Force Fetch Training Coming Up

[Mickey Finn 3,016]

 

 

Damn Lurcher! He had it made in the shade. Retrieves were good, and rabbits were brought back alive.

 

Today, he hunted up and chased a rabbit which escaped through a fence. Well done, I gave him praise and he did his little pleasure sprint. 20 mins later he finds another and catches it. Promptly making off with it, and killing it. He ignored my fetch command, and looked like he was preparing to eat the rabbit. (this is not allowed!) I blew his recall on the whistle, and here he comes straight to me. Without the rabbit. Had to praise the recall especially in light of the temptation to disregard.

 

So, back to the training table he goes. Problem is I didn't FF him when he was younger because he seemed immature, and a little on the soft side to boot. Now, he's over 2yrs old and may hold a grudge if I put too much pressure on him. It's going to be interesting to see how well this thing plays out.

 

Thanks for reading my vent,

 

The 'trained retrieve',..for a running dog composite,.requires a different approach, with regards to achieving success, than when schooling a bird dog...

 

Personaly,...I would eschew the usage of any persuasive training and instead,..concentrate on that most important and necessary attribute,...the recall...

 

Get that right,.and you will have your fetch....feck up on the training table,.. and you'll have feck all...

 

Just an opinion,.and I could well be wrong..

 

All the best, Phil.

 

true , differnt ball game with lurcher as to gundog.The main 2 differnt things are, 1st its not natural in a running dog, what is,is to chase+ kill. 2nd is temp, i would most if not all lurcher xs, have quite a (sensitve) temp as compare to a gudog type breed. And the bringing back live game, can be where lot of people somtimes hit a brickwall, because if you try to make them they will as above, just stop or kill the rabbit and leave it there. with these type of dogs (lurchers+longdogs) its a kid gloves job. All my lurchers( colliexs,bullxs,bitsas) have brought back, and most alive . Prob the worst was my bitsa bitch , she would bring only 1/2 way back and that was it. And she was taught the same way as my other dogs, but all dogs are differnt.My pup Buck 1x gsd xgrey is very good as caught from 60yds and will come right to you with the rabbit, and not done much training really with him, but his recall is 100% .

Bryn 1x collie x grey

 

 

 

 

 

Ray, I can vouch for the differences. Though there are softer Gun dogs who learn through FF to be reliable retrievers. Viszla's and some setters I have seen come to mind here. I enjoy this Lurcher, and he's a pleasure to work with.

 

Always good to see a pic of Byrn bringing it home.

[2Painless2btrue 11]

I get a pup retrieving to hand around the house with something soft and nice to hold. Encourage them to bring it to you, take it gently from them and praise them... inspect the object like it's the most interesting thing you've ever seen.... keep praising the pup and then give it back! After a few experiences of this the pup should be bringing you anything interesting that it finds.... I've got a Boerboel pup that's bringing me un-marked toilet rolls, petty cash books and other more unsavoury items for me to inspect on a daily basis. My Whippet/Beddy stalked and killed a buck Squirrel inj the garden tother day and then came looking for me to show me the prize. They're no different to kids IMO. Years ago I had a Springer who used to circle me with dead game in his mouth, he never did that with a dummy. Made me rethink the dominance thing. Good luck with yours MF and keep smiling.

[Neal 1,873]

I'm glad this thread came up as I was thinking of starting a similar one due to pondering along similar lines while walking the kelpies this morning.

 

I never had much luck with "training" previous dogs to retrieve. However, when I got Rust (the one in my avatar who's now nearly fourteen) he was a natural. He just couldn't help himself and was always bring things over to me. His favourite when he was a pup was empty plastic bottles, which used to be left behind on my local field after the Sunday football league, when I lived in Pompey. He'd hold them in his front paws, unscrew the lid with his teeth and bring me the bottle. Then, when he realised I always put them in the recycling box by the front door, he'd carry them home and drop them by the box. He also found a heavy hand-weight (small dumb-bell type thing) on the beach and carried it about two miles home.

 

However, I remember reading many years ago that the problem with a natural retriever who'd not been trained to retrieve was that they couldn't be commanded to do it if they didn't fancy it one day. I equate this a little to my kids sleeping: my son was a dreadful sleeper as a baby so needed "training" but is now great whereas my daughter was naturally great and started sleeping through the night at a very early age but when something out of the ordinary happens (illness, change in routine etc) she can't settle and goes back several stages. Hope that analogy made sense!

 

Now that Rust's an old fart who's no longer expected to retrieve his catch he's stopped retrieving anything. As I said, I'm not asking for advice; it just got me thinking what other people's views on this might be but the thread has kind of answered my musings already.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Neal

[skycat 6,173]

I agree with the theory that you should teach the retrieve even to natural retrievers: of course it's a lot easier as you only have to say 'fetch' as the dog is carrying stuff to you when it's a pup, and it gradually associates the word and the action, but it does mean that in a less than perfect situation the dog will continue to retrieve. Just this morning we were out mooching along a flooded dyke and the Airedale caught a young rabbit, was bringing it back to me when they put another one up so she dropped the first one as she was chasing the second, right in the water. I got the dogs back and told the Airedale to fetch once more, pointing at the rabbit floating in the water: so she did. Without having taught her the command I would have had to get a bit wet myself.

 

Like the baby analogy: makes a lot of sense. And of course practice makes perfect: even a natural retriever gets better with fun games and a learning programme.