Pheasant season opened last Saturday out here in Montana. I've seen a couple episodes of "Gun It with Benny Spies" on the Sportsman Channel and have to say, the bird hunting out here is a little different. You actually have to work for it. No offense at all but from what I've seen, South Dakota pheasant hunting can be pretty ridiculous. I walked a few miles and shot at three birds. What it looks like is you can't walk 30 yards without shooting at three birds in SD. And again, no offense because I really love the show but Benny, you need all the chances you can get...
I only hunted upland birds a couple times last year and it was pretty tough. Cutter didn't really know what he was supposed to be doing and once a bird dropped, he was pretty reluctant to pick them up and bring them back. He wasn't quite two years old at the time so you got to cut him some slack. The ducks were a different story. He only lost one bird all season and had to have made 30+ retrieves.
Hunting with a dog should be fun--fun for you and the dog. The second a good bird dog gets the scent of a rooster, it's pretty obvious and can be pretty entertaining. Cutter got on a few birds today and was really good at staying after them for the first few minutes. However, if he couldn't find them right away, his ADD kicked in and he started looking for ground squirrels or a pile of cow manure to roll in. (Found one...) I'm sure with the more birds that get shot over him the more birdy he will become--just a matter of time and miles.
I've trained all my dogs but I'll be honest, I'm really not very good at it. I can get them to listen and to get off the bed or out of the kitchen and Cutter is really good about not breaking on a bird and even better at circling back on the whistle but the retrieving today, (or lack there of,) really challenged our relationship.
The first bird dropped in some pretty sparse cover so it wasn't really a concern of whether or not I could find it if Cutter couldn't. But I sent him after it and was patient to wait and see what he would do once he did find it. He picked it up and came about 2/3 of the way back and dropped it.
"Fetch it up Cutter!" I said with enthusiasm and excitement and he went back to it, sniffed it and left it...
"Fetch it up!!" This time I yelled it with a little frustration. That certainly didn't help.
I picked up the bird and waved it in front of him until he started chasing me and bighting at the bird. I ran around in circles with him and then tossed the bird yelling, "Fetch it up, Cutter. Fetch it up!"
Cutter did pick the bird up and brought it back to me. We played that game for a while until I figured he understood what his role in the whole hunting thing was. I put the bird in my vest and we headed towards the river. Cutter was in need of some water and he was full of cow crap.
We got to the river and he jumped in. I wanted to re-instill the retrieving thing and also wanted him to wash the crap off himself so I chucked a stick out in the river. "Fetch it up!"
Cutter swam out, grabbed the stick and swam back with it. When he got to the bank, he dropped the stick, shook off and left it there and came walking back.
I'm not going to lie, that is so frustrating. The thing is, it's a really bad habit. I've seen birds take off when dropped like that and sometimes they get their bearings and you lose them all together. It's not just annoying; eventually you will lose birds. It's something I wanted to nip in the butt right away so the next time he dropped the stick without bringing it back, I gave him a little shock with his collar.
Bad boy, Russ...
Here's the thing. The shock collar is a way of getting there attention but it's also a form of punishment. You can shock them when they break on a bird and don't listen to the whistle because they will associate the whistle with the shock and they will learn that if the whistle blows, I better stop. However, if you punish them for not doing something you want them to do, it will almost always result in associating the desired act with the punishment. I just trained Cutter to be afraid of the stick and even more-so, to be afraid of playing fetch even though I was trying to tell him that dropping the stick was bad. Now, anything to do with the stick was going to result in a punishment. Bad boy...Russ.
We kicked up two birds in some heavy cover along the river. I missed the first rooster but dropped the second one. I sent Cutter in for it and listened for him to stop, which I figured was when he found the bird. I wanted to call him back, thinking he would still have the bird in his mouth so I blew the whistle. Did I say how bad I am at this?
Cutter immediately came back, empty handed. "Fetch it up, Cutter!" I yelled, again with excitement and enthusiasm and watched him head back into the brush and again he came back empty. "God Dammit." My blood pressure was rising.
I went into the brush and followed Cutter to the pheasant. It was stone dead but with the amount of feathers on the ground, I could tell Cutter had gotten to the bird earlier. "Come on, Cutter." I said with some disappointment and again, what I was telling him is that birds are bad.
Cutter got on at least one more bird on the way back to truck but we couldn't flush him. That's the challenge of having a flushing dog versus and pointer. When a bird runs on a flushing dog, they pursue the bird until they get him up or you call them back and a smart bird will just keep running until he's far enough away and then flush. A good pointer can get up on a bird without flushing them or making them run.
We got back to the truck and took a couple pics and then I wanted to straighten out this retrieving thing. I probably should have waited until the next day to work on it but I was frustrated and for those who know me, I have a hard time of letting things go when I'm frustrated.
I told Cutter to sit and stay and then chucked one of the pheasants. I gave the command to fetch and he jogged out to the bird, sniffed it and slowly walked back. Training should have been done but now I was even more frustrated.
"Cutter!" I yelled. "Come on! You've done this like a hundred times. Fetch it up!"
That certainly didn't get the desired affect from Cutter. He lay down and instead of backing down and just calling it quits for the day, I grabbed the training bumper and threw it. "Fetch it up!"
He looked towards the dummy and back at me. (Or maybe I should say, "He looked towards the bumper and then back at the dummy...) "Fetch it up, Cutter!!"
I ran over and grabbed the bumper and threw it again. "Fetch, Cutter!" Of course, he didn't.
A storm had been brewing both inside me and outside and within a few minutes, the wind had picked up to about 30 mph. I grabbed the bumper and launched it high up in the air. My frustration guiding the trajectory and force and with the help from the wind, the bumper sailed across the road and over the fence into a private field. "AHHH!!"
It's usually about this time when I've lost total control that clarity sets in. It's usually about the same time I look around and thank God nobody was watching this embarrassing display of my total loss of any kind of self-control. It's also about the same time I think, "Great, I've really fucked this dog up now," and I started analyzing what was going on.
Cutter is still a puppy. Maybe he's like a teenager but he's not to the point that he knows his role in all of this. To him, it's all about fun and playing fetch is supposed to be fun but he doesn't live for it like other dogs and he's definitely not to the place where he's doing all he can to please me. At this point he just wants to play. Chasing birds is fun but at some point, he loses interest. Playing fetch is fun too, when he's competing with another dog or when he gets an "atta-boy" out of it but the minute he gets reprimanded, he's done.
With this newly, re-found clarity, I grabbed the bumper and told Cutter to come. Reluctantly, he did. I waved it in front of his face and ruffed up the fur on his neck and scratched his ears. I rubbed the bumper across his back and waved it again until he jumped to grab it. I pulled it away and waved circles around his head until he was jumping for it and then I threw it and yelled, "Fetch it up, Cutter."
He did fetch it up and I ran away from him until he chased me with it. When I stopped he ran up to me with it and grabbed him and scratched his ears and praised him. I picked up the bumper and threw it again and now fetch was back to being a game.
After a while, I did replace the bumper with the pheasant and he retrieved it. I did it just enough to reinforce the behavior and then loaded him up and we were on our way. We were both tired, my voice was gone but I was back to thinking maybe I didn't totally screw him up.
Keep 'em where they live...
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