Is your dog obedient until a rabbit runs past? Does he ‘bolt off’ after birds or even butterflies? Chasing behviours are often a problem in young gundogs, particularly in spaniel breeds, and most especially in springers.
Despite a promising initial start, many gundog owners have all but lost control of their dogs by nine months or so. They are unable to prevent their lovely young dog chasing rabbits, butterflies, birds, leaves, even sheep. All their efforts to get the dog to obey the recall commands they thought he understood, fly out of the window. The owner is often quite desperate and wants to know how to stop this behaviour and to get the dog to come when he is called.
Powerful hunting urges
Why do many spaniels and quite a few retrievers cause their owners such problems and what is the answer?
Well, part of the solution is understanding what is causing the problem. Working bred Springer spaniels (and cockers too) are ‘hard-wired’ to hunt. That is to say they are born with a powerful instinct to search for, flush and chase anything that moves. To the competent gundog trainer this is not a problem; in fact it is just what he is looking for. However, he approaches training his dog from a very different perspective that that of the average pet dog owner.
A different perspective
Effective gundog training is a process of teaching the dog ’what to do’ in any given situation, rather than teaching him ’what not to do’. Strictly speaking, we don’t teach a dog ‘not to chase game’. Rather we teach him what he should do in the presence of game. This might be to complete his retrieve, or to walk to heel if he is a retriever, or to sit to flushing game if he is a spaniel. A working gundog is always on a ‘mission’ whether that mission is a retrieve or to hunt. The dog knows what his mission is, and understands that he must stick to the job in hand and not change the rules in any way.
The Self-Employed dog
The pet gundog is often exposed to a situation in which he has no absolutely no idea what he is supposed to be doing. Commonly this is referred to as a ‘walk’. Once the puppyish phase of a strong dependency on the owner is past, typically at 6-9 months of age, the young gundog with his inbuilt hunting instinct, when taken for a walk, will hunt. After all, the owner hasn’t asked him to do anything else, so hunting seems like the best plan. Sooner or later something will move - a leaf, a bird, a rabbit and the dog, already in ‘prey drive’ and ‘high’ on adrenaline will give chase. Your whistle or desperate pleas for the dog to return have absolutely no chance whatsoever of being obeyed.
Teach your dog to follow you, not the other way around
People experience endless problems with pet gundogs chasing things, simply because they haven’t taught them what else to do, or because they allow them to be exposed to powerful temptations before they have trained the dog how to cope. Like so many problems, prevention is simpler than cure. When you take a young dog out for exercise, try to resist the temptation to walk in a straight line. It makes you very predictable, and the dog may begin to feel confident in venturing further and further afield in the knowledge that you will be plodding along in the same direction when he returns. The more independent the dog, the more you will need to keep changing direction. This forces the dog to keep an eye on you. Your objective should be for the dog to be following you, and not the other way around. Keep away from high risk areas where there are lots of other dogs around or rabbits to chase. You cannot train a dog under these conditions.
In areas where you cannot be certain there are no distractions of this nature, have your young dog wear a training lead so that you can prevent him amusing himself without you if the unexpected occurs
Teach your dog a solid recall command
People sometime say ‘my dog’s recall is great until another dog comes by’ or ‘another person, or a ‘rabbit…’ The fact is, teaching a dog to recall where there are no distractions is only the very first rung on the recall ladder. Proofing the recall is by far the biggest part of recall training. Many times what is seen as a ‘behavioural’ problem, is simply a recall problem. Proper recall training is more than just getting a recall established where there is nothing to distract your dog’s attention.
You need to begin at close quarters and only add distractions such as other dogs, people, and game, in gradual stages. If you are not sure how to do this, there are precise instructions in The Gundog Club’s training guides. Build up distances gradually over many weeks and put a strict limit on how far the dog is allowed to go from you. Always recall the dog before he reaches the limits within which he will obey – distance erodes control and is a strong ‘distraction’ or factor of difficulty to a young dog.
Give your dog a job to do
Make sure your dog knows what he is supposed to be doing, whether that is following you, or fetching dummies, find things to occupy him. If you don’t he will surely find amusement for himself.
One of the simplest ways to occupy and amuse a dog during exercise is with retrieving. Make a point of nurturing your dog’s retrieving instincts so that you can give him longer and longer retrieves to keep him fit. If your dog is a spaniel, teach him to quarter from side to side in front of you and never allow him to run around hunting for himself
Do train your dog as a gundog
Even if you never intend to go anywhere near a gun, gundog style training is designed to harness the natural instincts and desires of the gundog and will give him and you great pleasure
Training a dog takes time – most people introduce far too many distractions to a pup at far too young an age. Follow a well-structured training programme such as the one in The Gundog Club training guides. Get the basics well established before you add complications.
Keep your puppy close and out of mischief. If you are careful he need never learn to have fun without you.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi there
I have a six month old working black lab that I am having a few problems with….
Basically, in the house she is well behaved. She can do sit, wait, off, stay, and so on and walks well (up to a point) on her lead on the streets near my flat. However in the local park (just across the road) she is a bit of a nightmare. When walking to heel she is ok until another dog comes along, or a jogger or se rubbish catches her eye at which point she lunges towards whatever has caught her eye and it is really difficult to get her to sit still and wait until we want to move off again. Off the lead she is completely impossible. Many dog owners seem to just let their dogs do what they want and I am not happy to do this. I want her to have a strong recall but I have no idea WHERE to train her to have this. I can do some stuff in the flat but the park is so full of the distractions it’s a complete nightmare. I was thinking of getting your passing grade one book from the gundog club site. Will this give me the instruction I need to sort my puppy put or is there a better book for my needs? Should I be getting a whistle and if so which one – 210.5 or 211.5? Should I get a long training lead – I use a six foot lead at the moment? Etc etc. all advice gratefully received.
