Gundog Training Forum

She's nice looking!
Suppose I'll have to get my camera out now to prove my pup will retrieve past the others an' all.

No Alice I was given this pup for a bit of retrieve training as her owner was having trouble getting her to retrieve.

Yes Judy but would your pup do it after only two days of you having her ?

Wullie

Yes if somebody better than me had had her first...

The training the pup had from her owner consisted of sits to voice and heelwork in his courtyard.......maybe she was too bored to retrieve !
Heelwork is the last thing I train a hunting breed to do and even then it is very sketchy, loose heelwork. I think heelwork can inhibit a pup as a hunter. This pup shows few signs of ever being a whizz-bang-wallop sort of hunter and I'm not even sure her owner wants her to be one. He likes my Brittany and he likes the idea of being able to stroll up to points and then shoot. Maybe he will be pleased if his springer pup is a natural pointer ?

A point from her may never happen again once she gets properly into hunting but it was interesting to see just how strong the pointing instinct can be even in a springer.

Wullie

Well I got my just deserts for taking the mickey - took the camera out with me. Pup ran past the others to get the dummy, third dog in the row breaks stays and wanders off, pup decides getting within three feet of me then running off might be much more fun than giving up the dummy... So, which one do I go back to basics with first, the old girl or the pup?

This evening was training class evening and since my Brittany has come into season I took my cocker Charlie along instead. I have done some training with Charlie over the last four years or so but very little and very infrequently. He does his job as a picking up dog well enough not to need constant retraining.

Picking up standards were not quite enough this evening however ! I haven't been to the classes for about 4 weeks and when I turned up this evening things had changed a bit .....only Labradors , fairly advanced Labradors were present. I joined in with the labs and just made the best of the retrieves as I could.

The training ground is truly excellent , I'm told John Halstead has travelled there to train his labs once or twice . The land is very uneven, full of humps, bumps, very steep hill slopes and numerous ponds . By this time of year the cover is very high, much higher than wee Charlie which put him at a considerable disadvantage. He couldn't even see the marked retrieves being thrown sometimes !

He was not better than the labs but he did manage to retrieve every dummy thrown for him or planted for him as blinds. I had to handle like crazy quite often but between us, he got every dummy. He was having to return towards me at times in order to see which way through all the tall grasses and other cover I was trying to send him. He did a couple of good marked retrieves with no extra commands ....but those two marks were the only ones he could actually see over the tops of the cover . He did blinds and he did double marks as blinds and he did blinds with easily seen distraction dummies.

His worst fault showed when he returned to me with dummies. Charlie is a show off and he is also a bit possessive of dummies. Those two things combined ensured that he wriggled and pirouetted in front of me instead of just giving me the dummies. His antics amused the lab folk but did not amuse me !
The little devil thoroughly enjoyed his evening out and the lab folk were very complimentary about how well he handled. I felt he could have responded at once to some of my stop whistles but he did not. He moved back towards me to try to see me better through or over the cover . It showed dog sense but did not show instant dog obedience.

It was a very pleasant evening out with wee Charlie ..... alias the Devil's own cocker. I have one or two friends who make the sign of the cross to ward off evil when he appears at shoots. Charlie has made his own legend around here.

Charlie .... otherwise known as "Charlie Yabugger !"





Wullie

The springer pups training has been slowed down. She has a couple of fears that may take time to overcome. She is not as bold as I'd first thought. Woodlands can scare her .....I suppose a wood could be a scary place to a pup that has never seen trees close up before. I have taken her into woods a few times now and she is beginning to enjoy being among them mainly thanks to Charlie and Billy charging about and enjoying themselves.

Yesterday I threw a tennis ball for her in the woods and she at once retrieved it with considerable enthusiasm.
More worrying is her reactions at times to people. I arrived home late one evening wearing boots, gaiters and a shooting jacket and baseball hat. She saw me coming in the door and was terrified. She ran to hide behind my wife while yowling her head off. A few seconds later and she was fine but I'd taken off the hat , sat down and talked to her by then.
I noticed she behaved in the same way when my daughter visited us yesterday.....again she was fine once my daughter had sat down.

