The natural retrieve in your bird dog

The way I see it, the only problem with the natural retrieve is that we forget to begin reinforcing our bird dog’s desire to ‘go get’ things early on.  Most puppies will chase and pick up things to carry around and eat or play with.  That in fact is the foundation of the natural retrieve…a genetic desire to stalk, pounce and consume.

stalk…

I’ve written an article on my web site at http://brittanys.com/ that discusses how to go about doing this.  

What I’d like to share are some of the common questions I get about the natural retrieve and hopefully it will answer a question or reinforce something about the natural retrieve in your own mind.

First: As mentioned above, most well bred bird dog pups have the genetic desire.   They have the desire to prey upon, pounce and eat.  In its purest form, that  _is_ the natural retrieve.  The confusion on the dogs part is that we have domesticated it so they learn early on that we are the provider and so the desire to prey upon / pounce and eat is somewhat lost in translation of how they will live their life.  They are never required to prey / pounce / eat.  

Take raising pen raised quail.  If we walk among the quail on a daily basis and bring their feed to them they become conditioned to accept human presence and our offerings of feed however, if we raise them in isolation and place them in more ‘natural’ surroundings such as the surragator release method, they think and learn to fend for themselves.

Now I am not advocating that you starve your dog and make them find their own feed!  I’m merely pointing out the explanation to what the underlying issue is with regard to the development of the natural retrieve.

The Number 1 all time concern:  ”My dog picks up the bird but won’t bring it to me”.  My answer is that he is retrieving, just not to you!  This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about your dogs desire to prey / pounce / eat (retrieve to themselves!).  What we want to do is carefully modify that natural behavior.  So, away from any retrieving games, we work on the ‘come’ command.  We work daily on the command so that it is so natural for them that without thinking, they come right to you.  Now we go back to the retrieving games.  If you’ve done it properly, he will bring it right to you when you command ‘come’ or if teaching ‘heel’ when you command him to ‘heel’.

Number 2 all time concern:  ”My dog doesn’t like to pick up anything”  or “My dog will fetch tennis balls but not birds” or some variation thereof.  This goes back to when they are just weeks old.  I encourage the use of frozen quail.  It is funny to see a 5 week old pup trying to carry around the frozen feathered carcass of a bobwhite but trust me, they do.

A concern that always seemed funny to me is that your dog doesn’t retrieve anything but freshly shot birds.  Is that really a problem?  LOL … sorry, I digress.

Sometimes though, even with the proper breeding and proper introduction a bird dog doesn’t care for the retrieve which brings us to…

Number 3 all time concern:  ”My dog doesn’t retrieve anything, he just leaves and begins to hunt live birds again”.  Even if your dog is well bred and you have done all that you should have it just didn’t work out.  Why?  There’s an old saying that dogs strong on finding birds tend to be weaker on (natural) retrieving and vice versa.  No, it is not always true but there is a small element of truth in that saying. Many strong running dogs simply want to find wild birds as that is what they enjoy most.   The ‘cure’ for this sort of dog is often the trained retrieve program (force fetching, etc.).

I cringe when someone about to buy a pup asks “are your dogs natural retrievers?” because what they are really asking is “will the dog naturally retrieve no matter how I train?”  The answer is no.  If developed properly the answer is usually YES and that should be the answer for ALL reputable breeders.  I don’t care how strong the natural retrieve is in the parents, anyone can screw it up in a hurry with no chance of repair except for the trained retrieve.

What you want to do early is promote the genetic desire to ‘go get it’.  

Get it!

 Later, when he is mature enough, you will teach your dog to ‘come’.  In the end, hopefully it all comes together.  If not, then the trained retrieve is all that is left.

That's a big bird!

Give your dog a treat for me and tell ‘em “Dave says good dog!”

Dave