Hunting Dog Training

Steadying Blues - An Interview with David Lauber
Over the last two issues David Lauber has walked us through the process of steadying a dog to wing and shot. This month David addresses how to combat the "steadying blues", which faces many dogs during the steadying process. (Continue)

Wild Pheasants and Field Trial Dogs - Good or Bad?? – Part I
Here in North Dakota we have 3.5 million acres of CRP. CRP, for anyone unfamiliar, stands for Conservation Reserve Program. Through CRP, the Federal Agriculture Dept. contracts with farmers to place highly erodable cropland into a set aside program. CRP acres are planted to grass and left out of production for a minimum of ten years. This has created a boon to wildlife of all kinds, especially pheasants. Imagine hundreds of thousands of acres of knee to waist high grass-crawling with wild pheasants, sharp-tail grouse and Hungarian Partridge. Sounds like a dog trainer’s/field trialer’s/hunter’s dream? Well, it is, most of the time. (Continue)

Crate Training
Often clients ask, "What do you think about crate training?" My standard answer, "Crate training is the most misunderstood training technique a new dog owner faces today. Like most things in life, people often criticize what they don’t understand. Personally, I crate train all my dogs that live in the house. Many people have a misconception about what crate training is or what it is not." In this month’s article I will attempt to dispel some of the myths about crate training and give you some simple techniques that you can begin using today to make the process of crate training easy and create a "domestic den" for your dog.
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Preparing a Retriever for Duck Hunting
It’s never good when someone takes a young retriever duck hunting for the first time and then doesn’t understand why their pride and joy is picking up sticks in the water and grabbing the decoys and bringing them back instead of retrieving ducks. If that dog has never been in a duck blind before, it’s understandable to me, but hunters are always asking themselves, "Why isn’t my brand new well-bred, super expensive retriever sitting there like he’s supposed to, and retrieving like he’s supposed to; heck, he does it perfectly in the backyard."(Continue)