(as I am typing, and thinking of you and Ty hunting, Im sitting here at our lil wifi spot outside town hall, a flock of 22 turkeys just walked by...a nice omen, perhaps?)
I don't know of anyone who has ever trained a Kai to hunt birds in the 'western' style of bird hunting. I'm really interested to see how this works out.
Thats great Dave, I wonder how Ty would do in a duck blind? I am amazed at how Ty has really turned on to being so quick to pick up on the birds. I'm so glad it worked out great!
@dlroberts Dave, as to how it's different, well I guess they don't really teach Nihon Ken bird dogs over here so much. Basically it's just getting them out there to the mountains, where they mostly are used to hunt Yamadori. It's a pheasant like bird, but lives up in the mountains, and is pretty wary. I'm just assuming you're going to be training Tyson as a traditional bird dog, giving him commands and such.
With the NK bird dogs over here, it's pretty much a silent affair of walking through mountain ravines with your dog. When the dogs catch scent, they take off uphill and immediately flush the bird. The hunter reads his dog's movements, and has to generally keep himself in a position to take a good shot off the flush. Most of the dogs will retrieve.
I guess the things you won't see much of is pointing, whoa, blind retrieves (on command). Of course some hunters train their dogs more than others, but there's just not the whole training regimen that you usually see for western style bird dogs.
@shishiinu - I suspect he's be pretty happy to chill in a duck blind once he got some excitement and energy out. He just loves to be around me so he'd probably just nap with his head on my leg until it was time to go to work. :-)
@TheWalrus - Thanks for the explanation! I suspect Tyson's first year is going to be exactly like what you describe. I'm trying to make it all fun for him, so I'm not worrying about sloppy retrieves or anything like that. I'm not sure he'll have much interest in blind retrieves, but I'll certainly be attempting to try them with him once he matures a bit. He just entered his adolescent "I'm going to do what I want" phase, so for now I'm just going to let him do what he wants to make sure he's enjoying his time on birds as much as possible.
Loved the pics and the update! It sounds like he did really well....Yay! It was really interesting for me to read about how bird dogs are trained, too. I had know idea how it was done...
Last week rained a LOT. Tyson is really funny about the rain. He likes water, he doesn't mind walking in the rain, but when the backyard is soggy he has no interest in being out there. He'd rather hold his bladder than go out into the soggy backyard. So, after last week's introduction to birds, we took a few days off, only to meet up against four straight days of rain.
I took one of the now frozen chukars out with Ty and tried to get him interested in it. He was extremely interested in it while still in the house, but the soggy yard was enough to turn him off. I tried getting him to retrieve it a few times, but he just wasn't having it. He would chase and sniff. And because he wasn't all that interested, my typical pick up the bird/bumper and ignore him for a minute tactic didn't work at all. After five minutes of attempting to get him to retrieve, he finally picked up the bird, ran it to the door to go inside, and stood there waiting for me. "Ok Ty, I can take a hint." I took the bird from him, gave him some pets to he didn't think I was upset with him, and let him in. The second we got inside he started jumping up to grab the bird back. Silly Tyson!
We repeated that on Tuesday and Thursday of last week in the rain. Then, Friday turned beautiful, so I was actually able to encourage him to do some retrieves. We started Friday's session out with our standard play, but he wasn't interested in retrieving, only sniffing the frozen chukar. I picked up the bird and held it while he inspected it thoroughly, pulling it away if he grabbed for an appendage (like the head or legs). After about a minute of that, he started to settle, so we practiced the "take". I would reward him for putting his mouth on the bird, then for taking it from my hand and dropping it, then for taking it from my hand, holding it, and releasing it back into my hand. After a few minutes of that, we did a couple of retrieves and I decided to stop there on a positive note.
Saturday we woke our asses up early and went down to the preserve again. We met up with Ken and Remy at 8:00am. This time Ty was more excited than nervous. A full six miles from the preserve, I could see him sniffing the air (I had the windows down in my truck). We loaded Ty up and caught 7 quail from the bird house and went out into the field. We let Ty and Remy run around chasing each other and play with bumpers for about 30 minutes to let them habituate to the new field we were working in. There were cows in a neighboring field and Ty showed some interested in them, but his recall was perfect when I asked him to ignore them and come back to me. There were two guys in a neighboring field hunting Doves and Ty didn't show any reaction to them, so I decided we should try shooting a bird over Ty to see how he did. We put Ty and Remy in the truck and tried to grab a bird out of the bird box. Those little quail are lively suckers! Two birds squeezed out of the box and flew away. Two birds to the hunting gods. I got a line on one of them, so we took Ty down there to see if he could find it. He showed a lot of interest in one area where I figured the bird had landed, but after searching the area for 10 minutes, we gave up. Back to the truck to catch another bird.
This time we managed to get one out of the box and Ken planted it about 50 yards downwind. I had Ken do the shooting so I could keep a close eye on Ty to watch his reaction. I let Ty out of the truck and worked him around to the side of the bird about 30 yards. When we got about parallel with it Ty got a whiff and took off directly for it. He started pawing wildly at the kick pen. "WHOA! WHOA!" Ken and I both yelled, but it was too late. Ty knocked over the kick-pen and flushed the quail. BANG BANG. Ken emptied both barrels of my 12 gauge O/U and missed. Stupid me followed the bird and didn't see Ty's initial reaction. When I looked back at him, he was staring off in the direction the bird had landed, tail not up, but not down either. I whistled him in and praised him, then started working him toward the area the bird landed. He was a bit tentative, not ranging out more than 10 yards or so. So did my best to get him interested again. I ran around going in and out of the cover, trying to make it a game for him. He sniffed around a bit, but didn't enter the thick cover at all. We worked up and down the row of cover the bird landed in and on our third pass, Ty flushed it again. BANG, one shot and it's down. That was too much for Ty. His tail went down and he jumped all over me for comfort. I ran out to the downed bird and tossed it for him to chase. After two or three tosses, he made a nice retrieve to hand, so I treated and praised and hugged him.
