How to train the perfect gundog

I imagine that this is a scenario that will be familiar to lots of GunsOnPegs readers: you’ve worked hard in a town for a few years, and been doing OK, but you long to leave the bright lights behind you, move to a rural idyll and get a gundog puppy. I know it rings true for me, and at least two of my colleagues.

It is also a familiar story for Kristian Forsberg, GunsOnPegs member and co-founder of The Gundog App. While working in London at a variety of internet-based companies, from start-ups to larger organisations, he harboured two dreams - one, to self-fund a start-up internet business, and two - having grown up shooting, and being a keen stalker and fly fisherman - to have his own four-legged companion who could accompany him in the field. 

When I chatted over Zoom with Kristian and his business partner, champion dog trainer and former GunsOnPegs Podcast guest Ben Randall, Kristian told me: “I had always wanted my own gundog - I’d seen them working on shoots, whether that’s those belonging to the beaters and pickers up or someone with a lovely peg dog, so when I moved to the countryside I decided that was something I was going to focus on.”

The gundog dream becomes a nightmare

However, despite having read not one but two gundog training manuals from cover to cover prior to acquiring his superbly-named cocker spaniel George, that dream swiftly soured. “I’d done my swotting up,” says Kristian, but when it came to trying to put the theory into practice things started to go wrong. “I had taken a bit of time out to focus on the dog, but I got to a stage where I didn’t know why the damn dog wouldn’t come back when I was calling it, or what to do next!” George and Kristian were struggling with steadiness, he explains. “I just didn’t have control of him. I didn’t really know what I was doing, to be honest. He was charging around, he wasn’t stopping on the whistle, he wasn’t retrieving very well, he was taking the longest route back to me like a dodgy taxi driver. It was a nightmare.”

Having tried a few dog trainers local to him, to try to get George straightened out, he eventually drove the hour and a half to see Ben Randall. When he appeared on our Podcast, Ben related the first encounter thus: 

“A young chap gave me a ring, with a young cocker that he was really struggling with. He left the London rat-race, bought a house in the Cotswolds and bought a cocker, to live the dream. It all started to go horribly wrong. Eventually he called me and said, “Look the dog’s running in, it’s chasing, I’m not enjoying it, can you help?” So at my place, this young lad rocks up sporting a pair of gold aviator sunglasses, hair slicked back, you know the London type, “I’m a country boy now”. I was thinking “Uhoh, we’re going to be struggling here from the start.”

Make progress with your gundog between training sessions

But despite this inauspicious start, after a few sessions with Ben, George was progressing well, and between them Kristian and Ben had got him ready for the season. What’s more, a friendship was blossoming between Kristian and Ben. But, as Kristian lays out in a short film made for the launch of the app, he found it hard to make progress with George between sessions. The distance from his home to Beggarbush Gundogs, Ben’s training school, coupled with both Ben and Kristian’s busy schedules, meant that the sessions were perhaps less frequent than would be ideal.

As it happens, this scenario is not uncommon. Back on Zoom, Ben told me a similar tale: 

“I had someone come to me today, who drove two and a half hours to get to me, and it was almost a waste of a session because he just hadn’t progressed since the last one. They’d only practiced that one thing that we covered in the previous session, because he’d only been able to practice that one thing. I said to him, “Imagine if you had the app, imagine how much more advanced you would be next time you come to see me, not flying blind for a whole month because you can’t get down to see me: by the time you factor in the cost of the lesson, the fuel, your time, you’re looking at a cost of well over a hundred quid, and you’re only going to remember a few bits of what we cover.”

Kristian jumps in: “We’ve made the app I wish that I had when I was training my dog. It’s all about getting the most out of your dog - that dog has been bred to go out on shoots.” 

Gundog owners: do your homework to get the most out of your dog

The Gundog App is a platform that allows you to take Ben, and his training techniques, out with you on every walk, and on every training session. Packed with more than 200 training videos, with the app you’ll never be stuck for ideas for drills or struggling to remember the tips you got at your last training session. Importantly, and as Ben is keen to emphasise, the videos not only show you the exercises going right, but when things go awry, and how to rectify things when they do.

For the client in Ben’s story above, Ben was able to bookmark and download to the client’s phone a selection of videos for him to work on with his dog between sessions. The Gundog App will deliver the best results, says Ben, when used in conjunction with lessons with a trainer, but could, in theory, be used as a do-it-yourself guide. “We’ve sold subscriptions worldwide: to Russia, America, Australia,” says Ben, “There are professional trainers around the world who are now adapting their techniques to incorporate the ones I outline in the videos.”

Reward-based gundog training techniques

Those techniques are based around Ben’s BG Foundations, the method that he has used to train multiple champion gundogs. “The techniques are proven. We don’t believe in bullying dogs,” he says, “my techniques are reward - not bribery - reward based. The idea is that if the dog works hard for me, I work hard for the dog. They flush a bird correctly, I get to shoot the bird, they get to retrieve the bird. If they don’t, I miss out and they miss out on the retrieve. It builds trust, it builds a partnership.” 

When Ben refers to a reward, he doesn't necessarily mean a treat - in his eyes the act of retrieving is in itself a reward. “Everything that dog is doing is in order to earn a reward, and that could be one of multiple things, but from the very start, as a puppy, that dog is being rewarded.” He gives the example of the ‘stop whistle’ - “In my mind, and in my dog’s mind, that’s an assistance noise, something to help them to achieve. They want to stop for me. You stop quickly, you’ll get a retrieve.”

How to train a champion gundog

The videos currently on the app take the user on the entire training journey from puppy right the way through to champion standard, if that’s what you are looking to achieve. “People can take it as far as they want, or have the time and motivation to take it,” says Ben, before Kristian adds, “It all builds on Ben’s foundational training, all a champion is, is just a really well-trained, obedient dog that understands the commands that you’re giving it.” 

But the plan, the guys tell me, is to continually add to the library of videos. Users of the app are able to submit queries and requests for further videos on specific problems that they are having, so the content will be increasingly community-led. Meanwhile, they are working on further sections to offer guidance on gundog health, nutrition, and even in-field videos. “We’ve got incredible things planned,” explains Ben. “Peg shooting with dogs, picking up with dogs, rabbit shooting in Yorkshire with drone work - this is stuff that’s never been done before. I’ll be out picking up with my team of dogs, and explaining how and why I’m doing things, shooting live birds on a peg and explaining why I’m doing it.”

“Very few dog trainers would be able to give you that hands on advice,” adds Kristian, “doing things in the training ground is one thing, but translating that into a shoot day scenario is a big jump. It is the equivalent of shooting at a clay ground and shooting your first driven day.”

But, of course, the proof is in the pudding, so my final question was for Kristian: if we asked the other members of his syndicate how George’s performance was last season, what would they say? “Well, as a rough syndicate,” he replies with a smile, “we are very reliant on dogs to make the day, and George is as hardworking as they come!”
 

The Gundog App is available for iOS and Android devices, and can be downloaded for free.
Access to the videos cost  £24.99 per month, or £249.99 per year.
Download the App