Training a gundog can be a daunting prospect, particularly if it’s your first, like me. It’s even more daunting if you hope to take the dog with you on the peg when you're a guest at a smart shoot at some point in the future.
However, the journey so far has been a whole lot easier than I imagined it would be, mainly because of the help of one little tool which I’ll share with you shortly.
So, given that I haven’t owned a dog prior to welcoming our beautiful golden labrador, Cora, into our lives earlier this year, I found myself asking a lot of questions to anyone I thought knew a bit about gundog training. I thought I’d share my experience as a first timer and the thought processes that have gone into it.
So much advice, so little certainty
I’ve grown up with family dogs, but never been solely responsible for one. Therefore I’m certainly no expert, and the trickiest thing I found when embarking upon the training process with Cora, was the wide and often contradictory range of opinions on how best to train a dog, when to start, and how often you should do it. To be honest, asking questions to others made the whole concept far scarier than it should ever have been. I’m sure others can relate to this and it certainly would have been helpful to know this in advance.
What I found was that sticking with the opinion or approach of one trainer was crucial to success. So the question I think each gundog owner needs to ask themselves is: Which approach do I follow?
Choosing the right training method for you and your gundog
Gundog training has been around forever, so you’ll never be short of information. There’s books that people swear by, local trainers that others hang their hat on, YouTube videos from newly-formed social media stars... the list goes on. Finding one and sticking with it will save you time, confusion and a whole load of hassle. It’s also the bit of advice that consistently came up when asking others who have ‘been there and done that’.
For me, there were three key factors to consider when forming a training plan - cost, time & convenience.
Boarding school, training classes or DIY gundog training?
If money is no object, many will suggest learning the basics at home and sending a young dog away to a trainer for a stint at ‘boarding school’. It’s an expensive ordeal, but has a pretty good success ratio. However, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. If your working dog is also one of the family names when signing off your Christmas cards, not seeing little Rover for 3 months is a tough decision and many decide against it for this reason alone. Where this option falls down on cost, it makes up for in time and convenience in that not a lot of thinking needs to be done on your part.
Whichever training approach you use, remember they'll still be a puppy when you aren't looking!
Another option is to visit a trainer on a relatively frequent basis for 1:1 classes to hone your skills. This is a very popular method, and compliments your training at home. However, it’s also pretty expensive and it certainly doesn’t score well in the time or convenience stakes either. In fact, you’re either going to lose a lot of weekend time or you could quite easily find yourself having to take 12 days of holiday from work (probably half an annual allowance), purely to attend training with your dog. This is a huge commitment. Some do a bit of a top up, or refresher using this approach which, if you’ve got a good trainer nearby, is probably a nice balance.
The final option is the DIY approach. Ths means finding quality training time that fits around your lifestyle and having a process or plan to stick to… easier said than done, but by far the most cost-effective. There are plenty of risks inherent in this approach, and you’ll rely heavily on books, online videos or some other kind of plan, especially as a first-time trainer, so when I opted for this approach I spent plenty of time on research. This is where a very new tool saved my bacon, and Cora’s future career as a peg dog.
What approach worked for me?
Shortly after Cora entered our lives, Ben Randall of Beggarbush Gundogs launched The Gundog App. Ben is a hugely successful gun dog trainer and has a very large following. Ben’s approach caught my attention because he uses psychology to underpin his techniques which really resonated with me. I can also now tell you that it works! His principal is also very much like business leadership too; any business book will talk about positive reinforcement and minimising negativity wherever possible, I’d never seen this discussed in a dog training sense though.
Ben pitches The Gundog App as like having him in your pocket during your training session. It’s an app with a monthly or annual subscription at a fraction of the cost of visiting a trainer, with a huge library of short videos - mostly under 3 minutes - neatly laid out for you to work your way through. Each video focuses on one technique or exercise, making them easy to digest and implement. I found that bookmarking the ones relevant to the stage we were at meant that I could watch them over and over until we’d perfected that stage and move on to the next.
Neatly laid out sections of The Gundog App
Ben & Kristian, the founders of the app, also host occasional Q&A’s online for the community and you can send in your questions which Ben will answer in video form, so as the community grows, most questions have been answered for you to revisit in the app.
If you haven’t seen the app before, you might be thinking “why not use YouTube and bookmark all the videos you like in one place?” For me, that’s kind of like painting a room yourself rather than getting a decorator - it just won’t be as good. Then there’s the convenience and consistency of having regularly updated content all using the same approach, which trumps YouTube everyday of the week.
What are the best bits?
The app is really neatly laid out into the key sections, such as Recall, Heel Work and Stop Whistle. Each section has a set of videos to work your way through. Any bookmarked videos show on your ‘My Training’ tab for you to easily access. There’s also the search, so if you want to see any video containing something to do with the stop whistle, for example, you can easily find them all.
The handy search function
And the shortcomings?
If you’re a first time owner, there are a tonne of questions one has at the start. Right the way through from feeding to sleeping and going to the loo. The app is designed to focus on training, which during the early days is almost the second of your priorities. I think there’s real opportunity for the app to develop this aspect of its offering. Aside from this though, there’s very little to mark it down on, and anything that it is currently light on will be added over time as the community and feedback grows.
Where have we struggled in our gundog training?
The short videos in the app show you how to perfectly complete a task. Let’s be honest, it’s very difficult to capture a dog doing the exact thing wrong and then film its progress all the way through until it is sorted, although some of the videos get very close to this. When your dog is not doing what the video intends, such as listening to the stop whistle - is an area we got stuck on for a while - it can feel like you’re a world away from getting it sorted, and you almost resent the 2 minute video that makes it seem so simple. However, perseverance is key here and it will come good in the end, plus, we’re very unlikely to achieve it as quickly as an expert trainer such as Ben Randall would.
Training the dog or training the handler - what I would do differently
I’m chuckling to myself writing this - I’d do so much differently the second time around. But I think that’s the same with children?! Firstly, I'd worry less about progress, knowing that perseverance is key and it will come good in the end. This in turn will allow me to be more positive with the dog during training, something that Ben continually reiterates. I wouldn’t worry about how others are getting on at certain stages with their dogs, I’d just trust in the process with the app, stage by stage, not moving on until we’d achieved a good standard at that task, other than to add variety into the training regime.
The final thing I’d do differently next time is start with the end in mind a bit more. If you want a 'remote control' dog, I think there is a trade off between that and how much of an ‘Aga dog’ or ‘sofa dog’ as Ben neatly puts it, so it’s asking a lot of you and your dog to be perfect at both. Decide where you’ll allow some shortcomings and accept that early on because the amount of freedom a dog has seems to be the biggest influence on the end result.
What next for me and Cora?
We’ve got a long way to go! Ben Randall has won world championships over the years and there’s videos in the app that I’ve not even dared to watch yet, for fear of realisation that Cora is not quite as good as I might think she is! But, she’s making great progress and on track with where the videos in the app suggest she should be at this age. I’ll continue working my way through them, in my own time, and when I hit a hurdle, send a message into Ben and Kristian for them to answer.
If you’re reading this and you’ve recently got your first dog, as I had when I started using the app, I hope it’s helpful. It’s daunting if you’ve got an end goal in mind, but perseverance is key and having an expert companion in your pocket eases some of that burden.
For more information about The Gundog App, and to sign up for a 7 day free trial, visit The Gundog App.
A look of confidence ;)
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