We then went back to the truck, and I loaded him up to give him some quiet time. Remy got a chance to point and retrieve his first bird and it was just beautiful to watch (I'm now almost sure I'm going to own a Vizsla some day). We then decided to give Ty another bird, but not shoot over him. Ken planed another quail about 50 yards upwind this time. He carried the gun, but wasn't planning to fire. Ty worked the wind beautifully. He didn't quarter at all, he picked up the scent right out of the truck and followed it in perfectly. When he got to the bird, he stopped, sniffed, and waited for me and Ken to approach. I praised him, kicked up the bird, and Ty made his way back to the truck. The three shots from the last bird were clearly too much for him. We took Remy out to police up the bird and it ended up in a tree. Because Remy couldn't see it, we decided to give a third bird to the hunting gods.
After that we took Ty and Remy up for a swim and he did great! He made a number of 30+ yard water retrieves of a bumper, including one where he had to find the bumper in a distracting mixture of floating sticks. It required him to approach and inspect every floating object until he found the bumper. I was SUPER proud of him.
So, day two on live birds was definitely a success. But, he's going to need quite a bit more work on his gun shyness. I'm confident we'll be able to fix that, but it is going to take a lot of work.
We've started work on the frozen birds in the yard, and Ty is really getting the hang of it. He's learning quickly that birds need to be retrieved, not played with. Differential rewards are really working well with him. I've started giving him larger rewards (3 pieces of kibble and lots of praise from me) for a quick and direct retrieve and smaller rewards (1 piece of kibble, no or small praise) for less enthusiastic retrieves, and he's getting much more prompt.
We've still got some work to do on his retrieving to hand. He'll get close enough for me to grab it, but I can't get him to front and sit before delivering the bird. So we've got some work on that. And of course, the gun shyness. But that's a whole other endeavor entirely.
A funny anecdote: Last night I planted two frozen quail and two frozen chukar in the yard for Ty to "hunt". He found them and retrieved them all smartly. After, I tossed one of the chukar for him to retrieve three or for times to end the session with some play. Fast forward to this morning. I've got the dogs outside before I leave for work and I notice Ty is chewing on something. I call him to me to inspect and he won't "out" it. So I take it from him and much to my surprise, it's a chukar head. EEEEEEEEEEWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!! It must have snapped off one of the birds when I was tossing it for him to retrieve. So gross! LOL. I guess the upside is that he's now very focused on bird scents. :-)
It's been a while since I've written an update, so I thought I'd write a quick one. I've been a bit distracted with various things, so Ty and I have been on a 2-3 day per week schedule rather than the 5-6 we were on before. He is now 9.5 months old and is starting to assert his independence a bit. He's gotten somewhat sloppy on his retrieving, so I've been increasingly mixing in some other skills for him. We've been focusing on "heel" and delivery of birds.
My ultimate goal is to be able to train him to deliver birds while sitting on my left side, facing forward. Do I need to do this? Absolutely not! But it's fun to try and that's what this experience is all about. I've been working on heel with treats only, but I'm thinking it might be time to dust off the old clicker. Tyson will heel for a few steps, but is having trouble realizing that heel means my left side, and not just by my side. He is also having trouble learning that "heel" means he needs to move into that position if he isn't already there. But we're working on it.
I'm also starting to teach Ty to "hold" birds/bumpers and wait to deliver them. We've been practicing with is favorite Nylabone because he likes to hold that. I'll give him the "take it" command, ask him to "sit", then give him the "leave it" as I hold the corner. He's got that down very well, even without treats (getting the nylabone back is a reinforcer). Because he's so used to delivering bumpers and birds on retrieves, he's having slight trouble generalizing to bumpers. He'll take it, then immediately drop it and look for his reward. Clicker time again. :-)
To link the heel with the retrieve, I've started turning my back to him when he comes back with the bumper. He seems to be fine delivering with my back turned toward him. Slowly, I'm beginning to turn a bit sideways as he retrieves so he learns to move into heel position when he retrieves. I think we'll get there with a few more practice sessions.
I need to dust my clickers off, too. Since the spring, I have been a little more lax with their reinforcement training than I should have been. But now that we are back to just the three of us, it is time to get the ball rolling again!
Over the last week or so, I've been working with Tyson in the house on delivering to hand and on heeling. I dusted off the clicker and after about five minutes, he really got the hang of it. We've been working inside in part due to the earlier darkness making it difficult to get out in the evening for training after work, and also because he seemed to be getting a little bored with retrieving practice in the yard. After two session with the clicker, Ty was retrieving the dummy in the house at about 10 ft, bringing it back, sitting, and waiting about 5 seconds for me to grab it. BIG progress. We also did some work on heeling. At first I tried to lure him to a heel position while I was standing and he just wasn't getting it. My fault, not his. So I start by walking up next to him and taking a step forward. When he got up in position, I'd click and treat. After a few minutes of that, I start 1/4 turn and he would move back into a heel for a click and treat. Then I tried 1/2 turn, but he didn't get that. He just started sitting in front of me expectantly. I backed off to 1/4 turns again and he was fine. So then I started walking around my house in circles and I'd click every time he got into heel. He got that super fast and really well too. So he's making progress on those fronts for sure.
