Now that Homer has been through his first year of hunting dog training and a full hunting season I’ve slacked off on his training. He is doing exceptional and now just needs a dog training “tune-up” a couple times a week. On weekends I’ll take him to a large open area and work the “Double T”. The far end of the T is set at 200 yards and sides are 30-50 yards off the main leg. I place 2 bumpers at each point and play dealers choice. This hunting dog training drill really gives him a work-out because of the distance.
One day during the week Homer gets 15-20 marked retrieves. Most of the marks are doubles and at least one triple. One “problem” that popped up this hunting season was doubles. If I shot a bird while Homer was on a retrieve, he would break off that retrieve to get the new downed bird.
To solve this problem, I throw a dummy send Homer off, then throw a second dummy in his path as he’s going for the first retrieve. If he tries to get the second dummy first, he gets nicked told “Back” and made to pick up the first dummy down. It took about a dozen of these corrections for him to get it.
Another thing I did was take him to an area where I could shoot, I’d throw a dummy and send him off. Then I’d fire a shot when he was about ¾ of the way to the dummy. If he stopped, or even looked back, again he was nicked and told “Back”. Once he had this gun dog training drill down pat with dummies, I started throwing a dead pigeon in place of the second dummy.
The pigeon really gets him fired up so it took a few more corrections for him to go to the dummy first. I’m fairly certain he has it down now, I even got a friend to release a live pigeon’s and shot them as Homer was making a retrieve on a dummy. As of right now he completely focuses on his first retrieve.
Joe Dynarski
