Need some advice guys , My puppys gonna be 7 months old when teal season starts and he's not trained completly yet but he will fetch dead birds in the decoys and such. All my friend that have gundog think I should bring even if he doesn't retrieve bird just to be there with in the blind but I'm not so sure if he ready for gun fire , it will be only me and him but still i'm concerned for his sake , i've been working with light gun fire capgun and starter pistol but not alot baby steps , this is all new to me , just not sure what to do. thanks in advance.

Bring him as much as possible, your gonna flare birds while working him but patience will form a fine hunting machine for you. I've done it twice and both my dogs are machines, i can't stress it enough bring bring bring them. They'll get use to the layout and what they are suppose to do the more you bring them. Good luck, i love training, its alot of fun to see your work pay off

Take 'em did you force your dogs that you worked with prior to hunting?

Tapatalk 2

If u r questioning Urself don't bring him bc if he is not ready for the gunfire u will ruin him do what the dog is capable of and that's it it will all come in time and u will have a great hunting companion bc a starter pistol is not the same as three or four guns going off at once in his ear

If u get a chance to hunt somewhere easy on a levy of a rice field and u r by Urself to where u can keep a leash on him and hold while maybe someone else shoots a few birds for him that would probably be a good thing but a bunch of guns at once could be bad

Well if ur by Urself u can tie him up while u shoot so he don't break out in front of u but it could discourage him from going to retrieve it to if he not use to the leash pulling on him try tying it real short so he is already at the end of it the whole time so it wont give him a yank and just put a snap on it so u can release him real quick but Remember u can't expect what he doesn't know but at the same time it's something that u don't want him to fail at bc it show up later in training so I wouldn't set him up for failure bc u will ruin any confidence u been working on

WHEN you bring him in the marsh bring a 5-6ft. rope, hunt normally and when he breaks and gets to the end of that rope that will cure the breaking, he'll only do that a couple of times before he realizes breaking doesn't work lol, i use to carry a 6ft. piece of rebar and shove it in th ground and tie my dog to it, yeah the guns gonna scare it the first couple of times but they will get over that way faster than breaking, you can kill 2 birds with one stone, Breakng and Gun shyness. Bring him every chance you get, the only way they will get use to hunting and all the sounds and commands and such is by bringing them.

Breaking is easlily curable, when at home get you a 10ft. piece of rope tie it to the ball of your truck a tree anything that is not gonna move when he gets to the end of the rope, give the command to sit stay or what have you. Throw the dummy, i promise you he will get to the end of that rope 3-4 times before he realizes that stay means stay. My first dog got jerked twice and she never broke again. Stay is one of the hardest commands to get across to a dog. My current dog broke once cut a flip and that was the last time, its brutal to some but s a trainer it works.

Use caution and make sure there are no gators in the area!!

First and for most^^^^^^^puppies are curious

Yea when the dog has retrieved birds and knows what is expected of him it works great but on a young dog that has no experience it can cause him to not understand why he's being jerked around and it sounds like he is going to be introducing a lot more of things the dog is not familiar with so therefore o can cause a misunderstanding there that might not turn out very well in the long run

It's a lot easier to cure a dog from breaking later than it is to trying to get one to retrieve that is scared to retrieve it usually never turns out good

ok

My pup is almost 6 months old and I prob won't bring her this year.. When I tell her here, she comes, but gets distracted so it isn't perfect.. Heel is good as long as I have her attention, so not perfect either.. But does come to the whistle.. Haven't done FF, so she drops early.. And haven't done blinds and shot shotguns around her, still a lot of work before I bring her.. Just me

I hunted my dog at 7-8mths and in a controlled enviroment ( field by the house) and as good as he was doing i thought he would be ready for sure. but when i got three ppl in the blind and abunch of distractions he didnt do so well and it just cause me to get frustrated and i had to becareful not to make him have a bad experiance cause i was mad. so i just started being patient with him and hunting by myself and taking my time making sure he was putting the BIG PICTURE together.

I trained him in a controlled enviroment*

Got one question how many dogs have you trained AKA?

Well I'm gonna take my pup with me on the first day to see how he does , this is not his first day in the blind but , let me say this , for all the above post I train my puppy mostly In a hunting setting and mostly from the very spot that I'm gonna hunt teal season , I only hunt the salt marsh , very few gator and my puppy can run in the water and only swim in a few spots , he is very use to the place he is gonna be hunting with me, His training is my main concern , i'm gonna let my son shot a few teal and thats it just for the pup and will see how he does , if I don't like how it going he will sit the next 4 days out and we will kill the shit out of them on our own , this puppy means the world to me and my son and we.ve had a blast training him , I'm a Rookie at this And I don't know if my puppy will be a great gundog but he dam sure will retrieve my birds one day.