Today, I woke my ass up super early and took Ty down for some more bird time. This time I bought two pigeons. My goal was to work on his gunshyness. That's all I really cared about today. So, I gave Ken my cap gun and sent him off about 30 yards. I put Ty on a check cord and took one of the pigeons and tossed it out about 10 yards (I had clipped its flying feathers so it couldn't really fly far). At first, Ty just sort of looked at me, then he gave chase. Bang bang on the cap gun. Ty didn't notice at all. He also didn't retrieve at all. lol. CHOMP! Ooops. I dragged him back in with the check cord and he handed me a bloody pigeon. I tossed it again. Bang bang bang bang on the cap gun. He paused slightly, but then went right to the pigeon. I had Ken move back about 5 yards and we repeated. After three or four more tosses, Ken was about 10 yards away and Ty didn't seem to notice the cap gun at all. Then, a nearby hunter fired a 12 guage and Ty decided he wasn't cool with that. We quickly packed up and moved 1/2 mile away to get some more distance.
I clipped the flight feathers on the second pigeon and tossed him out into cover about 40 yards away. With Ty on the check cord, we started working the area looking for the bird. He didn't quite get the idea this time. In previous times, he's hunted beautifully, quartering at a nice lope with his nose working the entire time. Today he basically stuck to my side while I guided him through the brush. Ken spotted the bird before Ty did, so I worked Ty up to it. At first he didn't see it and was totally confused. But then he caught sight of it and started lunging excitedly. I tried to get him to sit but he just wasn't having it. Fwap fwap fwap fwap off flew the bird. Ty busted it. It landed in some tall wheat and we went to look for it. Ty just didn't seem interested today. So after a few minutes of me trying to Coax him to hunt, I decided to give him a rest and put him back in the truck. Remy (a Vizsla) and Moon (a Brittany) came out and policed up the pigeon in four minutes. Seeing the two of them locked on point was quite a sight. :-)
After that, we loaded up and went down for a swim where Ty did his typical one water retrieve and then lost interest in trying to outswim the other dogs. He had a good time splashing around and trying to steal bumpers from the other dogs that had swam out to get them. After a good cooling off swim, we loaded up the other dogs and let Ty chase the pigeon one more time. This time I fired the cap gun and threw the bird myself. He wasn't fazed in the slightest! I got six or seven solid tosses on the bird and by the final toss I unloaded six or seven cap shots. Ty didn't retrieve, but he didn't eat the bird either. He ran to it and stood over it sniffing. I can work with that. :-) So, we'll head back down in a few weeks with a .22 blank gun and repeat the process.
In short, today was a big success in terms of starting to get Ty over his gunshyness. It also showed me I need to drill him harder on his retrieves, because he was definitely not interested today.
I've been really bad about posting updates on Tyson's training, and due to being busy with work I've been pretty much even worse about training Tyson. :-( We've had sporadic training sessions over the last few weeks in the back yard with bumpers to work on his retrieving a bit. I started using the clicker to encourage prompt retrieves, rather than allow him to stand over the bumper for a while before picking it up. It worked really well, but that was as far as we had gotten...that is until today.
Given that it's been three weeks since our last training outing with live birds, I decided today was as good a day as any. We hit the road at 7am this morning. It was pretty chilly at 35 degrees, but by the time I got down to the preserve it was a stunningly gorgeous day at nearly 70. Today we worked Ty with Remy the Vizsla, Bink the lab/GSP mix, and Zack the 5 month old English Pointer. Ty and Zack were like peas in a pod, but Zack definitely liked to RUN a lot more than Ty does.
After allowing all four dogs some time to stretch their legs, I worked Ty and Zack on a wing for the first time. If you've never seen this done, it's pretty amazing. You take a wing from a game bird and tie it to one end of a 5 ft. length of fishing line. You then attach the other end to the end of a fishing rod. You start by swinging the wing around the dogs to get them excited. Both Ty and Zack enthusiastically tried to pounce on the wing. After a minute or so of that, I flopped the wing down into the grass and bam, Zack locked onto point for the first time. Amazing! Ty had a little vinegar left in him, so he tried to pounce around Zack. I quickly lifted the wing and flopped it back down on the other side of Ty. He tried to pounce again, so I lifted and re-flopped. We repeated this little dance for about 2 minutes, then all of a sudden, Ty figured it out. "If I don't pounce quickly, it won't go away." What would you know, Ty was pointing the wing!!!!! My jaw dropped. He pointed it three or four times for about 10 seconds each time. Pretty amazing for a big-game dog is you ask me. :-) Ty got a HUGE hug and LOTS of pets from me for that.
After that, I gave Ty some water and put him in the truck to rest and so we could plant a clip-winged pigeon. Today, we tied it's legs together and made a scent trail by dragging it through the tall grass for 100 yards or so. I loaded my cap gun and set Ty free to "go hunt" about 10 minutes later. At that point there was barely any wind, and Ty pretty much wandered around aimlessly within 10 feet of me, so I walked him around until the wind kicked up a bit. We went past the bird to work him back into the wind, and he definitely picked up the scent drag. His nose went down and he started scampering a bit more enthusiastically. He worked in towards the bird very nicely, walking past it at about five feet twice, both times pausing momentarily at the closest point. I knew he smelled it, he just wasn't sure where it was, so I walked in closer and gave him a visual queue on the bird. He pounced it immediately so I fired off two rounds from the cap gun. No reaction at all. He happily chomped his bird. I wrestled it away from him and tossed it about 10 feet away. I then emptied the remaining four shots in the cap ring while he chased it. I reloaded the cap gun and repeated. A full three rings of caps and no reaction at all from Ty. Great progress!
