retreving in snow

[hamster123]

just wondering is it hard for a pup to retrieve in snow , as my 6 month old dog is retrieving blind in snow , does it knock his smell making him lucky or is it the making of a canny dog.

[cracker]

Not difficult, just not necessarily wise if your aim is to develop a dog's marking ability. Sight supersedes scent when it comes to marking - the nose they're born with doesn't need to be developed and it never fails them. Their eyes have to be "trained." So I wouldn't say it's the making of a canny dog to let it dig through the snow to find a dummy, just teaches them to have more reliance on their nose, which again hampers marking.

 

As for actual retrieving in the snow, well, retrieving snows - snow geese - is more fun for a gundog, but if they're good markers

 

 

they'll be happy with whatever they can run to and pick.

 

MG

[mosa]

give me a shout Simon any weekend id love to see the pup out in action!

[kent]

I believe marking is also about ears, dogs can locate the origin of sound very presisely. blinds totally hidden and thrown away from any footprint diections when the dog cant hear and cant see are always about nose

[WGD]

That's fine if all the dog can hear is the thump of a dummy or a bird, try it when you're picking up on a busy shoot. Marking is critical and there are 6 or 8 guns shooting, other dogs being handled and a line of beaters doing their best to get the birds in the air.

 

Marking, for me, is about sight first and foremost - the nose comes in when the dogs gets to the fall site, especially on a runner. If the dog used its nose all the way to the fall site, it would effectively be hunting its way to the fall site, almost sure to become distracted by which time your runner is up and off making the retrieve all the more difficult.

 

Personally I wouldn't complicate things for a 6 month old pup by hiding retrieves in the snow, the dog has plenty of time yet to build up to working things out for himself.

[cracker]

WGD's got it to a "T." A corollary to his comments: The Yanks use white dummies ("bumpers") precisely because the pup can see them at a distance - and the pup also can see them lying on a flat featureless field when they come to rest after having been thrown. A trainer doesn't have to develop a pup's nose, but its eyes need "widening" for marking, or pin-point marking as it's known.

 

MG

[darren m]

i was using orange dummies in the snow the other day and both spaniels were having trouble seeing them , i changed to white for experimental purposes and no probs at all even on snowy paddocks.

[Kron]

i was using orange dummies in the snow the other day and both spaniels were having trouble seeing them , i changed to white for experimental purposes and no probs at all even on snowy paddocks.

 

 

I noticed that with mine. If I threw two out she would always pick the white one first before going back for the orange. No matter which order I threw them in she went straight for the white one. When sent back for the orange she sometimes ran over it before picking up the scent.