First Dog?

Develop a Game Plan

ost pro trainers talk to a great number of people on the phone about training problems. Additionally, I get many visitors who come to my kennel in need of training help, and I also answer many questions about training sent by e-mail. And without a doubt, two of the main problems that I encounter in trying to help first-time trainers or new retriever owners are that they are either "still playing ball on the elementary school playground," or they are grinding their youngsters into the ground, expecting too much of them at too early an age.

 Those that are "play training" their retrievers usually have no real permanent plan for building a foundation for advancement; they're just tossing bumpers and doing what they have seen others do with their dogs. Let me explain.

 On the elementary school playground, you may have gone out and played football at recess or during gym class as a way to get some exercise, have fun, and learn a little about what the game was like. But, if you decided that you liked playing football and went out for the team in high school, suddenly you had a coach who taught you the fundamentals of how to actually play the game correctly.

 In elementary school, you learned about the game by simply going out and doing it, having fun, and copying what you had seen others do or on TV. At a more advanced level, the coaching staff has a game plan and begins to break the game down into its fundamentals and teaches each of them individually and incrementally. These fundamentals are put together in the form of a scrimmage to get all of the individual pieces to work together as a team. On Friday or Saturday, the team tests what it has learned by playing against another team.

 This is how we should train our young hunting retrievers - with a game plan. To be successful, a dog must be started with fun lessons, but as he develops, the training must expand from those play-training lessons into incrementally learned fundamentals.

 Now let's look at the other extreme. Last summer, a man in need of some training help for his young Labrador came to visit. He brought along his teenage son. My first impressions of the fellow by his outward appearance and demeanor was that he was retired military. His son, who I would have guessed to be about 16, stayed somewhat in the background with his eyes generally cast downward, not having much to say; he only extended his hand to shake mine when I offered it.

 After the normal greetings and discussing his trip, we got around to talking about training his dog. He said, "I will accept nothing less than perfection from him. I honestly don't think he is capable of performing as I expect, and if you feel the same way after looking at him, I will get rid of him and get another dog." He also volunteered that his training had broken down when he was working on teaching the dog to do triples and run lines, stop on a whistle, and cast. As a matter of course, I asked how old his Lab was- not quite six months!

 People like this who push their pups far too hard, too fast, and at too young an age - often without good fundamental training - wonder why everything falls apart. I have noticed that it is most often the first-time owners who get enamored with watching the youngster absorb training and progress - and then overdo it. I find that new owners tend to skip fundamentals in favor of getting right into the cool stuff. As an aside, it was also pretty obvious that the fellow with the Lab had raised his kid in much the same manner. The young man was browbeaten to the point of being afraid to be outgoing; he would rather have remained silent than to have said or done something wrong. Too bad.

 So, although a first-time trainer with a young dog should always have his eye on his ultimate goal and have a game plan, young dogs need fun lessons to learn the game. These then develop into a solid foundational training built incrementally so that it won't topple at some point. Like I have said before, you have to dig the hole and pour the concrete before you can build the building.

 Here are some guidelines to help you and your retriever pup make that crucial transition from play training to incremental training: 

 First, your pup needs a "safe" place where no corrections of any kind will be made. Probably the best "safe" place is his crate because it will be his home in your house, and it will travel with him in your vehicle to be his home in a motel or wherever your adventures take you. Also, he is not to be shoved into his crate as punishment for misdeeds; it is to be a place where he can feel safe and comfortable at all times.

 Second, it is imperative that your dog knows and responds to his name. At first glance, the indication of your dog not knowing his name may seem silly, but I am simply amazed at the number of dogs that come to my kennel for training that really don't respond to their name! And, I don't mean they just ignore me - that's different. They simply don't respond, as if they don't know their name.

 It seems simple enough to use your pup's name to get his attention every time you make him sit before putting his food down, when you call him, tell him to go in his crate or kennel, whatever. Just use his name a lot, and you will be reinforcing his conditioning to recognition of his name. You should be able to tell when he understands his name when his attention is focused elsewhere and, when you call him, he responds by his head popping up and looking at you.

 By the way, please pick a name that both you and he can be proud of and that you won't be embarrassed using around a group of other hunters. If you name him Mack, don't let everyone in the family call him Punkin, or whatever. If you want him to be called Punkin, then by all means (and heaven forbid) name him Punkin.

Third, in all training, give a command one time and then always be prepared to make or help him comply. Do not get in the habit of giving commands several times, or your dog will get in the habit of performing on the second or third or fourth or twentieth time you give a command. Whether it is something simple such as learning to "sit" or "kennel" when he is told, or whether it is something complex such as a right- hand angle back cast, give the command one time and, once you are sure that he understands what is expected of him, make him or help him to do it correctly.

 This is one of the most common mistakes that trainers get in the habit of making. We all do it. So, try to remind yourself to avoid repeating commands from the outset.

Fourth, be consistent in the commands you give and the movements you make when you give a command. And don't beg him to perform. Teach him the correct performance and then each time you give the command, do it the same way with the same body movements - and expect compliance.