Next, we took Zack out with a fresh bird and let him find and point his first bird. He was a real champ about it, but if it hadn't been for the check cord he probably would have caught the bird very quickly. We threw it up and let Zack chase it down. Ken fired his .22 blank gun up in the air. That thing was LOUD! It was probably just as loud as a 20 gauge. Zack hesitated for just a split-second, then continued after the bird into the woods. We followed him to find him pointing it from 3 feet away. Good boy Zack!
Then came Remy's turn. Remy is already started. He's far from finished, but he can find, point, and retrieve reasonably well. This exercise was all about the gun for him. So I loaded six green crimps into the pistol and off Remy went on the same bird that Zack had been using. I held back about 10 yards and let Remy do his thing. He located the general area of the bird within two minutes, but was having trouble zeroing in on it. Then he accidentally bumped it, got a bit scared, but recovered quickly and pointed it from 10 ft away. It was a sight to see! Ken picked up the bird and tossed it for Remy to chase. I let him get about half way there and fired one shot behind my back into the ground. Still pretty loud, but not as bad. Remy retrieved the live bird, and we repeated until all six crimps had been fired.
Ty's turn again. We made a fresh drag with a fresh bird for Ty. I loaded another six green crimps. This time I hung back about 50 yards and let Ken work Ty up to the bird on a check cord. He certainly didn't remember the pointing he had been doing on the wing. LOL. He did find the bird quickly though. Once he flushed it, I fired off a single .22 blank and got no reaction from Ty at all. So I moved in about 10 yards and let Ken toss the bird for him a second time. Another single shot from the .22, no reaction from Ty again. Excellent! A third time, with no reaction. One the fourth and final toss, I was only about 15 yards away from him and I fired two blanks with absolutely no reaction from Ty. HUGE progress, lots of praise, and I decided to end the session right there. No need to push too hard when he's making such amazing progress!
We let all the dogs run around for about 10 minutes, then loaded up and went over to a pond for a cooling off swim. All four dogs took turns making water retrieves of bumpers and had a blast chasing each other.
I think I'm going to have to get myself a 20 gauge because I think Ty will be ready to be shot over on the next trip. :-)
There's no denying it, I've been horrible about training Tyson for the last few months. The end of November was horrendously hectic for me, in early December it was deer season and Ty got left at home. Then came the holidays and the associated travel, and right when I was getting back into a routine with Ty, I got sick. Like really sick. I was pretty much in bed for five weeks, only to find out that you can, in fact, get mono at age 29. Who knew?
Anyway, as a result, Tyson has gotten zero in the way of training over the last 2.5 months. That all changed this week though. I started him back on a wing on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings this week. (That's the old pigeon wing on a fishing poll.) It took him a good 10 minutes to settle, but after that he started to get the hang of flushing slowly. I don't ever expect him to whoa completely when he sees a bird, I'm just trying to reinforce the stalk part of his prey FAP so I have time to get into position for a shot after he flushes.
Last night I started bringing back more and more of the skills we had been working on in the fall. We started the session with about five or so minutes on the wing. Once he settled, I got two beautiful slow flushes from him in a row, praised the heck out of him, and moved on to retrieving. He enthusiastically retrieved a chukar dummy on the first, second, third, ..., seventh try. Wow! He hasn't skipped a beat despite my lack of stick-to-it-iveness. Good boy! I decided to kick it up one more notch, and brought out a frozen chukar. He was all over it! The first toss, he just wanted to sniff it. So I picked it up and tossed it again. This time he sniffed for a few seconds, then picked it up and dropped it. Progress. He got some verbal praise for that. Third toss, he retrieved to within 4 or 5 feet of me. GOOD BOY! Treats, praise, and another toss. Again, got withing a few feet of me. By the fifth toss, he was dropping the bird at my feet and on the ninth and tenth tosses, he retrieved to hand! I was floored at how well he did. I decided to stop on a very positive note and I let him cary his bumper around for a while to celebrate. :-)
I also have purchased some new training gear that I'm excited about. I got a .22 blank pistol that will help with his gunshyness. I also picked up a remote bird launcher. It's a neet little thing. It's a vented box with a canvas platform attached to springs. It then has a wireless receiver attached to a release mechanism so as Ty approaches it, I can push a button and it will launch a bird/dummy/whatever up into the air. This will help in steadying him to flushes and enable me to work on his gunshyness without needing any help. I also picked up a really cheap 20 gauge side-by-side as the next step in Ty's gunshyness training.
Tomorrow, we hit the preserve for some live bird work. If he progresses like he was at the end of the fall, I'm hopeful I'll be able to shoot a bird or two over him with the 20 tomorrow. I don't want to push him too much though. Slow and steady wins the race!
Wow! That's very impressive!! Well done Tyson! and you offcourse! Reading all those hunting stories makes me want to come over to the states!! :-) No hunting in the Netherlands... :-(
So it sounds like it's all good....so remove the bad dad part : ). It is amazing what they remember. I don't think we give them enough credit sometimes.
Sounds like you've done a really good job with him He obviously likes working with you!
