Well I suppose an introduction is in order. My name is Al. I live in rural southeast Michigan with 3 birddogs, Betsy-10 yr. old GSP, Evie-rescue pointer age unknown and our “failed foster” from IBR, Sassy-age unknown along with a very understanding wife who loves the dogs as much as I do.
We’re a birddog family. We hunt grouse and woodcock with our dogs about 30 days a year and train on grouse and woodcock during the off season probably another 30 or 40 days. Plus a few preserve hunts for pheasant thrown in. Our dogs get a lot of field time!
As much as we hunt, our dogs are our spoiled rotten pets first and foremost!! We don’t have birddogs to hunt, we hunt to spend time with our dogs watching them enjoy what they were bred to do.
The reason that we’re starting this blog, is to help people look into some alternative training techniques that are not normally found in field work.
I’m also hoping it will help any adopters who are interested in field work but don’t know where to start. There will also be a lot of good information for non-hunting homes too. Loose leash walking, recall, things like that. For the hunter, we’ll cover field commands, intro to birds, intro to gunfire, gunshy cures, learning theory and a host of other topics.
I should note that even though I train a few dogs for other people, I’m not a professional trainer. I’m just someone who got frustrated with traditional field training and went exploring different options. I’m still learning and hopefully always will be.
Thanks, Al