update on my GSP and some pointing questions

[flats1]

My GSP will be 5 months old on the 10th. I have been working with obedience,sit, here, heel on a leash, she is doing really good on the sit and here, doing ok on the heel, but still needs some work. We took her out and shot blank 22's by her while walking her on a leash...she flinched a little we gave her a treat and I told her good girl. Then we played fetch with her while shooting and she didn't even act like she cared about the shot. We told her sit, we shot, and then threw her toy and told her to fetch it up....she would bring it back to us. We also took a quail, put it in a cage, and hid it in the weeds. We led her towards the area the bird was in and then when she acted like she was smelling it, we turned her loose. She sniffed out where the bird was and stood front leg up and tail strait out, pointing. We did this twice, not letting her see where we put the bird, and she found the bird and pointed both times and acted very excited. We gave her a treat and told her good girl.

Now, what else do we need to do? Are we going about this the right way? What else should we do when she finds and points at the bird? I think she is going to make a GREAT bird dog, and I don't want to mess her up. She seems to want the birds and point all on her own. Thanks for any help on this subject, really appreciate it.

[NDBDHunter]

Read the post "How to use the buddy stick" That will tell you alot.
I know the title doesn't inspire confidence in getting your answer, but as you read the replies/posts you will understand more.

[snips]

Get the book "Best Way to Train Your Birddog" by Bill Tarrant and pay close attn to the chapter on the first yr of pups life.

[markj]

Yes the Delmar Smith way of training is what I use, easy methods to use and learn. I like his take on Force Fetch, dont do it unless it is absolutly nessasary.

[Yawallac]

Ditto on Delmar Smith. Great book. I use the ear pinch rather than the toe hitch, but other than that, I really like his understanding of pointing dogs.

[volraider]

I don't know if everyone will agree but If I were you I WOULD NOT teach your pup to sit until you have him broke on his birds. By teaching a dog to sit you end up with a dog that sits out of confusion during training. Most all pro trainers will tell you the same thing don't teach sit to a pointing dog until they are finished.

[Ryan]

Get the Tarrent book you cant go wrong with that one.

[Ayres]

The "to sit or not to sit" issue has been discussed in length here:

http://www.gundogforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1360

Basically, sit is an easy command that a dog might do in lieu of some harder command when pressured. Some people complain that a dog will sit on point. Usually this is because the dog is pressured by hearing "woah, woah, woah" and sits because he knows the handler has liked that response before.

Instead of sitting, you may end up with a dog that, when pressured, comes to you (here command) or does some other nuisance thing. I'm not sold that you can totally avoid the cons of the sit command by not teaching it. The cause of the problem is too much pressure on a dog, and sitting is just the result. As long as the problem exists, you're basically just choosing which result you get by teaching sit, here, or any other easy command that a dog will revert to.

[Greg Jennings]

My GSP will be 5 months old on the 10th. ...

We took her out and shot blank 22's by her while walking her on a leash...she flinched a little we gave her a treat and I told her good girl.

That's a great way to make a dog gunshy. Search the archives here or talk to some of the long-time trainers on how to do it correctly.

Best regards,

[snips]

TOTALLY AGREE with Greg here. Lay off gun before damage is done. Let the pup get bird crazy and then introduce blank at a distance while pup is chasing.

[Wapiti]

I absolutely agree. Refrain immediately from using the sit command. In time the dog will forget about that command. When I was training my pup I did the same thing not knowing the problems it would later create. Sure enough, during pointing sessions he one day decided to sit. It took a little work to over come it, which we did. He was good and solid on the sit command but in time he forgot the command. It’s been my experience that dogs need constant reinforcement of learned commands. If you don’t reinforce commands, over time they will forget about or dismiss the command when issued by the handler.

Now as far as gun breaking is concerned, in my opinion the best way to gun break a dog is without a gun. When my dogs were pups I would feed them in the garage where I kept their dog food in a metal garbage can. As they were eating, I would softly bang the can lid. Little by little I increased the intensity of the banging. Finally I was able to bang on the can lid as hard as I could and the dog would not pay attention to the noise. Keep in mind that the loudness of this banging in an enclosed garage is far greater than any shot gun fired out in the open. Dogs learn by association, so associate the bang with something positive like food, and later on birds.

When I introduced the gun I would plant a bird in the launcher and then bring the dog in. When he pointed the bird I would release it and let him start to chase the bird, at that point I would fire off a 22 cap pistol. I repeated this a few times and then brought out the 12 ga. Works like a charm. Introducing a dog in this manor has nearly zero risk of the dog becoming gun shy.

If you were walking along with a friend and suddenly they fired a shot in the air, I guarantee you it would startle you. I don’t understand why you would subject your pup to that fear. That is how dogs become gun shy. It sounds like you may be lucky and it may not have adverse affects on your dog. I would recommend ceasing that practice.

[Margaret]

Back to this "sit on point" stuff.

I got to thinking that all my dogs know the sit command and I would have to be really confusing the dog, cowering it or on the verge of teaching blinking before they sat on point, an actual point where the dog is focused on the bird.

What on earth do you trainers do that you are worried your dogs will sit on point?

