Young WPG False pointing/missing birds sign of a bad nose?

A

andyperry07

New member
Hello all, I have a 13 month old WPG who seems to baffle me. Somedays he looks great points bird from a good distance other days he runs right into birds especially pheasants he also appears to false point some , but his intense points almost always pay off with birds. To start off though and be fair we live in a very dry area of Wyoming full of cow poop and sage brush. While we do have some pheasants the numbers are not high and those are really the onlly birds he is able to get on. My questions are:

1. Should I be worried yet about possibly having a sub par nose?

2. Does anyone else hunt in dray sage brush with lots of cow scent and do you have some of the same problems.

3. Is only having him on running pheasants as of now going to be a big problem am I being to hard on him cause he only deals with running birds?

4. Is false pointing normal in younger dogs, and do any other WPG owners have this problem.

Thanks in advance for any information and also if there were some tests to do with planted birds this summer to test his noise.

Thanks
 
He's only 13 months old. He will need to learn how to handle those pheasants and it will come with age and experience. He's probably not actually false pointing but pointing where one of those uncivilized birds was at before it took off running.

Could be a number of things for him running into birds but some things that come to my mind are wind direction and scenting conditions.

Don't worry about his nose. It's just fine.
 
I agree, he' s still young and still learning to sort out all the different scents. You combine that with poor scenting conditions and it's even harder for him. Trusting his nose is something that will come with more experience.
 
Very much agree. He is young and learning. No worries. get him on wild birds.
Also, we have zero clue what the scenting is like in the grass at different times. I would like to think we do, but we dont.
If he is showing a solid strong point one minute and running into them the next, this would tell me that the scenting conditions was not good or he is working out old scent, bird walked off and he just didnt get it dialed in. in either case, no worries. Dont make a big deal of it ad just walk on.

Oh, and post pictures!!!
 
Very much agreed. Dry conditions in sage takes a good while for dogs to learn. At 13 mos, if you have had good solid points that produce birds, that is a very good sign.
 
Dog is fine. Experience is key. If he's pointing birds from distance like 20 yards or more on a regular basis, his nose is fine. He's figuring out how to use it.
 
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