My two dogs are like oil and water. One is as swift and agile as a gazelle; the other is like a bull in a China shop. One can barely swim; the other could put Phelps to shame. One would rather point at something interesting in the distance; the other would rather grab it and show it off up close. Both, however, have been a doggone test of patience for bird dog training!
Before going further, allow me to set the table. My oldest of the two dogs is an English setter, named Gabby, I got during Minnesota’s big pheasant boom. Unfortunately, a harsh winter and following spring decimated its population that’s still hardly rebounding.
In those eight years, she didn’t get much exposure to birds; upland hunting was third on my hunting to-do list (behind duck hunting and bow hunting). This was mostly due to the lack of a pheasant population and grouse being the bane of my existence. I also blame it on a lack of knowledge with pointers; I grew up with spaniels and retrievers. When I did bring her, I brought her with hunters that had flushing dogs. They didn’t enjoy how far she ranged, so I constantly had to whistle her back. The whistling became so constant that it limited her ranging to just 40 yards ahead. This bodes well for the flushers, but, unfortunately it may have wrecked her from honing in on what she was bred for: to point.
Is she ruined? Sadly, there’s a possibility. I sent her away on two separate, month-long occasions when she was a pup. But a lack of exposure to birds during her learning years multiplied by me whistling at her the whole time hampered her pointability. I will say, though, she did grace me with some beautiful points on pheasants (the first one I mounted) and during an epic grouse push. But, recently I’ve had a larger concern.
Three years ago, I returned to my retriever roots. This was mostly because my old man raised me to be a waterfowler at heart. The last dog I grew up with was a golden retriever. All she needed was a soccer field, a few bumpers, and 30 minutes of training a day. That training was the chore my old man tasked me to that summer going into 8th grade and it was the best thing I learned growing up.
I returned to the retriever because I thought I knew what it’d take; if I could do it in 8th grade, why couldn’t I do it now? I also wanted to get a dog that I could enjoy more hunts with. Above all, I wanted to get a dog that others would, not only welcome the company in the duck blind, grouse woods, and pheasant fields but demand it – when a dog gets to that status, you know you’ve got yourself a real hunting dog.
This time around, I didn’t want to make any mistakes. I researched for a few years and landed on getting an English Lab puppy whose sire is from Scotland and her dam is from N. Ireland. Since I blew it in the training department with Gabby, I definitely didn’t want to with my new puppy, named Jacie. Prior to scooping her up at the breeder, I initially chatted with a coworker that has participated in field trials and googled to read the highly opinionated and sometimes far too passionate remarks rampant in forums. After all the consultation, I went with the Evan Graham’s Smartwork System.
“You paid $___.95 for a training program?! You’re nuts! I spent zero dollars and minimal time and look at how my dog turned out!”
“Yeah, your dog can fetch a bird. It does pretty good.”
Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself: That’s what a retriever is bred for: to retrieve! Furthermore your dog is sh** for steadiness in the blind; at first shot it’s already in the water. Yeah, it shows eagerness, but it also may not give you a chance at finishing off a cripple if it’s swimming in between your shotgun and the bird.
Speaking of eagerness, it can’t sit still in the blind. The last thing any of us want is someone or something not being able to sit still and just tromps around on the shore. Moreover, your dog is worthless on blind retrieves and handling. I bet you’ve spent almost as much on shells you throw out in the water to mark the birds for your dog as I will with this “expensive program”. Finally, when your dog brings back a bird, it always drops it off on shore and expects you to go pick it up. That’s technically not a full retrieve….
As tempting as this tangent is to go down, I won’t. I know what I want in my dog, and that’s what I set out to do. I followed the Smartwork System religiously with – getting all the way to basic handling (hand casting and T retrieves) when duck season started. She was 10 months old at the time. She was technically pretty savvy, but actual hunting situations are a bit different. They’re especially the case if there is another dog added to the mix.
This other dog, owned by my friend, walked with Jacie and me to our blind while aforementioned friend was setting up different field 200 yards away from us. Shooting time was quickly approaching, so he didn’t get his dog. The dog was known to lash out at other dogs in the blind (it did to an older dog the previous year on a late season hunt). So when it was time to hunt, I put myself and a different friend of mine between the two dogs.
Sidebar: the major emphasis of the Smartwork System stresses the importance of fundamental obedience training – that the dog is praised for making the retrieve but doesn’t own the bird.
Anyway, after bagging a couple birds, I set them off to the side (as far away from the other dog as possible). Unfortunately, Jacie made one step too close to the birds. In an instant, the other dog jumped over my friend and over me and lashed out at Jacie. Jacie yipped and ran out of the blind. Seconds after, a lone mallard had swung through our decoys that my buddy shot. I turned to her after seeing the bird fold and noticed her clawing at the ground.
