written by Butch Goodwin
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Northern Flight Retrievers  
The Retriever Journal Sep./Oct.  20001 

hat the hell did you do to my dog?” were the first words I heard from the voice I immediately recognized on the other end of the phone. “His marking is ruined, and it will take me months to get him back to where he can compete in a field trial.” I didn’t say a word. I was at a loss. I didn’t immediately grasp what I had lone so wrong, and I was totally blind-sided by this outburst. “Do you have any idea how much time I have spent developing his marking? Do you know that now he is swinging his head? Do you know that he has started running the bank? Do you know that when he gets on scent on the water or on land, he is following the scent rather than going to where he has watched the bird fa1l? Why did you let him get away with doing these things?” 

   Silently, I waited for a pause long enough to get a word in, but on it continued: “He has even started popping on me and is looking at me to handle him and help him find the damn marks. He won’t run to where he sees the fall; he has started putting his nose down and hunting! All of the people in my training group agree, he is probably ruined. Plus, what are these scars under one of his eyes and all along the side of his nose? What happened to my dog? Did you let him get in a dogfight? What did you do to him?”

After all of this, I truly felt bad for the dog. I knew the training pressure that he was likely going to have to endure to get back into the “form” that my friend expected. But let me explain how this all came about.

I have a friend who used to be an avid field trialer. He has done quite well for himself financially and was able to retire at a relatively young age; retriever field trials became his passion. Some years ago, as an anniversary present, he wanted to take his wife to Africa for a photo safari - something that she had always wanted to do.

Since they were going during our winter, he asked me if I would keep his young prospect and take him hunting while he was out of the country. He wanted to give the youngster the experience of some real hunting situations his previous dog had never had. My friend didn’t hunt at all.

He insisted that I take the two-year old, and I agreed, but felt an explanation was in order before he sent the dog. I thought he should know that dog would be hunting pheasants, Huns, chukars, and quail, as well as waterfowl. I also told him that the majority of my waterfowling was done along the Snake River -  a powerful, fast-moving river dividing Idaho and Oregon in my area, and where our hunting is done almost entirely from the islands in the river. The dogs occasionally get as much as a mile downstream chasing cripples and - as it takes a really tough dog to swim against that current, which in some places has been reported to be 12 miles per hour -  we often have to chase the dogs down with the boat to bring them back. And, I wanted him to know that when it is well-below freezing and the ice is floating in the river, it can be downright dangerous. I guess what I was trying to tell him was that I really didn’t want be held responsible if, heaven forbid, something should happen to his valuable, young hopeful!

So now I found myself, having just sent his dog home, feeling obligated to listen to his resulting tirade on the phone. I guess I must have forgotten to tell him that a really savvy river dog learns to use the riverbanks to his advantage. I must have also forgotten to tell him that in moving water, the birds are never where they fall. By the time the dog gets there, even when the birds are shot dead, they have floated on down with the current. I must have also forgotten to tell him that a river dog usually gets released or sent quite quickly, and those that go straight into the water will likely either have to be handled or lose birds. And, until a dog has the experience of encountering a crippled Canada goose in a moving river, he hasn’t earned his stripes. My friend didn’t seem to care that those scars on his youngster’s nose and under his eye were his stripes  and he had earned them! I knew that the only way he would ever understand would be to have him come out and experience a few days of river hunting for himself; so when I got a word in, I calmed him down and invited him.

ut enough about him for now, let’s talk about the problems related to hunting moving water and how to handle them. It is sad to think, but when I lived in Colorado and hunted the Colorado River, I could have sat alongside the river every weekend morning and had my dogs recover nearly a limit of ducks or geese that were lost by other hunters upstream, who either (a) weren’t hunting with a dog; or (b) had a dog that lacked the toughness or experience to handle the big river,

   I truly believe that there is simply no retriever that has more confidence, innate ability, and self-reliance than an experienced river dog. They seem to walk with a different swagger, the swagger of self-confidence. They are truly the “tough-guys” (and girls) of the retriever breeds. But you can bet they didn’t get that way overnight. It takes specific training and experience to develop a reliable river dog.

   Training a dog to deal with the power of the big and fast rivers may not seem to follow what you have read in the books or seen on the videos. But don’t be fooled - much of the necessary foundational training is exactly the same; it just goes much deeper. The only training that you can’t afford to do with a dog destined to hunt the rivers is anything that will take away his self-confidence. This kind of dog has to be walking a fine line where he is under your control but also capable of thinking for himself and using the instinctive abilities he was born with and the judgment of his experience. Many of the situations he will be put into will require him to be out of your sight or hearing range, totally on his own.

Training a river dog starts with the same basic or fundamental yard work that is required of the retrievers destined to be any manner of hunting dog: basic obedience, particularly with the “come” or “here” command; handling; whistle commands; lining; taking multiple marks; going to the bird I want him to go to; and firm steadiness.

