hello everyone, i just wanted to write and find out my pup and my status so far. he is 11 weeks old and ive had him now for 4 weeks. so far here are some of the things he knows and does. he knows his name, he knows "here" (he picked that up better than come for some reason but that's okay), he knows "sit",he knows "kennel",he is pretty good w/ "fetch" though sometimes he wants to run past me and run around a while., he knows "u want something to eat", lol.. we are working on "get down", and he knows "NO" though he doesn't want to listen to that to much. i tried working on heel but that's not happening yet, not even close. hes also not crying anymore when he eats or goes on walks, in fact he loves the walks that's his best part of the day. he has a pretty good nose on him already.[/align]now for something im a little worried about is it seems he is really scared of loud noises, someone is building a house by me and the nail guns were going off and he freaked out about it, i hope that's not going to be a problem later on.[/align]now what i want to know are we on schedule or are we behind. im really wondering what should be my next thing to try to work on. we are starting obedience classes next month so that will help w/ some things also. [/align]does anyone have any thoughts. thank you oh he is an english pointer if that matters any[/align][/align]

Sounds like your doing great.Don't go crazy with training, the walks are the best thing. Expose him to everything you can, People, other dogs, water rock walls etc. don't hack him with "here" just let him romp around. Do the puppy class{it sounds corny but it's good for him} Get this book http://www.swanvalleypress.com/top.html Have fun and good luck

You are fine. The learning process is long. It takes awhile for a dog to learn a command. I have a 5 1/2 month oldenglish setter and she is about where you are. She's at the point where she won't listen off leash but on leash she's fine.

There are a few things I do to teach my dog. First, english pointers and setters are not natural retrievers. Some people don't mind though, some people do force fetching. I'm one of the first but here is what I do, I have a long leash. I toss a toy (bumper) just far enough for the dog to run and get it and still within reach of the leash. If she doesn't come I reel her in.At night I use my hallway with all the door closed.

She has been on the chain gang for a while but stopped as the time for her to calm down has gone down drastically. So, here is what I do. I take her for a run for an hour and let her burn up energy. Then I do a 15min to 30min training session depending upon how quickly she does it, ie. we don't stop until she does what I want her to do. Mainly working on whoa and heel.

When I feed the dog, I woah her. She is steady. Two blows from the whistle and I let her go.A week of this then I started useing the command lead although I still do it. She's been doing fine during training session for her age.Now, when she's running too far away, 2 whistle blows calls her to me. I stop training session when I can woah her, walk in a 5' circle around her, then call her to heal. Then I do a heal - woah combo till I reach the car. ie, I woah her then walk ahead abit then heel her.

For heeling I use a command lead. Its heavy braided rope that you can buy at Lion County Supply (www.lcsupply.com). On days she won't woah, I'll tie it around her belly also, so I can handle her better. You may wanna use gloves as the rope will burn you. This as opposed to a choke collar. The command lead pinches instead of choking the dog.

OB classes are good but you may wanna tell the instructor to teach the dog woah instead of sit and stay. Waterfowl dogs sit and stay. Pointing dogs woah. If the dogs on point, you woah him and not sit and stay.

As for the nailing gun, I don't know what to tell you but try to keep the dog away from the sound till you introduce the gun. You should be introducing the dog to birdsabout now. Get his prey drive going. You should be seeing his prey drive developing. After a few birds, fire a .22 blank and check his reactions. If he reacts then put away the gun and take it slower with a toy cap gun. If not, then fire a few more until he associates the noise with birds. You can also have a friend to fire the .22 blank for afar (around 150 yards) then walk closer and closer each time a bird flushes to fire the gun if the dog don't react.

Don't worry as my dog is not perfect either. Whenever I call her, she comes and just stay out of my reach. When woahing her, she will get distracted easily but she knows she cant get away so she just stands there looking which I then can walk around her then I have to do it again. Other times she gets frustrated and starts playing with the command lead then whines and jumps on me. Heeling she's always getting distracted by floating leaves, feathers, little pieces of trash, etc. A slight tug will get her attention back.

Isn't it a wonderful time? You should start seeingthe dog in the puppy. Train it properly and you'll have yourself an awesome dog. Good luck and don't let the puppy drive you to hysterics

A few suggestions

1) Patience is your number one key to success. Your puppy will still be a puppy for many months to come. Let him be a puppy. Sounds like you are having some fun and he's learning in the process. Just remember not to push anything. I have a dog that is nearly a year and a half old, but I still call him a pup, and I still let him be a pup some.

2) Fix that fear of noises, quick. You don't him scared of loud noise, plain and simple. When you feed him, clang things around and talk loudly (but nicely) and excitedly to him. Make noise with a metal feed pan, whatever. Just get him to like the noise. If you don't get him use to noise, I don't see how holding off until you fire a gun will fix anything, except that he will be a little more mature and sure of the world. That's another thing, win his trust. When he is a little bit older and sure of his surroundings and you, have someone walk off and shoota capgun some distance off while you are with the pup. You might encourage him, or possibly make no reaction at all to the noise. I can see both working. I don't think you need to do anything fancy to fix his shyness yet. Just let him be a pup, and I think he'll be fine. Good luck.

thank you everyone. and im not being hard on him, i know he is a pup, but this is new to me and i just want to give him the best chances and train him right. he is my buddy i cant believe how attached i am to him already. tonight he had the night off, we just played around the house and he got a bath.(which he loved it).
this weekend im going to get him on some birds somehow, he already goes after the yard birds and such, but im going to see if i can take him to place w/ some birds and see how he acts. also i was wondering if getting a bumper w/ feathers on it would be a good idea? would that be good for a pointing dog? well again thank you , i was just checking on our status and see if we werent too far behind. im sure ill have a ton more questions, this MB really helps me out

Good for you. I am going to a game farm this Tuesday and to a national forest this weekend to get some grouse for my pup. If I can't get wild grouse, the game farm will have chukars.

