Training Methods

[RuarkReader]

I finally bought a female black Lab puppy after losing my black Lab Jake four years ago.

Anyway, I never cease to be amazed at ideas on dog training methods. Today, my veterinarian's assistant (who is also a trainer) told me when my puppy jumps up on her hind legs to paw at my waist I should just turn my back on her. To do anything else gives her attention and "reinforces the behavior".

My own thought, was that the best way to discourage that behavior, was to grab her front paws and bump her chest with my knee. I've also found that nothing works so well in house breaking a dog as holding a dog's nose near their accident, whacking the floor behind them with a rolled up newspaper, and saying, "No!"

Are today's ideas on training getting a little "out there", or am I being old-fashoned and cruel?

[deerhunter338mag]

I think it's becoming a little latte with dogs personally, I'm sure there is some great training ways out there but the new generation of modern people where men like men and women like women and dogs are the new "kids" it's just a bit out of control IMO.

[mchughcb]

I took my dog to puppy school. Got the videos all that crap that I never had 30 years ago when i got my first dog. Anyway after a few months I got a police dog trainer over. He threw all that crap out. Got a choke chain and had the dog under control in 5 minutes. He said there are too many new age pussys advising people on dog training these days.

[dinsdale]

But it's so easy on TV.

[Corjack]

what worked well on one dog is not always the same. Potty training my last dog, when she had an accident on the floor, I made her go in a portable kennel, and stay for an hour, before letting her out. When I tried this with Sophie, she would bite me, and then manure on the floor anyway.

[skeetshot]

Just as many dog personalities there are, and as many owner types, three times that are the types of training methods.

[Lovedogs]

I have good experience with http://obediencematters.com they are all about to train your dog as good as possible.

[mchughcb]

Always the same. When I see those trainers they are with a dog breed high on the intelligent scale. Never see them with a thin dachshund lol!

[SPEEDY]

I took my dog to puppy school. Got the videos all that crap that I never had 30 years ago when i got my first dog. Anyway after a few months I got a police dog trainer over. He threw all that crap out. Got a choke chain and had the dog under control in 5 minutes. He said there are too many new age pussys advising people on dog training these days.

Damn strait, people at the dog park keep asking me why my dogs are so well behaved and can do so many tricks, I don"t tell em its due to the carrot and the stick method.
The carrot being liver treats to reinforce good behavior that got weened to pats and a good pup, the stick was, well a stick when they were really really bad and the best way is to grab em by the scruff of the neck and growl at them, same as they do in a pack.

[stokesrj]

"Training" means very different things to different people. My Grandfather was a renowned bird dog trainer and maintained some of the best kennels of highly capable bird dogs in our area, which spanned several counties. This was back when there were enough Bob White Quail in Florida that we felt a day with less than 20 coveys pointed was a bust. My grandfathers regiment of training consisted of some very rudimentary obedience training and then breaking the young dog to wing, (I never liked that term, breaking), shot, and retrieve to hand.

After this was accomplished, which usually took about 4-6 weeks he then put the young dog with an experienced dog to teach them how to handle a quail properly. Some dogs learned really quickly, some more slowly, but they didn't last to long if they failed to show promise. He always had multiple prodigies, so wasting time on one that was dubious was not tolerated.

My Grandfather liked big running dogs that were finding the coveys out there several hundred or even a thousand yards in front of us. He had a Quail Buggy with a high seat so we could see the dogs work across the big palmetto flats as we slowly drove the edges or trails. I, on the other hand, liked close working dogs that we would put down after the initial covey was flushed to hunt down the singles.

After my grandfather died, I realized how much I had failed to learn from him, and how much I had relied on his guidance in training my dogs. I wasn't that successful for a dozen years or so. But then I became determined to find a way to succeed and doubled down on my efforts. I also began field trialing my dogs and found one with some real promise, Renegade Jack.

Jack was an English Setter from some of the best blood lines in the shoot to retrieve competitions. He was fast, very fast and would kill himself rather than let his brace mate beat him to the first quail. He was intelligent, muscular, had a good nose and just a drive that put him above other dogs, he also had style.

I campaigned Jack for two years, sent him to Montana each summer to work the young birds there and then road harnessed him every day when he was in Florida. That means hooking him up to a four wheeler and letting him pull part of the weight of the vehicle as he ran in front of it for 5 or 10 miles a day. I also shot several thousand quail that Jack had pointed and then retrieved. Jack had heart, but he lacked personality, I was only there to take him hunting, training, or competitions. He could care less about me, or anyone else, he simply saw people as a means to take him to what he loved to do, find quail, point them, retrieve them. Jack did well in the NSTRA field trials and finally made it to a national champion in 2002.

Registered Nbr: 1511887
Owner: BOB STOKES
Registered Name: RENEGADE JACK
Callname: JACK
Breed: English Setter
Region: FL
Sex: M
Date Whelped: Wednesday, April 07, 1999
Sire: RIVER RIDGE JOHNIEJACK
Dam: TOMOKA'S STOKELY NIKKI

Number of Times Open Champion: 1
Date of Championship: Sunday, May 05, 2002
Total Open Points: 23


This is one of my favorite pictures of Jack, he is pointing a covey of quail on the Susina Plantation in Georgia while another national champion Rhett, a Llewellyn setter is honoring his find. That made me smile.

The second picture is of poor quality but it is with Jack and Rhett after a day of quail hunting on the Florida, Georgia line, with a limit of twelve birds taken in Georgian and 12 in Florida the same day. He was killed the following day by a diamond back that was 7' 9" long and weighed 19 pounds minus his head.

[SPEEDY]

My grandpa had a different method to train sheep dogs, let em run 1 pup with 2 good dogs, tie a 1m length of chain with a weight on the end to their collar to pull em up and if they went running off on their own, biting sheep or chasing rather then rounding, he would put a load of .22 rat shot up their arse.
Hard old fuzzy bunny, but damn he had some good working dogs, I just wish he was better at breeding them as he would get 1 maybe two pups to work and try and give away the others but I would always wind up with the job of shooting the last 3 or 4.
I had to volunteer, if I didn't his method was a wack with a hammer and toss em in a dam.

like I said, hard hard old man.

[stokesrj]

I added the pics of Floirda Quail Hunting to the above reply.

[thechamp]

Excellent story there Robert. Thanks for sharing that one with us. I'd love to hunt quail in a place that had that many birds. Even in some of our quail pastures here they don't come close to that many. They are an animal that I really like to just sit and watch as the mom and her babies make their rounds. Very peaceful/tranquil.

[secondtry]

Speedy's Grandpa should be around to train modern humans.

Reckon the "hammer and dam"technique would have a positive impact on the reverse evolution of humanity that is currently gaining pace. Might run out of dams, but we can sort that out as we go along

http://www.fetchpup.com and the book of the same name were a big help to me. Replicate the social structure that dogs are wired for - a pack with a leader, and it all gets a lot easier. Of course that statement presumes that the human is the leader, which is often not the case