Gundog SOS E-Book

Laura Hill

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 277

Beschreibung

In Gundog SOS, respected trainer, judge and competitor Laura Hill takes an in-depth look at common mistakes and what can be learnt from them. She looks at avoiding potential pitfalls in the first place, unpacks 'bad behaviour', analyses the relevance of the relationship between trainer and dog, and gives practical strategies for improvement in training partnerships. Supported by illustrations, case studies and exercises, this essential resource comprehensively addresses the most frequently occurring training problems and provides workable solutions to help readers to improve or fix them.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

PART I: PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

1Mistakes

2Bad Behaviour

3Rehoming

4Finding a Way Forwards

PART II: GUNDOG TRAINING CLINIC

5Steadiness and Noise Issues

6Recall and Delivery Issues

7Handling Issues

8Marking and Hunting Issues

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

PREFACE

The idea for Gundog SOS was born from my experience over the years of training a large variety of dogs, and working with handlers to help them get the best from their gundogs. Whilst most of the owners understood the basic principles and timeline of gundog training, and many had methodical plans to achieve their goals, there were still inevitable hiatuses in training where their own particular dog didn’t fit the blueprint and progress was slow or non-existent. Some of these trainers lamented that videos and books always show things done perfectly, with the dogs doing what they should, and nothing ever going wrong. But they rarely showed problem dogs, or what to do when there were major issues or a breakdown in training.

Whilst choosing a well-bred puppy from established working lines will give owners the potential starting material to make training more straightforward, it is no guarantee of success. And when you add in human factors, it is easy to see how things can go wrong. When this happens, for some it can leave feelings of self-doubt in your ability as a trainer, and also of dread in having to take the dog out, only for issues to continue recurring.

In Gundog SOS I have gathered together some of the things I have learnt over the years, including wisdom from other trainers, along with knowledge and techniques that can be of use. The book doesn’t contain all the answers, but instead provides an approach to avoiding some of the pitfalls in the first place, and a toolkit of ideas that can be employed to rectify some of the most common issues.

In Part I: Prevention is Better than Cure, I address some of the common mistakes made during the training process, and how we perceive some behaviours as being inherently bad. I look at when, and if, rehoming is a sensible option, and how we can change our own behaviour and strategies to find a way forwards and obtain more consistent outcomes. Reading through this first section may help you to prevent future mistakes, and help you to review your mindset with regard to undesired behaviour as it occurs. Acknowledging your own failings as well as analysing so-called problem behaviours in your dogs will also help to prevent any further deterioration in the training partnership.

In Part II: Gundog Training Clinic, we look at the more common problems seen in training, broken down by category. Case studies illustrate some of the key issues and show how these can be successfully resolved, and the chapters contain exercises and drills to improve on specific areas of weakness. Hopefully you won’t have all of the common issues outlined, but some of them may resonate. You can dip into this section to help with some of the problems as they arise.

My decision to start work on this book coincided with the arrival of a pup named Vera, to whom nothing came easily. Although I would consider myself an experienced trainer, I am not afraid to admit that she was a challenge to train, and at times tested my problem-solving skills to their limit. In addition I had a young Cocker Spaniel, Purl, in training too. This was a new departure for me, taking me out of my comfort zone of retrievers, and helping me to develop new skill sets and approaches. And then along came Labrador Twig, my ‘project dog,’ acquired at sixteen months old and definitely not a blank canvas. These three dogs have taught me a lot in the past couple of years, not just about training, but also about an approach to life.

INTRODUCTION

When you start training your gundog, you normally have some sort of expectations or a goal in mind. For example, you may be training a spaniel to accompany you rough shooting, a retriever to join you on the peg, or you may even aspire to compete with your dog. In most cases you will have started off with the blank canvas of a young puppy with a good working pedigree, and be full of hope about the bright future that lies in front of you both. However, your expectations of what the partnership between you and your dog will bring may not be realistic, or they may begin to change as issues start to occur in training that you really don’t know how to rectify.

