New update and new problem.........

[fieldwanderer]

Right, been a while and I promised daisy's previous owner I'd let him know how she's doing from time to time so here goes.

 

Perhaps the easiest way is to put it into percentages as to how confident I am she'll do what's asked of her;

 

Retrieving; 90%, including blinds and being directed with hand signals

Stop; 80%, increasing as she gets closer to me and she'll usually trot a little circle to face me when she drops but I like that as I can see she's waiting to be told what to do next.

Drop 50% but she drops to the stop whistle as above

 

She waits to be sent for a retrieve 95% and returns it to hand every time, sometimes I need to recall her for that though.

 

She'll walk to heel nicely but still has issues with pulling on the lead.

 

Our training's slightly unorthodox but seems to be working a treat; Three times daily we have a walk which incorporates a fair bit of training from the book I have (training spaniels -joe irving) where she gets all kinds of retrieves, quatering, stop whistle blinds etc all with hand and whistle commands. We also go shooting three times a week (roughly), I know it's not the preffered way of doing things but I'm just one man and a dog after the odd pigeon or rabbit so have time to train her on the job which is getting the best results of all at the moment, it's also the only thing that stopped her being scared of guns (not the noise, she'd cower whenever I had one in my hand and run to her bed).

 

We'll arrive at the farm and I let her play for the first 5mins or so and do her business and from there on she has to walk at my side or, if there's not enough space, behind me. I sometimes drop her while I stalk something and call her to me if it escapes or to drop her again if it's a long stalk (this is a work in progress however as she seems to preffer to stalk with me). If I fire a shot she stops (usually sitting) and waits to be sent for whatever I shot - or be told "gone away" if I miss. I've no need to hunt her really, especially at this time of year, other than to find a bird in deep grass etc. I'm really pleased with our progress and cant picture shooting without her now - cant wait to get some serious decoying done later in the summer - she'll love it!

 

Problems; She won't pick crows up for some reason, she's got a lovely quatering pattern on open ground but doesn't appear to use her nose - she's just going through the motions (my fault for not training this on ground with scent) and she wont go into thick cover unless she wants to (ie, she smells or sees what she's retrieving in there, not just because I tell her to) erm, I think that's about it at the moment.

 

Next up is teaching her to drop to shot, I'm going to get a cap gun and start this one on our training sessions and reinforce it out in the field when she's got the hang of it.

 

Will try to get some pictures soon but shooting, training and photography all at the same time might prove difficult

[Spaniel]

just watch your dog with crows,,,if they aint dead they could attack your dog with their nasty beak

[fieldwanderer]

she wont have anythin to do with 'em mate so no worries there. As far as I'm concerned they can stay where they fall.

[Blackbart]

Sounds like it is doing everything it needs to be doing and i would be very happy with its progress if it were one of my dogs,well done.

 

I would leave the crows alone though as they can make the dog hard mouthed as the temptation to give a little crunch when your face is getting pecked is just too much,or even worse go off the whole idea of retrieving altogether.I had a spaniel that carried the crunching thing on to pheasants,she would pick it up and then have a little crunch and then drop it and then pick it up again and retrieve it,all because a crow pecked her face to bits one day when she was young.(they dont forget)

[fieldwanderer]

Thanks guys, I'll leave the crows well alone then - makes sense either way because I dont want her to get used to not picking things up.

 

Any suggestions when it comes to getting her to use her nose while quatering?

[Blackbart]

The dog will be scenting the air as it is quartering but unless there has been some game about it is missing that trigger that will make it get its nose down and try and work out where the scent leads.Take the dog somewhere that you know holds a few birds and i am sure she will be more keen.