Creating a great companion and bird dog starts with creating a great relationship
By Jordan Horak
Bringing home a new puppy is one of the most simultaneously exciting and stressful events known to mankind.
It’s been over 30 years since I brought home my first puppy. But I still vividly remember many details from that day. The two-hour drive. Watching the pup’s mom do some work in the backyard. Arriving home with the puppy.
And then having no clue of what to do next!
I struggled through the early months with that pup, making plenty of mistakes. And while I had years of hunting adventures with that dog, I am convinced that some of my early mistakes with that pup created long-term issues that we never fully got over.
Since that time, I’ve worked with well over 100 puppies. Yes, I have made some mistakes since that first puppy. But I’ve also learned an awful lot of things about puppy development that I wish I’d known on day one.
WORK ON THE RELATIONSHIP
Puppy development has more to do with building the right relationship than it has to do with teaching skills.
Today, everything I do with puppies focuses more on getting them “right” with me than it does on teaching specific skills.
There's a good reason for that: I can take an eight-month-old pup that knows almost nothing, but that wants to be with me and has a good attitude, and I can teach it almost anything in a very short time.
On the flip side, if I get an eight-month-old pup that knows almost everything, but is apathetic and has a poor attitude, I’m going to struggle getting that pup to its full potential.
That’s why early puppy development should be focused on building a solid relationship much more than it should focus on teaching skills. If the pup wants to be with you, and wants to work for you, you’re going to have a lot more success in the long term.
And you’re both going to have a lot more fun, too.
When I brought that first puppy home, I almost immediately started teaching him everything I thought he would need to know in order to become a great hunting dog. Recall, fetch, sit, down, and so on.
I threw everything at that pup. Sno surprise, he quickly grew tired of my antics and no longer wanted to work with me. He became the poster child for apathy. I had done too much, and much too soon. If I’d only taken some time to build a solid relationship with that pup, I suspect he would have had a much higher likelihood of reaching his full potential as a hunting dog.
While it’s not necessarily hard to build a strong relationship with a puppy, it does take some intentionality. Here are some of the things that I now do with new puppies. Give them a try with your pup.
WATCH: PURINA Sporting Dog Shorts: Puppy Training
1. MAKE THE MOST OUT OF FEEDING TIME
Food is a valuable tool for teaching behaviors and building a good relationship. Food never goes out of style! Your puppy will want food for the rest of its life.
If used in conjunction with their mealtime, food offers an almost never-ending supply of motivation. I will often have a puppy eat their entire meal out of my hand as I ask them to do very simple tasks; more on that later.
At the very least, I’ll always ask for at least one behavior before giving the pup its food bowl. That behavior may be as simple as eye contact for two seconds in the case of an eight-week-old pup. As the pup gets older, the behaviors should get more complex — such as going in a crate, placing or sitting.
2. DO LESS TALKING AND MORE BEHAVIOR MARKING
Resist the urge to give constant verbal commands to your pup.
Instead, when you see the behavior you want, give them a piece of kibble. You don’t need to make a big deal about it, as the kibble will do all of the “talking” for you.
A great example of this is how I teach the “place” command with a Cato Board. I don’t start out with a verbal command. Instead, in a confined room (I want the pup to be a captive audience), I stand directly in front of a Cato Board with a piece of kibble in my hand. Instinctively, the pup will get on the Cato Board to try to get the treat in my hand.
As soon as the pup is on the platform, I immediately let it take the treat. After a handful of repetitions, almost every pup figures out that getting on the platform is a way to get rewarded, so they will start offering the behavior on their own. This is exactly what I’m looking for!
While this seems like a very simple behavior, and it is, what I’m doing with this drill is laying a foundation where the pup understands that offering specific behaviors can result in specific rewards (kibble).
I use this same process for teaching the pup other behaviors such as “kennel” and “sit.” As the pup gets older, the concept of offering behaviors for a reward will be used to teach much more complex skills, such as steadiness and remote handling.
When we put in a bunch of verbal clutter — “what a good boy, good boy, here, place, sit!” …), all we do is make the behavior more confusing for the puppy, and we make it hard for them to understand us.
Good communication is at the core of every good relationship! The better you get at non-verbally communicating a desired behavior to your pup, the better your relationship will be.
3. ONLY TEACH SKILLS THAT ARE EASILY REWARDED
For the first few months after I bring a puppy home, there are only a few behaviors that I really worry about teaching. “Kennel,” “Place” and “Here” are the main ones. Then, “Place” transitions to “Sit” very easily.
Why teach these foundational behaviors first?
- They all happen CLOSE to me, which makes it very easy to reward them.
- They are simple behaviors that don’t require much effort or thought.
- These skills make for a much more enjoyable experience with the puppy, and I think that’s important. If your puppy won’t go in a crate, doesn’t know “Here,” and won’t place, it’s going to make for a very limiting and potentially miserable experience.
Focus on these three behaviors from the start, reward liberally, and don’t get in a hurry to teach everything.
4. NOT ALL RELATIONSHIPS ARE GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
We all want our relationship with our puppy to be all flowers and unicorns — happy, peaceful, and only positive.
That’s not a bad goal. But if all we ever do with our pup is talk to it in a high-pitched squeaky voice and give it treats, it’s unlikely that pup is ever going to respect us, and it’s likely going to lead to a poor relationship down the road.
Setting boundaries is a good thing because those boundaries will make your pup more confident and level-headed as it gets older. Which means that, “No, you can’t bite me” and “Yes, you need to stay in your kennel at least until you’re being calm and quiet” are completely fair expectations for your pup.
Finding a balance where the pup knows when and how to have fun with you, but also knows what rules are and how to abide by them, will ensure years of a harmonious relationship with your pup.
5. ENJOY THE PROCESS
We become so consumed and overwhelmed with taking on a puppy that we forget what it’s all about.
Puppies should be a source of joy, happiness, motivation and fun! Over-analyzing the puppy-raising process often robs us of the good parts of puppy ownership. I think it’s important to remember that puppies are generally resilient, and even if we make a mistake or have a bad day, all is not lost.
Keep your focus on the bigger picture — building a great working relationship in which the pup wants to be with you, knows boundaries, and understands the concept of offering behaviors in order to receive a reward.
If those are the only three things you accomplish in the first few months of ownership, you’ll be well on your way to having a wonderful, long-lasting hunting buddy and companion.
Good luck and have fun!
Jordan Horak is the owner of Cato Outdoors and Juggernaut Gundogs. He has had a life-long obsession with hunting dogs that goes back 30 years, and in that time he has trained countless gundogs as well as trial dogs for Spaniel field trials. His most notable achievement was winning the Cocker National Open Championship and the Amateur Championship in the same year (2018) with two different dogs. While not currently running in field trials, Jordan spends the Fall chasing Pheasants in the Dakotas and Grouse in in Northern Wisconsin, and in the off-season he enjoys developing young dogs.