Fab day yesterday. My dog walker who also teaches agility, has got really interested in gundog training since walking our three, so she organised a gundog experience day, We don't have any positive gundog trainers locally, as she is a positive dog trainer herself..who do you think she asked? A wonderful day. A lot of dogs were agility or obedience trained, so was interesting to see how they adapted. Learnt so much..a couple of highlights were we able to take Casper, and although he was a bit excited, he managed to retrieve in front of everyone. So special, and how far has our reactive boy come! He did race to SWMBO at one point, he just couldn't resist! Another highlight was watching a slightly nervous rescue labrador, come out of her shell under the caring hand of SWMBO..and reveal herself to be a trained gundog! She was a beauty! The lovely Harley was also there, looking stunning. Great to see her racing to retrieve dummies, especially after the rotten couple of months she has had with paw problems. Anyway...some photos here https://flic.kr/s/aHskK7k7DP
Yes, a gorgeous dog! One really fascinating titbit we learned.. regarding labradors and dummies. A cohort of labradors were shown various shapes on a piece of card. Squares, circles, and a dummy shape. They displayed the most excitement over the dummy shape, supporting SWMBO's theory that labs have a genetic OCD about dummies...
Such fun!! I've just had my first go with Shadow and a dummy launcher. He absolutely loved it! He wouldn't even take cheese - cheese!! - when there was the prospect of another dummy. We may have to do something about his threshold
Yes,we have the same thing going on with Benson, the ultimate reward, only a dummy launcher is a bit big to carry around...
Fabulous photos! Being totally ignorant of all things gundog I don't know what a dummy launcher looks like or how it works. Is it a machine?
He did chase a ball as a reward for bringing the dummy back (almost all the way ) but it was a bit half-hearted, and he was definitely more interested on keeping an eye on J to see if there was another magical flying dummy going to appear! There are many different types of dummy launcher, Mags, but I have the most basic type. It looks like this: You slide a special dummy over the silver end, insert a blank cartridge in the middle (it cracks open) and then you pull the knob on the end of the handle and release it to fire it. It goes for MILES (well, I have the powerful cartridges, which send it about 100m). It is really loud!
Ours is slightly different...looks like this, it has a stock that can sit on your thigh, and a trigger, more comfortable. We use the green cartridges, less powerful, less gunpowder. I don't know if this translates to a bit quieter. (ps @Bensons-dad says yours looks "quaint" @snowbunny ...sounds like a challenge...dummy launchers launchers at dawn perhaps? )
Wow! I didn't expect that at all - I imagined a thing like they use to launch tennis balls on tennis courts!
Ah, yes, I looked at the ones with a shoulder stock, but I have to be careful here that it doesn't look anything like a gun. The pistol grip and stock are a little bit too gun-like to be safe. I was a bit concerned because I've heard the recoil can be quite nasty on the hand-held ones, whereas the shoulder stocks absorb a lot of that. It's pretty powerful, but nothing I can't handle. Maybe too much for @Bensons-dad though.
@Boogie, you can also get remote ones, which can loot a bit like rocket launchers. From a single one to something like this bad-boy: I don't think I could convince the old boy that we need one of those, though. They're a touch on the pricey side! I'm also going to get one of these when I'm next in the UK: It's a thing that attaches to the dummy launcher and launches tennis balls instead of dummies! A bit of one-upmanship at the local doggy walking spots? There they are with their plastic chuckers and I bring this out.... (BTW, that's a lie because it makes too much bang for me to use it on public land - but it would be quite funny!)
Had another session with Benson and the dummy launcher. This time incorporating some of the advice from yesterday. We are now working on steadiness with Benson. So dummy launcher is fired, and I sitting about 80/90 metres from bensons dad. He is almost beside himself with excitement and rearing to go. I have to get Benson to do a simple exercise, like touch, or paw..something not associated with gundoggery before I release him. Almost impossible, so we worked on this with seen dummies instead. If he breaks, OH puts his foot on the dummy, and I wait until benson chooses to come back, and we try again.
Charlie has fetched one dummy fired from a dummy launcher. He'll not get to fetch another one until he thinks dummy launchers are the most boring things in the world. I reckon that's about 5,000 dummies launched when he does not get to fetch it....
Then 10,000 more when another dog gets to fetch it. My biggest tip for dummy launchers, is do not send your dog for the retrieve!
