Lab training in MN

LoneRooster

LoneRooster

New member
Looking for a solid trainer to work with a lab pup at the end of summer. Looking for something somewhat reasonable.. cant really afford trainers such as Holzinger. If anyone has any reccomendations or good places to send the pup for a couple of weeks please let me know! Thanks!
 
How old is your dog? What type/kind of training are you seeking?
Training a dog is an investment, not a cost...
 
A couple weeks is not enough time for much training. The first week is usually spent just aclimating the dog to kennel life and evaluation. I would guess 6 weeks would maybe be enough for intro to birds, water, gunfire, and some obediance. This would probably be the bare minimum necessary to get a dog in the field.

Where in Mn are you located?

I suggest joining a retreiver club and following a program such as Lardys TRT or Bill Hillmans. I am partial to Lardys TRT.....

Steve
 
What type of training are you looking for? Bird work, force fetch, hand signals? I sent my pup to a co-worker for a few weeks last summer to have her force fetched and some bird work. Best decision I've ever made. She retrieved well before I sent her to him but when I got her home she was a completely different dog, she's now a bird retrieving machine.
 
The pup will have already gone thru some training with me so I am not looking for a 6 week program. I am going to be covering most of the basics... I am looking for someone to take it a step further with some force fetching, etc and some additional birdwork. I will certainly look into some retriever clubs..any suggestions? Thanks for the input.
 
Force fetching will take longer than a couple weeks unfortunately. Figure on 3-4 weeks depending on the capabilties of the dog and the amount of time the trainer spends with the dog each day. The beauty of a dog trainer is that they have unlimited time to work with a dog. If you were going to get one thing done. I would recommend force fetching. The bird work will come with time and experience but force fetching is not something I would recommend trying to do yourself, it can be very easy to ruin a dog by pushing too hard. The nice thing about force fetching is the dog will get experience retrieving birds through the process and ultimately make training easier in the time to come
 
If I had a lab I would send it to Tom Dokken.
 
FF is not a "some" process. In being fair to the dog it needs to be all or non. Take some time and visit with a trainer or two. I think your expectations of what can be done in a couple weeks is a bit off.
Read dokkens book, especially the pressure on/off with puppies section, this will give a big head start to ff and cc
 
I've personally used Tom Dokken and a protege of Tom's Brian Roushar, at West Country Kennels, located near Hutchinson..

In both cases I've sent the dog's through the two week puppy class - introduction to birds and the gun...no field work.

Retrieving is not a problem with any of my dogs. Most of the work with my current dog (1.5 yr) is with live birds - both placed birds and wild. Am having fun teaching my Golden to point and he's pointing almost every bird. This technique tends to slow him down and not chase a runner.

Attempting to replicate the hunting experience is a great way to teach a dog and have fun,but it can be expensive: $16 for chuckers and $25 for pheasants.

Good luck with your training.
 
jsdriggs said:
I know hunting planters seems expensive, but it is really about disposable income. Hunting wild birds is infinitely more expensive, per bird harvested, than planters if you do a trip somewhere. Like a comment above, paying for training is an investment not a cost. I would place buying planters in the same category, IF you can afford it.

I know I can't right now.
Click to expand...

If you have a box launcher slip a baby sock over the birds head. I know this sounds crazy but they will fly a bit better than a clipped wing but not good enough to get away nor do they run! Now you can let the pup hunt up the bird, launch it, shoot in the general direction and the pup can retreive it. Depending on the dog you can get a lot of training out of just a couple birds. I have only done this with pheasants, I am not sure how chuckers etc would work. We worked 4 different dogs last night, each dog got 3 flush/launch/retreives and we still have 2 healthy birds left. One ended up being rather chewed up........ I guess my pup needs a little more work on hold!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top