My Hunting Dog Training Blog

Jake and I had the opportunity the other day to chase some birds. We found a hunting club only a few miles from our new home in Monroe, UT. The owner was very good to us and offered to plant some chukar and pheasant for Jake to get a taste of bird hunting. The club encompasses about 200 acres of farmland planted in varied grains and grasses. Jake did fairly well for his first time out, I am sure he will get better as he learns the game. We didn't actually shoot any birds although he did find a few. We were primarily shooting blanks in an effort to acclimate Jake to the noise of gun shots.

At nearly 8 months old now, Jake is doing pretty good. My children are still a little leary of him because of his extremely energetic nature. He is very much a puppy still and enjoys any and all attention that he can get. We are working with hime more on basic obedience. My wife would be thrilled if he would just simply sit and stay on command. Again, this is my mistake in waiting too long to start the obedience training. At this point it takes a little more time and patience to teach Jake these lessons that would have been natural when he was much younger.

Posted by Big Bad Jon at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Jake is coming along nicely. We play the game called "find it" once in a while. This is where I drag a small piece of hotdog through the grass leaving a scent trail and hide it several feet away. I then lead Jake to the start of the scent trail and tell him to find it. He then goes to work trying to find the treat with his nose to the ground. We started out just a few feet on a straight trail. Now we are up to 10-12 feet away using a curved trail. I don't really count this as training but it does help him to practice using his nose in trailing scent.

At 5 months I found myself wishing I would have spent more time with Jake when he was younger working on basic obedience. Instead we just played around and had more free time. I can see now as he is getting bigger that it is getting harder to teach him basic obedience. Not only mentally more difficult but also more physically challenging because he is getting stronger and larger in stature.

Posted by Big Bad Jon at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)