She wasn’t the same the rest of the hunt. The following week, I took her to the field I’ve done most of her training in and had her run through some basic retrieves. Then I began to slowly introduce the blank gun again to her (she was perfectly fine around it prior to the unfortunate hunt). Once I was able to fire it off next to her, I progressed her to the lake where I trained her for water retrieves – going through the same process with the blank gun. I then took her to a different location where I could mimic a duck blind. In all instances, she was perfectly fine.
After a couple weeks of this type of training regimen, I took her on another hunt. She started back to clawing away at the ground again after the first volley. After some encouragement, she did make her first retrieve and second and third. Still, with each volley she grew more and more terrified. I was beset with concern for her as well as confused, so I stopped hunting her altogether. I’ve heard of gun shy dogs, but is there such a thing as blind shy?
It was an ominous cloud that hung over the hundreds of hours I spent with her the following year – clearly an issue beyond a training program. Yeah, she was only 10 months old – a pup – but still… I maintained hope that we could work through it by putting her in more “blind situations” and shooting around shotguns instead of just blanks.
Her second season, turned out to be the same. I took her out on three separate occasions. Each time produced the same results: her anxiously clawing at the ground. It was perplexing; she’d go get the bird but make a bee-line to shore and always run 30 yards behind the blind in the woods or cattails and just stare terrified of the blind with the bird still in her mouth. I had no choice but to end her duck hunting season again.
After some talk with my old man, we figured that maybe we should try to associate birds in her mouth as fun, for it was clear the retrieves she made fine to her. It was when she made her return back with the bird in her mouth that she was not having fun.
“Let’s take the pups in the grouse woods – there isn’t a greater scent to a dog than a grouse,” my dad suggested, “I’ve got some work I’ve gotta take care of at a lodge along the Gunflint Trail. Maybe the owner can point us to some woods to go check out.”
And checked out we did; Gabby was no slouch to sniffing out grouse, nor was my dad’s dog Indie. Unfortunately, the woods were sparse with birds. We managed to drop the only one that gave us an opportunity, but sadly escaped before the seasoned veteran dogs (Gabby and Indie) could put a nose on it. I realized a couple things with Jacie during these hunts.
- She didn’t really hunt. Most of the time she just walked at heel and, whenever she got a wild hair to run, she would just chase after Gabby or Indie. This confirmed to me how much of a puppy she still was mentally.
- She was unaffected by our gunfire. In fact, when she heard it, she was just as excited as Gabby and Indie and proceeded bust through brush with her nose down sniffing. This confirmed to me that she actually can have fun around gunfire.
I started thinking that upland hunting could be a way to ease her into the positive reinforcement she may need to break her out of blind shyness. Since we didn’t have an outstanding pheasant population last year, I decided to take her out grouse hunting again – yeah, maybe this time I could fold one that she could retrieve.
The stars aligned again. I connected on the one grouse that flushed. It fell like a ton of bricks. Neither Gabby, Jacie, or I could find it though (seriously, see above about them being the bane of my existence!). What I was able to do during that hunt was drop my limit of woodcock. Although she kept to my side, she did get excited when I fired off my gun. Each time it perked her up and she’d bolt from me to sniff around for something – possibly connecting all the fired off rounds of blanks from the training we did in the offseason. Eventually, she tracked down each of the fallen woodcock and brought them back to hand with a tail wiggling uncontrollably. She finally was having fun.
After chatting with my old man about that hunt, we figured to give her exposure to some birds that she can see take air and fall from gunfire: we concluded on getting after some game farm pheasants. She was exactly the same during this hunt as well: mostly at my side and excited once there was gunfire. She started connecting with looking up to watch the birds fall at the end – even making a retrieve.
It was bittersweet. The good: she was excited by gunfire and grew encouraged to make retrieves on birds. The bad: she was practically a wallflower the entire time; she wasn’t really hunting but just hanging out. Hunting wasn’t clicking for her.
The next offseason I didn’t progress her much more than what we had already been doing – keeping things basic. Except this time around I added a dog blind where she could grow comfortable in (like a home base). Since hunting is never the same – day-to-day – I figured to also change it up by taking her to various training locations (meanwhile always using her dog blind to reinforce that there’s no need to fear).
So when waterfowl opener came around back in late September, I was hopeful her “home” would provide enough solace for her to forget about her past and focus on doing what she enjoys: retrieving. I elected to sit on a little pothole with her while my old man and some others positioned themselves on surrounding ponds; this way I could keep variables to a minimal.
The morning came with thunderous ovation of shotguns around us at shooting light – she maintained focus. I dropped a couple wood ducks and she made the retrieves with little issue. As the morning progressed with a couple more ducks, she slowly diverted back to her strange ways of not wanting to return back to the blind after making the retrieve and just hold on to the bird in her mouth on the nearest shoreline she’d come to.
