Building an Upland Retriever

Page One: A Golden Opportunity

Wait, did you say, “Upland Retriever”?! You read that right. Next, you’re thinking, “Since when”?!

Well, it’s not such a stretch. I’ve hunted around several retrievers in upland and waterfowl settings. My setters had hunted in tandem with a buddy’s wonderful springer - long before working flushers and pointers together became “trendy”. Heck, I even had an uncle that bred and trained (black) Labs. So, I’ve been around retrievers as long as I can remember, I just preferred hunting with pointing dogs.

Now, I’m not pretending to be an expert; not going so far as to claim that I can prepare retrievers for participating in organized testing events. Not yet, anyway. That would be a bit like moving from the outfield to the infield in baseball. It’s the same game, to be sure, but the differences are significant enough that proficiency at the new position will take time.

Yet, as I said, it’s not a huge stretch to move into training field skills to retrievers. The primary task is knowing how dogs think, the cues they are sending, and knowing what is expected of them by their owners. I love gun dogs, watching them work puts a grin on my face. Between my occasional involvement with flushing dogs and what is available on the “inter-webs”, I felt comfortable meeting the requests of some of the SEVERAL people asking for help in this regard. After my customary first meeting with dog and dog owner, I knew that this was going to be my first real attempt at training an upland retriever.

So this is Cooper. My partner in the first attempt to train an Upland Retriever.

His name is “Cooper” and he is a Golden Retriever. “Why Cooper?” you ask. Well, it wasn’t because of the fact that he was a golden. Truth is, I have probably put my hands on less than a dozen goldens in my entire life. I just felt that young Cooper was perfect to be the Jackie Robinson of my canine training program. For those of you that do not understand what that means, shame on you!

You see, Jackie Robinson was the first Black athlete in Major League Baseball. It is often debated whether Mr. Robinson was the most talented ball player in what was then called the “Negro Leagues” but, for multiple reasons, he was the perfect man to be the first in the, what was at the time, racially limited major leagues. The similarity being, much like major league baseball at the time, I had limited my availability to pointing breeds, exclusively.

To continue, Cooper had received a great deal introductory training and his owner(s) had previous experience with the breed and hunting - specifically, upland bird hunting. This was key. I have hunted waterfowl several times with, mostly, Labs but my wheelhouse is hunting upland birds. Though I hope to be able to help train water retrieving sometime in the future, I didn’t want the added pressure of having to train for waterfowl blind etiquette.

I have hunted waterfowl several times with, mostly, Labs but my wheelhouse is hunting upland birds.

Yes, not having to train for multiple hunting styles was a huge relief. The owners and I understood each other right away and respected each other’s point of view. They explained the issues they had with “Coop”, his previous training, and, after observing the dog in our training area, I could see that he was intelligent, wanted to please, but was very animated. Some of that was due to a desire to wriggle-out of pressure and Cooper would test the handler’s command for its level of seriousness.

So, how do you train an upland retriever? Good question - I asked the same thing!

I knew a little about flushing breeds and what their owners generally require of them. What is very understandable, to me, is the need for a dog to be in control of the handler and in range of the ammunition. In addition, I could relate to the desire for the dog to flush birds into the air without chasing. And, lastly, the necessity for them to actively hunt for and retrieve birds that have been brought back to earth by a string of shot.

So, to begin answering the question, we start with the field basics - Come, Heel and Sit. Coop’s heel and sit was very well established, his owner did a wonderful job in this area. His recall was very sporadic and I figured that was where I would start. I observed that the owner used multiple call and whistle commands to invoke Cooper to move toward him. Therefore, job-one was going to reduce return commands to only one verbal (Come) and only one whistle command (three blasts). Since Cooper had been sporadically trained with an e-collar, I would add (consistent) application of slight collar stimulus anytime (every time) the call/whistle was ignored.

Many happy returns! The check cord is to instill the feeling of control and limit the need for electrical stimulation.

Bingo! In very little time, Cooper was happily, and quickly, responding to return calls. I won’t take any credit, however. He knew what these commands meant and only had to learn that they are now consistent and insistent. The next major step in creating a wonderful upland retriever will be training Cooper to sit with eyes on the handler after a single blast of the whistle. I began that during our heel exercises on the second day. He did fine because he sits well at the sudden stop of the handler; adding a quick toot on the whistle and my finger pointed up has just begun.

Cooper sits and stays put. But, will he do that from a distance?

How will Cooper take to remote sit commands? And, what about his testing ways? - See Page 2 - 5 posts to find out!