I'm debating about sending Macy back to her breeder for training. It's a 3 month program for gun dogs, with emphasis on bird work and more advanced skills. It's sounds silly, but my main hang-up (besides cost) is having her gone for 3 months. She would be right at 6 months old when starting this program so I would get her back at 9 months old. I'm just concerned that we would somehow lose our routine and bond that I've worked so hard at since she was 7 weeks old. My head says she will come back a better dog, but my heart is nervous. Does anyone have experience with this? Did you reconnect quickly with the dog? Any other pros and cons of sending your pup away?
Well, to be honest I simply cannot imagine sending a dog away for that amount of time. 3 months!!!!! When she's only six months old! I do know gundog trainers who take dogs in for training, but I've never heard of them having the dog for this length of time. It doesn't sound silly to me at all that you are worried. Three months when she is completely outside your influence, with little say about how she is trained or kept; it certainly wouldn't be right for me. And who's to say she'd come back 'a better dog' - what does that even mean? She may come back able to hold and deliver a dummy properly - but will that make her 'better'?
No no no no no no no. No way would I do this. My dog isn't just a tool for honing, it's a partnership, and you work on that by - well - working on that. Not getting someone else to do it. Not to mention I've heard some horror stories about the handling at some of those places. There are very, very few people I would trust with my dogs even for a few days. Months would be out of the question. I know it's the norm in some circles, but I also know that many of those circles are ones that "get the job done" with plenty of punishment. That's the fastest way to get results, after all, and if this is run as a business, that's what you're after - results. Anyway, I want to take pride in the accomplishments I have had with my dogs, not take credit for what someone else has done.
No gundog could possibly be fully trained at 9 months of age. I know plenty of gundog trainers here in the UK who take dogs in for training but not at the age of 6 months. The dogs are usually about a year old. A period of about 3 months is about right though. Would I ever do it? Not in a million years. I simply couldn't part with them for such a long time, nor would I trust another trainer to train them and handle them the way I like to train and handle my dogs.
I've always been in the same camp as you guys, same exact thoughts. However, my thoughts are changing a little bit. Big reason is I have two small children (ages 1 and 5). Plus I work full time. I can handle all the basic training, but do not have time for all the bird work. This breeder has a very good reputation in the area and so I am not worried about neglect or abuse. And a 3 month time frame is pretty standard here in the US for this type of gun dog training. She would not be finished, and ready for trials, but very well started. Having said all of that........ still don't know if I can do it.
And what about her developing joints? She shouldn't be doing a whole lot of retrieving at this age anyway, because of potential damage until her growth plates have closed. How intensive can it be with that restriction? Neglect and abuse is one end of a spectrum, but there's a whole lot of things I wouldn't be happy with between that and how I would choose to handle my dogs. Things that would seem perfectly normal to many people but are not acceptable by my standards. Nope. You hopefully have many years ahead of you with your girl. Why miss out on a huge chunk of her puppyhood? What's the rush?
But what could he possibly do with her at such a young age? Training would be 10-15 minutes in the morning and the same in the afternoon. Mentally that is pretty much all she could cope with at this age.
Its a NO from me too ! My lad started his gundog training at around 10 months of age , he would not have been mature enough at six months . I couldn't imagine sending my dog away for three months , I want to build the bond with me , have him do my bidding , I would be sick with worry and missing him far too much , sorry x
I'm afraid I couldn't part with my boy for three days, let alone three months. Especially at such a young age. I know how I want to train my dog, I too take pride in what my hard work has produced. If this is something you are interested in doing with your dog does he have to be so young? I would say go with your heart - sorry if that's not what you want to hear.
I don't have a great deal of time to spend individually with my dogs, we muddle on through dog training together though, and are getting there slowly. What I have got now is a fantastic bond with all three which has developed over time and hours training. They know instinctively what my random whistle and waving of arms mean..and I like that. I am never going to be able to run them in trials, you really, really have to be dedicated for that. I have though already one dog who is perfectly capable on a shoot, and one who is on her way, and probably will have her first picking up season this year. Would I have achieved this any quicker by sending them to a training camp? Probably not, unless I took three months of and went too!