You may have read some books, done some courses, or watched DVDs and online videos of professional trainers in action. All these will likely have shown you how things should or can be done in the ‘right’ way, but none of them will have prepared you for what to do when things don’t go to plan, or when your dog doesn’t follow the expected route map, for any number of reasons.

Gundog training, like life, is rarely perfect like this, and yet some aspire to achieve perfection or even, unrealistically, to expect it. This can lead to setting goals that are impossible to achieve, resulting in dissatisfaction and frustration.

New puppies promise the start of an exciting training journey.

Early conditioning with young dogs will pay dividends later.

And whilst we use the word ‘training’ liberally, it is useful here to consider the semantics. Is it training or is it teaching? When you are imparting primary skills to young dogs, you are teaching or schooling them. It is very much like a child being in a classroom. Lessons can be broken down into topics, and you are imparting knowledge and techniques to help build the dog’s skill set. But when we talk about training, particularly in groups, this is more akin to sports training – like going to football practice. Here, the attendees are already familiar with the rules of the game, or should be, and they are there to rehearse and practise their skills, refining them in a group context away from home. Training, in this respect, is more about using the knowledge that you have already and applying it in context.

When things go wrong, it is most commonly because the teaching or learning part, usually done at home, hasn’t been consistent or thorough and there are therefore gaps in the dog’s understanding. When the dog is subsequently put into a ‘training session’, it is poorly equipped to deal with the challenges put in front of it.

REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

If you set perfection as your ultimate goal then it is likely that you will set yourself up for failure, because perfection in gundog training is not attainable. The bar is impossibly high if you are aiming for perfection, and small mistakes will feel like huge setbacks in reaching this target. Instead of thinking about perfection, it is perhaps more helpful to think about excellence instead, which is still about achieving greatness or brilliance, but allows you to accept mistakes and embrace failure as part of the process, and to learn from it. Excellence is rarely achieved ‘first time out.’ It takes a lot of practice and learning along the way.

If you are struggling in your gundog journey, try to take the pressure off yourself by acknowledging that it is enough to make an effort and be ‘good enough’ at some things along the way. This doesn’t mean accepting substandard work forever, but understanding that doing your best as you go along is a more positive approach. This will improve your enjoyment of the process and offers you a kinder self-dialogue instead of a harsh or self-judging one. It is also a way of overcoming procrastination, as it is less daunting making a start. Put your time and effort into becoming better at training and understanding the learning process. This is empowering and will help you reach your aspirations.

A STITCH IN TIME

When you notice that an issue has crept into your training, it is rarely a good idea to ignore it or to hope that it will improve on its own over time. Quite often handlers will say ‘he’s just a puppy’, and this can be a good catch-all phrase to excuse undesirable or juvenile behaviour. Of course, genuine puppy behaviour on the part of very young dogs that haven’t been taught, or that haven’t learnt what is expected of them in different circumstances, is totally acceptable. But it is when the behaviour becomes ingrained into a pattern that is undesirable in the long term that it needs addressing. In this respect, as the saying goes, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. Acknowledging the problem behaviour and setting up a plan to deal with it in a timely manner will mean that it is easier to rectify and doesn’t become something that is unfixable at a later date.

The golden period of the first six to seven months in the puppy’s life is the most important period to imprint good habits whilst it is still very impressionable, so that it is set up for what is expected in later training. However, with a good plan in place there is still the opportunity to set things right at a later date, if you haven’t been able to capitalise on this early training time.

CHOOSING A TRAINER

In the real world, things don’t always go to plan. You may have inherited a legacy of problems, or created some habits that you don’t want, in which case it is time to seek some help. Many people will have realised that they have some significant issues with their gundog, but will wait until after the shooting season has finished before seeking professional help. If this is the case, ensure that your dog (and you) have had an adequate break before you turn your attention to some remedial spring/summer training. This may mean planning regular sessions with a local trainer to give you a framework to your training plan, or it might be booking some ‘away days’ to give your dog experience of new grounds, or yourself some input from a different training professional.

Find a trusted mentor who makes you feel comfortable.

