Training Your Bird Dog

Being a successful hunter means building a relationship with your bird dog. It takes hours of training, and hard work with your dog on the fundamentals like listening to commands, obedience and retrieving. You want to build a relationship with your dog. 

It's good to purchase a few retrieving dummies to use specifically for when you are practicing your hunting commands and exercising your bird dog.

A good hunting dog will come to recognize this dummy and associate it with working and hunting. The sight of the retrieving dummy should rev him up and get him excited. Motivated.

So much so that he will do anything for the bird. Make sure that you are always alert and keep your dog behaving. Don't allow him to snatch the dummy from you when he sees it.

Training takes patience. Don't get frustrated if he misbehaves. 

And don't give up.

It is good practice to ask your dog to sit and stay while you ready yourself. Teaching them to hold and wait is important in hunting.

You don't want your dog to scare up the birds before you are ready. 

He should be focused on your every move, your every command. Practice having him sit still and wait.

When he is focused and you are ready, release the dummy and give him the command for your dog to, "Fetch it up."

 Your dog should retrieve the dummy and bring it back to you. You want to be able to ask him to, "Give" or "Drop it" by command.  He should relinquish the dummy to you with ease.

Often, this takes the most practice (and patience.) When dogs are excited about retrieving, they want to hold on to their prize and can be reluctant to hand it over.

 
Stay calm and ask again if need be. 

Repetition is the key to successful retrieving. Use the same approach every time and the same commands. Keep asking him to drop it until he does.

Be positive.

A positive attitude equals success and a fantastic foundation.
Hunting and working with your dog is fun!

It's all about good communication.

Good body language and consistent commands. 

Work on good throws and don't forget to let the dog do the work...

Oh Boji....