When's too old to force fetch?
 

My dog will be 3 in a month. I trained her myself but never finished forcing her. We made it through hold and picking up the dummy on command. Once I started the ground work it started getting rough and I was scared to mess her up not knowing fully what I was doing. I picked it bAck up a couple months later and had her working a line up to about 20 yards. Hunting season ended, Laziness, and lack of time got in the way, and I stopped working her. Hunted her this weekend. All her marked retrieves were great, but the blinds she went to her typical hunt on her own and eventually find it 5 minutes later deal. Is it too late to try and finish forcing her? She still knows her commands to pick up the bird and delivers to hand just won't work a line and doesn't know hand signals.


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I'd say it's never too old assuming you have the drive. Hunting dogs tends to undo a lot of training. Sounds fo me like pattern blinds would do you more justice at that age and with quicker results. Also I'm assuming you never went thru swim by...do dat! It all depends on what your willing to put into it.

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Force is not required for a hunting dog to run blinds. It makes it easier only if you follow up force fetch to force to pile to double t to pattern blinds and so on. It sounds like the dog just hasn't done enough handling to trust you.

Would you think that you couldn't run pattern blinds without force? My thoughts are if its running blinds, well willing to go on a blind, he should be able to get it out to single T, then double T and pattern blinds...swim by would be icing on the cake! I guess hard to tell without seeing the pup. A lot of people think more of a dog then what is actually there sometimes IMO.

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You didn't even get to the point of running blinds so why not backup and do it right? Sounds like he/she has been forced but not on birds or to a pile? Single t is next, then swim by and only then pattern blinds(taught blinds). You can finish the process if YOU want a finished DOG! How bad do you want it?? Your dog can be successful but can YOU?? Most hunting/meat dogs have half *** trainers and they make excuses for that kind of training. You can call me anytime and I will walk you through the process or drive to LC and I will show you what to do FREE of Charge. Just make sure you never Low Rent your dog for your poor training methods.

I think that handling can be taught by teaching handling. It sounds like the dog won't handle because it don't know what sit is and doesn't understand the concept. I have taught dogs to run blinds without force fetch. It was not fun and took a long time and I constantly had to re-teach things. Both of those dogs ran blinds and were hrch but looking back it was painful.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I've had a few at the camp and will have to read them again tomorrow. I'm not granular with the swim by so if somebody would explain that please. Raymond I'll get with you tomorrow. I really think I'm capable of doing this myself and she's a great dog so I'm gonna put the time in to get her finished . The dog has over 600 retrieves under her belt easy.


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Easy as painting by nummers if you'll listen and act.