Burying the bird

Two ?s in one. First my three year old britt tries to bury the bird he retrieves. Second how do I teach him to hunt dead birds?

Okay, forget the burying the bird. That is irrelavant. What is relevant is he is not retrieveing correctly. That is go out, get it bring it back. Any varience for any reason is disobeying a direct order. It must be dealt with in this manner. Look in the previous answers and you will learn the correct procedure for retrieveing. Stick to it. If your dog varies it is not trained correctly. Go back to the basics and do it again. one of the biggest problems novice trainers have is saying "They do it pretty well." . You have to be honest with yourself and say "either they do it or they don't" . If they are not doing it, train the routine better. If they are doing it, my question would be "How can they retrieve a bird and bury it at the same time?" I don't mean to over simplify this but it is not complicated. Obedience bt definition means "do what you are told". If you do anything else you are not doing what you are told and you are not obeying.

Now, for hunting dead birds. I start this way. I use the bumper as the bird and while I'm drinking my morning coffee I make the dog sit by the table. I then go into the next room and hide it. I come back and say, dead bird, and encourage the dog to find it. The game should contiually get harder. Strong encourage ment during the search. Move it outside later on. Go to different locations. EVERYTIME the dog finds it there is great praise and reward. After a while "dead bird" is a command just as sit or stay is. An obeyed dog will do as it is told and will not stop until it has completed its task.

Again, if a dog understands the command, it hears the command, but does not obey a command, for any reason, he is not trained yet. Don't hurt him by giving him reasons to disobey. Help him by teaching him what he has to do in order to complete his task correctly and then rewarding him for it.

If you DEMAND 100 % from your dog, he will give it to you with out question. If you ask him meekly for 75% he may give you 50% which comes out as maybe he will or maybe he won't. Most dogs that are not obeying are the reasult of trainers that are too easily satisfied.

Terry Germany
JC&T Shooting Sports
griz43@pacbell.net
http://wilcoxwebworks.com/tg/

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