7 month old lab - not bumper crazy?

SoGaLabLover · Post by **SoGaLabLover** » Mon Aug 11, 2014 2:50 pm

Greetings, I am new to the board, glad to be here.

I have a 7 month old choc lab. I have had him retrieving since he was just about 8 weeks old. Since about 5 months he has been doing good on land and in water, sitting, marking, staying, fetching all types of bumpers.

About 2 weeks ago, we introduced him to live pigeons and frozen dove (which I plan to use him for most) and he is CRAZY about them. Retrieves them great, and has a really soft mouth, so thankful that. Well since we introduced him to those, he has seemed to have lost is drive to get a bumper with that intensity? Really thankful he is crazy about birds and doing great with them, but as we know we cant work him on birds alone and I really want him to have that same intensity level with his bumper. I have both canvas and plastic and he jsut doesnt seem to have much interest in either

Any recs? and advice? Thanks for any help here!

gonehuntin' · Post by **gonehuntin'** » Mon Aug 11, 2014 4:36 pm

That's very common and consider yourself lucky. Once a dog tastes birds, the young ones want nothing to do with bumpers. FF takes care of this. You can then use bumpers for the tough training and happy them up with live birds.

Nothing at all to worry about.

SoGaLabLover · Post by **SoGaLabLover** » Mon Aug 11, 2014 7:29 pm

gonehuntin' wrote:That's very common and consider yourself lucky. Once a dog tastes birds, the young ones want nothing to do with bumpers. FF takes care of this. You can then use bumpers for the tough training and happy them up with live birds.

Nothing at all to worry about.

Thank you for reply!

Very thankful he is loving the birds.

Something I left out, he's as crazy about dowels as he is birds, but not bumpers....what's up with that?

minigooch · Post by **minigooch** » Mon Aug 11, 2014 7:44 pm

I had the same problem so I tried zip tying a quail wing to the bumper. It worked for me !

Bluesky2012 · Post by **Bluesky2012** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:43 pm

minigooch wrote:I had the same problem so I tried zip tying a quail wing to the bumper. It worked for me !

Doesn't matter if it's got a wing or not. After you start formally training the dog, retrieving isn't a game anymore, it's a job. Force fetch the dog, and teach the dog that bringing back a bumper, bird, etc is it's job, no ifs and or butts.

It sounds like you aren't following a program verbatim. Hammer down formal obedience, THEN move to force fetch and these issues will go away.

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