Goodsen,

When I brought my dog home from his training, it was recommened to me by the trainer that I head to the Bong Rec area in Wisconsin as they allow bird training. The trainer even said that i could order the birds through him and to let him know when I was going up there and he might come out and show me a few more things. I will have to try the wing on a stick trick to see how my GSP does. My next question is this. I have been working with him for about an hour a night on whoa and heel/come. Should I be spending more time on these or is an hour a day plenty? New to the bird dog family. EJ

In my opinion,too much time is worse than too little.Gets to be a drag for the dog. Normally my dogs picked this up fast.I always concentrate on the hunting,after all thats what you got him for.Probably the most important thing is too spend time in the field.

i'd say, that maybe you need not to train quite that long. when the dog does the command right, stop and work on the next command. ALWAYS, stop on a good note and put the dog up before he gets tired of the training and while his tail is still wagging. for birds, maybe you could use some homing pigeons. it doesn't take much to keep afew in the back yard, and you can reuse them over and over when you are trying to work with a pup. i use pigeons some.

EJ,

One hour a day IMO is to long. I feel you can train for 15-20 minutes a day and that is plenty of time. The thing is you have to stop before your dog gets bored. Short time with good concentration is better then a long time with marginal concentration. One question is does the dog retreive to hand? If not make sure you work that in with come and whoa. Play and make it fun. The dog is still a pup mine is 2 yrs and it is just getting out of its puppy stage. Working on the dog to be steady you need live birds and a check cord start the dog quartering run him were the bird is planted( make sure it is dizzied) when the dog slows grab the check cord for allowing him not to grab the bird. Don't pull and slowly walk up check the cord. Now you can work on you dogs point carefully reposition him to the correct posture. I would recomend you go to the NAVHDA site and get the green book. It is a step by step book on how to work with a versitale dog. Work slowly with the pup and enjoy him.