I know this is long, but I am at wit's end. Any help appreciated. My 5 year old male, my best friend and companion, is close to not being able to hunt any more. If he never picks up another duck, he will always be those things to me, but that would be the biggest shame and waste ever. He spent over a year with a professional trainer with my goal being to just have a great hunting dog. Along the way, it was recommended that we try some competition to further his development, so he attained his AKC Senior and HRC Finished titles. The last few hunt tests of those were tough and it was a struggle to finally eke him by. I should have noted that the issues which caused his difficulty.... extreme hyper behavior causing inattention....were going to follow us to the duck blind. The entirety of this dog's existence away from hunting is the exact opposite. Calm, serene, sleepy all describe him. When we awaken at hunting camp he's still OK, even on the boat ride he's cool, but when we set-up, duck calls start being blown, and ducks begin to appear in the sky, its like a switch is thrown. He whimpers, cries, whines and sometimes yips at a level that drives me crazy, bothers all others in the group, and is such that the ducks can certainly hear. He is anything but still on his platform, squirming and turning. He jerks his head constantly searching for ducks in the sky, and sometimes has drool running from his mouth. He at times pants when the temperature and cold water should not call for such. When we're done, get back in the boat to head in, the switch is thrown again. He might doze off during the ride. My attempts to stop him from all this have been mightily energetic corporal punishment (a total waste.....it only made him worse) and most recently an electronic collar applied precisely when he mouths off. First morning I thought it might have slowed him down some, but the next we were right back to square one. If I can't get this stopped, he's done. People I hunt with are sympathetic but firm in that it can't be tolerated, and I can't argue with that. By the way, he's a tremendously talented retriever, which makes this all the worse. One interesting recent phenomenon is that after having not retrieved or received any work whatsoever for one year (due to health issues on my part), on the first morning's hunt 2 weeks ago he was fine....made almost no noise and put on a retrieving show. Every morning thereafter he progressively got worse until it was back to where we left off last season. OK, that's it. I'm open to all ideas to save my duck dog's career. Its been suggested that there might be anti-anxiety drugs that could help. If anyone has knowledge of that, I would like to pursue it, but as a last resort and only if its perfectly safe. Thanks in advance....
Tombigbee, welcome to the forum I'm sorry that you're having such a frustrating experience with your boy. I'm afraid I don't personally have experience of managing this kind of behavior, but I know that lots of our members have a wealth of collective experience with working Labs. Hopefully some of them will be along shortly with suggestions. Please may I also refer you to our Forum Guidelines, and particularly the bit about punishment based training. We firmly believe that aversives, including corporal punishment and electronic collars, have no place in modern dog training - you can read more about why here, and here. And we take down posts which promote them. Since you have discovered that punishment doesn't work, I doubt your experience here will promote it to anyone else, and we're happy to leave your original post up so our community can offer their support. Good luck, I hope you find some success, but your boy sounds like a wonderful companion whatever happens
Tombigbee I suggest you teach your dog to relax in the environment which is problematic. I would start off with postively reinforcing automatic check in. Teach settle. Put dog in down position. Feed treats between front legs. Stop treat supply when your dog gets up. I can't tell from your description whether it's the presence of other dogs, game, hunters that arouses your dog. You are going to teach your dog LAT for whatever the stimulus that is sending your dog over threshold. Use distance to lower your dog's arousal level when implementing LAT. Your objective here is to desensitise your dog to the stimuli. It will not happen overnight. Expect to do a lot of LAT training. Beware of trigger stacking. Keep training sessions short in the presence of problematic stimuli even at a distance.
A dog making noise when working is the devil's own job to stop, if possible at all. One of my spaniels used to do it and there was no distraction in the world that would stop him. Any pressure would make it worse, ignoring it made it worse. He was as you say, very calm in all other situations, even mock shoots/training days, but the real thing was another matter. My situation has changed a lot over the last two years and he his now out working 4 days a week and has stopped completely. Now this might just be his age- stopped making a noise at 7 years old, or more exposure, who knows. I train quite a few gundogs and have never known anyone find a 'cure' for this behaviour other than nipping it the bud the first time it happens. Personally, I would keep him as a much loved pet, maybe take him out from time to time alone or with some tolerant friends and focus on a new pup for your duck dog. You never know, he might come right, but given that a new dog is going to take two years to train up anyway, at 5 years old, it might be time to start (Slowly!) on his replacement. I say "slowly" as often rushing your training to get them on the real thing is what causes the noise in the first place.
My beagle is in her senior years (will be 11 this year). Best dogs you could have. Sorry for you loss. Kodi nox
