released Buck who was very young, very fit and as fresh as a daisy. He was all over the place up on the hillsides moving at a very fast pace and finding birds too ......but he only brought me back one or two of them ......if that !

The guns kept on seeing him running while other dogs were barely able to walk and they were also seeing him find birds and carry them back . What they were not seeing was that he was dropping them again to go to find a "fresh" one ! I was very embarrassed especially when the shoot captain , an Irish farmer, came up to me at the end and insisted on giving Buck a pie ! He said Buck was the only dog there that did any work !!!
...................No I did not 'fess up !

With more check cord training and one or two more "fishing sessions" while using cold game I eventually did turn Buck back into being a very reliable retriever but it took time and it lost me quite a few of my already rather sparse hairs.
..............................................................................................................................................

To be continued

Wullie