INTRODUCTION TO LIVE BIRDS

Introducing your puppy to live birds for the first time should be an exciting and fun experience for him. Looking back when your puppy was in the pack with his littermates, the breeder would remove one dog at a time and introduce him to bird scent with a few feathers and then a bird wing from a pigeon or a pheasant. The breeder would toss the wing for the puppy to chase and retrieve a few times a day to imprint him to the smell of a bird as well as helping to encourage his predatory instincts ( prey drive).

Most well bred puppys take to this imprinting right away and really enjoy the fun.

As the puppy grows during the third, fourth and fifth month I keep the puppy excited about finding and retrieving wings or small bumpers with wings attached making sure I limit how many retrieves he gets ( 3-4) is plenty. I stop retrieving with him while he is still excited about it and wanting more.

I am not working on structured obedience or a finished retrieve at this time. I still want to keep it fun.

During the imprinting stage from 10 to 20 weeks I will move from wings, to small bumpers with wings attached, to a frozen pigeon or chucker. making small changes in the size of the bird will help build his confidence.

When I have the dog retrieving frozen birds, I will move to a lock wing pigeon.( I lock the wings so the first time the pup retrieves the live bird the bird wont flap its wings in the pups face and spook him.) I want to keep him motivated to retrieve a live bird with out a struggle from the bird.

As the pup retrieves these birds for a few days, I will move to a clipped wing pigeon.( I will place masking tape around the flight feathers of one wing so the bird can flap his other wing but not fly away.) Again building confidence in somthing new. a moving bird.

After the dog has become comfortable with this more active bird and is retrieving it with ease, only then will I start with the introduction to gun fire.

Imprinting your dog to scent and live birds should be done over a week or two. no reason to rush this, keeping your dog motivated and confident about birds is your first step to developing a confident upland dog.

During this level of training, you should have a flat collar on the dog( no choke chain) and attach a 30 foot light weight rope.

Do all of your training on a mowed lawn or very short grass. Stay out of the tuff stuff.

Roger Hess