Tyson's training log --- 2 guns, Ty kicked ass
As I embark on this journey to train myself and to try to mold Tyson into a functional hunting dog, I thought I would post occasional updates in one thread. A place I can share what is working, what is not working, and how Tyson is progressing.
Over the past few months, Tyson's training has been almost exclusively on off leash work and recall. We have practiced recall daily in the back yard, and most weekends we get out hiking and let Tyson do his thing. Yesterday we turned a corner. I took all three dogs for a walk around Lake Raleigh. One side of it is a paved path with public fishing access. The other side is rugged and there are some very poorly maintained and often difficult to follow trails. Once we cleared the congested area, Tyson was off leash the entire time. For the first time in all of our various off leash adventures, two things happened: 1) He started quartering! and 2) He started using his nose a bit. I noticed this first with Joey that around 7-8 months of age, he began to follow scents more intensely. Tyson will be 8 months on the 30, and he's just now beginning to follow his nose. So those are both exciting developments. He also chased a few birds and small game animals. At one point I heard a big animal take off through THICK cover about 30 yards away. Tyson took off like a rocket to investigate. I kept walking down the trail slowly, whistling every 30 seconds are so. He found his way back 2-3 minutes later. I have no idea what it was, but I suspect a deer.
We also began some scent and retrieving work in the yard a few days ago. I elected to begin with a Chukar dummy and bottled scent. When injecting the dummy, the needle separated from the syringe spraying me and half my kitchen with chukar scent. Yuk! I got that cleaned up and finished injecting the dummy. Then I introduced Tyson to the clicker for the first time. I was using small pieces of turkey hot dog which he seemed to really like. In fact, he liked them so much I couldn't get him to focus on the dummy at all. By the end of the 20 minute session, I was able to get him to chase the dummy 5 feet or so, sniff it, then return to me for a treat. So, I plan to try again without the hot dogs. Just get him excited about the dummy to start. I worry he'll hard-mouth it to death, but we'll figure that out if/when it happens.
That's it for now.
Over the past few months, Tyson's training has been almost exclusively on off leash work and recall. We have practiced recall daily in the back yard, and most weekends we get out hiking and let Tyson do his thing. Yesterday we turned a corner. I took all three dogs for a walk around Lake Raleigh. One side of it is a paved path with public fishing access. The other side is rugged and there are some very poorly maintained and often difficult to follow trails. Once we cleared the congested area, Tyson was off leash the entire time. For the first time in all of our various off leash adventures, two things happened: 1) He started quartering! and 2) He started using his nose a bit. I noticed this first with Joey that around 7-8 months of age, he began to follow scents more intensely. Tyson will be 8 months on the 30, and he's just now beginning to follow his nose. So those are both exciting developments. He also chased a few birds and small game animals. At one point I heard a big animal take off through THICK cover about 30 yards away. Tyson took off like a rocket to investigate. I kept walking down the trail slowly, whistling every 30 seconds are so. He found his way back 2-3 minutes later. I have no idea what it was, but I suspect a deer.
We also began some scent and retrieving work in the yard a few days ago. I elected to begin with a Chukar dummy and bottled scent. When injecting the dummy, the needle separated from the syringe spraying me and half my kitchen with chukar scent. Yuk! I got that cleaned up and finished injecting the dummy. Then I introduced Tyson to the clicker for the first time. I was using small pieces of turkey hot dog which he seemed to really like. In fact, he liked them so much I couldn't get him to focus on the dummy at all. By the end of the 20 minute session, I was able to get him to chase the dummy 5 feet or so, sniff it, then return to me for a treat. So, I plan to try again without the hot dogs. Just get him excited about the dummy to start. I worry he'll hard-mouth it to death, but we'll figure that out if/when it happens.
That's it for now.
Comments
What is your backup plan if Tyson did not come back? How long would you wait. And is it stressful for you those 2-3 minutes? Was it stressful when you first started out?
Sounds to me like Ty is going to develop into a nice hunting dog. Do you have alot of chukar over there?
@shishiinu Man, I'd love to get back out there! It's a LONG drive though. As for chukar numbers, I don't know for sure. I know there's some top notch waterfouling to be had on the coast though.
@white_bear Chukar and Pheasant are upland game birds. They are ground birds that are typically hunted with pointing dogs like GSPs or flushing dogs like spaniels.