Clearly I had concern. My old man suggested to get away from putting her next to water in the blind and go to a spot where we could pass shoot at birds coming off their roost – instead of swimming to make retrieves, she’d have to scent birds in tall grass and woods. It was, in a way, a modified upland hunting approach to reinforce the fun of gunfire and birds she had experienced in previous seasons; she wouldn’t be cooped up in her blind for periods between birds – she’d just wait for the first birds to fall before I set her loose to retrieve ducks that were falling in nearly every direction.
That was just the ticket for her; she found the limit of woodies and mallard I dropped – all the while having the time of her life tromping around in the high grass to sniff them out. The next week we did the same thing both Saturday and Sunday – she had no issue! I couldn’t have been more thrilled to see her finally progressing in the right direction!
So, to maintain reinforcing the upland experience, I figured to take her out to the same plot of land that I limited out on woodcock the previous year. The wallflower she was during that hunt was hardly such after I folded the first one she flushed up. From then on out, she kept a 15-yard range from me (perfect for a flusher in grouse/woodcock covers) and flushed and retrieved a limit of woodcock.
The following weekend was the third annual “Waterfowl Weekend” at my buddy’s hunting shack; it’s grown to be my favorite time during the duck hunting season, mostly because the second weekend of October is generally the first push of migrating birds from Canada (hello divers!). I had my reservations about Jacie, though – she was going to have to go back to the water and make retrieves in super spreads (not easy for inexperienced dogs on water when they have to scent a bird amongst so many decoys).
After a few fallen birds, she started to figure it out, though – each of which she’d try swimming to the closest shore. Thankfully there was a handle on the top of her vest, so I’d meet her out in the water, grab the handle on her vest, and walk her back with the handle hand (while she was still swimming) giving positive encouragement all the way back to her kennel (her home). The next couple of birds she started homing back to her kennel (success!!!).
To reward her for all the swimming, all of us at the hunting shack made a little push for grouse nearby. She returned to upland hunting form, quartering at fifteen yards away and making clean sweeps with her nose glued to the aspen floor – flushing three in the first twenty minutes. The first one took off towards a road I was close to and didn’t want to rain down a shot at a bystander. The second one took off perfectly to put Jacie between my gun and itself – yet another reason why grouse are the bane of my existence. The third one, though, gave me a split second of opportunity and I made every millisecond count. We both were grinning and wiggling our tails off in triumph; it was our first grouse together!
The remainder of October and early November I kept her on the same regimen: pass shooting ducks in the morning and upland coverts that held a multitude of woodcock and grouse in the afternoon. Something happened that I never would’ve thought would happen in all my life: I’d shoot more upland birds than ducks in October (25 woodcock and 3 grouse to 27 ducks). She put me on more birds than I’ve ever folded in that short of a timespan. Clearly, exposure to live birds and gunfire weren’t lacking.
An actual duck blind experience was, though. For the last month of the waterfowl season, I eased her as best as I could. She had a slight issue at first, but it didn’t take long for her to shake out the fear of the blind once she got a couple retrieves to reinforce her confidence. The weight of concern for her finally lifted! It just took three years of waiting…
She’s not perfect in any way; she showed reluctance to make retrieves in the frigid water for the last few weeks, but, with encouragement, she’d get the birds. This coming offseason, I’ll start force-to-water retrieve training with hope that she’ll overcome that small obstacle and continue in her development.
Speaking of development, it finally occurred to me that I was changing too. I thought training would be the answer to everything and was terribly wrong. Training is more than a list of do’s and don’ts, whistling, and praise. It was a means for me to speak her language, so, when the bullets are flying, we’re both on the same page.
There’s no doubt training sets the foundation of so many things. After logging hundreds of hours with her, I can attest to it’s significance to obedience, blind etiquette, instilling confidence, and balancing the need for a dog to be equally independent on retrieves and dependent on their handler when help is needed. It doesn’t solve all of hunting’s unpredictable problems, but it helps us both solve them together, in time.
Psychologically, Jacie experiences a bit of anxiety / hesitancy in anything new; I’m sure much of this is due to her being the runt of her litter. Once she gets it, though, she doesn’t have a problem. However, certain situations dictate more time I need to devote for her to figure it out – be it both logging training and hunting hours. It took her three seasons to discover how fun it is to retrieve a bird I shot than being a wallflower by walk at my side in the woods. This was reinforced mostly by upland hunting. Her fear of the waterfowl blind are all but gone; it just took three seasons. Pass shooting alleviated that anxiety.
She isn’t the dog that made a 150 yard retrieve on a crippled goose when it was 11 months old. Nor is she the one that made two hundred retrieves in her second season. However, she now is a dog that you’d be a fool not to want in the grouse-woodcock coverts. She is a dog that you’d also want to track down a fallen bird in high grass. More importantly, she is a dog that taught me that virtue was found after three years of patience.
And if you read through this long ramble, you know a thing or two about Patience, Doggone It!
2 thoughts on “Patience, Doggone It!”
Way to hang in there Chad. You and her are a great team now. And will only get better
Patience and persistence, it’s all worth it in the end! Great read!