Leap of faith for springer

GUNDOG TRAINING

My young English springer had a bad experience jumping a wire fence during the winter. Fortunately, he only suffered a small tear under one of his hind legs, but it made him cautious for the rest of the season. I now have time to build up his confidence again because I have to admit that I did not really do any jumping training with him — he virtually taught himself. Can you offer any tips on how to do this?

A lot of youngsters are natural jumpers — and that’s a good thing. But while they have the confidence, they are sometimes short on technique. All too often they assume every fence is going to be an easy obstacle to tackle, but then come unstuck because of inexperience and lack of match practice.

So spend the next few months doing all you can to allow him to regain his confidence over fences and other obstacles he may encounter out shooting. Always make sure any practice fence is solid at the top — I always prefer to have a wooden rail as the top of a training fence — and about 3ft high to start with.

The jumping technique of most spaniels is to briefly touch the top of the obstacle while going over rather than ‘fly’ the fence in one leap, which many retrievers often do. Make sure the landing side of a fence is as good as the take-off side — all these small things will combine to give a hesitant dog more confidence.

Undertake all your jumping initially using a small dummy, so that the dog can gradually learn how to balance.

You can move on to heavier items in due course. The main aim is to instil in the dog the belief that it can get from one side of the obstacle to the other and back again safely and without coming to harm.

But there are two golden rules as far as jumps are concerned: don’t ask dogs to jump over barbed wire — it might look clever but if it goes wrong it can be fatal and costly; and never ask a dog to jump something you are not convinced is totally safe. It is far better to lift the dog over and get the bird delivered to hand from the other side and haul it back over rather than put the dog at risk. JH

Make sure the landing side of the fence is as good as the take-off side to build confidence