You will
often experience times in training when you don’t have a clue what to do. A Brittany pro trainer who
has trained dogs to National Championship wins told me once that dog training involves
a lot of guesswork. The trainer guesses, and the dog’s reactions tell him if he
is right. Undoubtedly, the more dogs you have had on the end of a check-cord,
the better your guesswork.
When I go to the training field, I carry a short list of rules in my
head to guide me in making better guesses:
- Don’t say anything.
·
Let the bird
teach the dog.
These simple rules are part of the Bill West method. A few years ago I
added another one to the list:
·
Stay out of the
way.
Too often as trainers we think we know more than our dogs. For example,
I see trainers using the whoa command to tell their dogs when
to point. They tell them when to be cautious, where to hunt, and a hundred
other things their dogs already know how to do, rather than simply letting
their dogs learn on their own.
Last week I was working a two-year-old Brittany on
quail in releasers. I had opened the releaser early and was letting him drag
the check-cord as he hunted down the feed strip. When he got about halfway
down, he pointed, and then he began to creep. Instead of yelling “Whoa” or
nicking him with the e-collar, I stayed back and out of the way. Sure enough,
he crept closer to the bird and then pounced big-time, putting the bird in the
air and chasing it. Only after the bird flushed did I take charge and nick him with
the e-collar as he chased. Once he stopped, I went to him and gently but firmly
stood him up and walked in front to let him know that flushing the bird was my
job.
The concept of staying out of a dog’s way is
appropriate throughout all stages of training. Maurice Lindley recently posted his
thoughts on a pointing
dog message board regarding
the concept of staying out of a dog’s way to help the dog learn to not blink
(avoid game):
I have a
dog right now for training that was made bird-shy with the gun. She thought if
she found birds, the gun was coming too. The first couple of days of running
this dog were very interesting. If a bird flushed close to her, she spun around
and hightailed it out of the area. I just kept running her on birds and stayed
out of the picture.
She started
pointing some birds, but would leave the bird after a few seconds. I still
stayed out of it. She returned to that bird after a few minutes and pointed it.
I could see her getting her nerve up, and she started to creep real slow toward
the bird, and finally, she flushed it and ran away. She did this about ten
times, and I watched her getting a little bolder on each bird. Before long she
was pointing and not blinking; she still hesitated when the bird flushed, but
she was chasing it.
These last
ten days, she has really come along, and is showing no fear; she’s very bold
around game, and really hunting hard. With dogs like this, I find it best not
to try and help them in any way. Allow them the time to figure it out and get
over their fears on their own. Stay out of the way and let the dog learn.
A famous cutting-horse trainer said that the secret to
training horses is knowing what the horse is going to do anyway. The same holds
true for training dogs. If you get to know your bird dog—the intelligence,
superior nose, and genes behind him—you will develop the confidence to stay out
of the way and let him learn on his own so he can become the bird dog he was
born to be.
