This article was written by dog trainer Lorraine Leibbrandt for askaprepper.com.
I. How to Train Your Dog For Hunting In The Field
I have always believed that any dog can be trained how to hunt if you have the patience and skill to train it. However, some dogs are natural hunters, so it is much easier to work with them.
The best breed groups for hunting are gun dogs, terriers, and hounds, and they all have an inherent need to hunt.
- Gun dogs: The gun dog group consists of spaniels, retrievers, pointers, and setters, and these dogs were mainly bred to hunt bigger animals.
- Terriers:This group consists of any terrier breeds, and these dogs were bred to hunt vermin and smaller animals like rats, rabbits, birds, and even insects.
- Hounds: This group consists of sight hounds and scent hounds, and these were bred to find animals in the field (by scent). Sight hounds can spot an animal from very far away and have incredible speed.
Your dog is already getting a great reward from the hunting activity itself; however, you can intensify this using reward-based training that consists of either food, a toy, or praise. Food is the most effective.
Related: 14 Dog Breeds for Preppers
In order to teach your dog how to hunt, it first needs to have a thorough grasp on the following basic exercises: Retrieve, Stay, Recall, and Search.
Retrieve – To fetch things for you
- Teach your dog how to retrieve by starting with a ball or a toy first.
- Keep the distance you throw the toy short in the beginning, and then you can extend the distance as your dog gets better at retrieving.
- As soon as your dog returns the object, ensure that you swap it for a treat, and give it lots of praise!
- You can then start using a decoy with animal urine on it (of the specific animal you want your dog to target) and have it retrieve the decoy to get used to bringing that scent back to you for a big reward.
Stay – To wait until it is given a release word
- Ask your puppy to stay by showing it the palm of your hand and saying, “Stay.” Take one step back, and let it wait for no more than a second. Give it a treat immediately by coming toward it.
- Keep increasing the time and the distance you go back when you see that your puppy is confident with the exercise.
- Combine the retrieving and staying exercise by throwing the decoy and asking your puppy to stay.
- Encourage your dog to fetch the decoy when you give it a release word like “fetch it” or “go.”
Recall – To come when called
- Get a word for your recall that you would use in the field; it can also be a whistle.
- Ensure that you have lots of treats, and call your puppy using the recall word. Give it lots of praise and a treat for coming to you. Your puppy needs to learn that coming to you is rewarding.
- Now combine all three of the exercises. Throw the object, ask your puppy to wait, and then release it to fetch. As soon as your puppy has the object it should retrieve, use your recall word and call it toward you!
Search – To find things using their sense of smell
- Start this exercise with your puppy at a young age. Hide treats all over your home and garden, and have your puppy search for them.
- You will need to encourage your puppy in the beginning by pointing out the area in which to search as it might not know what search means.
- Make a big fuss when your puppy has sniffed out the treat! Take it to each area where you have hidden a treat, and ask it to search. Soon your puppy will be confident with the word “search,” and then you can move on to the next step.
- This time use the animal urine on objects for your puppy to sniff out. For scent hounds, make a trail with the urine on a cloth or by dripping some urine drops, and at the end of the trail, have your decoy ready.
- Use your recall command to ask your puppy to retrieve this item, and give it a huge reward when it has successfully done so.
These concepts are best taught before taking your dog into the field for its first hunt as it will have to know how to wait for you to shoot the animal, how to go and retrieve it, and how to bring it back to you. If you want your dog to search for the prey as well, it needs to know how to sniff them out. If your puppy is familiar with all the above-mentioned exercises, it should be easier to teach it to retrieve and hunt prey in the field as it will understand what you need from it when asking to search, stay, or retrieve the prey.
Related: Six Primitive Traps for Catching Game in the Woods
If you are going to be hunting with a gun, it is important to get a dog that won’t get a fright and run at the first shot being fired. You will need to make sure your dog is not bothered by the loud noise. You can do this by introducing your puppy to loud sounds and the sound of gunshots early in its life, before the age of four months. This is because anything they encounter in this early stage of their development becomes normal to them.
Take your dog to the field early, and although you should not put too much pressure on it to retrieve prey on the first few sessions in the field, you can use this time to get them used to the sound of gunfire and the environment. Do this by having someone else shoot a gun while you sit with your puppy, and give a big reward each time a gun is fired so that it associates the loud noises positively.
II. How To Train Your Dog for Personal and Home Protection
Most dog owners think that their dogs would naturally protect them and their homes in an emergency situation, but this is seldom the case. Only about 2% of the dog population will protect you without being trained to do so. Although our dogs have an instinct to protect us, they usually avoid conflict when put to the test. Most dogs will naturally bark at strangers in your yard, but not all of them will take action when they need to. To illustrate my point, view this video.
Training a dog to protect your home is not only difficult but it is a time-consuming exercise that needs to be repeated often to cement the behavior. The ideal protection dog would be a dog that is social with your guests and other dogs but will not hesitate to protect you in an emergency situation. Remember that there is a difference between having an attack dog and a protection dog. An attack dog is for police training and will attack and bite on command, whereas a protection dog is in the defense position and will only bite when it senses trouble or it needs to defend you.