It sounds like a great idea to try, my NK loves to hunt pretty much everything. I think a dummy in a controlled environment would work great, since I'm not a hunter myself.
@ white_bear, that's "potarniche" and "fazan"
Ooops, sorry dave, we're ruining Ty's training log lol
Tyson is finally completely comfortable with the cap gun. It's taken 5-6 weeks of daily work, but he doesn't even flinch when it's fired right before or during feeding time. I can be 2 feet from him and he's fine with it. So that's a HUGE success. I need to proceed on two fronts in this department: 1) I need to up the noise by either going to a .22 or .32 blank gun. and 2) I need to introduce gunfire at times other than meal time. My goal is to do this in the field, because the Shibas still aren't wild about the cap gun. I need to catch Tyson when he's distracted chasing something or during play. So we'll be working on both of those transitions (not necessarily at the same time) over the next few weeks/months.
I gave Tyson a day off from playing with the bumper, and started over again with the hot dogs. I just wanted to get him excited about it and wasn't particularly concerned with any specific behavior. I held it by the toss rope and ran around the yard which he really seemed to like. That got him pretty riled up, so I started tossing it a few feet away. He retrieved the first two or three times, then lost interest, so we went back to just running around. Then today, I reintroduced treats (this time kibble) without the clicker. I got him riled up again, and started rewarding him for putting his mouth on the bumper. I didn't care what part he grabbed, as long as his mouth surrounded it completely. We were at it for about 15 minutes today and he got that part pretty solidly. So, more progress!
I can only imagine that the Shibas are not too fond of the cap gun... Haha.
We've continued to work on retrieving and started work on scenting. It's amazing what a day off from training will do. After a few days of me reinforcing Ty for mouthing the bumper, I was finally able to get him to do two retrieves to hand at the end of the training session. I praised the hell out of him and gave him a treat "bonanza" for the second retrieve to hand (dropped four or five treats on the ground at once, rather than hand him one). Then I skipped a day of training and when I came back, Ty was basically jumping out of his fur to retrieve to hand. He couldn't get enough. I even switched bumpers and went with a quail scent and he didn't skip a beat. He is energetically chasing down the bumper and retrieving all the way across the yard (60 ft or so). About 50% of the time on a long retrieve he will get distracted and drop the bumper. He responds very quickly when I remind him to bring it back though.
Yesterday we started on a blind retrieves (where he gets a visual mark on the bumper, but doesn't get to retrieve until I give the command to do so). I'm focusing on that for two reasons: 1) In the field birds may fall in thick brush or in bushes and he won't always see them right away; and 2) I want him to get used to using his nose to find game.
We did four or five short retrieves where I walked out and placed the bumper 3-5 feet away while he maintained a sit-stay (or "whoa" as I'm now calling it) and he did perfectly! So I started making it a bit more difficult by burying the bumpers under some pine needles. He gets a visual on the general area I am hiding the bumpers, but has to use his nose to find them. At the rate he's learning, I suspect he will be a bumper retrieving machine in no time flat!
From here, I plan to begin hiding multiple bumpers in a few days, and then ordering some bird launchers to simulate flushing a bird. Then I'll introduce the .22 cap gun to the process as well.
Progress!
Any chance that Joey (or even Lucy) get to play too? I know they could never be hunting dogs (as the whole off leash Shiba thing I am sure gives you cold chills just like me!), but I think they would have a blast scenting out the bumpers and retrieving for treats.
Let me know, if so, it may be something that I try with Bella and Nola.
Nola may have the same problem as Lucy, as she has a tiny mouth compared to Bella.
Well, we hit road blocks on two fronts....
My goal is to train Tyson on two fronts and then slowly integrate them: 1) scenting and searching out game; and 2) the flush-->shot-->retrieve sequence. He's got the retrieve down near perfect now, so I started to introduce the shot with the retrieve.
I took him out with a bumper and my cap gun. We did a few retrieves and I got him very excited over it. So, on the fifth or so retrieve, I threw the bumper and fired the cap gun while he was in mid-chase. He flinched a bit, but kept going enthusiastically and finished the retrieve. LOTS of praise and kibble. I then immediately went back to a few retrieves without the cap gun just to keep him excited. Then tried the cap gun again. A slight hesitation, but he completed the retrieve with a little encouragement. LOTS more praise and kibble. I continued alternating a few retrieves without the cap gun and then one with for a while. Each time he got slightly more hesitant after hearing the shot. After about the fourth or fifth retrieve with the cap gun, Tyson stopped retrieving. He would chase down the bumper, sniff it, and then come back without it. He did this even after I stopped firing the cap gun. So we played with the bumper for a bit just to end on a positive note.