 I have found that inconsistency is a common problem when trying to instruct the owners of dogs that I've trained. First they tell him, "Fido, here"; the next time they call him, they say, "Fido, come here"; then it is, "Come here, Fido"; before long they are saying, "Come on boy, come on Fido, come here, good boy." This begging seems to get worse the farther away the dog gets from the owner. It seems most inexperienced trainers believe that when a dog gets off at a distance, he is out of their control; therefore, they have to request that the dog obey. And they also usually feel that they must raise their voice to get him to respond. So, be consistent with your commands and don't get in the habit of begging him to perform.

 Fifth, try not to get progressively more and more upset, shout louder, and get your dog even more excited, thereby compelling him to get even further out of control. In other words, calm down. No one understands better than I how difficult this can be, but don't raise your voice; don't let your blood pressure go off the top of the scale, it's not worth it. If you have an issue with your dog not responding to what he has been taught, put him away, take a step back, and think it out. There is always another day. He obviously has a "hole" someplace in his training, and all of the shouting in the world probably isn't going to convince him to respond to you. Get him under control, rethink what you have done, back up in his training however far you have to in order to fill in the gap, ask the help of a pro if you need it, and then continue.

 Sixth, always get your dog out of his kennel, his crate, or the truck under control. The first step in good -~ training is good control. When you get your dog out of his kennel or his crate put a lead on him and have him under your immediate control - he is being trained from the time he comes out until the exercises are done. Do not just let him out and allow him to run wild while you gather your equipment.

 I used to see this regularly at a particular pheasant club where I hunted. The hunters would pull up on a side road and turn their dogs loose to "run off some steam" and relieve themselves while the hunters got ready. Anyone driving past would have to be especially careful of dogs darting across the road from between the trucks. And many of the hunters seemed oblivious to the whole situation.

 Finally, when one hunter's pointer got killed, the owner of the club put out a notice asking everyone to watch out for the road, and to keep their dogs under control or in their trucks until they were ready to hunt.

 Seventh, praise should be limited and tempered. This is an often-overlooked one. Many dogs will perform correctly until they are praised, and then all bets are off - they break out of control. Some dogs simply can't handle the prosperity of getting praised. Much of this is the trainer's fault for too much praising, perhaps with too much exuberance. I notice that many owners of the dogs I work with try to
use lavish praise as a way to get their dog to remember them and like them again after having been away for several months. In reality, what this is doing is lowering the owner's standing in the pecking order. The dog senses that this person is trying to prompt him into play (which is exactly what subordinate animals do to get attention from the pack leader) and will take total advantage of the circumstances to begin testing the owner.

 Honestly, I believe that this is one of the major problems with dogs that will do excellent work for a trainer but when they go home, tell the owner where he can stick it! It isn't that the dog isn't well-schooled or that the owner doesn't know the commands or the movements expected, it's that through the enthusiasm of his praise, the owner is communicating that he is in a subordinate position to the dog. The dog picks up on this. So limit praise to really special times so that your dog knows that praise is something to work for. And keep the enthusiasm in check.

 Eighth, all correction must be applied only when your dog is caught in the act or when the misdeed has just taken place. And avoid correction if you feel yourself getting angry; at these times, it is likely that any correction or punishment dealt will ultimately have a counterproductive effect. The first goal in training should be to act (plan ahead and avoid possible unwanted behavior from developing) rather than to be forced to react (have to correct, punish, or patch up problems). Correction should always be in a manner that the pup understands, such as a shake of the muzzle, shake of the scruff of the neck, or picking him completely off of the ground by the scruff of the neck and skin in front of his tail and shaking. In severe cases, rolling him on his side or back followed by a vigorous shaking is called for. 

 And certainly never punish unless you are absolutely sure that he fully understood the meaning of the command and what was expected of him. Or that he knew full well that his misdeeds would result in correction but still made the choice of misbehavior.

 Never call your dog to you and then correct him; always be prepared to go wherever necessary to make a correction. All corrections should be made swiftly and without malevolence; the level of the correction must fit the level of the infraction. Try to keep in mind the maxim so often used by legendary former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden: "The purpose of discipline isn't to punish but to correct."

 Ninth, always build up training through teaching that gradually increases in difficulty, rather than testing on a task that your dog has never been taught, and then punishing him when he doesn't perform correctly. This is that game plan thing again. There is absolutely no quality of a hunting retriever's character that is more important than self-confidence. There is nothing that will kill a hunting dog's self-confidence faster than setting him up to fail by continually testing him on things that he likely cannot accomplish. Always plan everything for your dog's success, not to set him up for failure. If he does fail at something, step back and retrain on the previous step or steps and then move forward again, perhaps in smaller increments.

 Tenth, always plan beyond your immediate expectations - focus on your goal. Look ahead to what you hope to achieve and remember the success of everything you accomplish in your future training is totally dependant on what you are doing right now. Training a hunting dog takes dedication and a game plan. It is not something that you start today and then forget about, work on next Sunday all day long, let him sit for two weeks and grind him into the ground again with a marathon session - and then wonder why he doesn't perform as expected come hunting season.

 Likewise, astute trainers realize that every dog doesn't fit into a "pre-packaged" training program or fit predetermined timetables. Each session is planned around his dog and the results he hopes to achieve.

 Remember, what's inside of a trainer's head is more important than all of the training tools and training drills that have ever been developed. As George Bird Evans wrote in his classic Troubles with Bird Dogs, "There has to be a brain on both sides of the equation."

The End

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