Introducing live shot

Our two youngsters, Howard and Herschel are about to embark on their first season working on game. Up until now, they have only heard very limited shotgun noise, generally as background noise when we had driven shoot days here on the Estate. So they would equate this to 'white noise' as such, it's a sound that does not have any meaning for them, its just 'there' so to speak.

This month, we are starting to put a little more meaning as an association to shot for them. Shot will mean 'retrieve' at some point this season. They have both experienced some blank shot from a starting pistol in training and at a couple of working tests. Now we are moving them onto live shotgun shot.

I want them to have a positive association to what is essentially a loud noise. I also want them to stay calm. So we undertook some training one morning with each dog, where I paired the sound of the shotgun being fired at some distance to a food reward. So long as each dog did not react either over excited or scared by the noise, we moved our 'gun' closer to the dogs. Eventually, I swapped the shotgun noise for a retrieve, asking Toby to throw a dummy like a bird lifting from cover and then shoot over it.

You will see from the two videos how this worked out for the boys. Next stage will be to reduce the distance from this session (about 40 yards) to standing in line with our gun for a typical walked up retrieve.

Howard - introduction to live shot training

Herschel introduction to shot training