Given his hesitation, I decided I would abort that tactic for a while just to keep the positive association with the bumper up. So, I started focusing a bit more on scenting. I started this by putting him in a sit-stay, walking out a few feet, and burying the bumper under some pine straw. He did great, although he was less enthusiastic about doing those retrieves than he was about chasing the bumper after I threw it, so I made sure to mix in a few throws between the buried bumpers. As I started to increase the distance of the buried bumpers, I noticed he was losing interest. He would get to the general area, and then seem to get distracted. If I walked out toward him, he would snatch up the bumper and bring it back.
After a few days of burying bumpers, I decided to kick it up a notch even though he was less enthusiastic about finding it. I brought two bumpers out, one scented as a quail and one as a chukar. I buried both and encouraged him to "hunt". That, unfortunately, just seemed to confuse him. He started breaking his sit-stay early and getting the first bumper, then he would bring it over to the second bumper, drop it to pick up the other one, and then drop both and return without any bumpers.
Having succeeded in thoroughly confusing him on two fronts now, I decided to take a few days off from training. Tonight, for the first time in 4 days, we went back out with a single bumper. This time I leashed him to a tree and buried the bumper. I made sure to pretend bury it in 2 or 3 places, so he didn't have a good visual of where I had left it. The short of it, he did GREAT! He really started using his nose to find the bumper, although he wasn't all that good at it at first. He walked by it a few times before he really locked in. Once he got it figured out, he started becoming far more accurate, picking the right location almost immediately and excitedly retrieving to hand.
So, for the second time in this process, I have learned that taking a few days off, especially when you seem to have hit a wall, can work wonders. :-)
I'd say he's making some great progress! My next plans, other than reinforcing what he has already learned, include three things: 1) buying a few more bumpers and bird launchers to simulate an actual flush. 2) getting a .22 blank gun to use during meal time so he gets used to more noise and the cap gun won't bother him as much. and 3) bringing in some actual birds (I've got a call in to the hunting preserve so hopefully I'll be able to get them this or next weekend).
That's it for now.
Its one of those things where it seems like you are on a flat spot with the bumpers where he is now comfortable but need to be introduced to live birds. He's still young and should be fine with it. It will probably build his drive a lot more by using some thing that will fly or run. Give me a call and I can explain what to do a bit better.
It seems like Ty now has the bumper associated with the loud noise from the cap gun so try throwing a curve ball in there and start introducing birds like quail, chukkar, or pheasants. I would go with the pheasant since it will last longer. They usually cost about $18.00 a pop for a live rooster. You can clip the wings and attach a water bottle or a 4X8 piece of card board with a string to its leg to keep it from going too far.
After talking to the preserve guide, I found out they only have Chukar and Pheasant right now. So, I decided it was time to break out the pheasant dummy I've been saving. The chukar and quail dummies are all rubber and both relatively light. The pheasant dummy is a cloth dummy with real pheasant feathers zip-tied on. It weighs 3 times what the other dummies weigh. I wanted to Ty to get some exposure to something that big and with that scent before he saw a live bird for the first time.
I began training today by leaving Ty inside and hiding the chukar and pheasant dummies out in the yard. When I let Ty out, he made a nice quartering loop and zeroed in on the chukar within a few seconds. Perfect retrieve with lots of praise. I then put the chukar in a tree branch to get it out of the way and gave him the command to "hunt" for another bird. He went back to the previous location of the chukar dummy and started sniffing around. After about 10 seconds, he gave up and headed for the other side of the yard, nose to the ground. Like a laser he zeroed in on the pheasant and went right to it. I called praise to him from across the yard and encouraged him to retrieve. No dice.
So, after he sniffed and pawed at the partially buried pheasant for a minute or so, I went and picked it up just to reinforce to him that he was indeed in the right spot. He immediately showed a bit more interest once the pine needles were cleared away. He started to grab at it, so I held it by the rope and let him jump at it as I walked back across the yard. That got him really excited, so I stopped and let him make a closer examination. He immediately started to try to pick the feathers off of it. So I took it away and continued walking back across the yard. Right when I got back to the chukar dummy, he jumped up and ripped the pheasant out of my hands. As I went to take it back from him, he grabbed it and went to hide and inspect it more closely. I gave him a few seconds to enjoy the spoils of his victory, then I approached and took it away.