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Get the smallest bird you can. A pheasant at that age will still look like a turkey to him. Last weekend a heron flushed from a ditch behind my dog. The heron - bigger than her - spooked her and she jump five feet, she looked back to see what made the sound, then gave chase.

I will be taking my .22 and .410 shotgun with me. She has been exposed to 20 ga at about 100' distance at a training seminar. First shot she ignored, second shot she looked at the direction of fire but again no reaction. When she flush a sparrow last weekend I fired the .22 and no reaction. This weekend my plan is; setting the chukar first and letting her find it by smell. Flush it and chase with no shots. The second and third will be shooting the .22. Then the forth will be the shotgun and see from there.

Getting a bumper with feathers can only help with retrieving. Just make sure she doesn't grab it and start tearing the feathers off.

wow that's pretty good for that age. we don't start much training until our beagles are somewhere around 16 to 20 weeks. just keep the training fun for you and the dog and you'll be surprized how fast they learn. good luck

Damn Damn. Sorry PA Gobbler, I keep thinking your pup is almost as old as mine. At 3 months, just getting him on birds is fine. The more birds, the more drive you create in him. Just get the smallest birds you can. You can also fire the cap gun as it isn't all that loud but produces that pop. As for training do you use a chain gang setup? That will help. Also, at that age, whenever my dog pulled on the leash, I would tug him back. The harder she pulled the harder I tugged. She eventually got it. Thatlead tothe command lead.

Just an update. Went grouse hunting but didn't find any. Went to a game farm with my sister and her friend and they brought two other non-hunting type dogs, one was an eight year old golde with bad hips and the other was a whippet. It was a fiasco but I was able to watch my puppy work. She is not gunshy. Hooray! Fired 4or 5 .410 shells over her as she waschasing chukars. She scent pointed. The last bird she pointed twice ( I missed horribly).On her last point, she sniffed around with her tail going 80 mph then stoppeddead. Nose at 4 o'clockand tail at 10. Her range seems to be about 100' with sometimes she likes to run as far as 150 yards. But she always come back with the whistle. Ran her 2 days prior in a national forest. First day, for five hours and she was still wanting to go for more.

Today, she pointed at a tiny bush right at my feet after sniffing around the area. The bush couldn't hide a grasshopper. While she was pointing and me scratching my head, a rabbit flush 10' to the side and ran behind her.

The way she worked, me finger pointing then the dog taking off in that direction, and always trying to stay ahead of me quartering makes me excited about the years of hunting to come with her.

Mite- sounds like you had a really good time, thats great. and also seems like you have a great pup. im sure youll have tons of fun w/ her in the next upcoming years.
w/ my pup no i havent done the chain gang but im planing on it, i should have done that first. yeah i know he is only 3 months and im not expecting much yet. ive had him out looking for wild birds 5 days since last fri. and for the life of me i cant find him any, what got me mad after i put him in after a walk w/ him i went back out to the same area to do some scouting for bow hunting and right past where we walked i flushed 3 grouse.. ugggghh oh well thats how it goes..
now this is what i did, it might not be the best thing but i got a grouse wing and some grouse scent from LCS and put it on a fishing rod and had it in a bush and had my dad stand away w/ the rod and i led him to it, well once he got wind bam he just started pulling so hard at it and once he got close to it my dad yanked it upwards, and he was so excited he wanted that wing so bad.. now he didnt point he just took off after it.. then we teased him w/ it so he couldnt get it and then he went into a point, i praised him and put the wing away.. so i dontknow if thats good or not but to me it seemed like he is into birds or least the smell. im going to keep working on him and also keep trying to find him birds, but im not going to worry too much till i get him trained w/ woah and heel..

There are differing opinions on the wing+string trick. Some people like it alot, others say it's just used to see the dog pointing. I used it once or twice then put it away as it showed the 'form' of my puppy's point. Some people say it teaches the dog to creep. I don't have an opinion either way. My puppy creeps when sight pointing but with scentlocks up and won't move until the bird moves or like last Wednesday, rabbit bolts. Something I have to correctlater.

I wouldn't worryabout teaching 'woah' or 'heel' as the first priority would be getting birds for the dog. You will start to notice things about your dog. Like if the pup stares at birds, chases birds, etc. My pup likes to playwithother dogs alot but recently she's been staring at birds more than playing. That's why Iknew I had to get her on birds quickly. Woah and Heel you can teach whenever and the chain gang is just suppose to make him more biddable.

At three months you can start conditioning him for later training, like after a long walk the last ten minutes, tug gently on the leash if he pulls too hard. Before he eats, make him stand still. Stuff like that.

I would be interested to know how far your pup ranges when off leash. English Pointers rule field trials for a reason. They range futher than most gundogs, they have an excellent nose, and they can go all day full bore. For some people, the EP are too intense. I've heard GSP owners call all-age stakes EPs too intense for their liking. But it all comes down to genetics. Some EPs hunt close. But if your dog like running big, then you're in for a treat (he'll find alot of birds) and alot of exercise (running to the points). I use to hunt behind an EP who won puppy stakes and she would flat out run and run all day long.