Meat Dogs

written by Butch Goodwin
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Northern Flight Retrievers  
The Retriever Journal Dec. '05/Jan.  06

Realistically, what does a true "meat dog" really need to know? No, I’m not talking about not training your dog at all and just turning him loose to use his natural instincts (we all see plenty of these "self-trained" dogs in duck blinds and CRP fields), and what follows isn’t meant to knock the sophisticated and have demonstrated on videos and at the field trials or hunt tests. But honestly, without getting your hackles up, what does a hunting dog really need to know?

  In a few paragraphs, I’ll give you some of my thoughts about what meat dogs must know, but first I want to tell you about some of my training clients’ special requests and also tell you about a video I watched.

  The first time I really thought about training that is specific to hunting dogs was more than a decade back, when a hunting guide from one of the prime duck-hunting areas of the Southeast asked me to teach his dog to "remote drop" birds in a pile. After many years of training and hunting with retrievers I had never considered teaching a dog that it was acceptable to drop birds, and I asked why he wanted his dog to drop them in a pile rather than deliver them to hand.

  His answer was that he hunted in a blind with clients and didn’t want to continually have to climb between, over, and around people with possibly questionable gun-handling skills to get out of the blind and take birds from the dog. So he wanted his dog to "drop" the birds on command in a pile unless he was told to "hold" them (in the case of a cripple). Then he wanted his dog to immediately go into a brush-covered crate and stay there until he was sent again to retrieve. I have to admit that I was skeptical of the practicality of his request and his need for such specialized training, until a few years later when I watched another guide’s dog at work doing exactly as I had taught the other dog several years before.

  Nylon dog blinds have become very popular recently, and I was getting such a great number of requests to teach dogs to work from them that I now routinely teach every dog that comes in for training to go into one of these little blinds on command, lie down, and remain steady until sent for marks. This was, in fact, the subject of my August/September 2004 issue of RJ column. I have even had a couple hunters request that I teach their dogs to work from nylon dog blinds mounted on a boat.

  That brings up something else that has become a regular part of my hunting dog training regimen - teaching a dog to work from a boat. As soon as they are big enough to figure out how to jump in and out of it, I begin familiarizing my puppies with a boat that is sitting in the yard. Every dog that comes to my kennel for training learns to sit steady in a boat while marks are thrown, and return to the boat to deliver birds to hand. Maybe these dogs are never going to have to know how to work out of a boat, but it sure doesn’t hurt for them to be familiarized so that their owners don’t have a rodeo on their hands when they try to drag the dog into a boat for the first time!

  Occasionally, I also get requests to teach a dog to sit steady on a platform attached to a tree or post, and to jump back onto the platform to deliver the bumpers or birds. Hunting in flooded timber with a dog sitting on a platform just above the water level is common in the South, and, again, it doesn’t hurt to know how to handle it if faced with this type of hunting situation.

  A few months back, after reading a column that I wrote about goose dogs (December/January 2005 RJ) a friend from Iowa sent me a video; he particularly wanted me to see how aggressively the Lab in the video retrieved the geese. I wasn’t far into it before I realized that the dog epitomized exactly what I wrote about in the column.

  But watching the video, which began with the hunters in Canada as they worked their way down into and through the States, got me to thinking about something else: Here is a dog that picks up more geese (and there were some duck sequences, too) in one season than most retrievers will see in a lifetime, and he doesn’t seem to know a great number of commands or have received a great deal of sophisticated training. He obviously was under control and had received some degree of training (he would stop and take basic casts when necessary), but much of the work that he performed came from his genetics and a large measure of "on-the-job" training.

  The dog in the video was given only a handful of commands throughout all 0f the hunting sequences. He was told to "kennel," and he went into his blind and lay down, even from quite a distance away; he knew to "heel" and "sit" beside the hunter lying in the layout blind; and he knew to hold the birds until he was told to "drop" - all of these are pretty basic commands. He also was given a "back" command when he was to go back out into the field and find another bird. The hunter didn’t get out of the blind, he didn’t line him up, he didn’t blow a whistle to stop and cast him, he didn’t expect him to mark every bird down - he just used the command "back" to tell him to go and find another bird.

Let’s talk about what a true meat dog really needs to know. First, I think we will all agree that a dog should be steady. I would probably amend that by saying that a dog should remain steady but be walking that very fine line between sitting or lying steady and being ready to rip out of there like he were being fired from a slingshot when sent. This was the only major fault of the dog in the video - when the shots rang out, he was already heading for the falling geese. This is dangerous. I do believe that a dog needs to get there quickly, and in the case of hunting in moving water, such as a river, be on the verge of breaking, but he must know to stay steady without having to be reminded all the time. Your concentration should be on your shooting, not on your dog.

Second, a dog should know to hold onto birds until he is told to drop them. Whether this comes naturally or whether it is reinforced through force-fetch, a dependable hunting dog should not drop birds before he is told to.

Third, he should unquestionably come when called and come to "heel" when told. Both of these commands are the very first steps in establishing control and a hunting dog that is out of control is a nuisance.

Fourth, he should know to take a basic line in the direction he is sent. Is it truly necessary to teach a dog to run precise or very long lines? These are the things of field trials or advanced-level hunt tests; if you want to teach them, that’s great, but I would rather have a dog that will run or swim a basic line of about 60 or 100 yards or so and then stop and take casts.

And that brings up "fifth," the subject of stopping and casting. How important is precision casting for a hunting dog? If a dog will stop when you blow a whistle (if he won’t stop, you can’t cast him, so teaching him to stop is imperative) and go to the right when cast to the right, go to the left what cast to the left, and go back when cast back, you will be able to put him in the area of most of the birds that he has not seen fall or that he has mismarked. He can then use his nose to hunt for them from there. If you have the time and inclination and want to teach precision casting with all of the angles, that’s great, but being able to get the dog into the area where you think the bird is located and having him hunt it out is probably much more practical.

And while we’re on the subject, remember that in the case of a hunting dog, it is more likely that the dog will be redirected by casting when he has mismarked a bird rather than in a true "blind retrieve" scenario. Few hunters know the exact spot where a bird fell; the best they can hope for is to get the dog into the area and let him use his nose to track and find the bird.

Sixth, using his nose to find birds is probably as important - or more important - than all of the sophisticated training you’ll do. Dogs without a good nose are a waste of time; their ability to use their nose is why we hunt with them. If trained on birds (both live and dead), a dog will quickly develop to where he knows more about finding birds than you can ever hope to teach him. Help him develop his nose!

Seventh, how important is precise multiple marking for a meat dog really? Now I know that this is probably going to raise some hackles, but the ability to mark more than one or maybe two falls is really pretty impractical; if you have a dog that will stop and take basic casts and use his nose to hunt for birds you are going to be able to direct him into the general area where the birds fell so that he can track and hunt them out. So rather than spending the time teaching sophisticated multiple marking patterns that he might see once in his lifetime, I would rather spend my time teaching a hunting dog to carry a good line out to 100 yards or so and then develop his casting. I just think it makes more sense.

Other than the things mentioned above, how much more does a meat dog really have to know? Yeah, it might be important to teach them to lie in a nylon blind or work from a boat or sit on a platform, but it really comes down to his needing to know as much as you want him to and his wanting to learn. But one thing that seems to be paramount among all experienced hunting dogs is that they all have a burning desire to retrieve - that desire "to run through a brick wall to get to a bird," and the innate ability to maintain their self-control and still think on their feet, all the while working within the rules of what they have been taught.