Piper Training

     Here is a video with Piper training to point. As I said in a previous post, I am not a professional trainer, in fact this is my first pointing dog. All videos that I post I hope can be useful to someone like me, someone training for the first time. In this video you will see me using a wing on a fishing pole. Using the wing to trigger a natural point is much like my beagle seeing a rabbit for the first time. I didn't teach her to point, she just does it. I don't know, maybe I am a tad insane or weird but seeing her point for the first time is exciting! Just like watching my beagle run a rabbit, its just one of those things that unless you experience it you won't know the feeling. In the picture below you will see a point; head down, steady gaze, tail up, and most of the time one of the front paws with come up too.

     I called as many game bird dealers as possible in order to obtain a wing. Many breeders in the region lost a lot of birds due to an early snow storm in October. I was getting frustrated trying to find a wing to use when I talked to one game breeder who told me I could buy a wing from Cabelas. So that is what I did. They were fairly inexpensive, 8 bucks for a pair. I bought a pair of wings from both a pheasant and a quail. I plan on raising live quail so I figured I would start with some quail wings as well. I obtained a permit from MA DEM. I can possess up to 25 live quail. I built the pen already and I used a very useful book, "Training the Versatile Hunting Dog," by Chuck Johnson. If you plan on getting a versatile hunting dog, meaning a dog that can hunt upland game as well as retrieve for waterfowl hunting, I would HIGHLY recommend buying this book. Read the book cover to cover and then reread each section as you prepare to train for each. In the book it even gives blue prints on how to build pigeon and quail pens, dog kennels, and training tables. It has all the information anyone, like myself, who is training a versatile gun dog for the first time, needs. In one of the photos below you can see the quail pen I built. All together building it probably costed around $300 and took 2 days to build. I am currently waiting for the spring hatch to obtain some chicks. "It takes birds to train a bird dog."