Complete Training for the Working Spaniel E-Book

Graham Gibson

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A beautifully illustrated guide to training a working spaniel in the shooting field, from basic obedience to advanced hunting and retrieving, with advice and step-by-step information from esteemed gundog trainer Graham Gibson. Complete Training for the Working Spaniel is suitable for both novice and experienced trainers, and is essential reading for anyone looking to bring out the best from their spaniel in the shooting field. Topics covered include choosing a spaniel; teaching the basics - commands, lead training and the recall; introduction to game; hunting, retrieving and handling; common problems and solutions, from the delivery to chasing game; advanced retrieving and water work and finally competitions and gundog trials. There are 141 beautiful colour photographs to demonstrate the training techniques throughout.

Leseprobe

COMPLETE TRAINING FOR THE

WORKINGSPANIEL

GRAHAM GIBSON

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 2015 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2015

© Graham Gibson 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 946 9

AcknowledgementsI would never have completed this book without the help of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my best friend and partner, Holly S. Donaldson, as without her help and infinite patience, as well as her skill in photography, the book would never have been finished. I would also particularly like to thank Billy Steel Jr and family, and their puppy Shadow; Virginia Colley for her artwork; and a sincere thank-you to everyone else who helped in whatever way to make this book possible.

Thanks are also due to my long-suffering red Cocker Spaniel Willow, who appears in many of the photographs in this book. She has proved invaluable in illustrating the various training methods that she had to perform repeatedly for the camera!

DedicationI would like to dedicate this book to my son Craig Gibson, who is also a gamekeeper, in the hope that he one day might read it and learn something.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1  Choosing a Spaniel

2  Preparing a Puppy for Training

3  Teaching the Basics

4  Teaching Hunting

5  Teaching Retrieving and Handling

6  Introduction to Game

7  Bringing It All Together

8  Common Problems and Solutions

9  Advanced Retrieving and Water Work

10  Beating and Picking Up with the Spaniel

11  Competition

Index

INTRODUCTION

I was born in the industrial heartland of Scotland in the late fifties. My father worked as a wages clerk for the Distillers Company Ltd and my mother was fully employed raising my brother and I in a small tenement flat in Coatbridge (when she could catch us). My first memory of any kind of ‘field sport’ was just after the town council decided to fill in the West End Canal, which ran right alongside our tenement. The rats vacated the canal in their thousands, setting up residence in the relative comfort of our communal back yards, wash houses and outside toilets. My mother, her friends and neighbours were horrified, but my brother and I devised every possible method of trying to catch the rats. The hunting instinct must have kicked in because ever since then I have enjoyed every kind of hunting, shooting or fishing.

School was not a happy time for me. Fortunately, I made a few like-minded friends who also much preferred fishing, bird nesting and hunting water rats to sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher. Hence truancy became common and I was an expert at it. Our little group of anglers and hunters spent hours learning the ways of the countryside around West End Park and Coatbridge Lochs, now known as Coatbridge Country Park. We were punished with the belt for non-attendance, and it happened so frequently that eventually my hands and arms became too painful and I just did not go back to school.

Instead I applied for every gamekeeping job I saw advertised – which, in hindsight, were very few (actually none, especially in industrial Coatbridge). However, a very helpful careers adviser managed to get me an interview for a greenkeeper’s job, which I dutifully attended, despite not really knowing what a green-keeper was. I was mortified to learn that I had to cut grass every day and make sure there were no divots missing. I eventually started work as an apprentice earth moving equipment engineer – basically a digger mechanic.

I served my four years’ apprenticeship and qualified – not with flying colours, but qualified none the less. It was during this time that I bought my first shotgun. It was a Baikal 32-inch single barrel, which I bought from my mother’s catalogue for the princely sum of £17.75, payable in twelve monthly instalments. By this time our family had moved home. My father bought a new house on the outskirts of the city, where we had access to miles upon miles of countryside and unlimited hunting, shooting and helping ourselves to whatever game or rabbits that were available.

I realized that a dog would offer a great advantage, flushing rabbits and retrieving any game that I missed. I could always blame the useless dog … A trip to the pound ensued and for the princely sum of £4 I bought Glen, a Collie-type mongrel. He turned out to be a fantastic dog for flushing rabbits and always seemed to chase them in my direction, allowing for a shot. Unfortunately, he would not retrieve. He would find the dead rabbit and stand over it, but would never demean himself by putting it in his mouth. And he had one major fault: he would severely bite anyone he took exception to. Eventually we had to have him put down before he could do any serious damage. I was heart-broken, but the seed had been sown.