I am so impressed by what you've managed with him!! Maybe someday, you could persuade someone to record some parts of a training session, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's curious
That's great news! We all fall off from time to time. I'm no exception to that. It's just about getting back on track, and it sounds like Tyson is doing great!
One thing that I've seen in Kais, my favorite thing, is that they seem to just "get it". They get what you want from them quickly and do it despite their stubborn strong will.
Comments
(as I am typing, and thinking of you and Ty hunting, Im sitting here at our lil wifi spot outside town hall, a flock of 22 turkeys just walked by...a nice omen, perhaps?)
I don't know of anyone who has ever trained a Kai to hunt birds in the 'western' style of bird hunting. I'm really interested to see how this works out.
@TheWalrus - What's the difference between the "western" style and the type of bird hunting they do in Japan?
I am also curious to know the difference between the "western" style and the Japanese style of bird hunting.
Ty sounds like Saya she loves to tear feathers off of things..
With the NK bird dogs over here, it's pretty much a silent affair of walking through mountain ravines with your dog. When the dogs catch scent, they take off uphill and immediately flush the bird. The hunter reads his dog's movements, and has to generally keep himself in a position to take a good shot off the flush. Most of the dogs will retrieve.
I guess the things you won't see much of is pointing, whoa, blind retrieves (on command). Of course some hunters train their dogs more than others, but there's just not the whole training regimen that you usually see for western style bird dogs.
@TheWalrus - Thanks for the explanation! I suspect Tyson's first year is going to be exactly like what you describe. I'm trying to make it all fun for him, so I'm not worrying about sloppy retrieves or anything like that. I'm not sure he'll have much interest in blind retrieves, but I'll certainly be attempting to try them with him once he matures a bit. He just entered his adolescent "I'm going to do what I want" phase, so for now I'm just going to let him do what he wants to make sure he's enjoying his time on birds as much as possible.
Last week rained a LOT. Tyson is really funny about the rain. He likes water, he doesn't mind walking in the rain, but when the backyard is soggy he has no interest in being out there. He'd rather hold his bladder than go out into the soggy backyard. So, after last week's introduction to birds, we took a few days off, only to meet up against four straight days of rain.
I took one of the now frozen chukars out with Ty and tried to get him interested in it. He was extremely interested in it while still in the house, but the soggy yard was enough to turn him off. I tried getting him to retrieve it a few times, but he just wasn't having it. He would chase and sniff. And because he wasn't all that interested, my typical pick up the bird/bumper and ignore him for a minute tactic didn't work at all. After five minutes of attempting to get him to retrieve, he finally picked up the bird, ran it to the door to go inside, and stood there waiting for me. "Ok Ty, I can take a hint." I took the bird from him, gave him some pets to he didn't think I was upset with him, and let him in. The second we got inside he started jumping up to grab the bird back. Silly Tyson!
We repeated that on Tuesday and Thursday of last week in the rain. Then, Friday turned beautiful, so I was actually able to encourage him to do some retrieves. We started Friday's session out with our standard play, but he wasn't interested in retrieving, only sniffing the frozen chukar. I picked up the bird and held it while he inspected it thoroughly, pulling it away if he grabbed for an appendage (like the head or legs). After about a minute of that, he started to settle, so we practiced the "take". I would reward him for putting his mouth on the bird, then for taking it from my hand and dropping it, then for taking it from my hand, holding it, and releasing it back into my hand. After a few minutes of that, we did a couple of retrieves and I decided to stop there on a positive note.
Saturday we woke our asses up early and went down to the preserve again. We met up with Ken and Remy at 8:00am. This time Ty was more excited than nervous. A full six miles from the preserve, I could see him sniffing the air (I had the windows down in my truck). We loaded Ty up and caught 7 quail from the bird house and went out into the field. We let Ty and Remy run around chasing each other and play with bumpers for about 30 minutes to let them habituate to the new field we were working in. There were cows in a neighboring field and Ty showed some interested in them, but his recall was perfect when I asked him to ignore them and come back to me. There were two guys in a neighboring field hunting Doves and Ty didn't show any reaction to them, so I decided we should try shooting a bird over Ty to see how he did. We put Ty and Remy in the truck and tried to grab a bird out of the bird box. Those little quail are lively suckers! Two birds squeezed out of the box and flew away. Two birds to the hunting gods. I got a line on one of them, so we took Ty down there to see if he could find it. He showed a lot of interest in one area where I figured the bird had landed, but after searching the area for 10 minutes, we gave up. Back to the truck to catch another bird.
This time we managed to get one out of the box and Ken planted it about 50 yards downwind. I had Ken do the shooting so I could keep a close eye on Ty to watch his reaction. I let Ty out of the truck and worked him around to the side of the bird about 30 yards. When we got about parallel with it Ty got a whiff and took off directly for it. He started pawing wildly at the kick pen. "WHOA! WHOA!" Ken and I both yelled, but it was too late. Ty knocked over the kick-pen and flushed the quail. BANG BANG. Ken emptied both barrels of my 12 gauge O/U and missed. Stupid me followed the bird and didn't see Ty's initial reaction. When I looked back at him, he was staring off in the direction the bird had landed, tail not up, but not down either. I whistled him in and praised him, then started working him toward the area the bird landed. He was a bit tentative, not ranging out more than 10 yards or so. So did my best to get him interested again. I ran around going in and out of the cover, trying to make it a game for him. He sniffed around a bit, but didn't enter the thick cover at all. We worked up and down the row of cover the bird landed in and on our third pass, Ty flushed it again. BANG, one shot and it's down. That was too much for Ty. His tail went down and he jumped all over me for comfort. I ran out to the downed bird and tossed it for him to chase. After two or three tosses, he made a nice retrieve to hand, so I treated and praised and hugged him.