I exchanged the pheasant for the chukar and threw it out in the yard for him to retrieve. He ran right to it, sniffed, and returned to the tree where the pheasant was. He started sniffing the air and jumping up on the tree trunk. At that point I knew I had him, so I exchanged dummies again and began tossing the pheasant 10 or 15 feet for him to retrieve. At first he chased enthusiastically and then just sniffed, but after the third try he started to retrieve really well. I then leashed him to a tree and buried the pheasant in the yard. When I released him to "hunt" he took off like a bullet, bounding around the yard nose working at full capacity. After a quick detour to an old location, he found the pheasant and enthusiastically ran it back to me. LOTS of praise and treats, a few tosses and retrieves, and we repeated. He really picked it up quick!
So, I'm very hopeful that Saturday morning will go well. He seems to either really like pheasant, or really like the real feathers. Either way, I'm extremely encouraged by his enthusiasm. :-)
Glad he seems to like the pheasant. The few times I have run into pheasants on a trail with the dog, they both went NUTS. And Bella rarely goes nuts. So I can imagine that Tyson was pretty stoked.
I hope the trial run goes well this weekend. Try and take some pictures if you can!
After my last entry, I decided to change things up in training a bit in preparation for our trip to the hunting preserve yesterday. Up until last Wednesday, all of Tyson's training on dummies had been in the back yard and I figured a change of environment might confuse him. So, on Wednesday I took him out front (no fence) to do some practice instead of in the yard. I wanted to help him generalize before I took him out in the field. He started off doing pretty well, but then got very sloppy on his retrieves. There were just too many interesting things to do out there. The good news was that he did generalize his training from the back yard pretty well. The bad news, he picked up a bad habit of dropping the bumper 4-5 feet away and taking a long detour around before returning to me. I decided on Thursday we'd work the back yard again with the pheasant bumper he likes so much to get him excited again. Fail. After about five minutes if him being disinterested and half-assed, I played with him for a minute or two to end on a high note and decided to call it quits.
At that point, there was only one more day until our first trip to the hunting preserve and my initial enthusiasm gave way to confusion over what to expect out of him. Ultimately I decided the trip was more for me to get a sense of 1) Does Ty have the interest or desire to find birds? and 2) What are the areas that are going to need the most attention during his training? So, we took the day off from training on Friday and went to bed early. We got up Saturday around 4:45am, pottied and fed the dogs, loaded up the truck to hit the road around 5:30am. When taking Ty to the truck, he decided a romp around my neighbor's yard would be more fun than a ride in the truck. After he pottied again, he reluctantly loaded up and we hit the road on time.
When we arrived at the preserve at 7am, Ty was pretty stressed. They have a bunch of off leash dogs that live there. Combine them with all of the strange smells of a farm (manure, penned birds, diesel fuel, fertilizer, etc.) and the fact that we never get up that early and Ty was completely out of his element. I met up with the guide, Ken, and we chatted for a few minutes about what we were going to do while Ty stayed in my truck. We loaded up two other dogs in Ken's truck. One GSP/Lab mix named Bink and a Vizsla named Remy. Bink is quite possibly the ideal bird dog and is finished. Remy is a 7 month old gangly puppy who is just now learning to be a hunting dog. We drove over to the training station and I took Ty out of the truck for the first time. He was not happy at all. He barked a lot and kept jumping up on me for reassurance. I ignored him and gave him treats in between barks which calmed him down some. After about 10 minutes, he was calm enough to take a treat from Ken and to sniff Remy, but Bink was just plain scared of him.
So we decided to take the three dogs out to one of the ponds and let them play. That worked wonders! Within 30 seconds, the three dogs were having a blast chasing bumpers around and splashing around in the water.
Bink was soooo fast into the water that neither Ty nor Remy would actually chase bumpers past where they could stand, so we put her back in Ken's truck and let Ty and Remy play. Then, Ty would still give up as Remy was faster into the water than he was. We let the two of them play for a while, and then we put Remy back in Ken's truck. At that point, we finally got Ty swimming! He got LOTS of praise and encouragement from me after his first full water retrieve of a bumper and we decided to go right to live birds. We loaded Ty into the dog box in Ken's truck which he was basically happy to do once I threw some treats in there for him and we went to catch a few birds. That was my only mistake all morning....I forgot Ty's treats in my truck which would have some effects later on.
