An important element of obedience training for any retriever is what the English call ‘steadiness’, which quite simply means that if a bird drops out of the sky within inches of it’s nose and flaps around for several minutes, the dog does not move or make a sound.
To get a dog to this standard for the experienced trainer is relatively easy for a number of reasons.
Firstly, from an early age the dog is taught the meaning of obedience. It is advisable to start training pups at eight weeks to sit, stay, and come, so that by the time the dog is ready to learn its occupation in life it’s a far more enjoyable experience for both the dog and the handler.
Secondly, if you are intending to buy a dog as a hunting companion it is imperative that you make your selection from working stock as opposed to dogs from bench or pet lines. Unfortunately, from time to time owners who have not done their research into bloodlines, and sent their dogs away to be professionally trained, are disappointed when they are informed that their animal is not sufficiently ‘ birdy’ and therefore lacks the basic ingredients required of a working retriever.
Far too many owners can’t wait to teach their dog to retrieve, which if they have chosen their pup from a working background they don’t need to, as it was born a four legged retrieving machine! In fact, it is a complete waste of time and money to attempt to train a dog to retrieve until the dog is fully obedient, as once this has been achieved it simply becomes a matter of channeling its basic instincts into various abilities required of the complete gundog.
Since arriving in Virginia after training retrievers in England for many years I have noticed that the vast majority of American owners and handlers are satisfied to have a dog that does not break when marking the fall of a bird. In fact, prior to the US Retriever Team competing in Europe this year there were concerns that some of the American dogs would not be sufficiently steady when faced with the added temptation of so many birds and the occasional bolting rabbit.
So why is there a difference between obedience training of working dogs in the UK and North America? There are two fundamental reasons; the first is the difference between hunting methods and the second are the training methods.
In the British Isles the majority of hunting, or shooting as it is referred to, is driven game. Therefore most working retrievers are used to seeing vast numbers of birds in the air being shot and are taught from an early age that not everything that falls out of the sky belongs to them. Consequently a young dog may get only one retrieve a day during its first shooting season whilst the older dogs nearby will have ‘picked’ more than fifty birds.
Therefore the early training, after obedience, mainly concentrates on steadiness, whilst working individually or in a pack. For example, a shoot that offers the guns over 300 birds a day will pay at least 4 ‘picker ups’, as they are called, to work their dogs. Each handler will use at least 4 dogs that will sit still whilst the birds are shot during the drive and work individually on different retrieves once the shooting stops.
In the US where the birds are wild and there are strict limits, the American retriever is not put in the same situation with the result that the training methods differ. There is almost a reluctance to concentrate on steadiness at an early age as there is a concern that it will affect the marking ability and pace at which the bird is retrieved. This is understandable if the US hunter, who might have driven many miles to hunt pheasant or quail, shoots only one bird which can’t be found by his retriever because it can neither mark nor has the drive to force its way through thick cover.
Although basic heel work and responding to the recall whistle are taught at an early age the real emphasis with early training in North America is put on the dog’s ability to mark. The training is also conducted on a one on one basis, as opposed to several dogs attending the same session, and the methods and various pieces of equipment required to control these eager youngsters are not used in England.
The net result is that it is far more difficult to teach a dog to be steady after it has had numerous training marks rather than receiving a mark as a reward for not breaking in the first place. Furthermore, the dog is a pack animal and always looks up to the leader, so if you train with experienced dogs that never break, the young dogs copy the older ones and quickly become steady.
However, it is impossible to train more than one dog at a time if the other dogs in the class are not obedient and steady. Therefore, it is imperative that a young puppy learns the meaning of the word ‘sit’. It does not mean that the dog can creep forward 3 feet, neither does it mean the dog can wander off to sniff something interesting. What it does mean is that the dog does not move even if the handler is out of sight having gone for a coffee-or perhaps something stronger.
Likewise tremendous importance is placed on heel work when the pup is about ten weeks old. It is not acceptable just to be able to walk a dog off the leash if it walks ahead of the handler and is easily distracted. It has to be trained to walk actually touching the owner’s leg and is glued there even when changing directions every few paces.
Gamekeepers in the UK all need several dogs to do their job and whenever they introduce a puppy into the pack the young dog works out very quickly that the guy who gives the commands and feeds them is the overall leader, but there is also an older dog that you don’t mess with! It is fascinating to watch several trained dogs walking in a pack. They continually change places as they each want to be next to the leader and eventually the bolder dogs are on the inside and the more submissive ones are left on the fringe.
In summarizing, irrespective of whether you shoot driven game in England or hunt duck in America the hunter wants and needs the identical qualities in their retriever. How the dog is trained however will determine in the long run if your four legged companion is going to be a help or a hindrance to your hunting enjoyment.