When a dog mouths a bird, after he picks it up, and starts to come to you mouthing it, follow these rules: Take a strap about a foot long, and calling your dog up to you. strap him across the nose two or three times.
Do this several times a day, at home, till he dodges the strap. Always hold him by the collar. After this send him out for the training sack and when he picks it up say “Hold,” and walk toward him and shake the strap at him. He will soon have confidence in you and will know that he will get strapped across the nose. Repeat this several times, then take a dead bird and throw it out, give him the same lesson he had with the sack, and if he offers to mouth the bird, strap him across the nose.
Then take him to the field and send him after a bird and repeat the lesson, if needful; but after a few days you will never have any more trouble with him on that score. The great secret in training a dog is to put him under command and not have him afraid of you.
From How to train Dogs and Cats by Frederick Erb, Jr. (1904).
I’m not going to comment on this method, but I’m sure it works (if you have a dog with very, very strong retrieving instinct.)
Making sure that a dog isn’t afraid of you may be the toughest part (and biggest drawback) of the method.
Ouch! It is sometimes wondrously amazing to me more dogs don’t eat people.
It tells you why these gun dog breeds are so docile. They had to be!
With the disclaimer that I don’t know anything about training retrievers…
Wouldn’t that just sour dogs off retrieving altogether? I know if you hit my GSD on the muzzle for picking something up (and mouthing it) he’d promptly make the leap to just not picking it up at all! Or he’d pick it up and run away with it. I’m often amazed that anyone got any work out of dogs at all using such force based methods. It certainly doesn’t encourage the dog to work with you.
It’s such a deeply ingrained motor pattern that the dogs best dogs will want to retrieve anything, just for a reward of doing so.
Of course, this man is training setters and pointers, which often don’t want to retrieve anything.
In the US, it was customary to make setters and pointers retrieve. In Britain, that was heresy. Retrievers retrieve. Index dogs locate the birds, hares, or rabbits.
That is really interesting. I know alot of retriever trainers who use a lot of pressure on their dogs (e-collars, force fetch, heeling sticks etc.) but not any that would apply that kind of correction when a bird is in the pup’s mouth.
I would love to read any info you have on the impact that e-collars have had on retriever breeding. Some feel that a lot of really “hot” dogs with high pain tolerances that can only be controlled with a collar that goes to 11 are now winnng championships and passing on their genes.
I link to Robert Milner’s stuff, which discusses a what you’re talking about: http://www.fetchpup.com/
Of course, this starts one of those big Labrador debates. Milner is controversial in retriever training circles, because he wants to use the British trial system, which is easier to train with less pressure but also requires a lot more training (in terms of time).
I can tell you that the most wild and hot dogs aren’t going to win anything. They are so wild that nobody can control them.
My theory is these dogs might be a byproduct of breeding for a dog that can handle a lot of pressure.
These are all interesting theories, but I would like some scientific studies on these dogs.
I do know that in livestock production, innovations can lead to all sorts of unintended consequences, like the meat roosters that kill hens instead of mating with them: http://books.google.com/books?id=yXazZCCj9QYC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=grandin+roosters&source=bl&ots=FGoOBafxjt&sig=gLDMio00Yhs1eVHbvKUG5TWtnpg&hl=en&ei=qN8VS_mWFNXZlAfz0KTNBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rooster&f=false
I wonder what you mean by “wild and hot”? In other sports (agility for example), it’s the “wild and hot” dogs that ultimately are the most accomplished (assuming their owners can train them to control their wildness and hotness.. which they primarily do by withholding what the dog wants.. to play agility… until it learns control.) This includes not just the wild and crazy border collies but intense highdrive dogs like Malinois and the extreme miniature poodle I see at trials around here. Psychological pressure such as this is just as successful (if not more so) than correction such as wacking the dog on the nose.. or earpinching it.
I’m talking about a dog that is so wild and so intractable that it lacks the normal retriever biddability.
I suspect the dog that was the basis of the book Marley and Me was of this type (and then he got no exercise, which made the dog worse).
Hot, as in like an Arab horse, which is hot-blooded.
You don’t want a retriever like that. It might make an agility dog, but it might be very intractable and may not pay as close attention as you would like.
I’m talking about dogs that are far higher pitched than border collies or very active pit bulls.
In Labradors, these dogs exist.
One theory is that the e-collar has put a selective pressure on the American trial Labrador that has led to the development of this sort of dog.
I’d like to see some studies on it, but it does make some sense.
I think some people see a lot of CHs in a pedigree, and think they are getting a puppy from a long line of great hunting companions, and what they are really getting is a dog from a long line of very smart, very hyper, very fast, field trial champions.
I will readily admit that I own too much dog for they type of bird hunting I do, but I’ve learned to love the lunacy.
A pedigree that has a lot of Chs in it is not likely to feature a long line of hunting companions or field trial champions. The AKC title CH = Conformation champion. No proof of working ability required. Field trial champion titles are FC or AFC (AFCs are amateur handled, FCs are handled by pros or amateurs.)
So a dog that had the title Ch Acme’s Rex would be a conformation champion.
A dog that had the title FC Acme’s King would be a field trial champion.
A dog that had the title AFC Acme’s Emperor would be an Amateur field trial champion.
There aren’t many Ch AFC or Ch FC retrievers. I’ve known a few, but they are rare.
I’m sure he meant field champions.
Dual Champion golden retrievers are rarer than Sussex spaniels.
In fact, I don’t think any of them are alive right now.
If you are talking about dual champions in North America there is Push in Canada – He is Can Dual CH AFTCH Firemark’s Push Comes to Shove WCX CDX AM***
I forgot about that one..
I saw a photo of him a while ago. Very nicely put together dog. He looks a lot like what I think a golden retriever should look like (which is more broadly defined than you might think.)
Here’s his photo: http://www.ambertrail.com/pushstuddog.html
Yup – I too think he is quite handsome! His mom, Pony, was a dynamite dog. I liked her alot.
I’m entirely sure that this method would not work to correct mouthing, unless by “correct” one meant “convince the dog to spit out the game and run like hell.”
The same luminary publishes an “infallible remedy for distemper” in the same tome, that is probably as effective as the muzzle-beating.
He also had a majik speshul collar for sale. He describes its benefits, but I cannot visualize what it looked like.
Reassuring, in a way, to see that loopy pseudo-experts have been getting their babbling about dogs published for over a century. A gullible book-buying, dog-owning public is not a new thing.
I am doing a post on his distemper remedy for tomorrow!
Did you see his “trained wolf retriever”?
But I have heard of this method being used on retrievers, real ones, not pointers that have been trained to retrieve, which, IMHO, is beneath them.
Do you like how this book is so much about training cats?
It has one very small section on training cats.
Therefore, it’s a great cat training manual.
However, his method requires that one have a dog that has very strong retrieving instinct.
You do this with a mediocre retriever that is also very soft and the dog will never pick up anything ever again.
well, I honestly don’t get why retrieving should be any different from any other job we ask a dog to do. “biddability” is a function of genetics, upbringing and training. Why should a wild and crazy retriever be any less trainable than a wild and craxy “x” or any less likely, in the hands of a skilled trainer, to perform job “y”? Retrieving isn’t more difficult than, say, detection/SAR/k9 work.
It’s not, but genetics is virtually everything with dogs.
And the accumulation of genetic effects on behavior is much more rapid in dogs than you would think.