The process of developing a puppy into an experienced bird dog should be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. That process begins with the all-important first season. Not only is the young dog at an impressionable age, but the experience and knowledge gained from that time in the woods and fields will create a foundation the dog will depend on and use in future seasons.
The first year is primarily about exposure. The goal is to have the puppy hunt for and find wild birds. Owners shouldn’t worry if the dog doesn’t point the bird or hold point for long. Both will come with repeated exposure, maturity and training.
The key is wild birds Most of what a dog needs to know about finding and pointing wild birds is learned from the birds themselves. The owner’s job is to put the young dog into birds—lots of birds.
The puppy will learn key details about birds. • Where they’re most likely to be found. • How to differentiate where the bird is as opposed to where it was, i.e., old scent vs. new scent. • How close is too close before the bird flushes. • It can’t catch the bird. • How to follow running birds.
Handling in the woods and fields Handling is often a big issue with owners. Jerry and I have a simple handling theory. As long as the young dog goes with us and looks to us for direction, we say the minimum necessary to control it. Over-handling, in terms of too much calling, whistling or constant encouragement, can distract and confuse the dog. We only use two commands: HERE and calling its name. HERE means come to us. When we want the dog to turn, we call its name. At a certain point we enforce the commands with an ecollar
Expecting your puppy to be always in sight or range at a certain distance is unrealistic and, in fact, can inhibit its bird finding. As long as it’s checking in and hunting in the direction we’re headed, we don’t say anything.
In this field, Sage (CH Miller’s Upgraded Version x Northwoods Comet, 2024) looks staunch on point. But was there a bird? If so, did she hold point until owner Joey Paxman of Montana could flush?
Puppy mistakes Expect your puppy to make mistakes—flush birds, chase rabbits, not pay attention and, at times, just act like the immature dog it is. Be patient. Remember it is still just a young dog. Take a break. Call it in to you, talk calmly and stroke its back.
Be prepared A few important points need to considered prior to the hunting season. The foremost is proper introduction to birds and gunfire. The young dog should be conditioned to an ecollar for the basic HERE command and for turning. A GPS collar is excellent for peace of mind.
Also, the young dog should be accustomed to wearing a bell or beeper and comfortable both with being in a crate and riding in a vehicle.
Proper physical condition is always crucial. The young dog should be at the proper weight. A couple extra pounds can make a big difference, especially on those hot, early season days.
Finally, remember! Have fun with your young dog. And savor this first, special season.
Jerry and I wrote a piece for the September 15, 2013, issue of the Minnesota StarTribune. Some parts of that have been reprinted here.
Our three males out of CH Woodville’s Yukon Cornelius x Northwoods Redbreast, Beech, Roy and Jack, basically share point on a pigeon in a releaser.
Timing, as the saying goes, is everything. This year, Jerry and I are not only fortunate to have 10 puppies from two setter litters and one pointer litter, but all are at exactly the perfect age to begin training. We introduce them to the bird field, take them on walks and expose them to other aspects for their future as bird dogs.
PUPPY FIRST POINTS These are no-pressure walks in the bird field to bring out a puppy’s pointing instincts in a natural manner through bird contact. We want the puppy to become confident, bold and accustomed to gunfire.
PUPPY WALKS On a warm afternoon last weekend, Jerry and I took our six four-month-old puppies (CH Woodville’s Yukon Cornelius x Northwoods Redbreast) for a walk on a nearby pasture. The buttercups and orange hawkweed were blooming, the ponds were full and butterflies provided fun things to chase. Yet even on this seemingly simple walk, the puppies learned.
They learned to turn on a whistle, run to the front and go with us. The puppies found water independently and all six not only drank but splashed in far enough so they swam. They were also reinforced on the “HERE” command several times.
TIME ON A STAKEOUT CHAIN When our puppies are eight weeks old, we always put brightly colored collars on them. When they became comfortable with their collars, we clipped them to a stakeout chain. They all struggled at first—some more than others—but they all learned to give in, to be comfortable with restraint and ultimately to relax.
Front to back: setters Chestnut and Foxglove (May’s Pond Hank x Northwoods Stardust) and pointers Peony and Dahlia (CH Miller’s Upgraded Version x Northwoods Comet).
Front to back: Our six puppies out of CH Woodville’s Yukon Cornelius x Northwoods Redbreast: Daffodil, Roy, Beech, Violet, Jack and Miley.
RETRIEVING Puppies are eager to please which makes retrieving an easy exercise at a young age. Jerry and I always start with tossing a tennis ball or retrieving dummy in the kennel office. But soon, Daffodil (CH Woodville’s Yukon Cornelius x Northwoods Redbreast), below, progressed to retrieving a freshly killed quail in the field.
