Training Young Waterfowl Dogs

Bringing Young Duck Dogs Into the Field

Follow Brodie Wubben, owner at Fowl Water Outdoors, as he takes his young dogs out on their first marking and water excursions as part of his waterfowl dog training program. It’s something he does after a few months of working on different tactics for duck hunting dog training to test the dogs and see where each one needs more work. Giving young dogs (who will one day be duck hunting dogs) a chance to get out into the field helps evaluate their basic obedience and training progress.

Introducing Young Duck Hunting Dogs to Marks and Water

For true gun dog success, the retriever needs practice and experience - and in a formal setting, you want to let them hear the sound of the gun, associate it with the sound of waterfowl and get in the water as soon as they show signs of being ready.

Training Young Gun Dogs for Success

[Transcript]

We’re going to take these guys and do introductions to marks, for their first time in the field. So we’re going to throw, it will be gunner throwing marks with thunder launchers. And we’re going to teach them how to mark off of a gun, run out, grab a bird, come back; we’re kind of working on attrition with delivery to hand, loosely, and intro to water.

Products to Use for Training Waterfowl Dogs

For intro to marks with these guys, we’re doing, we’re going to throw three marks, two on land and one on water. We’re using thunder launchers (Thunder 1000 from Thunder Equipment) that are ten shooters, so if the dog’s having trouble we can re-shoot and throw so that they continue to go. We’ve got one here, one over by Ryan and we’ve got one that throws in the water.

Training Waterfowl Dogs to Retrieve from Water

Your dogs, when you're first doing this - your dogs they’re going to swim out, but they’re not good swimmers yet - they’re going to swim out, get lost, you're going to re-throw it for them. You’re going to have some bumpers that are out there that are floating - that’s just fine - just kind of like peppering the area so they have more of a visual. If they get out and get a bumper, that’s all you care about. If they’re struggling, we’ll throw one for them to get them back out of the water. This is not about mechanics, this is just about getting them out and being able to run and pick something up and come back to you.

They’ve never run marks like this before, this is their first time running marks so I’m trying to get them used to the guns and look at the quack and then watch the fall and then go pick them up.

“So what do you do in a scenario like this?” Nothing, I’m just talking to him and letting him come, it’s ok to make mistakes, he’s going to he’s young. You have to be positive you can’t get all over them.

Building Confidence in Your Gun Dog

I’m trying to get him to go out and build a little confidence, but ideally I’d put him on a check chord now because he’s not coming back to me. He’s getting a little sour with some collar pressure. Now I’m going to go meet him out there.

When Waterfowl Training Dogs Start to Sulk

When they sulk it means they’re not understanding and/or working with the collar pressure - it’s (collar pressure) is not your friend at that point so I put my remote on my belt.

How to Handle a Young Duck Dog Who Hasn’t Retrieved From Water

You can see his confidence is a little low right? So I’m going to go walk up to the edge of the water and toss one - I’m going to use the launcher and see if he’ll go in. If he doesn’t go in and doesn’t get in the water, tomorrow or the next time we do this, we’ll do water introduction like we do with puppies and we’ll put waders on, walk around out there and hang out with him - let him know it’s alright.

Get Your Dog Comfortable with Water

It’s completely different from the stuff on land - in the water it changes everything. We’ll let them play around in the water hold, run around and get comfortable with it before you expect them to be able to do anything work wise or be able to get bumpers. They’ve got to learn how to swim and become comfortable being in the water. Right now there’s vegetation under the water and they’re feeling all that and getting through it.

Value of Basic Obedience in Waterfowl Dog Training

If your basics aren’t solid before you get to this point where you’re going to try to run marks - meaning obedience - “come,” you need to be collar conditioned, you need to know “here,” “sit,” - you’re going to fight a lot of stuff in this area. I’m not saying don’t throw marks before all of that is great, but don’t expect greatness if you don’t have everything solid - when you get here. If the dog runs out and gets the mark and doesn’t know to come back to you, you’re not doing really any successful training. So if they’re not coming back, and they’re recall is not good, you should have them on a long line and a check chord so you’re able to bring them back. And you can do that with just a person throwing the marks for you.

Listen to Your Dog for the Ultimate Success in Waterfowl Training

If you see that you can’t reinforce the commands that you’ve been giving, you know that your collar conditioning isn’t right. If the dog is continually making mistakes and not following simple obedience commands, it’s not the dog’s fault - they don’t speak English - it means you need to better educate your retriever and take a step back to do that. It’s ok to take a step back and go to basic obedience.

When a retriever in our waterfowl dog training program shows us it doesn’t understand something, we’ll go back to basics, to reinforce certain things that the dog truly needs to understand; like collar conditioning. If as a dog trainer or owner, you give a correction via a e-collar and it doesn’t change the behavior - the collar didn’t do anything for you. The last thing you want to do is a “burn a dog out” or over-use the e-collar. Maybe the dog isn’t being correctly conditioned to the behavior when you give them that correction.

It’s all about checks and balances - if you see a gun dog not responding to your commands - go back and reinforce the basics. They may not be ready to move on and as professional trainers it’s our job to watch that constantly. At Fowl Water Outdoors we only push the dog when we’re confident they understand what we’re asking of them.