Gun Dog Training

Our new GSP Remi is 1 year 2 months and we don’t think he’s had much hunting or gun experience, and we are uncertain of his training history. I’ve read that when gun training a dog for hunting you should avoid just shooting over them to check if they’re gun shy.
I’ve read that the best approach is in three phases: 1) get the dog used to seeing guns. Leave them out if safe to do so, carry unloaded on walks, and get them used to seeing guns as part of everyday life.
2) get them familiar with birds, and build up to getting them bird crazy. Purchase and place quail, chukar, or pheasant and have them hunt the birds with you and an unloaded gun. This builds the positive association of being bird crazy and seeing guns.
3) slowly introduce firing guns by having a buddy fire a small caliber gun from a distance while you and your dog are afield on birds and the dog is bird crazy. From there, build up to having your buddy fire from a closer range, and eventually increase your way up to 20 or 12 gauges.

Our first GSP Fritz was well gun and hunting trained when we adopted him, so this process is new for us with Remi. We just want to make sure we do things properly so he’s not afraid of guns, and I think this process makes sence. What do you guys think? Thanks in advance!

You are correct on the proper introduction of a new dog to gunfire. The old adage is, “it is far easier to properly introduce your dog to gun fire than it is to cure gun shyness” I can speak from experience here. The temperament of each dog is different, I could tell right of the bat that my current GSP if she was not properly introduced to gunfire it could be a disaster. She is the first dog that I have owned that does not pay any attention to thunderstorms. I would recommend that if you plan to train your own bird dog to purchase a good training CD for pointers, I purchased Perfection Kennels, Perfect Start video, but there are many others. They would go through step by step on the procedures that you would need to follow. Most training videos that I have seen, you need to have your dog introduced to birds and like you said “Bird Crazy”, and than incorporate gun fire with birds. I prefer to use pigeons and raise my own, Birmingham rollers, but you can use other breeds or catch feral pigeons. They are easy to raise and keep and don’t eat much food. Some trainers use blank pistols, but I start with the small cap guns and work slowly up from there to a .410, 20 gauge and finally a 12. At any point you notice any signs of apprehension or fear you will need to back up and start from scratch. If you are uncomfortable with this you may want to hire a professional dog trainer, which can be a good investment to get your dog started on the right track. There have been way to many hunting dogs ruined by just taking them out hunting with a group of hunters and start blasting 12 gauges over there heads with flushing birds, a recipe for disaster.

Don’t rush anything! The most important thing to remember is hunting season last 3-4 months you have to live with them the rest of the year. Obedience training then field work.

That said, for training stopping the dog is the most important command. I won’t hunt a dog I can’t stop! Take the dog for leashed walks in a city. Every block say sit ( or hup for us spanial people) and blow a whistle. After dog does this well take sit out of the equation.

Contoll the situation, get the dog retrieving, before you every fire a shot. Get them in cover hunting on planted birds to build confidence.

Joining a hunting club is the best way to train a dog with out a professional.

As for shooting over the dog make sure they are in hunt mode before you shoot. This means dog loves birds and when they point or flush the bird the are completely mesmerized by the bird.

Keep posting the progress and good luck!!!

You can get your first clues to his loud noise acceptance if he is a house dog by noting his reaction to pots and pans clanging in the kitchen. some dogs pay no attention others head for their kennel. if they show that response , be very slow in gun intro.
x2 on the Perfect Start videos. I Highly recommend them to anyone training their own dog!

The others already answered your questions but a couple things I would add from my experience with my first dog that is now 1.5 years old.

About point 2 and planting birds: You do want to get him used to and excited about birds but I don’t think you should overdo it without having a training plan and being in control of it. If you want him to point, and hold his point, you don’t want him catching birds. Most farm raised birds are dopes and your dog will catch them unless you prevent it. Let him catch a couple to verify he’s into it but then do your best to never allow that to happen again.

For training videos I like the Perfect Start video but nothing worked like in the video of course and I found personal instruction much more useful. Now that I’ve gone through both and realized everything I was doing wrong that will probably be different for my next dog but, for my first one, having people work with me any my dog was far more useful than videos.

Videos are really expensive but you can try out bowwowflix.com which is like Netflix for dog videos. It looks silly but it’s legitimate and a lot cheaper than buying a library of videos.

For personal training you can look at http://www.mnnavhda.com. You have to join the national NAVHDA which is about $60/yr and then MN NAVHDA is $20/year. They hold free (but it’s still expensive) training sessions during the summer in Hugo at Kelley Farms. The pass for Kelley Farms is $300/yr, which I think is a bit ridiculous, but the classes are really helpful and they bring birds you can purchase. Classes are over for the year but I believe they will have indoor obedience classes again over the winter and then the hunting training will start again in April next year.

As stated, start small (bird crazy) and work your way up. I started my last two with a wing on a fishing rod and a cap gun.
Then moved on to homing pigeons without a gun. This was to get them steady to wing, and then steady until released.
Then introduce a starter pistol to get steady to shot before shooting over them.