Related: Home Security Tips From an Ex-Burglar
Let’s look at what it takes to train your dog for home protection:
#1. Make sure you have a dog suitable to be a guard dog; for instance, most Labradors are too friendly and would want to play with intruders. Smaller dogs can be good alarm systems inside of the home, but they will not be able to stop an intruder easily.
Rottweiler, German Shepherd, or Doberman breeds would be a better option as these dogs are bred for guarding and it comes naturally to them.
#2. Take your dog to a reputable obedience training school as young as possible, before your dog has the chance to pick up bad habits. Obedience training teaches your dog to understand and obey commands like sit, stay, bark, heel, etc., and helps your dog become in tune with you so they are more attentive to our needs.
This is also important because you want to be able to ask your dog to sit or lie down when it should not be paying attention to a certain guest or if it barks unnecessarily at the mailman.
#3. If our dogs are more attentive to us, they can pick up on when we are suspicious, scared, or careful of certain people by using social referencing. Social referencing means that the dogs look to their owners for social clues when meeting a new person or encountering a new object. They copy our reaction (positive or negative) to the object or person almost all of the time. Our dogs are more likely to guard us if they pick up on negative feelings toward a stranger.
You can make sure that your dog understands when you are suspicious of a stranger by pulling the leash tighter, not greeting the person in a friendly tone (or at all), or moving away from the person. This should usually be enough to make your dog understand that you are not comfortable with a person’s presence, and your dog will most likely copy your behavior.
#4. Ensure that your dog knows where your home’s perimeters are. Make a habit of doing a perimeter check with your dog daily by walking around your home and the area you want it to protect. This will become a familiar path for your dog to walk, so it can do this on its own as well. By doing a daily perimeter check, you are more likely to see if wires have been cut or if someone has jumped over the wall so you can take precautions. Intruders are also less likely to come into your yard when you have a dog patrolling the area.
#5. Loyal dogs are more likely to protect their owners, so it is important to build a good relationship with your dog. You can do this through using positive reinforcement training methods and not punishment or dominance techniques as this causes damage to your relationship with your dog.
Related: 5 Bad-ass Perimeter Defense Lessons From A Vietnam Vet
Your dog will be more loyal if it receives a balance of love and discipline and not only one or the other.
#1. Praise your dog for the things it does right, and don’t focus on the things it does wrong. This way, you can redirect your dog from any unwanted behaviors, or you can simply use the word “no” and show your dog what you want it to do instead. This method is more effective than punishment and creates a positive relationship between you and your dog.
#2. Create a mock scenario of intruders in your home, and have someone make a noise outside or knock on your window. I found that my dog simply reacted with me looking startled at the door and walking around the room, saying, “What was that? Search,” and she would get nervous and bark at the door. This is because of social referencing once again, and I manipulated her by pretending to get nervous about a sound outside or a knock on the window.
So, in your own scenario, look startled, and say, “What is that?” to your dog. Encourage it to bark or patrol the area, and if it barks or growls, praise it and give it a treat for being a good guard dog. Then show it that there is no harm outside afterwards so it can relax again. Keep practicing this on a daily or weekly basis until your dog is alert and reacts by barking every time.
#3. Ask someone who is unfamiliar (to your dog) to approach you. Pretend to be a little nervous. If your dog growls, have the person immediately turn around and walk away. This gives your dog confidence that it can chase strangers away by warning them. Usually when a growl is ignored, a dog will resort to biting. However, this should be done with extreme caution as your dog should also be taught to stop growling when you ask for it. So ask it to stop, and reward the behavior when it does.
The key here would be to have an obedient dog that will back off when you command it. Ask your dog to stop growling, and lie down or sit quietly when you don’t want it to bark. (This is where obedience training would help a lot.)
In conclusion, we don’t want our dogs to be aggressive toward every person and dog it meets, but we want a dog that can alert us to danger and take action when needed. The best we can do is to give them confidence that their growls are being taken seriously as warnings by setting up scenarios for them to practice this. The idea is that if a warning growl is ignored, your dog will follow it up with a bite.
In order for our dogs to take action in an emergency situation, we can only hope that they pick up on our social cues, but there are no guarantees that they will definitely bite an intruder. If this is what you are aiming for, you need to train an attack dog with the police so that it can serve that purpose. This takes commitment and a full-time training schedule with your dog.
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Your Email are the best I copy everyone of them and then put them in a binder so I can read them over again.
My Great-grandfather had a large Kuvasz named the equivalent of “Who’s There!”. So when strange noises were heard at night, he called out in a loud, stern tone “Who’s There!” and the guard dog would be on the alert.
(He also scattered oyster/clam shells around the walls so he could hear people walking in the night.)
I keep Great Pyrenees around for Livestock Guardian dogs to protect my animals from predators. I wouldn’t mess with a Kuvasz in someone’s yard that for sure 🙂 They have a higher guarding instinct I think than the Great Pyrs. My Pyrs have stood around and watched mechanics drive my 4 wheelers off for servicing, from a distance. They typically (not all Pyrs) aren’t interested in human activity. I’m not going to push a Kuvasz on the issue though 🙂
What the heck?
