Gun Dog Forum

Meet Tilly. 10 month old female GWP. We got her from a gentleman in PA that, unfortunately, due to his health could no longer take care of her. Brought her to Michigan last Saturday to join my male shorthair, Dax, that is 9 months old.

What fun it has been working with both of these great dogs over the last few days. A shorthair and a wirehair, best of both worlds. Cannot wait for this fall!

nice looking pup

Excellent breed. While two individuals is too small number to draw any real conclusions, over time, we hope you will favor us with the differences between these two which you might attribute to breed rather than to personal characteristics. I hope you have a lot of time to put into training two young dogs of approximately the same age!

I thought a lot about that; the time and patience factor, but I have been waiting 17 years to get another pair of bird dogs, so yeah I’m ready. Or so I think!

I will be glad to report on their similarities and differences.

Beautiful!

Now you are going to be busy. Enjoy those dogs.

Boyu look at those eye's! She's ready!

Tilly has really taken to the water; much smoother than my shorthair. She is really coming along nicely.

Isn't that great! LOL Enjoy.

Wow, love it!

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great looking gal. Fall should prove to be a great time for you all

Worked Tilly on some quail from a launcher last weekend and she really did a nice job.

She caught one of the quail after it launched, which wasnt ideal but was okay. I was shooting dummy rounds while she was chasing.

She brought it right back to me with a nice soft mouth, but as soon as i asked her to give it to me, she clamped down. She would not give up that bird. I finally got it from her, but the whole time she was growling, never tried to bite me. As soon as i got it from her she was completely fine; tail waggin, jumpin around all excited.

I have never gone through force fetch and honestly dont know a lot about the training; would that help in this situation?

17Hunter wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 20, 2023 12:35 pm

Worked Tilly on some quail from a launcher last weekend and she really did a nice job.

She caught one of the quail after it launched, which wasnt ideal but was okay. I was shooting dummy rounds while she was chasing.

She brought it right back to me with a nice soft mouth, but as soon as i asked her to give it to me, she clamped down. She would not give up that bird. I finally got it from her, but the whole time she was growling, never tried to bite me. As soon as i got it from her she was completely fine; tail waggin, jumpin around all excited.

I have never gone through force fetch and honestly dont know a lot about the training; would that help in this situation?

Yes, but how is she on canvas dummies? Might not be any reason to go through a full force training program. She just needs to understand the command of "leave it " (or whatever command you want to use for a release). One of my dogs was a natural retriever (GWP) and just needed a "take it" and "leave it", which you can even teach in short sections (note the "short") while sitting in a chair combined with some treats and praise.

On the other hand, maybe she hadn't just figured out what you want to do. Growling isn't always aggressive; sometimes it's kind of a playful thing and their way of talking. Depends on the dog. Practice with the dummy and see what happens. You can just press the lip against the tooth combined with the verbal command with most dogs to be followed by praise when you get a release, but teach it on non-birds first to get the point across.

She is usually pretty good. She loves to retrieve, so when she gets really amped up I will sometimes have to give a pinch on her flank and she will give the dummie.

17Hunter wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 20, 2023 5:17 pm

She is usually pretty good. She loves to retrieve, so when she gets really amped up I will sometimes have to give a pinch on her flank and she will give the dummie.

Do you give her a specific command to release, or just leave it to her? It isn't precisely fun; it is a command. There are certainly people who jump up and down over the merits of force fetch -- which is not to denigrate the benefits for some dogs and under some circumstances -- but it sounds like you just need more practice at teaching release as a specific command.

I use “give” as the command. I did not get her until she was 10 months old and she didn’t have the best life for her first 10 months.

Weather finally cooled down enough to get out to work both dogs on some ground that holds a small amount of wild pheasants. Tilly jumped a deer 50 yards from the truck and had herself a little chase. Hopefully she looses interest in those soon.

Worked the dogs three different spots; no birds, but it sure was nice getting them out.

The one big difference in shorthairs and wirehairs that I have noticed is, the wirehair has drive for anything that moves; fur or feather. My male shorthair pretty much sticks to the feathered critters.

You will need to do some trash breaking if you don’t want her to run deer. Your wire hair is likely going to like the feel of fur in her mouth just as much as feathers. At least that is certainly the case with both my Pudelpointers, which are one of the foundation breeds of wire hair’s.

You need to put a stop to that right now. Every time it happens it will get worse. Pretty soon she'll be hunting deer.

I would use an electric collar.

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X2

She is e-collar trained and was corrected. That is why I am hopeful she wont fool with them. So far, so good.

She had a great day on Saturday; got in to a good batch of woodcock. She had 10-12 flushes and her point is starting to develop nicely. She had a great retrieve on 1 bird that I shot for her.

She did jump a rabbit and I was able to call her off that with “leave it”.

Enjoyed reading how your ( late coming to you ) GWP is coming along. She is a good looking pup, will be picking up my first GWP this weekend.