My next encounter with working dogs came when I met Tom McLean, known locally as ‘Big Tam’, who owned a brown and white Lurcher bitch called Sheena. Short-haired, and looking very much like a greyhound to my inexperienced eye, Sheena was a fantastic dog. She could catch brown hares, mountain hares and foxes, and – even better – retrieve them to hand. I promptly bought two Lurchers, young dogs called Biff and Emma, and proceeded to train them to the best of my ability. We spent the next ten years or so hunting hares, rabbits and foxes. By this time I had a couple of good working terriers to add to my pack, and foxes in my area were beginning to find survival quite a difficult option.

The need for work and responsibility was now seriously interfering with my sport. Luckily, during a fishing trip to Pool Ewe, I met Dougie Russell, who remains a stalker on a large remote estate on Wester Ross. Dougie happened to mention that he employed seasonal ghillies, using only ponies and traditional methods, to bring down from the hills the deer that had been shot by the guests. This sounded like the perfect job for me. Within the week I handed in my notice to my employer, and disappeared into the biggest wilderness tract in Europe for five months, my first full-time job in the sporting world.

One of my Lurchers, Biff, was a real character, but he would not chase deer either roe or red. He treated them much as he would sheep, not for chasing. One day Dougie and I shot seven hinds from a large herd of deer on Chesighan Mhor, one of the highest peaks on our beat. To our dismay, we could not find any of the carcasses. The heather was very long and it was on very steep ground. As usual, I had left Biff asleep next to the ponies, probably around half a mile away. After fifteen minutes or so of futile searching, I whistled for Biff. Amazingly, he found all seven deer within a few minutes. It transpired that we had been searching too high up the hill.

This was a defining moment for me as I then understood just how useful a dog can be. Its much superior sense of smell, coupled with its intelligence and speed, can never be replicated by man or machines. I realized that harnessing the dog’s superior abilities and senses to use to our advantage through training and practice would make our working lives much easier.

During my time in the Highlands of Scotland I applied for a few permanent jobs and was lucky enough to start work as a part-time gamekeeper here in Lamington, where I live and work to this day. I was required to have a proper gundog, so made some enquiries through some people I knew who trialled Labradors and subsequently I acquired a one-year-old male Labrador called Kyle – and a book on how to train a gundog. I trained Kyle just as it said in the book and after a few months I was quite proud of my achievement. When Kyle’s original owner came down to Lamington to shoot rabbits and do some dog training, he asked to see the dog and enquired how was I getting along with his training. Keen to show off my new dog, I gave him a demonstration, and he suggested that I enter him in a few trials, which I did. As it turned out, we won the first novice trial that we competed in.

At no time in my life did I ever make the decision that I wanted to become a professional dog trainer – it just seemed to happen. After running Kyle in a few trials, I trained more Labradors, ran them for a season and then sold them on. I also ran German Shorthaired Pointers and Spaniels, and subsequently sold them on too. Meanwhile, various people asked me to train their dogs for them. It was at around this time that I decided to build kennels and run them properly as a business in conjunction with my part-time job as a gamekeeper. That was nearly twenty years ago, and since then I have probably trained every conceivable breed, crossbreed and mongrel in basic obedience, as well as training gundogs.

I enjoy my job immensely and thoroughly appreciate how lucky I am to live in such an idyllic part of the country, doing a job that I love. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I am writing this book, not only to impart some of my experience and knowledge, but also because I am tired of being known locally as ‘that dog trainer guy who lives up in the woods’. Much more prestigious to be known as ‘that author guy who lives up in the woods’ – don’t you think?

Enjoy the book!

CHAPTER 1

CHOOSING A SPANIEL

There are many different types of gundog available in the UK. I often hear from prospective owners who have taken up shooting as a sport and, quite rightly, want to own a gundog. Owning a trained gundog doubles the enjoyment of shooting and there is nothing more rewarding than your dog hunting up a bird or rabbit for you to shoot, then having the satisfaction of your dog retrieving it to hand on command. In fact, I would go so far as to say that shooting without a dog available to retrieve possibly wounded game is morally wrong. If you are willing to shoot a bird, then it is your duty to find it and despatch it humanely if necessary. Without a dog, this is not always possible.