We then went back to the truck, and I loaded him up to give him some quiet time. Remy got a chance to point and retrieve his first bird and it was just beautiful to watch (I'm now almost sure I'm going to own a Vizsla some day). We then decided to give Ty another bird, but not shoot over him. Ken planed another quail about 50 yards upwind this time. He carried the gun, but wasn't planning to fire. Ty worked the wind beautifully. He didn't quarter at all, he picked up the scent right out of the truck and followed it in perfectly. When he got to the bird, he stopped, sniffed, and waited for me and Ken to approach. I praised him, kicked up the bird, and Ty made his way back to the truck. The three shots from the last bird were clearly too much for him. We took Remy out to police up the bird and it ended up in a tree. Because Remy couldn't see it, we decided to give a third bird to the hunting gods.
After that we took Ty and Remy up for a swim and he did great! He made a number of 30+ yard water retrieves of a bumper, including one where he had to find the bumper in a distracting mixture of floating sticks. It required him to approach and inspect every floating object until he found the bumper. I was SUPER proud of him.
So, day two on live birds was definitely a success. But, he's going to need quite a bit more work on his gun shyness. I'm confident we'll be able to fix that, but it is going to take a lot of work.
Looking forward to hearing how he does next time...
We've started work on the frozen birds in the yard, and Ty is really getting the hang of it. He's learning quickly that birds need to be retrieved, not played with. Differential rewards are really working well with him. I've started giving him larger rewards (3 pieces of kibble and lots of praise from me) for a quick and direct retrieve and smaller rewards (1 piece of kibble, no or small praise) for less enthusiastic retrieves, and he's getting much more prompt.
We've still got some work to do on his retrieving to hand. He'll get close enough for me to grab it, but I can't get him to front and sit before delivering the bird. So we've got some work on that. And of course, the gun shyness. But that's a whole other endeavor entirely.
A funny anecdote: Last night I planted two frozen quail and two frozen chukar in the yard for Ty to "hunt". He found them and retrieved them all smartly. After, I tossed one of the chukar for him to retrieve three or for times to end the session with some play. Fast forward to this morning. I've got the dogs outside before I leave for work and I notice Ty is chewing on something. I call him to me to inspect and he won't "out" it. So I take it from him and much to my surprise, it's a chukar head. EEEEEEEEEEWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!! It must have snapped off one of the birds when I was tossing it for him to retrieve. So gross! LOL. I guess the upside is that he's now very focused on bird scents. :-)
And eww... on the chukar head. Haha.
It's been a while since I've written an update, so I thought I'd write a quick one. I've been a bit distracted with various things, so Ty and I have been on a 2-3 day per week schedule rather than the 5-6 we were on before. He is now 9.5 months old and is starting to assert his independence a bit. He's gotten somewhat sloppy on his retrieving, so I've been increasingly mixing in some other skills for him. We've been focusing on "heel" and delivery of birds.
My ultimate goal is to be able to train him to deliver birds while sitting on my left side, facing forward. Do I need to do this? Absolutely not! But it's fun to try and that's what this experience is all about. I've been working on heel with treats only, but I'm thinking it might be time to dust off the old clicker. Tyson will heel for a few steps, but is having trouble realizing that heel means my left side, and not just by my side. He is also having trouble learning that "heel" means he needs to move into that position if he isn't already there. But we're working on it.
I'm also starting to teach Ty to "hold" birds/bumpers and wait to deliver them. We've been practicing with is favorite Nylabone because he likes to hold that. I'll give him the "take it" command, ask him to "sit", then give him the "leave it" as I hold the corner. He's got that down very well, even without treats (getting the nylabone back is a reinforcer). Because he's so used to delivering bumpers and birds on retrieves, he's having slight trouble generalizing to bumpers. He'll take it, then immediately drop it and look for his reward. Clicker time again. :-)
To link the heel with the retrieve, I've started turning my back to him when he comes back with the bumper. He seems to be fine delivering with my back turned toward him. Slowly, I'm beginning to turn a bit sideways as he retrieves so he learns to move into heel position when he retrieves. I think we'll get there with a few more practice sessions.
And yep... Clicker time!
I need to dust my clickers off, too. Since the spring, I have been a little more lax with their reinforcement training than I should have been. But now that we are back to just the three of us, it is time to get the ball rolling again!
Over the last week or so, I've been working with Tyson in the house on delivering to hand and on heeling. I dusted off the clicker and after about five minutes, he really got the hang of it. We've been working inside in part due to the earlier darkness making it difficult to get out in the evening for training after work, and also because he seemed to be getting a little bored with retrieving practice in the yard. After two session with the clicker, Ty was retrieving the dummy in the house at about 10 ft, bringing it back, sitting, and waiting about 5 seconds for me to grab it. BIG progress. We also did some work on heeling. At first I tried to lure him to a heel position while I was standing and he just wasn't getting it. My fault, not his. So I start by walking up next to him and taking a step forward. When he got up in position, I'd click and treat. After a few minutes of that, I start 1/4 turn and he would move back into a heel for a click and treat. Then I tried 1/2 turn, but he didn't get that. He just started sitting in front of me expectantly. I backed off to 1/4 turns again and he was fine. So then I started walking around my house in circles and I'd click every time he got into heel. He got that super fast and really well too. So he's making progress on those fronts for sure.
