dog whistle test

[music] many people say you should always take a tennisball and a racquet when you go for a walk with your gundog. it is, they insist, a perfecttraining opportunity. top gundog trainer howard kirby has lots more to say on the subjectof tennis balls. we need our spaniels, all of our dogs reallyto enter cover in order to find game with a retriever to go and find it and with a spanielto go and flush and get in there. so we make the game enjoyable. we roll a tennis ballinto soft cover not too harsh cover at this stage otherwise there is a danger you willfrighten him. too many prickles in his face he might not want to go in there again. soit is a gradual build up again. what we did

was we put a ball into the cover, we justencouraged the dog to hunt, i did what we call clicked him off. i made a noise thatindicated that i wanted him to start hunting, so where is it then ... so he starts to huntand gradually over a period of months he gets familiar with that command and he thinks ohthere must be something for me to find, he starts to hunt and blow me he finds a tennisball. what happens is he thinks my dad is really great because every time he tells meto hunt i find a tennis ball. so if he tells me to hunt, then i am going to do it everytime. that is the secret. and we build that up so that thedog hunts for longer with less aids from you. he gets more powerful. he holds an area andenters cover and pick it up. what we also

do there is as soon as he has picked it uphe has to come out and deliver it to hand. so he comes out and retrieves, delivers thebird or ball to hand. we then develop that exercise up because more often than not aspaniel will be used for flushing and not for retrieving out of cover so much. so hegoes in to cover where there is no ball. bearing in mind we have conditioned him that whenyou say start hunting he starts hunting. so while he is hunting i flick a ball in theair, we fire a pretend shot, bang or fire a starting pistol and we are starting to simulatethe whole process, the process he will go through on live game in the future. so weare teaching him to sit to the flush, look and when we say get out, he will go out andretrieve.

howard runs mullenscote gundogs from lainsshooting school near andover in hampshire. visit mullenscote.co.uk. this series on gundogtraining tips is brought to you by skinners petfoods, maker of the field & trial rangeof gundog feeds. visit skinnerspetfoods.co.uk