Will be getting a 9 month old female Brittany Spaniel!!!!

LuckyLuc82

LuckyLuc82

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So friggin excited, my wife just called and told me one of our neighbors can't keep their puppy Brittany Spaniel and we will be getting her!!!!! So excited, any tips or advice on how to get her training started?!?! I'll have more detail later.
 
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Ok, first,
"Britney" Spears
"Brittany" Spaniel

You are going to love this pup, they are awesome !
Smallest of the pointing breeds, great with kids and very much want to be part of your pack.
Don't ever play tug of war with the puppy, he must always give what is in his mouth to you when you tell him "give" or whatever word you choose for a command for him to relinquish anything he has in his mouth.
Teaching fetch and retrieve, have pup in a hallway with all bedroom and bathroom doors closed. Toss his toy down the hall for him to get while you say fetch etc when he catches his toy encourage him to bring it to you and the hallway provides no detour for him to try playing keepaway. Never play keepaway!!!!!!!! No keepaway play !!!!!!
When pup is having his chow, rattle pots pans make sharp noises to get him started to ignore stuff like thunder and most importantly gunfire.
Get a capgun, shoot it while he eats or is playing, over time go to a 22, 410 etc progressively always while he is having fun.
Take him to fields woods etc so he can see birds and gain interest in them. Get ahold of a pigeon wing, tie it to a string on a stick or fishing pole and tease him to follow it, smell it and he may even start pointing.
Look up on the Internet for gun dog forums and particpate / read.

That should be a good start.

Tim
 
I listen to the Orvis Double Barrel Podcast that deals with shotguning and bird hunting primarily.

The most recent ones have been 2 in a 4 part series on hunting dog training. Even though I am not a dog owner I find the info fascinating and I definatly want to keep these podcasts saved on my hard drive so the info will be accesable when I move out of the city to a place of my own.

Check it out.

http://www.orvis.com/intro.aspx?subject=7094
 
Our house is pretty crazy we have 3 britts and a golden retriever.

Pee-J, our 10 yr old male is gunshy and I've never hunted over him. Not sure how it happened but it did. Oh well, he's still a great family dog.

Then we got Piper, she's two and a half now and has a very unique personality - she's definitely my wife's dog.

Then this past Easter we rescued a 5 yr old female, Maddie. Her owners split up and the husband didn't take his hunting dog and the wife couldn't handle her high energy. So, we took her and she's become my dog. She'd never been hunted over but showed a lot of birdiness.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of time to train them and I don't have the cash to send them off to pro. We were worried about Piper because she didn't seem very birdy. So, we joined the local pointer club, got some good tips and did a bit of bird work with pigeons. Not a lot really. Mostly we take them out looking for birds. After we got the first grouse they really seemed to clue in and now they have a good idea of why we're out in the woods.

Here is Maddie pointing a grouse in the trees. She held point for a solid minute before we caught up to her, and by then she was so excited she was vibrating!!


This is Piper pointing a grouse


After she flushed the bird it flew straight at us. My buddy never got a shot off but I got a great pic of her watching it get away.


If you want to win field trials with them you'll need to do a lot more training than we did, but if you want to hunt with them then go hunt with them. Each time you go out you'll see something you can work on or improve.
 
I can't wait to get this going, the current owner said the dog just got her first period today and they didn't want to give her to us while she has it, I personally don't mind it as my wife has Hers right now too.... When in Rome right?!? Heh so I guess I have to wait a few days to get her.

I'll Check out the podcast right now, thank you for the heads up.

Does the fact that She's 9 months mean that it will be tougher to train her?
 
Here's my buddy Radar. Had him for just over a year now.

Not a recent pic but my favourite.

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Unfortunately I've been way to busy to go out hunting for upland this year but I try and do as much training as I can. I have a frozen duck that I will drag around the yard and then hide. I'll go get him from the house and then bring him to the start of the scent trail and let him go. He always wins at hide the duck.

The wing on a stick is also a good idea. If you dog even twitches, move the wing. It'll teach him or her to sit still on the point.
 
Britts are nice dogs. Went for a Setter myself but it was a tough decision. She's 6 months now, I've been giving her a lot of time off leash to build her confidence and hunting drive. She's already had grouse and pheasant shot over her. She's a very courageous pup, charges straight into everything, great hunting drive.

Introduced the gun slowly on her first week long hunting trip. First .22, moving ever closer as she sat on a lead. Rewarded her with small treats after each shot. Eventually did the same thing with 12 gauge. Would have stopped or moved the gun back if she showed any sign of discomfort - she never did.

I suggest you head over to the Hunt Ontario Dog forums. Lots of really experienced people over there to point you in the right direction.

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A Brittany starts to come into it's prime around the age of three, pickup a couple books on how to train a pointer/flusher or contact your local gundog club, I believe the Ottawa Valley has a good one ( No idea where rockwood is).
 
LuckyLuc82 said:
any luck using this breed for rabbits?
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Depends on if you want the dog to point them or flush them.

