A successful day of training!

[Powerstroke]

I have neither the time nor the money to have my dog trained with a profession this fall, but I am very interested in getting my new to me 8mo old yellow lab into the field.

So, I had the day off today and decided it would be as good a day as any to take my dog out to the farm and work on some things. My two big hurdles are live birds and guns. After reading about several different methods and watching a few video I decided I would work on guns.

Since I have to pass Oakwood game farm on the way to the farm in Princeton, I thought it would a perfect time to stop and check things out. I called and talked to them on the phone and the lady helped me decide on a couple things. I ended up picking up two chukars and two hen pheasants. $42 is a steal if you ask me. The worker there took the time to show me how to handle the live birds without inuring them and also showed me how to put a pheasant to sleep rather than make them dizzy.

Zoie and I picked up our birds and headed out. I was excited to show her the live birds, but I think that was too overwhelming for the first thing so I decided to go to more reliable training dummies and start with the guns. I used a .22, a .410, a 20ga and finally the 12ga. After 50-60 rounds I was shooting the 12ga overhead at 5-10yds. Never once did she flinch at the sound of the gun in the process. It took me over an hour just to get this far. This dog is a fetchaholic and I was holding things up by having to reload.

Now that she was revved up and started working the birds in and she loved that!! First by sight in the recently cut pasture and then into deeper and taller cover. I made a couple "bird poles" by bringing some Tposts and pounding them in and tying some 1/8" cord to the post and then giving about 50ft and tying to the birds leg. This allowed me to get a "flush" without losing the bird. For the next 2hrs I worked on various retrieves and tracking drills all while shooting the 12ga and she LOVED IT!

I couldn't be happier. She does have a bit of the hard mouth, but she's new to birds and chewing was to be expected. We did lose one chukar when somehow it shook my leg leash and flew away. I missed on one shot, but then the bird turned towards the neighbors house and I obviously couldn't try a follow up shot. We did try to find it in the fence row but no luck. I have one good pheasant breast in the freezer. The others were pretty well chewed.

I have one happy and tired bird dog right now. I'll post a video if I can figure out how. Things I would do differently would be to use an even lighter cord for the bird line for better flight and I would like to work on trackinga bit more. The strong winds and dry conditions made winding difficult

[Powerstroke]

[Glock]

Powerstoke,

Isn't great to see the summer's worth of hard all start to come together? I think the training yourself is the ultimate satisfaction if you have the time and knowledge I did the same thing with guns and birds as you did about a month ago to our pup. It now seems like once they see that gun they switch into overdrive.

good luck tomorrow

Glock

[duckbuster]

Looks and sounds good!!! I would do something now though about the drops and the hard mouth before it gets to the point where you will not be able to fix.

GOOD LUCK

[Powerstroke]

This was her very first experience with live birds, so the drops and hard mouth I think have alot to do with trying to get a hold of something flapping. As the day went on she got better at restraining and not dropping the birds.