Now that we have a reliable retriever under solid control, it is time to begin to modify the training to match the situation, and begin to allow him the freedom to make some choices on his own. The first and most obvious problem associated with training a river dog is that everything is moving and leaving the immediate area quickly. I like to begin to teach a river dog by using big white plastic bumpers, hand-thrown into a fairly slack spot on the river. If the dog is made to sit and watch the big white bumpers floating past, he will usually follow the float and go directly toward the bumper when he is sent; he’ll go to where it is, rather than where it fell. This might seem like a pretty simple lesson, but everything has to start someplace; understanding he must watch and judge the float of whatever fell will become much of his life’s work.

When you send him to make the retrieve, is he running down the bank and swimming out to meet the bumper, or is he going straight at it? Either is acceptable, but you will find that with experience, it will become his choice as he begins to learn to estimate the speed of the float and the trajectory of his approach to the river neces sary to swim out and meet it. He will also begin to return from the retrieve by going to the nearest shore and coming out of the water. I don’t correct a dog for not swimming against the current to come straight back to me. It conserves his energy and saves time when the birds are flying.

Returning from the  retrieve by going to the nearest shore and coming out of the water is not  crime - it conserves energy and saves time.

Han-throwing large white bumpers into a fairly slack spot on the river is a good way to start teaching the dog that everything moves away from where it landed, and to watch closely.

Is this going to go against the rules and create a bank runner? Yeah, probably - but what is more important, getting on the birds that are floating away as quickly as possible or doing it stylishly? Ain’t nothing stylish about hunting a big, fast river. Do whatever it takes to get the birds and save a little of your retriever’s energy!

couple of things that deserve mentioning here: First, one of the toughest situations to handle when hunting a river is multiple falls. By the time even an experienced dog can get one bird out of the river, the second and third have often floated quite far down, to be recovered only with a boat or by the handler and dog running down the bank until they spot the birds - a typical “line and handle” sort of retrieve. But it also emphasizes the importance of teaching him that when you line him, you will select the bird that he is sent for.

Second, a dog following a strong swimming cripple will often lose track of where he is. If his concentration is on the bird, he can be a mile or so downstream and have no idea how to get back to where he started from. Have a plan for following your dog either by boat or on the shore if he gets to following a cripple. Don’t count on the fact that in training you can call him off of a bird and get him back - if the river is noisy, he might not be able to hear your whistle. This is not a nice warm day out by the training pond - it is deadly serious, and you could risk losing your dog.

Now, if I haven’t ruffled your feathers by allowing your dog to nm the bank, let’s see if I can ruffle a few by sending him quickly and almost letting him break. I said earlier that river dogs must be released quite quickly or they will likely lose birds in the river. It is the nature of the situation. Remember how you taught your dog during his basic training to sit until he was sent? Well, any aspiring river candidate has to sit steady while birds are flying and when the shooting starts, but he must also learn that he is to go only when sent. He must also learn that he might be sent quickly or not at all. River dogs have to be “on the brink of disaster” and ready to fire like a slingshot at the first sound of the command used to send them. They have to be walking that fine line of control.

The Bottom Line: First, if you want to develop a reliable river dog, you have to have him under good control and well-trained before you begin his river work. Second, it is not sacrilegious to bend or break a few of the “chiseled in stone” training rules to meet the situations that you might encounter. Third, as he gains experience and builds his self-reliance in the river, allow him some degree of freedom to think for himself. Fourth, and probably most important, exercise good judgment! Have a plan to help your dog! Big rivers can be dangerous -  there is no bird that is worth the life of your dog!

As for my friend that I told you about in the beginning, he came out and hunted with us. He showed up in his fancy new clothes, which still had the creases from shipping. I think he wondered what he had gotten himself into when two other guys arrived with their rusty pump guns and clothes that looked as if they had been shopping the bargain boxes at the “New to You Shoppe.” He watched these tough “meat dogs” that slept between the bags of decoys hurl themselves off of the gunwales of a boat into the slush and floating ice going after geese - and then soak everyone when they jumped back into the boat with a mighty water-spraying shake. He watched the dogs raise nearly their entire bodies out of the water to look for a bird that they had lost sight of in the chop of the river. He watched as one particular bitch chased a crippled mallard for about three-quarters of a mile downstream -  well out of sight of the blind and, by the time she was picked up by the boat, she was out of the river and heading back on the opposite shore with the live bird clutched firmly in her jaws. He watched as a dog was lined across the river onto an island and then cast to where a shot duck was seen to fall, only to realize that the bird had run off and the dog had to follow the trail nearly 100 yards   totally out of sight of the handler to recover it.

My friend doesn’t run field trials anymore (I think his wife put her foot down when she realized how much time it took away from home), but he does own an expensive duck boat and several new shotguns and adds fancy clothes to his closet every year. As for me, I have a beautiful Canada goose mount that he sent me that is hanging right behind me as I write this. It was one of the geese that we got when he was here. It was a “thank-you” present for taking him hunting and for ruining his dog!

 The End