Learn Bird Hunting Dog Training Tools

Video Transcript

"I am Charlie McCanna, and on behalf of Expert Village.com, I would like to talk to you a little bit about retriever training. We are going to only hit the basics, because when you get into the expert stuff, you really need to have a professional worker with you. But when you are training a retriever or retriever training, the first thing you are going to need is a whistle. Hopefully, you will already done your basic obedience training, because trying to train a retriever without the basic obedience sit, stay, heel and those kind of things is virtually impossible. Another thing you will absolutely have to have are some kind of training dummies. They come in all shapes and sizes. They come in different colors: orange ones are used for blind retrieves, because the dog sees in black and white, and orange is basically the same color gray the grass is. Here is a black and white speckled one. The black is a lot more difficult to see, but the variation in colors or grays that they will see will help them to locate it. Here is a large bumper or dummy, a standard white one and here is another one without a lead. One thing you always want to remember with your retriever though is make sure they have fun. They have to have lots of fun. When you are done having a training session, you always need to throw what we call happy bumpers or playtime. Now, I like to have what is called a nylabone. It has a bone shape, that they can pick it up off the ground, because for a dog trying to lift this off the ground can be quite difficult… they love these. And also this is called a cong. This will bounce erratically on the ground and can be thrown quite a ways, and the dog has a blast chasing after it. Those are a couple of the things that I like to use when I am working with a retriever, and I think if you will get those, that will give you the basics that you need to get started."