Plenty of physical exercise is crucial to happy, well-developed puppies. They play hard until they tire; then they rest.
Betsy and I believe the first six months of a puppy’s life is crucial to its development. We put tremendous effort into preparing the puppy for situations it will encounter as it matures.
Everyday examples include exposure to different people, exposure to dogs of different ages, introduction to water and getting comfortable going into a crate and loading into a dog box. In early training exercises, exposure to birds, marker training, leash training and spending time on a stakeout chain are all extremely valuable.
Time on a stakeout chain teaches puppies to be comfortable with restraint. In addition, they learn to give to the chain when another puppy moves around.
A simple and often overlooked key to a happy, balanced puppy is plenty of physical exercise. Our puppies spend mornings in the exercise pens and go for walks of suitable length in various places.
Essential to how we develop puppies is that we rarely force the puppy to do a desired behavior. Instead, we set up the puppy to succeed by making the right choice easy and the wrong choice difficult. We then reward it with a treat when it chooses the desired behavior. We say very litte to the puppy, using verbal cues only when it has learned the behavior. This teaches the puppy to think.
Life experiences, though, are not all positive. Often, puppies learn more from choosing the wrong behavior and suffering the consequence. For us, jumping up on people and excessive barking are two undesirable behaviors that are met with soft “bonks” from a “bonker,” a rolled-up and taped hand towel.
Most behaviors are taught during the normal course of the day. When specific training is required, we keep the sessions very short, usually five minutes or less.
Below are five videos of puppies during our development process this summer. Enjoy!
Tink, Molly and Queen (RU-CH Northwoods Atlas x Houston’s Nelly Bly) are introduced to navigating a stream crossing.
How easy is this? With their bowl of dog food as enticement, littermates Rudolph and Cupid (CH Southern Confidence x Northwoods Comet) can’t wait to load into a truck box.
Fifteen-week-old sisters Tink, Molly and Queen (RU-CH Northwoods Atlas x Houston’s Nelly Bly) learn to use their noses and read littermate’s body language around birds.
Molly learns to choose behaviors that will earn a treat.
Boots (RU-CH Northwoods Atlas x Northwoods Stardust) learns an invaluable lesson. During the first few bird contacts, young puppies often stay on point because they are not bold enough to jump in on the bird. We never flush the birds on these early contacts; instead we allow the puppy time to jump in and flush the bird itself. The puppy becomes bold and confirms that it had the bird well located.
Willow (Northwoods Louis Vuitton x Houston’s Dancing Queen, 2022)
Sometime in late summer, it became clear to me that several things would come together to provide a perfect November bobwhite quail training session for puppies.
Two litters whelped in July would be four months old—a prime age to introduce them to birds. The quail in my four johnny houses that I’d been acclimating and conditioning would be wild-acting, hard-flying birds. My guiding responsibilities would be done and, hopefully, the weather would cooperate. Talk about serendipity.
Many clients were keen and signed up. With the puppies Betsy and I kept from those two litters, I had 11 puppies.
The adage is “It takes birds to make a bird dog.” More specifically and for me, it takes wild birds to make a wild bird dog. For the same reason beginning baseball players start with a ball on a tee, we can’t expect a 12-week-old puppy to handle wild birds—the equivalent of a major league pitch.
The Quail Our ball on a tee for young puppies is quail from a johnny house. Our birds aren’t the standard quail—caught, handled and buried in the grass. Our birds are never touched; they run and fly almost like wild birds. It takes time, effort and specific habitat to get the quail to act wild, but that’s crucial to prepare young dogs to learn to hunt wild birds.
Quail sun themselves on the perches of the johnny house. Birds are released through the hinged door the swings open.
The Johnny House A johnny house is a quail pen that, well, resembles an old outhouse. Ours are 4’ by 4’ square and 6’ high. All four walls are made from green-treated plywood except for the top six inches which is covered with ½ inch hardware cloth. The roof is either treated plywood or corrugated metal. The floor is made of ½ inch hardware cloth. There are perches just below the top six inches of hardware cloth where the birds fly to sun themselves.
An entry door is on one side with a feeder and nipple waterer attached to the inside of the door. Near the bottom of the door on the outside is an entry funnel for the quail to use to get back into the house.
Inside the door of a johnny house a feeder and nipple waterer are mounted. On the floor inside is a dusting pan. On the bottom left is the entry funnel.
