First a confession; I don’t train as many dogs as I would like. Basically, the buggers live so long that if you trained one a year you’d end up with a dozen even if you were careless enough to lose one or two along the way. A side effect of keeping a dozen dogs is [...]

To successfully train any dog, let alone one subjected to the challenges and temptations that face a gun dog, you have to be the focus of his world, at least whilst he is working or training. To get the best out of your relationship, it is important to reward the dog with whatever motivates it [...]

Teaching your dog to use its nose to the best effect can be relatively simple, especially if you teach it from a young age. The best time to teach a dog to use the wind effectively is when you are walking it in relatively open ground, and working the dog upwind. Let the dog off [...]

What makes a great hunting dog? Dogs, as with many things in life, can all too often be subject to fashion; and over a lifetime fashion can change a breed beyond recognition. But this is not a new thing. I have just been reading my copy of ‘Dog Breaking’ by Hutchinson. In it he talks [...]

This sounds a simple question, but to my mind it actually requires three different answers. The first answer I would give is one hour. That amount of time will be sufficient for someone who knows what they are doing to get to assess the dog; see him or her with their owner and identify a [...]