Straight line runs

“I have a spaniel that I use for beating and picking-up. He is very good at ‘sweeping up’, but I do on occasion have the need to send him out in a straight line and I am having real problems getting him to go much further than 10m before he starts hunting

The causes

There is a common phrase that readily applies to your particular problem and that is “horses for courses”. In gundog terms, this simply means that some breeds of gundog are more suitable than others when doing certain jobs in the shooting field. That said, most of us need a “jack of all trades” — a dog that is capable of doing a multitude of tasks — but we may have to accept that this kind of dog may not be able to do everything as well as the more specialist gundog.

When setting out a gundog training programme, it helps if you have an idea of what tasks you will eventually want your dog to perform. This way you can concentrate on the relevant exercises.

A spaniel that has been bred for generations to hunt will more than likely have some kind of quartering pattern built into its DNA. However, as trainers we will try to refine this, and it can be challenging to get a spaniel to run a straight line due to its inherent desire to work side to side.

If you have trained your spaniel to hunt close to you, it can be quite confusing for the dog to then be asked to get out away from you, especially if you need it to go some distance.

Failing to “condition” the dog into being a solid and keen retriever from an early age and allowing the hunting instinct to overcome everything else can be very difficult to undo at a later stage.

expert Advice: from SG’S gundog guru Graham Watkins “Most of us need a jack of all trades”