We caught two pheasant and two chukar and headed off to another spot in the preserve to introduce Ty to a bird for the first time. Ken hid one of the chukar in some tall cover under a mesh box. I put Ty on a 12 ft. check cord, gave him a big hug and pat, and told him to "go hunt" (which was the term we had used in the yard when he was supposed to look for buried bumpers). He had no clue what to do and kept looking back at me for input. So I walked out past the bird about 20 ft away and he didn't even sniff in its direction. I circled back and he still continued to focus on me. So I took hold of the check cord and led him in to the bird. When we got about 1 foot away, he dropped his nose to the ground and sniffed the bird. LOTS of praise from me. I then kicked up the mesh box and let the bird flutter around (it had clipped wings). Ty immediately chased but was hesitant to grab it. So I picked it up and tossed it a few feet away. Ty chased and bit off a bunch of feathers. Progress! I tossed it again, and Ty picked it up. Lots of praise! (Crap, where's that kibble?!?!?!).
We continued to play with the bird for a few minutes and Ty really started getting the hang of it. So much so he even retrieved it from water!
(Unfortunately those are the only photos I have because I found it too hard to manage taking pictures while training.)
After that, we put Ty back in the truck and gave Remy a few opportunities to scent and retrieve the bird. We then moved on to a new location. This time we took a female pheasant, gave Ty a good sniff while he was still in the truck, and then put her under a mesh box on the edge of some cover. I took Ty out of the truck and let him run along the low cut grass. He charged off ahead and as he ran by the bird his head turned left, hard. He definitely smelled it, but wasn't quite sure what to do. So I let him continue on a few feet before calling him back. On his second pass, he went right up to the bird sniffing intently, and then walked away. He could smell it, but again he didn't know what to do. So I called him back. He went right up to the bird so I praised the heck out of him and kicked up the box. The bird took off down the edge of the cover and Ty was on her like white on rice. Chomp! A bunch of feathers fly up. Ooops! With a lot of encouragement he brought the bird back to me and we continued to toss it out to let him chase and retrieve. (Again, lack of kibble made the bird more interesting than bringing it back to me.)
The third time, rather than put the male ringneck under a mesh box, we left his wings alone and tied his legs to some parachute cord. While I held Ty on the truck bed, Ken went out and dragged the bird through the cover to make a nice scent trail. After it was set, I set Ty free to "go hunt" and he wandered around "smartly". As he got near the scent trail, his nose hit the ground and he followed it enthusiastically to the bird. I couldn't even catch up in time. Again, lots of praise and lots of tosses and (check cord aided) retrieves. (Damn kibble missing again!)
To finish up the day, we took all three dogs back to the first pond and let them play for another 20 minutes. Ty loved it, although he got a tiny bit possessive of his bumper with Remy. I don't blame him though, it was his bumper from home. H e wasn't over the top about it though. Ken loaded up Bink and Remy to take them back to the kennel and I toweled off Ty to get him ready to leave. After I finished he ran off in the direction of the kennel. Grrrr. I called him once and he didn't flinch. So I closed up my truck and drove off after him. When I got onto the road I looked in my rearview and there was Ty sprinting down the road after my truck. I made him chase me for 30 seconds before I pulled over to let him in. I'm hoping he got the point that he needs to not run off like that, but somehow I doubt it.
Ken was floored by how well Tyson did on his first time out. He did better than Remy who is a purpose-bred bird dog. Although Ty is 2 months older and has been training for those two months. Remy is only just beginning. Ken's exact words were, "Tyson did 200% better than I could have possibly imagined. If you keep it up he will be as good if not better than most of the bird dogs out there."
That being said, my critical mistake to not bring kibble and reward him for retrieving birds is going to take some undoing. I now have four birds in my freezer that I'll be using for training this week to help break him of the feather plucking habit and to try to teach him that bringing the birds back to me is more fun than keeping them for himself. I don't think it will be too hard, but it's going to take some work.
Overall, "tickled to death" doesn't even begin to describe how I feel about Ty's performance. It was just amazing to watch him come alive out there. I don't think we'll be wining any field trials together, but he sure seems like he is going to make one hell of a hunting companion. :-) On top of that, he really looked like he was having fun which is really all I can ask for!