How the Quail Act At the beginning, most of the quail fly to the same areas near the house which makes it easier for the pups to find them. Then as the puppies learn to find, point and flush them, the quail run more, flush wilder, fly farther and become more difficult to find. Sometimes, with a dozen quail flushed out of the house, a group of puppies might find very few. But that’s ok. Wild birds are hard to find and the sooner the puppies learn they have to hunt hard to find them, the better.
Really good quail will flush strongly out of the house, flying up and over the trees for 100 yards or more. After a scattered landing, they will quickly gather together leaving foot scent for the young dogs to figure out. Once just one pup finds them, the quail react as a covey, giving the pup only one contact but that one contact will be wild-like.
At times, quail might not come back to the house for a day or more. And at times, I found some coveys more than 300 yards from their johnny house. When flushed, the birds flew another 150 yards in the opposite direction, and yet, they were back in the house the next day.
When to Start the Puppies Young puppies’ brains are like sponges. Too, they are bold, curious and adventurous. But they lack the physical ability to run far or fast and so stay close to the handler. Like other stages in their development, there is a short window of opportunity.
I’ve found that starting puppies on johnny house quail by 12 weeks of age brings the best results. I work puppies in groups of two or three where they learn not only to hunt, find and point quail but also to read their bracemates which can lead to good things like backing. Often I’ve had several 14-week-old puppies backing another puppy that is pointing a quail.
In addition, puppies worked in groups become accustomed to distractions while hunting and are less likely to be competitive with bracemates in the field. Two or three months of this work, threes time a week is about enough. After that the window starts to close; puppies are stronger, start to hunt wider and are more independent in their search.
The johnny house quail have done their job and the pups are ready for the next stages of advanced training and wild birds.
Juniper (CH True Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2021) retrieves a big, fat rooster. Juniper is owned by Joey Paxman and Amanda Allpress of Montana.
Jerry and I consider the first hunting season of a puppy’s life to be a crucial element in its development. A puppy’s mind is like a sponge, eager to absorb anything and everything.
For the owner of the puppy, that first fall can be a blast. There’s no pressure. Very little handling is necessary and definitely no “Whoa” command is involved. Just take the puppy onto the prairie and into the woods and expose it to as many wild birds as possible.
Even though Nemadji (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) has one sharp-tailed grouse in her mouth, she’s eyeing others on the ground in front. Madji is owned by Ron and Lora Nielsen of Minnesota.
The puppy can really do no wrong. Use its nose to hunt for birds. Find the bird. Flush it. Loose the scent entirely. It doesn’t matter. The puppy is learning with every exposure.
Eventually, the proverbial lightbulb goes on and the puppy gets it. The puppy points, perhaps momentarily, but it does stop.
After a successful hunt, Rickey (CH True Confidence x Northwoods Comet, 2021) looks cool and calm. Rickey is owned by Jake and Nicole Beveridge of Minnesota.
Puppies from our pointer litter out of Comet by True Confidence and our two setter litters, Grits x Stardust and Rolls Royce x Minerva, had ample opportunity.
Kudos to the owners for taking their puppy hunting. And the scenery is pretty nice, too.
Lupin (Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Stardust, 2021) is learning so much during her first season on the prairie. Lupin is owned by Tom and Tammy Beauchamp of Indiana.
Northwoods Redbreast (Northwoods Rolls Royce x Northwoods Minerva, 2021) happily complies with the “place” command using marker training.
I’m continually looking for new ways to enhance the development of our puppies.
For many years, we used the “treat” only technique to teach our puppies the kennel and recall commands. We used treats to lure the them into the desired behavior; such as tossing a treat into the dog crate for kennel or letting them see I had a treat in my hand for recall. With that technique, the puppies didn’t have to think about what they were doing; they automatically followed the food.
But then I found Gary Wilkes.
Gary is a professional dog trainer in Phoenix, Ariz., who got his start in the late 1980s. His resume is impressive, including experience training guide dogs, service dogs and military special operations dogs. An innovative person, he has developed techniques that dogs understand intuitively and respond to quickly.
One of Gary’s methods to teach new behaviors to dogs is called marker training. Initially used for training marine animals, marker training is now mainstream for training dogs. The concept is simple: wait for the desired behavior to occur and then “mark” it with a click and a treat. With this technique, the puppy has to think about what it has to do to get its reward.
And for me, a thinking dog is a better dog. It is more adaptable, more effective in the field and more interesting to be around.
Here is a video of 10-week-old Northwoods Redbreast (Northwoods Rolls Royce x Northwoods Minerva, 2021) working on the three behaviors I taught her: kennel, sit and place.