But how do you go about finding the right training, or rather the right trainer, for you? Choosing the perfect trainer can be tricky, especially if you don’t have personal knowledge of individuals and their style. In this case it pays to do some research, or at least to ask around. When you do find a trainer whom you think might fit your needs, don’t be frightened to ask them some questions (see box).

Once you have chosen a trainer, and a style of training that suits you, you will need to ensure that your goals and expectations are in line. There are rarely any instant cures in gundog training, so an ethical trainer should be honest and help you set reasonable expectations. It may be that you are looking to ‘fix’ some issues that have crept in, or that you just want ongoing routine training. As a rule, if you have a retriever, you are far better going to a trainer who specialises in retrievers rather than someone who works mainly with spaniels or hunt, point and retrieve dogs (HPRs), as there are nuances in training for the different sub-groups. In addition, if you have a specific issue, try to find someone who has worked with that specific issue and has documented success.

One of the most important things to consider when you are working with a trainer is whether they make you feel comfortable. They will be working with you, not just assessing the dog, so ensuring that you are confident and at ease with the person training you and your dog is very important. You should be able to trust them and approach them with questions or ask for suggestions that are appropriate for you. In turn, they should be able to be honest with you, rather than just massaging your ego.

It is acceptable to be selective about who trains you. A good trainer will be happy to talk to you about any questions that you have relating to their style of training.

THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD COACH

If you are lucky, on your gundog journey you will come across, and be guided by, a really good trainer. And if you are even more fortunate, then that trainer may become a trusted mentor or coach. Teaching is a skill like any other, but there are some who are able to get their message across more powerfully, or inspire and channel a wide range of students, pushing them beyond their comfort zones and moving them on to achieve higher goals.

Good coaches engage with their students, providing honest feedback and ongoing support.

Great coaches are perceptive and patient, and can tease out the relevant information from their students. They help fuel and direct individual growth, using their knowledge and ability to recognise issues. They also connect with their students to deliver relevant support in a meaningful way. A great coach is not only wise, but has the ability to communicate that wisdom to move their students forwards, and often beyond their own comfort zones. In this way, the coach should be able to look deeper at issues and scenarios, applying their own relevant experience, which has often been built up over many decades, and also their creativity to problem solve. And whilst technical knowledge is paramount, gundog training is also about ‘feel’ and the art. A gundog trainer may know how to teach the basic mechanical skills of handling and hunting their dog, but learning to read live situations (wind direction, terrain factors, canine and human body language, handler emotions, behavioural science) adds a whole additional layer to the basic technical skills.

In this respect, the coach needs to be extremely perceptive, and to represent a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ on your partnership. But it is more than that. It is hard to see yourself and your dog from an objective position sometimes. You get wrapped up in your own habits, which are often deeply ingrained. A great coach has a sharpness and perceptiveness that goes beyond just regarding the handler and their dog. They will see another layer, or pick out a particular detail. They will notice subtle aspects or differences. They get to know their students, analysing them and their dogs, and will customise their communications to fit that particular pairing. They should be curious and investigative. If you get the opportunity to observe a good trainer giving a lesson, you will see them watching and analysing not only what the dogs are doing, but what the handlers are doing too – unpicking tiny details and asking questions.

From these perceptions will come the timely delivery of relevant information. This can be a commentary as a particular retrieve unfolds, or an analysis after the event, with accurate observations and suggestions. And whilst some coaches are seen to have great patience, it is more than this: it is actually more of a probing impatience, which strategically unpicks various aspects of behaviour. The coach will be on hand to offer one strategy, but will also be ready with a plan B if the first idea doesn’t work. And they will have an arsenal of suggestions by way of advice, and other options available to employ. And once a student is consistently achieving certain tasks then the good coach will be ready to move them on and deliver new layers of information to increase their overall skill, pushing them beyond their sweet spot and on towards greater achievement. Whilst small successes are acknowledged and applauded along the way, they are not seen as stopping points, but rather as steps up towards the next level.

