Our started program is the first phase of our gundog program. It is a price-point course for people who are interested in having a professionally trained dog but are not interested in having many obligations of handling the dog in training or hunting. Pretty much, a dog that sits down while you shoot birds, and the dog does the rest. The terminology for this is a meat dog.
If you’re wondering if this is the right course for you, let’s answer some questions.
If you answer no, not really, and yes to being a house pet, this course is a good fit for you, and I'll tell you why.
You'll have a ready-to-hunt dog that requires little maintenance in training besides the occasional obedience and steadiness tune-ups. You're not obligated to spend two or three times a week refreshing the dog on taught material, and all in all, your dog will be an average retriever. Don’t let the word average deter you. You'll have a hard-charging, steady-to-gun dog that loves the game if done correctly. Now, let's talk about the material. This course begins with two things: the dog will start with formal obedience training and continue to socialization conditioning.
Now, this is where things get tricky. As the owner, you must be upfront with us about the development your dog has undergone before arriving. We've seen it repeatedly where people have not “had the time” to properly socialize their dog in their environment and to new experiences. Then, they send a 5-6 month old underdeveloped dog too. I am referring to simple characteristics such as poor prey development, gun, water shyness, and a hesitant and skittish dog. These characteristics extensively push the dog's training time because they have come unprepared for the rigorous course.
Excellent features of a socialized pup are hungry prey, a drive to chase a bumper, bird/wing, comfort in any setting, exposure to new people and experiences, unbothered by loud noises, and a love to swim. These qualities signify a confident dog ready to take on any type of training.
In our formal obedience course, the dog will spend around 2 to 3 weeks on a prong collar leash learning our basic commands: sit here, heel, place, kennel, no, whistle, sit, and here. This process is taught through negative reinforcement with the prong collar, rewarded with treats, and eventually retrieving.
Once the dog understands cognitively and is not hesitating on the command request, we then shock collar to reinforce all of the commands and condition the dog to that collar pressure to prepare them to be entirely off leash and to have a fair understanding of what it means to be a formal dog. That way, they respond to collar pressure appropriately with no hesitation or fear. This also prepares the dog for the next phase of training.
Phase two of our gundog-started program is force fetch. If you're unfamiliar, this is a training process of teaching a dog how to fetch on command. Now, you’re probably wondering why this is necessary. It is not only necessary but imperative that every dog is force-fetched. Every little impulse in this world entices a dog to break heel, break sit, not sit, or be disobedient. The same thing applies to asking a dog to retrieve. We've seen it a thousand different ways. Sometimes, they don't want to retrieve for no reason; maybe they'd rather go check out that fish that jumped or the bird that flew by, or perhaps they got a whiff of a hotdog stand down the road! All are reasons why we force fetch dogs. It is the only way to have a retriever do their job again and again and not be worried about a wild hair going up their ass. Now, force fetch can be broken down to close to 54 steps, but I'll run through a few simple ones. You have hold conditioning on table, walking hold on table, e-collar reinforced hold, and hold off table at heel.
Then, ear pinch fetch on table, ear pinch off floor, walking ear pinch, e-collar reinforced fetch, e-collar fetch off floor, e-collar walking fetch…. I'm almost done, haha! E-collar fetch off ground and then force to pile, progressing from a short pile to at least 100 yards, on land, and into water. Then, we reinforce everything by replacing a bumper with a duck. At this point, we should have a dog charging extremely hard before they are ever pressured to retrieve a bumper or bird, bringing it directly back to heel, sitting, and waiting for you to take it from them.
You're probably wondering why it takes so many steps to convince a dog to retrieve - saying my dog already retrieves on command. Force fetch not only creates a reliable and consistent retriever, but it also teaches the dog how to overcome extreme adversity. I see many young dogs mature into an older dog mindset by learning to beat the pressure of the collar and make that cognitive understanding of, “Hey, he's just asking me to do a simple task.” This is when I say dogs learn real critical thinking skills, but it doesn't stop here.
Now, let's take Rover and teach him how to mark. At this point, the dog has learned how to return to a memory pile, but a mark is a single throw. We use targeting methods with white bumpers, even white buckets, and blinds to help the dog compensate for distance through a process of running hundreds of marks in short and thick cover, shallow and steep terrain at different arc angles and time sequences; we can train a dog how to use their eyes. The same concepts are applied in water. Through this sequence, a dog learns to use their nose.
Thus begins old fall marks. This is where we ask a dog to run through an area where there is an old scent from a recent retrieve, and the dog must persist past that area to retrieve the mark that has fallen further beyond. We often see this in a hunting aspect, where a wounded game goes down past the decoy spread, but too many dogs hunt short and never push back past the old falls. Over time, the dog has been sitting for many seconds to minutes before retrieving, which instills steadiness and longer memory banks. They had guns popping off from launcher stations, bird boys, from heel, and they've been control broken, and we finally move into running sequences of double marks.
Double marks are the ultimate test for a young gundog. I’m a big marking guy, and I do not touch on hand casting. Typically, we would never get through with T drill before it's time to go home. I want your dog to be ready to hunt the day they leave.
Gundog training is not only an investment in your dog, but an investment in your everyday life and future hunts with your dog. Whether you have more questions about our started gundog program or are ready to get started, we would love to hear from you!