For more information about marker training and many insightful tips on dog training, check out Gary’s website at clickandtreat.com.
Twelve-week-old Northwoods Diana (RU-CH Northwoods Nirvana x Northwoods Carbon, 2017) exhibits remarkable poise, style and intensity while pointing a bobwhite quail.
Even though much of raising puppies is simply playing with them and enjoying their antics, Betsy and I do have a set schedule of things to introduce and what training to start. Bird introduction, which we begin at about 12 weeks, is probably the most fun and interesting. At this age, it’s all instinct; but for us as breeders, it’s really exciting to see what genetic tendencies and qualities we recognize.
This spring, two litters were whelped within 10 days of each other–Northwoods Grits x Northwoods Nickel and Northwoods Nirvana x Northwoods Carbon. Betsy and I kept four puppies from the first litter and two from the second.
We eagerly look forward to our puppy training sessions at the end of the day. Using either bobwhite quail or chukars flushed from their houses, we walk the puppies through the area where the birds flew. Watching them discover bird scent, follow, point (maybe hold for a bit), back (maybe) and then chase the birds is a highlight of our day.
Callie, on left, and Blitzen share point on a bobwhite that landed in the willows.
Starting puppies on birds is right at the top of our list as a fun part of our work. And it’s something Betsy and I believe in beginning when they are quite young. Puppies at three to four months of age are much easier to start than eight-month-old pups.
When we work puppies on birds, we head out into the pasture to one of our four recall houses. The pups watch as I flush a good number of quail from the house and, then excitedly, they are off. They chase the quail wherever they fly—into the woods, alders or willows.
These bobwhite quail act much as wild birds do and hit the ground running. Puppies learn to use their nose to follow the scent until they come upon the bird. When they find it they might point briefly or just jump in and flush it. Either way they then chase the bird with our high praise echoing in their ears.
Murphy displays remarkable poise, intensity and style on one of his first puppy points.
Betsy and I never flush the birds. Instead we let the puppies point until they move in. From this, puppies learn when they have the bird, and importantly, when they don’t.
A key part of this whole exercise is that we don’t interfere or make any effort to restrain the pups. We do loudly praise the puppies when they flush a bird and will call or sing to direct them a bit. We think it’s crucial, at this time anyway, for puppies to learn—to find the bird, point it and then flush it—all on their own.
All puppies pictured above and below are 12 – 14 weeks old and all are pointers out of Northwoods Vixen by Elhew G Force.
Pearl pointed her first wild birds today. One grouse and two woodcock. I was walking along and looked down at my gps to see where my older dog was and when I looked up, Pearl was on point about 30 feet in front of me with a 12- o’clock tail and a high head. I walked in and flushed a woodcock about 10 feet in front of her. She then proceeded to point a grouse and another woodcock before I decided it was enough for one day and carried her out. ~ Caleb, Minnesota, August 14
Our puppy is doing very well and healthy. We named him Bandit. He is very birdy and outgoing. I’ve started his puppy program and he is already learning the fetch command. He loves getting around the quail pen and tries to break in every chance he gets. LOL ~ Tim, Florida, August 17
Coop is coming along great. He’s had some clipped wing pigeons and I’ve started him with the cap gun—no problems there at all. His prey drive is off the chart. I have him standing still on the bench. Also been working on recall with check cord. ~ Tim, Massachusetts, August 16
This caution is repetitive but it is not redundant.
Jerry and I know of bad things that have happened to puppies over the Fourth of July holiday. They have become so scared that they panic, run away and are lost. Some have been hit by a vehicle. Others have chewed out of crates, breaking teeth and scratching until their paws are bloody.
Even if your young dog has been exposed to gunfire, you still need to be careful. Here are two easy precautions.
• Put a crate in a protected, quiet place and put the puppy in it.
• Provide background noise such as TV or radio.
If your young dog will be exposed to fireworks, consider these actions.
• Go about things normally during the fireworks. Act as though nothing special is going on.
• Don’t comfort the dog or give it any attention. Don’t look at the dog; don’t talk to it; don’t touch it.
• If your dog wants to be close to you, let it; but again, don’t comfort it. Comfort will most likely reinforce the behavior and make things worse.
In fact, consider older dogs, too. Even though they’ve been shot over countless times, those have usually been in hunting situations. The circumstances of loud noises and fireworks are utterly different.
Perhaps a hunter can relate to this. If you’re at a gun range, blasts, shots and noises of all kinds are expected. But if you’re sitting on your deck reading a book when a gun is fired 20 behind you, the experience is totally different.