A good coach should not only be able to engage with you, but should also adjust their style to suit your needs at the time. Sometimes ‘tough love’ is appropriate, sometimes a more nurturing approach is necessary. Some students need frank feedback, whereas others want patient support. Great teachers understand those differing needs and can connect empathetically with their students. They allow their students to figure out some things for themselves, which will develop their problem-solving capacity and eventually make them more independent. They won’t spoonfeed their pupils, but will give them homework and ask them to go away and work on the areas that need improvement, making some mistakes along the way as part of the learning process.

Finally, ‘character’ is perhaps the secret ingredient of many good coaches. The possession of an analytical mind paired with wit or good humour goes a long way to inspire students further towards their goals.

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR CHOSEN TRAINER

What are your methods?

Why did the trainer choose these methods, and why do they work? Are they the same for every client, or do they vary? A good trainer should be able to explain their methods clearly, and also the science and reasoning behind them.

What are your ethics?

The trainer should be able to explain their feelings and the reasoning behind their methods, and what their priorities are during training.

What is your background and experience? Does the trainer have any certification, or any type of formal education in teaching or animal behaviour? Are they members of, or affiliated to any organisations? Some gundog trainers will have taken professional courses in general dog training. Others won’t have this, but may have vast experience in the shooting or competition field. If you are specifically seeking preparation for competitions such as field trials, find out if they have a proven track record in this area, and a full understanding of the requirements for success. If you are visiting a trainer for help with a particular issue, make sure the trainer has suitable experience with the specific area with which you need help.

What are your prices and availability?

Do some research to ensure that the price is fair, considering their background, expertise and facilities. Also, factor in any travel time to get there. Would online lessons work for you, or do you need face-to-face help? If you are looking for an ongoing relationship with the trainer, make sure that they can meet your needs for continued support. You may only want an assessment and suggestions for homework, or you might need ongoing help via regular lessons.

Do you have customer testimonials or feedback?

Personal recommendations are invaluable here, if you don’t know the trainer. But beware online reviews from people you don’t know. If the trainer doesn’t have any reviews, find out if they are happy to refer you to other clients to provide references.

LISTENING

This might seem a strange topic to include in a gundog training book, but it is a skill that is vital to handlers as they seek to improve their dog’s (and their own) capabilities. Listening is an important and fundamental component of your interpersonal communication skills. It is not something that just happens – that is hearing. It is, or should be, an active process, when a conscious decision is made to listen to and understand the messages of the speaker. How well you listen can have a major impact on your effectiveness as a handler and trainer, and also on the quality of your relationships with others.

Listening is important for several reasons, namely:

• to obtain information

• to understand instructions

• for enjoyment

• to learn more

Given all the listening that humans do in daily life, you would think we’d be good at it! However, most of us are not, and it is thought that we only remember less than 50 per cent of what we hear, which means that when you talk to your friends, colleagues, clients or spouse for ten minutes, they will probably only pay attention to around three minutes of that conversation. Turn this around and it reveals that, when you are being presented with information, you are unlikely to listen to the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in the small percentage that you did retain, but this may not be the case.

TECHNIQUES OF ACTIVE LISTENING

• Smiling

• Eye contact

• Nodding

• Posture – leaning slightly forwards or having a slight head slant

• Mirroring – reflecting facial expressions

• Use of positive reinforcement via marker words

• Asking questions, clarifying

• Vocal reflection – repeating things

• Summarising or paraphrasing what has been said

Improving Your Listening Skills

Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you can increase your productivity, as well as your ability in turn to train and influence. You will also avoid frustration and misunderstanding, which is necessary for successful outcomes.

Use active listening techniques to help you remember information.

The way to improve your listening skills is to practise ‘active listening’. This is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying, but also, and more importantly, the entire message that is being communicated. In order to do this you must pay attention to the other person very carefully. You cannot allow yourself to become distracted by whatever else may be going on around you, or by forming counter arguments while the other person is still speaking. Nor should you get bored and lose focus on what they are saying. Have you ever been in a training group where other handlers are talking to each other rather than listening to the trainer, or browsing on their smartphones? It is hard to maintain focus for a prolonged period of time, so this behaviour is accepted. But bear this in mind when you think about your dog’s focus during that session as well.

