Minnesota Outdoorsman
Hunting Forums => Hunting Dogs discussion => Topic started by: CampYJewel on October 10/08/08, 10:10:21 AM
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Does anyone have any suggestions for Hunting Dog training books they have read?????? More geared towards Labs. There is sooooooooooooo many to choose from and I don't want to buy the wrong one.
Any suggestions would be great!! :help:
Jewel
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There are Lab books by Richard Wolters that have been useful to me. Make sure you have the retriever not the pointer book. There are also dvd's based on the books. I am mainly using Mike Mathiot's method with my 14 wk choc lab female. I don't know if he has a book out, but his dvd is really good. My suggestion is to check out a few but decide on 1 main method, and maybe refer to others for alternatives if you hit a trouble spot.
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Hey Jewel, Wolters lab books are "Water Dog" & "Game Dog"... I used his pointing dog book "Gun Dog" and I found it was good especially for the puppy and early conditioning training stuff... It was kind of old fashioned, but had alot of good common sense advice and help in it. Another good book I read was called "How to get your bird dog to train himself"... It helps you to use a bit of psycology to enable the dog to learn and figure things out easier... really helped when the dog would get bored with some of the more repetitive things....
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Jewel,there are many books out there to get you started but please keep in mind that all dogs are different(even in the same breed and litter)some need more training and some seem to train themselves,what might work on one dog may not be the answer in another.nobody can write a book to cover every dog but as you learn to read your pooch you can try to discover what his or her needs are and truthfully thats half the fun,having trained a lot of dogs myself I can tell you true that training most dogs isnt to hard but training the owners is another matter :doah:
:fudd: :fudd: :fudd: :fudd: :fudd:
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What's your game plan? Are you looking to do some puppy work yourself and then hand him over to a pro or are you planning on doing the whole thing?
Check out the local library. I know the Hennepin County Library has several of Wolters books. I borrowed them first but ended up not buying any. If you have Netflix subscription you can rent the DVDs from them.
For learning how to raise a puppy and work on obedience, I really like "How to Raise A Puppy You Can Live With" and "My Smart Puppy". I bought both of them after borrowing the books from the library.
A great DVD to get is Jackie Mertens "Sound Beginnings".
I'm still deciding which formal training program to use, if I don't send him off to a pro, but one book I really like that I'm using now is "The 10-Minute Retriever: How to Make an Obedient and Enthusiastic Gun Dog in 10 Minutes a Day" by John Dahl. It has a pretty good section on working with puppies, is easy to understand, and is geared towards the meat dog, rather then the field trial dog.
There are several programs out there that work and supporters for each one. I wish I had done me research before I picked up my pup, but I only had 2 weeks from when the opportunity came up to when he was crappin' in our yard.
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Thank you for the ideas. I rented three dvds off Blockbuster. Two by Richard Wolters and one by Tony Hartnett. I would of never thought of that!!!
Now hopefully I can learn something from them!!
Jewel
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:newhere:
Our vet, an avid hunter, recommended the Wolters books.I was lucky and got the entire series when the book store in town went out of business.
Also I've seen videos based on the books at Cabelas in the past.
Good luck.
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It may be out of print but when I bought my first dog in 1973 I used "Hunting Dog Know-How" by Michael Duffy. I re-read this book so many times that I could recite it chapter and verse. It worked with my first two dogs as I followed his suggestions religiously. I lost the book when I moved but the principles still stay with me and are valid today. This book was published before electronic collars were in the vogue. My opinion is that too many hunters today rely on e-collars to do their training for them. I am a firm believer that you must train your dog to obey your verbal and non-verbal commands before using the collar. The collar is a reinforcement tool to be used when training and in the field after your dog knows the commands and for whatever reason chooses to ignore it be the excitement of being in the field or whatever. This is not an endorsement but I like the Dogra T & B collar as I very rarely have had to use the nick or continous feature. Instead I use the locate/beep functon and hit the beep one time if my dog is ranging too far or if she is ignoring a command. That's all it takes and is so much better for the dog and my hunting partners. I hate to hunt with someone who is constatly yelling at their dog, blowing a whistle, and/or hitting the shock button on their transmitter. All you are doing is advertising your location to the birds. I should add that I hunt pheasants only so my comments might not be appropriate to those that hunt grouse or waterfowl.
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Correction: The author of "Hunting Dog Know How" is David Michael Duffy - not Michael Duffy. His books are generic for all hunting dogs and I used it to train my first dog which was a Springer. Other books I have used are "Gun Dog" by Wolters, "Hup" by Spencer, and "Gun Dog Training for Spaniels and Retrievers" by Roebuck. Each book has sections that I like and give good suggestions depending upon your dog's temperment, what you are trying to achieve and what faults you are trying to correct. I am now on my 4th Springer and have used all of these books to help me train them and I am very satisfied with the results.