Today, I woke my ass up super early and took Ty down for some more bird time. This time I bought two pigeons. My goal was to work on his gunshyness. That's all I really cared about today. So, I gave Ken my cap gun and sent him off about 30 yards. I put Ty on a check cord and took one of the pigeons and tossed it out about 10 yards (I had clipped its flying feathers so it couldn't really fly far). At first, Ty just sort of looked at me, then he gave chase. Bang bang on the cap gun. Ty didn't notice at all. He also didn't retrieve at all. lol. CHOMP! Ooops. I dragged him back in with the check cord and he handed me a bloody pigeon. I tossed it again. Bang bang bang bang on the cap gun. He paused slightly, but then went right to the pigeon. I had Ken move back about 5 yards and we repeated. After three or four more tosses, Ken was about 10 yards away and Ty didn't seem to notice the cap gun at all. Then, a nearby hunter fired a 12 guage and Ty decided he wasn't cool with that. We quickly packed up and moved 1/2 mile away to get some more distance.
I clipped the flight feathers on the second pigeon and tossed him out into cover about 40 yards away. With Ty on the check cord, we started working the area looking for the bird. He didn't quite get the idea this time. In previous times, he's hunted beautifully, quartering at a nice lope with his nose working the entire time. Today he basically stuck to my side while I guided him through the brush. Ken spotted the bird before Ty did, so I worked Ty up to it. At first he didn't see it and was totally confused. But then he caught sight of it and started lunging excitedly. I tried to get him to sit but he just wasn't having it. Fwap fwap fwap fwap off flew the bird. Ty busted it. It landed in some tall wheat and we went to look for it. Ty just didn't seem interested today. So after a few minutes of me trying to Coax him to hunt, I decided to give him a rest and put him back in the truck. Remy (a Vizsla) and Moon (a Brittany) came out and policed up the pigeon in four minutes. Seeing the two of them locked on point was quite a sight. :-)
After that, we loaded up and went down for a swim where Ty did his typical one water retrieve and then lost interest in trying to outswim the other dogs. He had a good time splashing around and trying to steal bumpers from the other dogs that had swam out to get them. After a good cooling off swim, we loaded up the other dogs and let Ty chase the pigeon one more time. This time I fired the cap gun and threw the bird myself. He wasn't fazed in the slightest! I got six or seven solid tosses on the bird and by the final toss I unloaded six or seven cap shots. Ty didn't retrieve, but he didn't eat the bird either. He ran to it and stood over it sniffing. I can work with that. :-) So, we'll head back down in a few weeks with a .22 blank gun and repeat the process.
In short, today was a big success in terms of starting to get Ty over his gunshyness. It also showed me I need to drill him harder on his retrieves, because he was definitely not interested today.
I've been really bad about posting updates on Tyson's training, and due to being busy with work I've been pretty much even worse about training Tyson. :-( We've had sporadic training sessions over the last few weeks in the back yard with bumpers to work on his retrieving a bit. I started using the clicker to encourage prompt retrieves, rather than allow him to stand over the bumper for a while before picking it up. It worked really well, but that was as far as we had gotten...that is until today.
Given that it's been three weeks since our last training outing with live birds, I decided today was as good a day as any. We hit the road at 7am this morning. It was pretty chilly at 35 degrees, but by the time I got down to the preserve it was a stunningly gorgeous day at nearly 70. Today we worked Ty with Remy the Vizsla, Bink the lab/GSP mix, and Zack the 5 month old English Pointer. Ty and Zack were like peas in a pod, but Zack definitely liked to RUN a lot more than Ty does.
After allowing all four dogs some time to stretch their legs, I worked Ty and Zack on a wing for the first time. If you've never seen this done, it's pretty amazing. You take a wing from a game bird and tie it to one end of a 5 ft. length of fishing line. You then attach the other end to the end of a fishing rod. You start by swinging the wing around the dogs to get them excited. Both Ty and Zack enthusiastically tried to pounce on the wing. After a minute or so of that, I flopped the wing down into the grass and bam, Zack locked onto point for the first time. Amazing! Ty had a little vinegar left in him, so he tried to pounce around Zack. I quickly lifted the wing and flopped it back down on the other side of Ty. He tried to pounce again, so I lifted and re-flopped. We repeated this little dance for about 2 minutes, then all of a sudden, Ty figured it out. "If I don't pounce quickly, it won't go away." What would you know, Ty was pointing the wing!!!!! My jaw dropped. He pointed it three or four times for about 10 seconds each time. Pretty amazing for a big-game dog is you ask me. :-) Ty got a HUGE hug and LOTS of pets from me for that.
After that, I gave Ty some water and put him in the truck to rest and so we could plant a clip-winged pigeon. Today, we tied it's legs together and made a scent trail by dragging it through the tall grass for 100 yards or so. I loaded my cap gun and set Ty free to "go hunt" about 10 minutes later. At that point there was barely any wind, and Ty pretty much wandered around aimlessly within 10 feet of me, so I walked him around until the wind kicked up a bit. We went past the bird to work him back into the wind, and he definitely picked up the scent drag. His nose went down and he started scampering a bit more enthusiastically. He worked in towards the bird very nicely, walking past it at about five feet twice, both times pausing momentarily at the closest point. I knew he smelled it, he just wasn't sure where it was, so I walked in closer and gave him a visual queue on the bird. He pounced it immediately so I fired off two rounds from the cap gun. No reaction at all. He happily chomped his bird. I wrestled it away from him and tossed it about 10 feet away. I then emptied the remaining four shots in the cap ring while he chased it. I reloaded the cap gun and repeated. A full three rings of caps and no reaction at all from Ty. Great progress!