When out for walks she shows no fear at all of people , in fact she goes straight to them hoping to be petted.
I think this pup will be O.K. and will lose most of her fears in time. I don't think she'd ever be trials materiel ....she's not hunt orientated enough and I do not have the game to "get her going." I have tried to let her find or even just see a few rabbits but rabbits are so scarce around here that even very experienced dogs have trouble finding even one.

Her owner had taught her heelwork ..... I have been busy de-training her heelwork ! I put her on a lead and let her pull to try to get to my cockers as they hunt in front of us. I'm hoping to lessen her inhibitions about moving away from me. This does seem to be working. She has now ran ahead of me for as much as 25 yards even among woodlands.

In the house she isn't much of a chewer but she has been very slow to housetrain .....she piddles just about anywhere. Other than that and her fear of people entering the house she has given no problems in the house. She is great with children and will play with my grandchildren very happily and quite "roughly" but without ever actually biting if she feels skin. Clothes are a different story, she has torn my wife's blouse and my grandsons t-shirt in play. With me her fascination is focused on my boot laces. It is difficult to put boots on or take them off if she is around.

Wullie

I found out yesterday that the springer pup is only 4 months old and not the 5 months that I'd thought. Wish I could say she is brilliant but she isn't. She has little bouts of being fearful of people and of objects. She has even shown a small degree of fear of a training dummy she had already retrieved with enthusiasm.

She does seem to have a good nose however. Yesterday a dummy I threw for her got stuck 5 feet up in a hedge due to a poor throw. She went all round that area and then scented it up there. She could not possibly have seen it there, I could hardly see it myself when I got within 2 feet of it. I shook it off the hedge for her and she grabbed it then bogged off back to my garden with it.

She greatly prefers very soft dummies, home-made ones, to small shop bought ones. Her favourite dummy is a rolled up and tied old cushion cover that is big and bulky but very soft. At four months of age her teeth are probably troubling her plus it is at about that age that pups are supposed to go through a "fear stage" in their development.
I think I will just keep her ticking over with retrieves and take her walks with the other spaniels until she leaves the fear phase behind her.
She still widdles in the house but that is slowly getting better thanks to my wife who seems to notice the pup's "signs" a bit quicker than I do.

A friend who goes beating and picking up came to visit me yesterday. He lives about 1/2 a mile away so he'd walked to my house through the woods to have a blether and to show me his home bred springer pup ......he has the sire and the dam. The dam is medium to large sized and the dog is pretty big for a springer. The pup my friend kept from the litter is bloody huge ! It is bigger than his sire at ten months old .
I know my friend likes BIG springers and he certainly has one now ! Personally, I like my spaniels to have a bit more "go" than his dogs have ever shown me but they suit him fine for beating and picking up ......trialing does not interest him at all . All his dogs are always well under control and he habitually works 3 or 4 at a time. My friend likes a calmer sort of dog than I do and I think most folk who have no real interest in trials would be happy with his "type" of spaniel too.

His dogs are a bit like he is......big and calm natured but willing to work . He tells me he is already booked in for about two months worth of solid beating and picking up on the grouse. He does at least 3 days every week on the grouse and sometimes 5 days. Wish I was even 1/2 as fit as he is at only two years younger than me !

We discussed this years grouse numbers in this part of Scotland. It does not look like being a good year for grouse .....too much rain. Where broods of many chicks were being seen last year there are sometimes only a couple of chicks this year .....or none at all. Bad grouse breeding years always have occurred and this year looks like being one of them.

Wullie

I took the springer pup out today with my cockers again. Things are not going very well. This pup is overly suspicious of certain things or of everyday things in certain places. Today, on a woodland path , she showed suspicion a lady with a large dog that passed by about 10 yards away. She barked, raised her hackles and hid behind me. She repeated this when a family went by with an old lab trotting alongside them. She also was wary of two adults we encountered but they had no dog with them so when they made friendly gestures towards her and spoke friendly words she went straight to them.

She is suspicious of anyone entering our house , including my wife or myself until she realises who it is.