Since you are in the south metro, there is a good pointer club, Southern MN Pointer Club, that meets on Wednesdays at the Prior Lake Horse and Hunt Club. They have homers and quail available for training, plus equipment and helping hands to do it right. The problem is that they train over the summer, ending the first week of September for grouse opener.

Don’t rush it. Watch some videos, read some books and do it right the first time. It will much easier to train than to untrain.

Find a training plan and stick with it. While you can piece together things and make it work, you can end with a much better finished product by doing things in order and for a reason. There are lots of training programs out there, unfortunately I don’t know much about the pointer world, so do some research and you will come across some! A great website that I used to frequent quite a bit that may be able to help you is: http://gundogforum.com/forum/

I took one of my dogs to a trainer (pointer). I doubt I ever would again. Its not that difficult to train a dog you only plan on hunting a few weekends a year. Lets face it. Most of us have lots going on and fall seasons are short. We can only swing so many bird trips since most require substantial drive time and usually stay overs.
Experience is the key. They have to know what you expect them to chase. Game farms are your friend. They aint cheap but cheaper than a trainer. Other than that is discipline and mostly instinct.
This is just one perspective. Others may argue a trainer is better if you dont have much free time. Others get out much more often to hunt. I’m just looking back at over 35 years experience watching friends dogs and my own and I would rather be soley responsible for training by dog.

Clarifying a couple of points from my previous post.

1.) Don’t let him get the wing in play. You don’t want him to learn that he can get the bird whenever he wants. That can translate into bumping birds. You want him to point, not flush. I made this mistake on my first pointer. Luckily it didn’t take long to get her back to pointing for live birds. She knows the difference and always pounces on the wing though now.

2.) Don’t introduce the cap gun until after he has shown to you that he is bird crazy.

Thanks everyone for all your great tips! Billy and I are excited to get Remi hunting, but we know that doing this properly will take time and patience. Remi is settling in well so far (I can’t believe it’s only been a week!) and he seems to be watching Fritz to see what he does. And hopefully he’ll continue to learn from Fritz once we’re out in the field together!

Remi has done well with training so far. We purchased some chukars to train with and his reaction was great! He got all excited and birdy and we had him down on a friend’s land to practice hunt with the birds (without guns) and he did very well. At one point we thought the bird got away so we began spreading out to find it – all the while Remi kept circling back to the same spot… yep, the bird was still there! Remi knew and kept trying to tell us. Man, those birds can really bunker down and bury themselves in tall grasses!

This last weekend we introduced a gun while Remi was birdy and his reaction was good. We only fired a couple of shots from a distance with a small gun (.22 pistol with blank cartridges) and as long as he was birdy, he had no reaction to the gunshot. Which is a good start!

Good for Remi!

Sharon I have an 1860 Colt Army, a .44 cap and ball revolver. If you just load it with percussion caps it’s more or less a cap gun at that point. No projectile to worry abut, etc. but it will make a sharp bang. You guys are welcome to borrow it to get Remi used to gun fire. It uses #11 caps.

Dad

That actually sounds kinda cool, Dad. We’ll have to take a look at that this week. I’d feel like a cowboy whilst training my huntin’ dog! Do you have holster for it?

Sharon wrote:

That actually sounds kinda cool, Dad. We’ll have to take a look at that this week. I’d feel like a cowboy whilst training my huntin’ dog! Do you have holster for it?

Yup, I have a holster. No notches in it though…….

That is great news.

Sharon wrote:

At one point we thought the bird got away so we began spreading out to find it – all the while Remi kept circling back to the same spot… yep, the bird was still there! Remi knew and kept trying to tell us. Man, those birds can really bunker down and bury themselves in tall grasses!

And field lesson one. The dog usually is right. This happens over and over even in trial dogs in competitions. So many hunters pull their dog off birds thinking they know more about the field than the dog. We’ve all been guilty of it at some point.
If I can’t find the bird that they are pointing I will tell the dog to re-find it to help me out instead of moving on. Rinse and repeat.

I can’t believe how quickly the last two months have flown by! We’ve gotten Remi out pheasant hunting and training with Fritz on several occasions and he’s doing great! We started shooting from a distance with smaller caliber guns, and have worked our way up and closer. The last outing was with a 12ga and Remi had no reaction to the shot and was totally focused on the bird falling from the sky! He’s improving on his willingness to venture into the thicker brush, usually following Fritz, and just yesterday Billy dropped a bird and both Remi and Fritz ran to be the one to grab it. Remi got there first and looked so proud and is doing well on his retrieving. (Billy didn’t take a photo… grrr.) It’s just a blast watching these two in the field together. My boys! Gotta love it!

Sharon wrote:

…just yesterday Billy dropped a bird…

That’s the part I can’t believe! Whoops…don’t tell him I said that.

Hahaha! Well, technically I wasn’t there yesterday (why do we have to work during hunting season anyway?) and since there’s no photo to prove this… ah but there is a pheasant, so I guess that counts! LOL!