I don't really know anything about gun dog training and what it entails - I imagine it's really hard though. But when Stanley was a puppy we got a trainer out for a 121 with us and Stanley responded to him really well. I was amazed and I joked if I could send him to him and him bring him back when he was trained and the instructor laughed and said he could do that - but Stanley probably wouldn't respond to me in the same way as he would him. To get the connection and mutual understanding that's something you have to just build together I think. I'm far from an experience trainer and my dog is a little terror if anything - but I think if I sent him away for 3 months to be trained he'd still be the same because as soon as he came back I wouldn't have changed. (And I miss him when I'm at work so 3 months would just be waaaaay too long)
That's a long time away. I know people who have sent their dog away for FF training and that was usually about a month. I didn't notice a big difference in how their dog responded or interacted with them. I imagine there must have been a re-bonding period. A good friend, I know her and her dog well, sent away for simple manners and behaviour training (she is an ER nurse with erratic schedule) and I didn't see any difference in bond. GSD aren't very demonstrative anyway though. My own field trainer warned me about trainers who use Stockholm Syndrome in the training, even though he himself took dogs in, but mostly only for a week.
I don't know about gun dog training in the slightest, but certainly with all the training I've done, training the human was a good 75% of the equation, if not more. While it may have been a heck of a lot faster had I gotten a trained service dog from a professional organization (and this is a real, if costly, alternative) I can't imagine not having had the bond that Brogan and I built up through going through the whole process as a team.
At 6 months the main focus is finding birds in the upland. Chukars and pheasants, some dogs point and others flush. The exposure to birds, day after day, is one of the big reasons I am considering. I believe this is an important time to imprint the bird drive. Then they move onto obedience, collar conditioning, and force fetch. Then they put it all together with retrieving birds to hand. I've now checked around with several different very reputable trainers, in a couple different states even. 6 to 7 months old is the norm, and 3 months is pretty standard. Some are longer. IF you only want force fetch, then the time frame is about one month as Snowshoe said. Funny, I posed the same question in a US forum...... very different responses. Although a couple admitted it took awhile to regain the bond.... which is my fear. My heart says 3 months is too long. But I was just hoping to hear both sides from people who have done it.
And herein lies the difference. This is a forum where most members are interested in positive reinforcement and force free methods. Shock collars and force fetch are horrible and completely unnecessary. Anyone that tells you they are harmless is lying. To use them on any dog is completely wrong. On a puppy? That's utterly barbaric.
Here are my thoughts. A few open questions, not personal but general. Is the dog a pet or a working tool? I'm not saying they can't be both. As far as I'm aware it's usual that service dogs are property of the service such as army dogs and police dogs and are trained by professional trainers before going into service, only later are bonds formed with their handler. Guide dogs too go through puppy walking and training then are matched with their owner. Sheepdogs, the ones I've seen on sheepdog trials on TV, the handlers (shepherds) trained their own dogs from puppies. I don't know if it's common for sheepdogs to go to sheepdog school or not. These dogs have to be trained to the highest level to ensure that their role is still valued above that which a machine could do. Our choice of dog and how we interact with it says a lot about how others perceive oneself and how we perceive ourselves, personality and status. Is working a dog on a shoot a livelihood or a hobby? If a hobby then how competitive does one need to be to feel success? How important is it to have the rewards of a trained dog on a shoot or to have the reward of training yourself? Oh, boy, have I thought about sending H off to be trained not to pull on the lead and not to bark and be obedient. I once met a lady who was all fussy when her miniature cockapoo puppy came bounding up to me "No, no don't play with him he's going to boarding school next week to be a gun dog!"
What on earth was that about? It's not unusual for sheepdogs to be sold as partly trained or fully trained.
