Originally Posted by raptor5618

First I think you need to read everything you can about training. Then I would not even consider a collar until the dog is 6 or 7 months old. I found that if you do a good job before they are 6 or 7 months that you probably will not need a collar.

Given what seems to be inexperience at training a dog for hunting, I would probably think you are better off not getting a collar. So easy to ruin a dog with a collar to the point where the dog will not hunt. I think you are better off buying a long lead.

In my experience, keeping a pup in control at all times as it grows up give you a dog that is trained to respond to your commands because you always have it under control. If you train to where it does not realize it can disobey your command you have less need for a collar.

I think a collar if used appropriately, as a previous post said about reinforcing a command it knows is a good tool. However, I see far more misuses than positive uses. I used a pinch collar with studs on it to do the same thing to insure they come on command and walk right next to me when I tell them to heel.

In doing that you are insuring that they act like they cannot do as you command fast enough. I had collars back when tritronics first started making them. But as I got better at training I found that my last few dogs never even had the collar on.

If you train your dog that not listening is never an option you will not find your self using the collar to try and get your dog to listen to what ever command you are giving. If they do not immediately respond, you really have not trained them enough.

It really is so very easy to train the wrong thing with those collars that with your inexperience I think you are way more likely to teach teach the wrong thing with a collar than the right thing. I saw one dog that ran back to the owner and would not hunt because it got shocked when it was hot on the track of a bird. Just trained the dog that finding birds could be a negative thing.

Not sure what the current thinking is but my vet neutered very early on. I would say at maybe 7 or 8 months. I am not advising as your vet should let you know when but as I recall it was just after the dog went into heat for the first time. Male dogs were neutered before a year old as well.

I never had a dog that seemed to lose drive from being neutered and none of my dog got fat which is one other tale that I have heard. I think we need to leave breeding to the serious breeders who really want to improve the breed and insure our dogs are not going to breed out of lesser reasons. I would never have a male dog that is not neutered. I had one lab who was neutered later in life when I had a foolish thought that I was going to breed dogs but that dog was perhaps my best trained dog but still would run off the second he saw that I was not watching what he was doing. If I saw him getting ready to head out and told him to come back he would but if I was not watching him, he was out looking for the ladies. Never did it while hunting but at home he liked to take a stroll when the opportunity presented itself. Not one of my neutered dogs ever did that.