Springer and pigeons

[rubyred]

Hi my 13 month old springer is coming on really well in the hide sit and observing what's going on but she will not pick up pigeons but the training dummy I have as got pigeon wings on why want she pick up dead birds advice would by welcome. Thanks for looking.

[ShootingEgg]

I would get a pigeon (preferably dead), sit your dog in front u, gently open its mouth and put the bird in, ask him/her to hold it, praise whilst holding, ghen say your word to get to drop. So dead etc. And praise like mad. Mine was spitting on retrieve and i did this and its stopped the spitting..

[teal27]

I used dead pigeons as the dummy!

It worked for my 9 month old pup, it's worth a try with lots of praise

[Andra]

I started this at the weekend with 15 month yo springer.

 

Day one put the pigeon in a very thin sock (I had head and feet hanging out each end) get the dog to retrieve it a couple of times. Agree with above lots of praise!!!

 

Day two peel sock back halfway get dog to retreive a couple of times then take sock off for another couple of retrieves. She stopped to mouth it a bit un-socked so I took off her and put sock back halfway and got another good retrieve then finished the session.

 

I plan to repeat this once or twice a week until she is 100% retrieving the pigeon with no sock. It took my cocker a fair while to get used to the feathers but in the end he was great with them I used a similar approach.

 

PS It is more the soft breast feathers they seem to not like as they come off easy rather than the wing feathers which are bit more robust.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Andra