Ms. Leibbrandt may have written the article however is sorely lacking knowledge regarding a gun dog hunts and how to train them. A “Gun Dog”, those she described Pointers, Spaniels, Retrievers and Setters are NOT used for big game. They are bird dogs. In the Sporting Group of the AKC.
Terriers are in a separate group and good luck training one to hunt birds and bringing it back to you whole and safe. They tear their prey to bits and pieces instinctively if they don’t swallow it whole and live. And, they are hard as hell to train for a person with little experience. If you want vermin taken out like rats, mice, badgers etc. the Terriers are your dog. You’d best have some experience with single minded stubborn dogs to train one of them.
Pointers do just that, they point out birds. Spaniels flush birds out so the hunter can shoot them and retrievers go and fetch the birds. Most will retrieve so the dog you pick is based on what you are hunting and how you want to hunt. The only breed that points, flushes and retrieves instinctively is the Brittany. They have more dual championships than any other gun dog hunting breed.
I don’t want my Brittanys to hunt urine on the ground. I want them to hunt BIRDS from the scent in the air. Why would I set a urine trail for a dog to hunt a bird? Birds don’t urinate a trail to land somewhere. I want them to sniff the air and wind to find the bird. All our puppies are given bird wings to play with when they stand up and walk. They are graduated up when they are up and rolling and playing by placing a wing on a string and tossing it out and moving it around. When the dog jumps on it it’s rewarded. Then by 8 – 12 weeks they are on birds and allowed to seek out the live birds in safe fly away traps the puppy can’t get into to injure the bird. When the puppy smells the bird they will usually stop. When it pounces to flush, the birds are released and blank fired from a weapon to get them used to the noise.
You find a soft toy like a stiff nerf football when they are younger to carry around. Teaching it to walk around and follow you around with it. Rewarding it when it doesn’t bite down and scolding when it does.
By the time they are six months to a year they are pointing to where a bird is (having sniffed the air for the scent, not the ground for urine) then will pounce to flush it and being used to picking up the bird wing and scolded if they tore it up, retrieve the bird with a soft mouth as not to damage the bird, that is what is rewarded.
If you want your dog to fetch a plastic toy I guess you could use the urine method. But, birds aren’t round plastic slippery toys that they have to really use a hard mouth on to hold it to get back to you. A soft object with bird scent is used also with bird scent on the object. It is hidden in the area and the dog released to find it. A slight wind in the air is helpful on those training days. A good bird dog will put it’s nose to the air, not the ground.
I teach my gun dogs to be crazy about finding birds not sniffing down a trail of urine to find a plastic toy. And, for the “dog trainer’s” information good luck finding enough “urine” for hunting birds since birds don’t technically urinate they produce droppings that include their urine. And, if the dog smells bird droppings on the ground the bird could be 500 miles south of you when the dog smells it. They may never smell bird droppings on the ground. They need to sniff the air.
I don’t teach my hunting dogs to fetch a toy and bring it back to me. That’s a game. I don’t want my dog to play a game when I hunt. I want it to be serious about what we are doing and what we are looking for. For them to do that they have to be crazy about bird scent. That makes them happy and they will work.
If you want a dog that fetches and won’t stop, get a Border Collie. You want a hunting dog, get serious and start them at an early age to look for those birds.
Screw the tennis ball.
I am by the way a gun dog breeder and trainer of 30 years.
You want your dog to hunt bigger game like deer or elk, which is illegal right now for the most part. You’d best have a hide or something so it knows what you are looking for. Scent dogs are trained to look for what you have given them the scent of. Good luck hunting dear or elk with a dog thrashing around the area sniffing it out.
Your dog trainer needs to stick to training pets to fetch.
Thanks for the great article, lots of good info!
As for me, I can’t wait to get started on training my Shih-Tzu for hunting and security!?
LOL. Probably will work out, they’ll chase anything that runs right?
GOOD ARTICLE ! I’ve Always had 2 large German Shepherds. I can state from many years of experience, that NO-ONE crosses My perimeter fence,especially at night. Strangers only enter My property in daylight, with My presence and permission. I live in a high-crime area, with a railroad track in close proximity. I don’t hear everything that I did when younger. Also My Dogs won’t leave My property, even when I fall asleep, and leave a large Gate open for hours. Additionally, My male is trained to “SEARCH” anytime, Day-or-Night, with a command, and pointing My finger. I sure sleep better at night, with a Shepherd at front and back doors. It also helps if YOUR dogs are trained NOT TO BARK, at anything but HUMANS. Not at the Moon, passing cars, stray dogs, or sirens. Reinforce proper behavior by going outside to “LOOK” each time They bark. I also encourage and pet them each time They warn Me correctly. A Good German Shepherd needs and wants structure and discipline in Their lives. Believe Me, They are worth every minute of training, and every Dollar spent, SECURITY—PRICELESS !!!
I’ve kept my German Shepherd since he was born. He knows my friends and family very well. He will growl at other people but he doesn’t bite unless one of us, usually my sister or I, says to get them.
I love this,good job here.am a forester and wildlife conservator.would love love to meet your team.