Ultimate Guide to Bird Dog Training

A Realistic Approach To Training Close-Working Gun Dogs For Tight Cover Conditions

Jerome B. Robinson

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493083848
• Edition: 1

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BIRD DOG TRAINING explains how to train a bird dog to hunt at a pace that suits a man walking, and to point and hold birds with all the elegance and style of a field trial champion. It combines successful traditional methods with modern electronic techniques to show how the nation's top professional gun dog trainers develop reliable hunting dogs that are easy to control, exciting to watch, and stylish on point.

Topics covered include:
Electronic training aids
Selecting and starting pups
How to prevent gun shyness
Backyard bird dog practice
Using your dog afield for the first time
Teaching dogs to quarter ahead of the gun
Using the wind to your advantage
And much more

The author has traveled around the United States for more than thirty years studying how professional trainers develop the most dependable and enjoyable hunting dogs, and passing that information on to readers. In this invaluable volume, he provides everything the sportsman or -woman needs to know to train pointing dogs for hunting in the close-cover conditions found in most parts of the country today.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 E-Collars: The Electronic Leash
• 2 Don’t Buy Mail-Order Dogs
• 3 Start with a Pup
• 4 Puppies Should Learn to Point Before They Learn to Run
• 5 How to Prevent Gun Shyness
• 6 Tone of Voice
• 7 Four Lessons Every Dog Must Learn: Come, Sit, No, Heel
• 8 Stop to Flush
• 9 The Early Months
• 10 The Backyard Bird Supply
• 11 How to Build a Callback Quail Pen
• 12 Pigeons: The Ideal Training Birds
• 13 The Harnessed Quail
• 14 Backyard Bird Dog Practice
• 15 First Time Afield
• 16 Second-Year Madness
• 17 Teaching the Dog to Quarter Ahead of the Gun
• 18 The Time to Teach the Dog to Whoa
• 19 A Trick That Makes Him Whoa with a High Tail
• 20 The Crucial Moment
• 21 Bird Work—At Last!
• 22 Use the Wind to Your Advantage
• 23 Steadiness to Wing
• 24 The Importance of the Stop to Flush
• 25 Steadying to Multiple Flushes
• 26 Retrieving: The Force Method
• 27 Steadying to the Shot
• 28 Backing Another Dog’s Point
• 29 How to Establish Artificial Training Coveys
• 30 Transition to Wild Birds
• 31 The Beeper and The Bell
• 32 Don’t Let Your Hunting Companion Ruin Your Dog
• 33 Hard Mouth—Easier Prevented than Cured
• 34 Be a Buddy as Well as a Boss
• 35 Your Kid Can Be Your Best Assistant
• 36 If the Dog Doesn’t Point, Don’t Shoot
• 37 Pre-Season Conditioning for You and Your Dog
• 38 What Not to Feed Your Dog
• 39 How to Ship Dogs Safely by Air
• 40 How to Build the Ideal Dog Kennel
• 41 How to Build a Lifetime Dog Crate
• 42 Don’t Let Your Dog Die of Snakebite
• 43 So, You Want to Have Puppies