Training’s foundation blocks
Fran Ardley highlights the steps that you need to take to accustom your dog to your whistle, gunshot and be steady to the flush
Ihave mentioned on many occasions that training is all about building up a gundog’s confidence and understanding of what will be required of it in the shooting field.
In basic terms, each individual step of a dog’s training will at some point connect in with other aspects and hopefully create a complete picture for both dog and its handler. From the early stages of its education, you will have begun by getting the dog used to the sit command. This will have been started by using a verbal cue ‘sit’ then a whistle command – a single blast. You will then have moved on to having the dog sitting in front of you and thrown dummies around it, teaching it to be steady and to ignore the retrieves. If these parts of your training are fully understood by your dog, it is time to begin the process of connecting the bits of the gundog training puzzle.
Why and when
A gundog should basically stop or sit in three situations in the shooting field: the whistle; a flush of ground or feathered game; and it should also stop or ‘drop’ to shot. In most practical cases the handler will be giving a blast on the stop whistle just as game flushes; obviously, a shot will follow but there are what can be considered ‘refinements’. A well-trained dog will stop to a flush or shot without any intervention from the handler, and this can come in useful if the dog is hunting in heavy cover and flushes game without the handler being able to see it.
A dog that stops to shot and acknowledges the shot – by looking in the direction – is worth its weight in gold, especially if you are shooting with other Guns and your dog may be required to make a retrieve from one of your shooting partners.
How
This month we will concentrate on getting your dog to stop to an artificial flush and a shot from a starting pistol – next month we will progress on to live game and a shotgun. Training your gundog to stop to a flush and or shot is undertaken in steps and you cannot even begin this process if your dog will not sit at a distance from you, is not steady to thrown dummies and is not on the stop whistle.
These three lessons are the foundation blocks that will allow you to progress.
“A dog that stops to shot is worth its weight in gold”