Active listening is a skill that can be acquired and developed with practice. However, it can be difficult to master, and will therefore take time and patience to develop. As its name suggests, it is taking part in the listening process: that is, fully concentrating on what is being said rather than just passively hearing the message of the speaker.

It involves listening with all the senses. As well as giving full attention to the speaker, you should try to show that you are listening by using both verbal and non-verbal signals, such as maintaining eye contact, nodding your head and smiling, or agreeing by saying ‘yes’, ‘right’ or simply ‘ah ha’ to encourage them to continue. By providing this feedback, the person speaking will usually feel more at ease and will therefore communicate more readily and openly. To understand the importance of active listening, ask yourself if you’ve ever been engaged in a conversation when you weren’t sure if the other person was listening to what you were saying. You will have wondered if your message was getting across, or if it was even worthwhile continuing to talk.

If you find it difficult to concentrate on what a trainer is saying to you, try repeating some of their words after they have said them, silently in your head. This will help to reinforce the key points and help you to retain focus. You can also make notes, either into a digital voice recorder on your phone or in a pocket notebook.

The ability to listen to and analyse information and then put this learning into practice will go a long way towards making your training more efficient and meaningful.

PART I: PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

1 MISTAKES

To Err is human.

ALEXANDER POPE, 1711

When things go wrong, it is very often down to human error. For example, if you analyse the true cause of most modern-day aircraft crashes, you will see that the majority were caused by human factors, and very few by aircraft technical faults. Humans are fallible. We make the wrong decisions or choices, fail to act in a timely manner, or don’t communicate our intentions to others. Gundog training is no different in this respect.

Making mistakes or one-off ‘bloopers’ is fine. It is only when these are repeated that it becomes an issue. If you make an error in training that leads to some sort of failure, try not to let it happen again and move on. You will need to accept failure and get used to it as being part of the overall training process. This will apply not only in training but also in competition. Failure is inevitable at some point, but it should also be seen as a positive force in that it can lead to adaptation and innovation.

When mistakes are made, use this as an opportunity to get creative and try new things to solve the issues. If you think of the scientist in a laboratory where an experiment didn’t turn out as planned, this is often the route to new discoveries. For example, it was only when Sir Alexander Fleming threw away a contaminated petri dish that he noticed that the mould growing in it was destroying bacteria. This led him to his discovery of penicillin. And the microwave oven was inadvertently invented by Percy Spencer, who realised that his confectionary bar was melting during his radar-related experiments with a new vacuum tube device.

There is usually an opportunity to learn from mistakes, so get comfortable with them. Try different approaches to resolve problems. Some will work and some won’t. However, try to avoid multiple failures. After something has gone wrong, try to reset for success. This means excluding the conditions for failure so that it doesn’t happen again, and this may mean lowering the criteria or simplifying the exercise. Try to set up the conditions so that it would be impossible for the same behaviour to happen again.

When dogs get things wrong, or don’t behave as we would hope, it is usually down to a failure on our own part. There are a number of common mistakes that trainers make, which result in a breakdown in understanding on the dog’s part, and consequently poor performance.

POOR COMMUNICATION AND TIMING

Quite often the dog simply does not understand what is required of it. This may be because you haven’t communicated effectively what you want in an appropriate way. For example, shouting ‘get over, get over’ at a dog that is running up and down a fence line to try to make it jump over the fence will not work unless you have actually taught the dog that ‘get over’ means jump. In fact, what you are actually inadvertently doing is labelling the behaviour of fence running, if you do this repeatedly. Some handlers think that the dog will automatically understand the meaning of the words, but this is not the case. The ‘get over’ cue would need to be chained, and proofed, to the act of jumping over a fence and other obstacles.

If the cue is not thoroughly conditioned, the dog will not understand that you want him to jump the fence.

Take care to make your arm signals clear.