I'm really confused about this

I have on occassion a dog crouch on point due to the circumstances of the point. One dog I couldn't find until the bird flushed, it was laying down. I have no idea why, but it was nothing to do with "sit" it was to do with the bird, and I think the
dog suddenly found the bird very close and was in an uncomfortable position to maintain. Who knows? That was the only time I ever saw it lay down.
One time another sat down by a windrow, it was pointing a wounded quail in the pile of branches and we gathered around to pull the branches apart and she sat down. Perhaps I should have gone back and retrained her

[Wagonmaster]

Hey Margaret-

One of the problems is that sit is taught as the safe command in obedience classes here in the US. Everytime pup heels and stops, or comes to the owner, or whatever, it is supposed to sit. It is then safe. It is also an easy command to teach, no birds, no check cord, no equipment other than collar and lead, so people who want to work with their dog and have not rounded up the stuff they need to make a bird dog out of it, will do alot of work on sit, which tends to make an ingrained command out of it. it is the one the dog knows best.

In steadying a dog, we simply use a check cord attached to the dog's collar, to restrain it from rushing in and flushing. The action of the check cord (just a 30' long piece of rope), is up and back, just like sit. So down goes the rump.

When we break a dog (meaning make it steady to wing and shot), there is some obedience work involved also. The dog is taught whoa. I teach this by having the dog heel, then stand or "Whoa" when I stop. Well, if it has been taught to sit on heel, down goes the rump. we have to unteach it to sit at that point.

Truly breaking a dog, meaning making it stand to the flush, shot, and fall, generally requires putting some pressure on it. putting pressure on it does not mean hitting, hurting, or any of that stuff. putting pressure on just means making the dog perform the whoa command under circumstances where there is confusion and distraction. just enforcing the dog with the check cord to make sure it understands it must whoa through shot and fall. at this point, the check cord action is up and back again, and with pressure being applied on the dog, it is not uncommon for the dog to resort to sit if it has been taught that sit is safe.

none of this is stuff you can't work through. it just takes time and you have to back step a little. and beginning trainers tend to get a little frustrated by it and wonder oh oh, what do i do now. you can certainly teach sit, i don't because i really have no use for it that whoa does not fulfill. but i recommend to people that if they want to teach sit, they should wait until after they have the dog fully broke.

i have seen one dog lay down on point, and thought it was one of the most intelligent moves i have seen in a bird dog. i have written about it before. it was an older rescue dog that a friend got to replace a younger dog that was injured. the older dog was a terrific quail dog. one day we found it on point, laying down behind a big log, its nose like a snorkel over the log. it was hiding from a covey of quail on the other side of the log so it would not flush them til we got there. good dog.

i agree with your comment that crouching on point is more of a matter of how the dog came to point the bird in the first place, is the bird near or far, is it elevated above the dog or in the grass, low, right in front.

the sitting thing is a different deal than crouching though, it is putting that rump down because that is the safe thing to do. the dog is actually breaking out of a point when it does that.

[Margaret]

Well, okay.

But I train mine on check cord and they don't sit. Could easily devise a belt the rope ran under the chest through to stop upward pull.
I tend to take a loop of the rope around the flank, it is much easier to control the dog.

I agree with the high level of obedience demanded in competition work, I never trained mine past a certain level and now I don't go into obedience competition because, here at least, the idea these days is the dog must "lean" on your leg and look up at your face.

I have trained stop on command too, and sometimes they sit but in the field they don't, they behave much different in the outdoors/hunting situations.

Mind you, we hunt in mostly heavy cover, so the dogs don' t need quite the same strict obedience.

[Wagonmaster]

The "flank hitch" works good, but if you have too much rope out, they can still sit on you. It does stop the "up and back" force of attachment to a collar.

We train "fully broke" here, for the most part, because it is required in hunt tests and field trials. People train hunting dogs whichever way works best for them. Many of us, though, hunt birds that hang together in groups, such as sharptail, prairie chickens, even pheasants can be found in quite heavy concentrations in one spot. if the dog goes when the first bird goes up, it will take out all the rest of the birds and there goes the rest of your shooting.

i have trained hunting dogs to be just staunch (allowed to go on the flush) and fully broke, and right now because we are hunting where there are good concentrations of birds like sharptail and pheas., i am training them to be broke.

But on the sit issue, as I said, it is not that big a problem if you know how to work through it, but does confuse new trainers when they run into it. flank hitch is one strategy to get around it. if they sit when I heel them, i will either just lift them with a toe, or use a "suitcase handle" to hold up the rear for a few repetitions until they get it. Easier not to get into it to start with.

[Ayres]

Maybe I never had problems with it because of the way I taught my dog to sit. I used a hand signal with treat reinforcement, in the house. I held the treat with my fingers, sort of like a pencil, and raised my hand up and over the dog's head. He looks back to the treat as far as possible and the rump goes down in response. I don't put any physical pressure on the dog to sit, he does it to look at something over his head.

Now I can look at my dog and do that hand signal and he complies. I also use the checkcord but, since I never put physical pressure on my dog's rump when teaching sit, it did not have the effect you described. The sit command was never transposed.

I also did not teach my dog to sit after it heeled. When heeling, if I stop, the dog stops -- and stands.

I have found that, when the confusion pressure hit my dog (woah was my pressure command to work through) he sat. All I did was immediately grab his rump and stand him back up, and that worked. It had to be done a couple times, but it worked great.

In the same situation with dogs not taught to sit, I've seen them revert to another simple command, "here." If woahed and there was confusion about it, they walked over to my (or the handler's) feet. I don't hear anybody arguing that you shouldn't teach a dog to come though. In my opinion, a dog sitting when pressured is better than a dog that won't get off your feet. The sitting can be corrected a lot easier, and it's a useful command for a dog that's a family companion and house dog.