GUN DOG's "Embarking Together" Episode 3 - Spring

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 things with the training along with his obedience still is, like, a fetch. You know, I started with just getting him to have fun and fetching the ball or a bumper and just within the last couple of weeks overlaying an e-collar with him coming back to me. You know, still trying to make sure he's having fun, but I want him to understand as well that he's got to bring whatever, you know, he's bringing it back to me when I ask. And yesterday, I actually got ahold of, or a few days ago, I got ahold of some old birds I had shot that were in the freezer and so I introduced him to those. It's a partridge and a woodcock and he actually really, really liked them. So, he sniffed them and then was going wild and wanted to take them right out of my hand and I throw him a little bit and he went right after them and it took him a little bit to get used to them. He was kind of just playing with it on the ground for a while, but the small, the woodcock, he handles a lot better than the partridge. The partridge, he still likes to play with a little bit or just grab it by the tail feather, but he's grabbing it and coming back. So, I was, when I had 110% dedicated myself to this, one of my biggest decisions was saying, am I going to do a beeper or am I going to do a bell? And I love the old school bell idea, you know, of, you know, whenever I hunted up where our camp is up in the kingdom, you know, I don't see a lot of bells up there. I don't see a lot of beepers up there. I see a lot of bells and I just think of this, you know, way back in the day when my grandparents and great-grandparents were hunting these birds, like they were running dogs with bells. So, I decided to get him a bell and I got him a separate collar, a leather collar with a nameplate on it and everything like that. So, he came in, I threw the collar, I threw the bell on the collar and I threw the collar on him, not really thinking, and he turned and that bell made a noise and he was not about that life. He wanted, he was so, he got so afraid of that bell and I instantly felt like crap because I'm like, oh, I don't want to. So, I had to tape the whole bell up inside, you know, and had to get him used to wearing it and then I slowly, and I think last week, on the, towards the end of our last, like I think it was like a two and a half mile walk we did with him, towards the end of that, I ripped all the rest of the tape off and he was fine. He ran around the whole rest of the walk with it. And now that he's associated, because I don't put that on him unless we're going in the woods, and now he's associated that sound because I grabbed it the other day and it just made a sound and he started going nuts, like he thought we were going somewhere and that's what I really wanted. I wanted him to know that, like when his e-caller comes on or that bell comes on, he knows he's about to go do something fun. So, he gets excited and he lets you put it on. I just want him, you know, it's like a nature walk in the woods and I just really want him to get used to the woods, used to his bell and I really want, like back there, he was kind of lagging behind and I'm calling him because I want him to get out in front of me and really, you know, start to explore more out in front of me. That's really what I want to try to do while I'm out here. Topper, here. Good boy. Get over here. Stay over here. Get over here. So, we've gone back from doing the regular, you know, just everyday retrieving for us, working on that, to basic just walking around in public, trying not to lunge at people or bark at people or other dogs because she's just, she doesn't realize, she doesn't know how to control her excitement yet. And we also got to just keep telling ourselves, like she's only five and a half, six months old, like still got a lot of growing, a lot of changes will happen and because we just try to hammer, hammer, hammer and it's like we can take this easy, you know, take it slow, take a step back and just kind of go roll with the punches and we'll figure it out along the way. It'll come with time, I'm sure. She's smart, she catches on quick and it's cool while we're going along because you can like just see it in her eyes, like I get this now, you know, it clicks and then she starts doing what you need her to do. Sometimes we do use an e-caller in case she's not listening. It's mainly for, you know, when she breaks. I don't want her to be able to do that when we're hunting and we have other friends with us that have loaded guns on them. We've realized with owning her, a lot of it is backstepping to realize like we've done a little too much. We're going too fast for her learning ability so we need to go back to the original steps. So one day I decided to go down to my parents house. They have a farm about an hour from here and I brought his 12 gauge with me and my dad shot around her a couple times and she was totally freaked out and then, you know, I came home. I told him about the experience, how I was a little bit nervous, like every time he shot she would just kind of jump and walk a couple of feet. So when I told him about it, he, you know, made me realize maybe we should start using something a little bit lighter like a 22. So we've been shooting the 22 around her and she doesn't, at this point, she's so used to it she doesn't even move. She just looks at us the whole time like, when can I go? Yesterday we shot just a skeet round out of the 12 gauge, probably like 20 yards from her, didn't even flinch. Yep. She's over it now, she's used to it, things are going well with that. We haven't gone back to the regular shells yet but we're hoping today might be the day to do that. These are the three decoys that I use. This one has like a little hole in here so I just kind of put some duck scent in. Hey, sit, sit. And Josh has his shotgun so he'll be shooting and usually I just go try to throw these. I'll hide this one. I feel like, I don't know, like all the stuff that I feel like, like when I came into this, what I thought I had to do, I don't have to do. Like it's really, it's been easier, I mean I'm not going to say it's easier, it's more, it's been time consuming but it's, it's not what I thought it was going into it. Like I thought like, you know, have the bird, like this is what you have to go for, smell this, go find that. That part of it is, it's ingrained, it's, it's just like the hand signals, like it was just, and it's very, like teaching her the hand signals was, was way easier than I thought. So, you know, spring came, she got introduced to water for the first time. During the ice out on Lake Champlain, we've only seen her like, she'd jump in, jump out, like we praise her, you know, it was, that's as far as we ever saw. So, you know, and she seemed to like it, she didn't have a problem with water, and then we went on this walk, you know, and it was the first time we've actually seen her swim, and it was pretty intense. We went out for a walk and there were geese swimming out in the river, and it was a big section of river, it wasn't a small river, and she jumped in and she wouldn't recall, and she swam, and it was probably, she chased those geese down, hundreds of yards down the river, down the river, and there was nothing we could do, it was way over our heads, cold, and I thought for sure, like I was running down the bank, calling for, they were saying up, up river, just in case she decided to come back, and the geese eventually swam off, or flew off, because she got real close, she got in a sand bar, and she got her footing and jumped, and they realized she was closer than they thought she was, they took off, and she kept swimming. It was kind of, it was terrifying. We were all having panic attacks, it was, it was definitely the most nerve-wracking experience we've had with her so far. So since then, like, you know, been introducing water more to her, she loves water, obviously, that's, yeah, she's not scared of it, starting on water retrieves, and it came pretty natural to her, you know, we do, have to do the tweaking, you know, of course she brings it, she'll drop it like somewhere in front of me, doesn't bring it completely to you, but she has the idea, she's got the idea down, like, what she's supposed to do. So this is gonna be Cree's first time with a duck dummy, we're just getting her introduced to water retrieving, we've done some just regular dummy work with her, you know, small introductions, but this is gonna be her first time with a dummy, a real dummy. So we'll see how this goes, it's not gonna be perfect, probably not gonna be too pretty, but it's a start. Good. So I think I'm pretty happy with today, she's definitely has a drive to retrieve in water, that was not an issue. She does have a fascination though with the dummy and bringing, finishing her retrieve with us, it's kind of turned into like her little game. This is gonna be something we're gonna have to work on, obviously, but the few retrieves we've done, she's gone after every one, she shows a strong interest in it, which is, it's good to see, and obviously she loves the water, so it's a plus plus, I think. But overall, it's a good day.