Retrieving is not the problem I'd been told it was. I have had keener retrievers but I have had less keen ones too. I let her run-in and she does the retrieve usually with no problems but sometimes with "run-by's" or even a drop if she scents something of interest nearby. I'm not worried about her retrieving, it will be O.K. eventually.
I am a bit concerned about hunting, so far she sticks to paths unless Billy or Charlie "pulls" her into the fringes of woodlands or even rashes. I would let her find and chase rabbits but even my adult cockers have a lot of trouble finding any of them around here !

I think I will have to encourage her to be much keener on tennis balls and then use them to get her started hunting.
She still does an occasional widdle in the house but this is now down to about one or two per day. She shows little interest in chewing anything except maybe for my slippers or my wifes slippers .......preferably while our feet are still in them.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I am taking a break from her and the cockers. I'm going to my first ever TAN. Don't ask me what those letters stand for because I don't know. I had been going to enter Libby the Brittany for it but she came into season. I'm just going along for a look. It sounds very simple. The pups or dogs just have to show natural hunting and pointing ability on caged birds and not show fear when a bang is fired off. No commands of any kind should be needed.

I'm told Libby would pass the TAN standing on her head. I'm not so sure ! Libby is never hunted onto caged game of any kind and the caged game is probably pigeons or quail......birds she never encounters.
I wonder what the judge of this event would have made of my very first Brittany ? The TAN rules state that the dogs must indicate the caged game, my first bitch did that all right ! She "indicated" it by jumping on top of cages and then squatting to pee on the unfortunate bird down below ! She had a total contempt for caged birds but she was bloody good at finding and pointing the wild ones. She would have passed the TAN at 4 months old if she'd been hunted for wild , free to fly off, partridges.
I'd love to have her back again but you never get the same dog twice.

Wullie

U.F.O. Hill - 1 p.m. - Rain and light winds (Yesterday)

Once more I let the springer pup loose in the woods to follow my cockers as best she could. Those particular woods have a fairly heavy undergrowth of ferns, broken branches, fallen trees and a few brambles. The pup still isn't exactly keen on cover but I could see a considerable improvement in her. She followed the cockers through all but the thickest stuff and .....great joy .....made a few forays out on her own.

She is going well out of good spaniel hunting range when following my wild and woolly cockers but as long as she is enjoying that experience she is welcome to do that until I think she is wild/keen enough to keep in a bit more without her feeling inhibited.

She followed Billy most of the time, Charlie usually is going too fast for her, and she "lost" Billy among thick cover 25 yards out in front. She had lost me and Charlie too so she looked a bit panicky. I made sure she could see me through all the trees and groundcover and then called her by name and by whistle. She saw me and came back right through some of the worst cover in the wood.

I wondered if that would discourage her from leaving me but Charlie made one of his far too infrequent appearances nearby and off she went again. She was thoroughly enjoying herself and I love watching pups do that.

This area has had a lot of rain recently and some low lying parts of the woods were two to 6 inches deep in water .....and mud. She was soon plastered in mud which shows up really well on a mainly white dog. I decided to keep in among the marshy bits to let her get well used to being in water . That was a mistake.
I was getting tired even if the dogs weren't and I went a bit dizzy and slipped on the moss while going over a big fallen tree. I landed backside down in a very muddy puddle and was somewhat wet around the unmentionables..... it's odd how that seems to happen far more when hunting spaniels than it does with H.P.R.'s ! I think it happens because I have to watch spaniels more carefully as they hunt than I need to do with HPR's. A spaniel "find" and flush takes place in a couple of seconds , an HPR "find" results in a point and I can take my time to more carefully consider my best route to the dog...... I don't need to have my whistle in my gob ready to blow "Stop" either !

Anyway I was now near the far end of the 2-300 yards long wood and I was very wet. Wet enough for it not to matter at all when I sat down on another completely sodden moss covered fallen tree to have a "Hamlet Moment." I sat there in the rain, puffing contentedly on a cigar coz my dogs had enjoyed themselves and so , in a masochistic sort of way, had I.

Wullie