Thanks
Hi Susie
It is really important to try and practice calling a dog away from distractions under very controlled conditions.
The same applies to heelwork.
My new book Total Recall is probably the most appropriate to show you how to do this, but it doesn’t come out until July. In the meantime I have put a lot of information about recall and the proofing process (introducing distractions into training ) generally on The Labrador Site.
You will find them in the Recall Training Centre
I hope you find them helpful, please feel free to ask any questions you have when you have had a look through the information in there.
There is information on whistles here Whistles It doesn’t matter which pitch you buy.
Best wishes, Pippa
,
Hi Pippa
Thanks for your reply above. We have in fact bought the Gundog Training Guide Part 1 ‘Beginner retriever’ since I last posted here. It looks fantastic and really clear and so on. I am afraid Iave a few questions – well quite a few actually! Feel free not to answer all of them, but I thought I’d write them down anyway!!
We have been doing the ‘about turn’ walk for about a week now as we found your post on that before either posting on your site or buying the book . This is going well to the point that it is actually now difficult to get any distance from the dog (Vespa) unless she starts to chase a bird or another dog. We are working in an area with as few distractions as possible, but occoasionally other dogs do appear and when that has happened she has run over to them but has eventually come back and we have been careful not to call her until she is already on her way back. So, that is good but……
In the book it seems that the first thing worked on should be the retrieve. Vespa clearly has a high prey drive and chases anything and everything with great excitement and enrgy. When she catches whatever it is, however, she settles down to destry it rather than bringing it back to us. On the rare occasions when she does come back with stuff she will not give it up and if we even try to put our hands on it she will pull away. We have recently found your post on dogs that play ‘keep away’ and we will read that and try to put into practice your advice there, but we are not clear about whether we should be making sure the recall is reliable before we work on retrieving and then if we are working on it how we are meant to ‘gently remove’ items from her mouth.
We have only recently found all your various sites and we know that prior to this we have made mistakes in her early training. She has had soft toys to chew on and we have used treats to get her to drop things. We now know that this is wrong and we want to correct the problems our actions have caused. We live in a city and there is so much rubbish on the street that we have been anxious about her getting hold of that we need a reliable, NOT treat-based method of getting dangerous things out of her mouth. Her shying away when holding stuff is, we are certain, a result of our trying to remove dangerous things from her and we need help to fix this.
Again, because of where we live, we have to take her out into areas with lots of distractions, on the lead, in order for her to relieve herself. We had been working on her walking to hell and sitting a road crossings and so on because of this, but in your book it seems to imply that one shouldn’t work on these uuntil after you have the work on the retrieve. What should we be doing and in what order? Should we be ignoring on-lead misdemeanours and not trying to make her sit until the retrieve is learnt or can we work on more than one things at a time?
Should she have no toys at all or should she have some and if so what? We have various soft toys (squeaky), a rope (we have never played tug of war with this thankfully) and various hard teething toys.
We are using a rope slip collar – is this right? This is fine when walking and she is concentrating but we do get anxious when she lunges at other dogs and the slip gets very tight on her neck. What can we do about this?
We have bought a 211.5 whistle but not yet started to use this. Will it be clear in your book how and when to use it?
She is a six month old working black lab – we chose working lines mainly for health. Her pedigree is very good (Drakeshead and Broadwath with dozens of FTC in her family tree) and we are very keen to allow her to be the best dog her breeding should allow and it would be a real shame to train her into bad habits as she is such a good dog.
Any advice you can give will be very gratefully received. We have been so excited to find your sites and all the amazing advice you have posted there. We know we have done stuff wrong through following well-meaning but unhelpful general dog training advice and now we have found your information we really want to go for it and get it right!!
Best wishes
Susie
ps we are thinking about whether or not to get her spayed. What are your thoughts on this? Will it make a difference to her behaviour/ability to work and so on….?
Hi Susie,
You cover a range of topics in your comment so I will start with this one.
As you can see, retrieving is a big and sometimes confusing topic! At the moment the website is rather a jumble of articles. I am in the process of creating a retrieving resource page to help make sense of all the information.
In the meantime….
The use of treats in retrieving conflicts with traditional training methods and if combined with those traditional methods results in a puppy that spits out the retrieve.
But the clicker retrieve (which uses treats in a structured way) is an excellent way of dealing with certain delivery problems including dogs that want to keep the retrieve themselves, and including dogs that spit out the retrieve despite having been taught using appropriate traditional methods.
It doesn’t matter that you have inadvertently taught your dog to play keep away, or to drop the retrieve, what matters is that she wants to retrieve. The desire is there. The delivery can be taught. Using treats and a clicker. So don’t worry about past mistakes
You cannot ‘gently take’ an item from your dog’s mouth until she is ready to let go. Which is why there comes a point in the ‘walking away’ process when you have to make a decision as to whether to keep trying to ‘bore’ the dog into letting go. Or to quit, and commit to teaching the clicker retrieve.
But teaching a trained retrieve takes time and patience. And you will struggle to find a gundog trainer that will help or support you. So you will probably have to go it alone. You need to be confident that you can complete the process before you begin.
I suggest that when you have read the ‘keep away’ article, have a look at this one the clicker retrieve and come back with any questions you may have. I think that there is another (slightly different version) of the clicker retrieve in the back of your grade one guide.
I will answer your other questions so please bear with me