Am I doing the right thing?

[pigeon master]

Hello all,

 

I'm right into training my ESS and have been for some time now, I’m after some advice on the training I’m doing at the moment as I’m not sure if it’s the right hting to do and hope it has no bad consequences later in training.

 

At the moment my ESS called Amber “Pictures posted previously” has been retrieving frozen birds to hand and releasing them to the command dead.

 

Should I really be doing this with frozen birds or should I be using a gundog dummy?

 

My theory behind this is, she isn’t seeing them as food because they are frozen and she does want to bring them straight to me for a treat so from my end it all seems great but I’m aware that certain things you do with these dogs can affect them in the future.

 

The second part of her training has been, leaving a scent trail and placing them in long grass or hedgerows when she is out of site from me, I call her and sent her to search for the dead pigeon. She just goes crazy and tries to suck the whole ground up with her nostrils but she finds them every time and brings them to me.

 

She was a May pup so still very young but tell me what you think, can you think of any pitfalls to this type of training. I have read a few books and they don’t seem to be doing this and certainly not at such a young age but hey, animals in the wild start there training very young so why are gundogs so different.

 

Any comments from the usual dog men very appreciated.

 

The PM