GUN DOG's "Embarking Together" Episode 2 - Winter

For some reason that, you know, there's the image in my head of a German shorthair pointer. Set my heart on that and I lucked out and got Copper. I kind of want to prove to people, especially newer people that get into it, that you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to train your dog. You just have to spend probably thousands of hours to train them. There was a lot of things, a lot of questions, and in my mind, like I, you know, to start the training, I have to start, like, teach her, you know, to look for birds and what, but some of the things that I'm seeing is, like, I'm the one being trained. Some of the challenges of raising him in the wintertime, or the pup in the wintertime, is, I think it really cuts down on how much you can be outside, you know. For one, he's, with all these really, really cold days we've had, that really bad cold snap we had where, you know, at nighttime you're hitting 20, 25 below zero, you know, he can't be outside for that long, you know. And when he did go outside to go to the bathroom, he wanted to turn. He didn't venture too far from the door, you know, and it's just, it's, you feel cooped up in the house and, you know, he doesn't want to be cooped up. We don't want to be cooped up. I think those are the biggest challenges that I've had is trying to do the training we need to do and get him to exercise and, you know, run some of his puppy energy out is really difficult. We found it's difficult to do right now with the snow and the cold. Crate training, I think we lucked out on big time because the breeder didn't, you know, they didn't introduce him to a crate, you know, which, you know, that's fine. So the first introduction he had to a crate was when we put him in it, when we got him in the truck, when we first bought him and the first night was pretty rough. And then I think it was by the fourth or fifth night, he was only, he would cry when you first put him in and then he wanted to wake up. I mean, I work nights, so Colleen was taking him out at 4am and then that was it. And now he sleeps all night. It's fantastic. Last night he went running in there and I said, I said, copper kennel. And he went tearing around the corner of the bed, ran in his kennel, laid down, I shut the door and that was that. You know, he still listens to me and loves being around me. It's just he has formed this bond with her now that I think is really cool. My job isn't the same every day, so I can't have the same crate hours or, you know, same routine. So just him kind of having to learn to be flexible, I think, you know, he's doing a good job, but that's been the biggest thing for me is just making sure that he knows that just because I'm here doesn't mean I can, I can be paying attention to him all the time. I think the only kind of upside I would say to him being so young in the cold is that he's in that puppy phase where like he runs, runs, runs, right? Chases the ball for maybe 30 minutes and then naps for like two hours. So I can only imagine, you know, maybe if we did get him like in the fall and he could have been outside and then got cooped up for the winter, I just feel like that probably would have been worse. But definitely, you know, finding enough activities for him to do inside or very short excursions outside to tire him out has definitely been difficult, but I'm hopeful that, you know, by the time we get to that point where he really needs to be like running for like an hour or longer, that it'll be kind of warm enough that he can spend some more time outside. Bringing River into our home with another dog has been easier in some ways where, you know, we've already been through that puppy stage with no dog and it's nice to have somebody that she can get the energy out with, but when I'm trying to do basic commands and training her, it is really hard with another dog who is continuously trying to get her attention. But at the same time, she's a lot less stubborn than trying to train a beagle in my opinion. Yeah. She learns a lot quicker. Everything seemed to go smoother in my opinion than the first time around. Yeah, I think, you know, I always, I don't like to think about how it's the breed that's easier to train, but it might be true in Maybe just the male and female aspect of it. She just seemed to be a lot, a lot easier to do it with. I don't know. So most of the training that we have done is just basic obedience. She's 14 weeks old right now. And you know, everything you read online is so different. You know, some people say you shouldn't start doing retrieves right now. You should do one a day. But we've kind of just felt out what her personality is and tried to go with it from there. I tried to train her one new thing a week, but she knows how to sit. She knows how to lay down, but she doesn't like doing it for some reason. So I think we need to go back to that one for a week. She knows place. She knows stay. And I recently tried to start teaching her heal. But you know, the other thing we can go back about having another dog is that it's hard to teach her how to heal when we have a beagle that just wants to constantly go. So I realized we're probably doing a little bit too much going there. So I think we need to take a couple steps back, do lay down, and then start working with her by herself on a harness and do heal. I would say some interesting things that we're learning from her is that, you know, she seems to be a very emotional dog. She is extremely loving all the time. If you tell her she did something bad, she is so upset by it. Usually she goes over into the corner and puts her head up against the wall and you have to like, you know, give her a couple of minutes, come over and tell her that it's okay. Training Ranger, it was like he didn't phase him. Back to doing whatever and eventually he'd stop. But you wouldn't see that in him at all, like feeling guilty or sad. You say one thing like, bad dog, she's in the corner just waiting. Like, give her time, she'll come out. Yeah, I definitely noticed that her natural instinct is to please us. What I was looking for, I'm not sure if, you know, what in my mind is what I'm actually experiencing now. You know, like when they say that they have natural abilities to hunt, I don't know, I had no idea what that even meant. Like, do they retrieve? Are they able to just naturally know how to work their way through the woods and hunt with you? She's taught me a lot actually. A lot of times we go out on walks, she goes into the wind. So regardless if I'm wanting to walk over here and I'm like, well that makes sense. Like, she just taught me something. Like, they use their nose so they're looking for, they know what they're doing. One of the things I learned with her was she responds to the whistle. And just something that I started, like this double whistle and it, she stops on a dime. And a few of the walks we go out on, she was like, she would totally respond in a way like I didn't expect. Like, I've never had a dog do what she would do. She would go out and she'd stop dead, she'd turn and she'd look directly at me until I gave her some sort of, okay come or okay go ahead. And it was, it was surprising. There's a lot of stuff like I'm finding that, you know, I thought it was going to be a whole lot harder with training with like, you know, doing the basic things. So that natural ability comes in. Yeah, it's really ingrained. She knows what she's doing. And you know, like after having my first, so far, my first gun dog, I don't know if I'd ever do it any other way. Like, it's worth, like, it's worth getting, if you're going to use a dog like this for hunting purposes, there's a lot of genetics that goes in and that's what you pay for. One of the things I thought, like, you know, I want her to get excited over scent. Like, I want her to, like, smell things. I was like, you know, winter Vermont, this is going to be really difficult. Well, one of the interesting things that I learned that actually it's almost better because if there's snow on the ground, I can see if she's, if she smells a squirrel and she gets on a squirrel or if it's some other animal and I'm like, oh no, and I, you know, I don't acknowledge it. I'm like, no, we'll keep going. But then like, if she would see the tracks of a bird and I could see her like change a mood and I'd, you know, I'd give her positive reinforcement. Yes, this is, this is what you want to smell. This is what we're going for. And it's, it's, it's cool having that snow because I can see without snow, you don't know what they're going after. So it's kind of pain, it's painted a picture for me and I'm like, oh, this is kind of cool to be able to do. Like I'm able to see if she's on the right scent and not going after mice. Yep. Because she, yes, she's caught three mice so far. Yeah. She's a mouser. Yep. Now it's pretty cool to watch her out there in the woods when she gets on a scent. We, we were walking, just the two of us, she's a different animal with Piper and I out there than she is with Brian. She is very focused on the hunt with us. She, she'll smell all the different, you know, tracks and this and that, but she won't go very far. But watching her follow those exact tracks and seeing which ones she gets excited about and which ones she decides she has no interest in. So like one of the things for me that's intimidating is like I kind of feel like that maybe I won't be good enough for her. That's it's kind of intimidating. Like the training part and, you know, some of the things like that you read about and you watch. I hope to think that I'll be able to do, you know, do the right thing. Do right by her. Yeah.