Teaching a bird dog to retrieve can be fun and simple. One of the tricks we use when training is the rule of three’s. Three birds, three Retrieves, three points. What I mean by the rule of three’s is you want to keep the sessions short and fun for the dog. Keep him wanting more and wanting to re visit what your doing.  When starting young puppies and teaching them to retrieve.  We like to take a small bird like a bobwhite quail and cut off a few the flight feathers. Then we get pup all excited by waving the bird back and forth. Make sure you have a lead on pup so that when you toss the bird and he wants to chew on it you can bring him back nice and easy.  Once you have the puppy focused on the bird toss the bird just about five feet away and tell the puppy fetch. Let him mouth the bird and play with it for a minute and then have him bring it back to you, if he wont slowly reel him in on the check cord. Repeat this three times and put pup away this will leave him wanting to come back for more. Don’t push retrieve to much I have seen dogs loose interest, you don’t want to do that. You want the puppy to Keep  wanting more by keeping the sessions short with lots of praise and excitement. This is something you can do in the middle of obedience training to get the dog excited or to just take a brake. So in short keep the session upbeat, fun, and start while there young. Make it a big game at first so the dog associates fetch as a reward. Continue to do the fetch sessions tossing the bird a little further each time. With repetition it won’t be long before pup figures out what your asking him to do.

Teaching Fetch

Using Bobwhite Quail

Fetch It UP!