We were out grouse hunting last weekend and Piper took off after a rabbit. However, my wife and kids have 3 rabbits as pets so I'm not sure if the dog wanted to play with it or eat it. Going by the sounds she made (which I'd never heard before) she was on the hunt!!!
 
JPOHLIC said:
Depends on if you want the dog to point them or flush them.

We were out grouse hunting last weekend and Piper took off after a rabbit. However, my wife and kids have 3 rabbits as pets so I'm not sure if the dog wanted to play with it or eat it. Going by the sounds she made (which I'd never heard before) she was on the hunt!!!
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Good to know.
 
casterpollox said:
The wing on a stick is also a good idea. If you dog even twitches, move the wing. It'll teach him or her to sit still on the point.
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This is the only training I gave my Brit when she was a pup. I tied a ruffed grouse wing to a fishing line and, in a small area in the back yard, I got up on a picnic table and swung the wing around the yard. The trick is to keep the wing away from the dog no matter how hard the dog tries to grab it. Every time the dog stops for a second, let the wing come to a stop, too. If the dog lunges at the stationary wing, don't let him/her catch it. If the dog points the wing, leave the wing stationary until the dog breaks point (and then don't let them catch it, again).

My dog was only 3 and 4 months old when this training took place (first amazing hunting display at age 5 months!!!). She has received no training other than actual hunting since. She's a virtual grouse/pheasant machine!! You can't find a better pointer or retriever. She's 6 1/2 now and showing no signs of slowing down.

On the gun shyness thing, unless the dog had a traumatic experience involving loud noises, he should be anything but gun shy. Lightning storms are a pain at my house - not because the dog cowers in fear - but because she leaps 8-foot fences in an effort to get to where she thinks they're hunting without her! :D

Here she is making sure none of those feathered bast*rds try to get up an' sneak off...

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So we brought her home tonight here is a pic of Molly:


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She sniffed all around the house found the cats, that was interesting, she didn't bark just point, the cats on the other hand became quite territorial. She seems afraid of the male cat as she backs away from him and refuses to come into the room if he's in there too.

So far Molly has been amazing with my two sons, The two year old adores her, he can't seem to get enough of her. She is quite fond of my 3 month old son too, my wife is really happy about that.

We took her for out first family walk, walking her reminds me of walking my parents jack russel, she kept pulling me until I started running. The previous owner kept her in his backyard most of the time, I doubt she had too many long walks. I'm scared to unleash her as she doesn't seem very obedient, I will try it tomorrow in my fenced in backyard and see if she comes back when I call her. Any tips on getting her to stay close unleashed or coming back when I call her?
 
LuckyLuc82 said:
So we brought her home tonight here is a pic of Molly:


2198c798.jpg


Any tips on getting her to stay close unleashed or coming back when I call her?
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She's a beaut!! "Liver" Brittany.

She'll not likely ever feel like she's got enough leash. I buy the longest retracting leash I can find and my Brit is always at the end of it. I could never understand why Brittanys always run ahead and why they work the bush so far from the shooters until I learned that, in Spain, they were bred to be hunted over horses.

If you take her to an off-leash area, she's likely to take off running around, seemingly completely lost. Do it anyway. Get her used to being off leash in wooded areas (make sure the off-leash area has natural or artificial barriers on at least 2 sides - when searching for your dog, you want to know you have containment).

I predict that not only will she not respond well to commands, she'll outright ignore them. The louder you shout after her, the further away from you she'll feel safe.

The opposite strategy tends to work better. Try to engage her in games of hide and seek (you hide, she seeks with her nose). The easy way to start the game is simply to hide behind her as she leads the way (Brittanys always want to lead the procession). The better you are at playing this game with her when she's a puppy, the better she learns the lesson that it's her responsibility to keep track of you - not the other way around. This understanding will serve you well in the bush later in your expeditions afield together.

When you want her to come to you right away, whistle your loudest whistle. Never use that characteristic whistle except when she's lost and you're calling her. I use a repeating low tone to high tone curve that would look like an exponential curve were it plotted on a graph (like "tweet, tweet, tweet", whistled loudly). The idea is to produce a distinctive, loud sound that the dog knows is you and can home in on. Reward her for coming to that sound. This, too will give you both comfort when dusk turns to dark, the coyotes begin to sing about past hunts, and you haven't seen or heard your dog for 10 minutes.
 
I have an 11 month old Brittany named Daisy. She is the sister of casterpollox's Radar (not littermate though). I gave her whoa training from an early age but have not yet enforced the whoa command on her in the field. I started out just letting her develop a love for hunting but I found out that her pointing and searching were very good just from a natural ability. I need to work on her fetch training and enforcing the whoa command with an electronic collar for next year. She is great at finding and pointing ptarmigan but sometimes flushes them prematurely. She has taught me that I can't shoot for beans. :)

It's important to properly introduce the dogs to water and gunfire, nothing traumatic.

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