Next, we took Zack out with a fresh bird and let him find and point his first bird. He was a real champ about it, but if it hadn't been for the check cord he probably would have caught the bird very quickly. We threw it up and let Zack chase it down. Ken fired his .22 blank gun up in the air. That thing was LOUD! It was probably just as loud as a 20 gauge. Zack hesitated for just a split-second, then continued after the bird into the woods. We followed him to find him pointing it from 3 feet away. Good boy Zack!
Then came Remy's turn. Remy is already started. He's far from finished, but he can find, point, and retrieve reasonably well. This exercise was all about the gun for him. So I loaded six green crimps into the pistol and off Remy went on the same bird that Zack had been using. I held back about 10 yards and let Remy do his thing. He located the general area of the bird within two minutes, but was having trouble zeroing in on it. Then he accidentally bumped it, got a bit scared, but recovered quickly and pointed it from 10 ft away. It was a sight to see! Ken picked up the bird and tossed it for Remy to chase. I let him get about half way there and fired one shot behind my back into the ground. Still pretty loud, but not as bad. Remy retrieved the live bird, and we repeated until all six crimps had been fired.
Ty's turn again. We made a fresh drag with a fresh bird for Ty. I loaded another six green crimps. This time I hung back about 50 yards and let Ken work Ty up to the bird on a check cord. He certainly didn't remember the pointing he had been doing on the wing. LOL. He did find the bird quickly though. Once he flushed it, I fired off a single .22 blank and got no reaction from Ty at all. So I moved in about 10 yards and let Ken toss the bird for him a second time. Another single shot from the .22, no reaction from Ty again. Excellent! A third time, with no reaction. One the fourth and final toss, I was only about 15 yards away from him and I fired two blanks with absolutely no reaction from Ty. HUGE progress, lots of praise, and I decided to end the session right there. No need to push too hard when he's making such amazing progress!
We let all the dogs run around for about 10 minutes, then loaded up and went over to a pond for a cooling off swim. All four dogs took turns making water retrieves of bumpers and had a blast chasing each other.
I think I'm going to have to get myself a 20 gauge because I think Ty will be ready to be shot over on the next trip. :-)
Go TY! ~
There's no denying it, I've been horrible about training Tyson for the last few months. The end of November was horrendously hectic for me, in early December it was deer season and Ty got left at home. Then came the holidays and the associated travel, and right when I was getting back into a routine with Ty, I got sick. Like really sick. I was pretty much in bed for five weeks, only to find out that you can, in fact, get mono at age 29. Who knew?
Anyway, as a result, Tyson has gotten zero in the way of training over the last 2.5 months. That all changed this week though. I started him back on a wing on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings this week. (That's the old pigeon wing on a fishing poll.) It took him a good 10 minutes to settle, but after that he started to get the hang of flushing slowly. I don't ever expect him to whoa completely when he sees a bird, I'm just trying to reinforce the stalk part of his prey FAP so I have time to get into position for a shot after he flushes.
Last night I started bringing back more and more of the skills we had been working on in the fall. We started the session with about five or so minutes on the wing. Once he settled, I got two beautiful slow flushes from him in a row, praised the heck out of him, and moved on to retrieving. He enthusiastically retrieved a chukar dummy on the first, second, third, ..., seventh try. Wow! He hasn't skipped a beat despite my lack of stick-to-it-iveness. Good boy! I decided to kick it up one more notch, and brought out a frozen chukar. He was all over it! The first toss, he just wanted to sniff it. So I picked it up and tossed it again. This time he sniffed for a few seconds, then picked it up and dropped it. Progress. He got some verbal praise for that. Third toss, he retrieved to within 4 or 5 feet of me. GOOD BOY! Treats, praise, and another toss. Again, got withing a few feet of me. By the fifth toss, he was dropping the bird at my feet and on the ninth and tenth tosses, he retrieved to hand! I was floored at how well he did. I decided to stop on a very positive note and I let him cary his bumper around for a while to celebrate. :-)
I also have purchased some new training gear that I'm excited about. I got a .22 blank pistol that will help with his gunshyness. I also picked up a remote bird launcher. It's a neet little thing. It's a vented box with a canvas platform attached to springs. It then has a wireless receiver attached to a release mechanism so as Ty approaches it, I can push a button and it will launch a bird/dummy/whatever up into the air. This will help in steadying him to flushes and enable me to work on his gunshyness without needing any help. I also picked up a really cheap 20 gauge side-by-side as the next step in Ty's gunshyness training.
Tomorrow, we hit the preserve for some live bird work. If he progresses like he was at the end of the fall, I'm hopeful I'll be able to shoot a bird or two over him with the 20 tomorrow. I don't want to push him too much though. Slow and steady wins the race!
Reading all those hunting stories makes me want to come over to the states!! :-)
No hunting in the Netherlands... :-(
It is amazing what they remember. I don't think we give them enough credit sometimes.
Great job...
Snf
I am so impressed by what you've managed with him!!
One thing that I've seen in Kais, my favorite thing, is that they seem to just "get it". They get what you want from them quickly and do it despite their stubborn strong will.
Great job!!!!!
I am not actually surprised that after a break, Ty did extra well. This is a performance pattern in many sports/arts. Good boy Tyson!