As well as ensuring that your communication is clear, you need to work hard to ensure your feedback to the dog is timely. This is one of the most common problems that novice handlers struggle with – when to praise or correct, and the ability to move quickly between the two responses. Getting your timing right is critical, otherwise you can end up inadvertently rewarding a behaviour that you don’t want. Equally, withholding praise for good work can be a mistake if you have other issues that you want to address with remediation.

Sometimes the cues that you give to the dog can be confusing. These may be intentional or unintentional: for example, your intention is to direct the dog to go right handed, but before you push right, you actually swing your arm over your head momentarily leftwards. The dog then goes left, and the handler is annoyed, as in their view they gave a clear righthand cast. However, the dog has acted quickly on the (unintentional) cue to move left, and the handler construes this as defiance or naughtiness.

At other times, mistimed praise can lead to continued undesired behaviour. Many handlers are quick to praise their dog with ‘good boy’ when it finds the dummy, but don’t notice that the dog is actually briefly hunting on before returning whilst being praised. The handler has now rewarded the dog for hunting on when that wasn’t his intention – but the dog understands that this behaviour is not only acceptable but now doubly rewarding.

RUSHING

The foundations for successful gundog work are the core skills of heelwork, stays/steadiness and recall. These are not the most interesting or rewarding tasks to teach, either for dog or handler, and often they end up being glossed over or rushed in order to get on with the more interesting retrieve or hunting work.

One of the most common mistakes in training is to miss things out, or only partially teach the skills necessary. This will eventually lead to confusion for the dog as there will be gaps in its understanding and education. Trying to do too much, too quickly for the dog is likely to end up in frustration when that plan doesn’t work. Instead, a methodical step-bystep approach should be applied, whereby you only move on to the next stage once the previous stage is completed. This requires a degree of self-discipline.

Heelwork is one of the most important foundations of gundog work.

Reward the puppy for incremental changes in behaviour to speed its learning.

Trainers who are familiar with the concept of clicker training will have an advantage here, as they work at noticing and rewarding small increments of behaviour change. The dog receives lots of very small ‘wins’ along the way to reaching the eventual fullyshaped desired behaviour. The important aspect is not upping the criteria too quickly to get to your goal. For example, if you want a young puppy to sit on a placeboard that he has never seen before, you would firstly click and reward the dog for just being near the board. Next, you might withhold the click until the dog looks at the board. Then you might click when the dog puts his nose on the board. After that you could wait so you only click when the dog places a paw on the board, and so on. Until eventually, after several sessions, you will have a puppy that can go and sit on the placeboard. The dog is happy to do this work as it is being rewarded for all its attempts along the way, and there is no long period when the dog is confused as to what is required.

Breaking down your training into small achievable tasks in this manner will help you to reach your larger goals. Using a method such as a checklist, where you tick off a certain number of repetitions of a key task, is a simple way of ensuring that you don’t rush through the core skills, and that you have done an adequate number of rehearsals of these behaviours before moving on to more complex tasks. It is also a very satisfying way of achieving little wins. For example, with a young dog I might start the process of teaching her to ‘lock on’ when I throw a mark. This means holding her visual focus on the dummy when it lands and keeping that focus until she is sent. With my checklist approach to training, all I have to do is go out and practise my ‘locking on’ exercise once a day for four days out of seven. I will tick off each time I have done this task, and I might make comments on how the dog is relating to the exercise. Progress is made this way, simply through repetition.

KEEPING THE FIRE BURNING

Get help with larger projects and approach them in a methodical way.

A friend came over to help me clear a large pile of tree branches and brashings from the paddock, where we had felled a couple of trees. The area needed to be prepared ready to sow with cover-crop seeds. There was a huge volume of material to remove, and I had been trying to drag large branches off the ground myself and hide them in the undergrowth, but my friend suggested a fire would be better to get rid of everything properly. I was dubious that burning was going to be effective, especially when the wood was so fresh and green. But she reassured me that it would work well, and showed me how to start and build a fire effectively to create maximum heat. I was keen to learn some new skills. But what I learned along the way was not just about building fires...

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