I have done the same, i spent every afternoon in the backyard going over lots of things day and and day out. Brought her out in the field and she retreived 5out of the 8 teal we shot on her first hunt. 2 of them glided and hit the salt grass a ways off, she didn't really know how to use her nose so thats the next thing i worked. about 5-6 hunts later she was all over it. NOw i pull up to the grass, she gets her a spot and thats where she stays until we shoot. I used the same training techniques on this dog as my last and it has worked flawlessly. I say in the field training after some good at home training is awesome. NOw i will have to agree with the above poster on the gun thing, i wouldn't make her/his first hunt the first time she/he here's a gun.

I would put my dog with the best of em. She is well trained and listens to everything i tell her to do....my favorite command of all is when she is sitting in the grass and we have a flock of birds circling, you whiper or say duck to her and she lays flat in the grass and doesn't get up till you yell fetch. I say her name she stays until after we shoot, if you don't say her name she's leaving the bank on the first shot.

Just wondering, what do y'all send your dogs on? On "back" or on just "their name"?? I've been using her name .. And I did away with stay also. Just wanted input and why y'all decided on that, thanks.

I send mine on fetch and her name, she'll go on either, I use back with hand signals, didn't want to confuse her. YOu can say all kinds of words/names when she's sitting next to you and won't move or loose focus, but if you say fetch or her name she's gone.

On her way back i can make her sit/stay and give her hand signals left to right with the dummy in her mouth and she'll go till i stop her or i can walk off and tell her come and she'll heel up next to me.

Yeah i did a little bit of force fetching but she kinda picked up on it on her own, My last 2 dogs have been great to work with. It all boils down to patience, if i start to get frustrated and you wil at times, i put her up i go inside, 20min's later i'm back at it.

When they are young their attention span ain't but about 10min, in which you can get some good training in, after that it'll start going down hill and then it resorts to laying down or not really listening. As they get older that attention span gets bigger and you can work with them longer. I try to keep her isolated from other dogs while training so she stays focused. I hung her collar on her kennel and she new if i didn't grab it she could play in the yard, but if i put my hand on it, she sat right there at the door and stared at me, when i opened it she was already in the heel position. I love when they get like that, She is a freaking machine, i would run her with the best of them, and the best part about it is i trained her.

Yea, today I got frustrated cause she wouldnt pick up a teal bumper, but while she was out there the second time and didn't get it, I threw her regular bumper and she got it, threw bout 3 more with that to end on a positive and that was it..

Thats just it, try to always end on a postive, it doesn't discourage you nearly as much lol

Do you train field trial dogs or hunting? Just wondering

I only do hunting dogs and hunt test dogs

Gotcha, i was fixing to say there is a huge difference in marsh training then field trials. I teach mine to hunt and only hunt, the more i brought her the better she got, i've been fortunate to not have a dog that was scared of gun fire, but they are out there and its easily curable. But i did agree on the first time you bring them doesn't need to be the first time you fire a gun in front of them. I used a cap gun for the longest, i would pop it while she was eating/concentrating every afternoon so she got use the the initial pop. then i moved it up to a 22 blank pistol, then it was on to the shot gun, needless to say she doesn't even flinch now

Yea the best way to do that is get a real duck or white bumper and have someone walk around in a half moon starting at 20 yds to about fifty yards it teaches the dog a numerous amount of things first u have ur buddy fire the gun why u r holding pup with leash the gun fire teaches the dog to look out there at u why u throw it and also gets use to gun fire at a distance but then release him as soon as it hits the ground and then after a few weeks start holding him longer and longer to an extent it teaches steadiness but he also starts building his marking ability but start on cut grass u just want him running as fast as he can to retrieve

Mine is a puss, lol. Down the street when I take her for a walk, there's a fire hydrant painted kinda like a dalmation some what and she's terrified of it. And I bought a living room rug today, and the big plastic bag it came in, I put it in the kitchen and she wouldn't go past it, even got in her kennel and looked at it for a second. Lol

Thats normal...lol mine did all that.

You should feel confident with your dog. if you aren't confident in its abilty then why set up for failure? I knwo for a fact my Dog is a marking machine and will retrive with almost too much enthusiasm. Handling i am at a basic point with him, I guess you would call it force to pile. He is Green i should say. I think I can handle him to a dead BLIND bird, But will i expect him to do it.. NO... It is all a confidence thing with you and your dog.

Mine goes crazy when u get a flash light out, she's like a cat chasing the light around, same with shadows. Lol

My dog will look up at the buck mount on the wall and start barking at it and running to the kitchen tail tucked. She hates the buck. but she will sit there and just stare at the duck mounts its the strangest thing.