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Currently I am advising two of my puppy purchasers on collar condtioning amongst other things. One pup is tough and currently needs high level stimulation which I know will be reduced gradually as she understands what is going on. The other one is shutting down at the lowest possible level and am not sure what to advise - any suggestions would be appreciated. Pups are 12 months old GSPs which is why they are older than the average Lab (much slower maturers).
teach the dog the lessons before you use an E-collar - for GSPs while whoa breaking them make sure they are using a rope around the waist and when they creep towards a bird, pull the rope and it gets tighter around the waist, for basic obedience use a prong collar for the tough one it works with very little pressure and much fewer corrections, they are not inhumane like some people tend to think. get basic obedience down and work with ropes and basic commands so they know what each command is - E-collars are for reinforcing commands not so much for teaching them.
A friend of mine has a dog like puppy #2. He held off on the collar for a very long time until the puppy had all the basics, had been hunted in the field and was two years old. The recommendation of the breeder was not to FF until after a year of hunting. The dog is a pointing breed.
Thanks - the tough pup will be doing rerieving only the other one mainly field (wild quail) but he has decided not to follow the Huntsmith method which I personally think is excellent but takes a lot of commitment. There is only one person in Australia that I know of who uses it. So we are following the usual Lardy process with these two dogs as I have done with mine.
I don't think that typical retriever programs are a good mix with pointing breeds. Especially collar work. I've gotten to work with a couple very skilled pointer trainers. What was explained to me(from the most successful local FT trainer) is that collar basics programs are developed to prepare labs for handling force to this, force to that, pressure for not doing this, pressure for not doing that. He said that there is not a need nor a place to extensively collar condition a pointing breed to that level because it is far beyond any demand you will ever place upon the pointer. I pointer life and skill is much more dependant upon it's natural abilities and desire/drive. Handling as we retriever people know it is basically non-existent. "Breaking" the dogs is much more hands on and manual. The dogs naturally point(you hope). Working to keep them on point without taking steps is the hardest part. The other significant factor is their force fetch routine. At most, the guys I've seen don't FF their dogs as FT'ers have no need to retrieve in the high level stakes. No birds are shot. Just blank guns. At the hunt test level shot bird retrieve is required so, most do a "soft force" just enough to get the bird picked up and back to handler.
This might surprise you Happy but at our recent Retriever Championships one of my GSPs won the West Australian State Championship and the other came Runner Up in the National. The trials were run over two successive weekends so same dogs competing. Our State is over two days and National over 3. There were 5 GSPs and 1 Weimeraner all the rest retrievers. Two GSPs finished the National including mine - my dog that won the State was dropped on the first run! Nine dogs completed the trial so competition pretty tough. We are a weird lot down here! Incidently I hunt quail with the dog that won the State Championship.
Take your point though on the guy who wants to get a Field Trial dog and as he seems to have pretty good control so far and the dog shows a lot of promise in the field so will suggest he forgets the collar unless he runs into trouble with come in whistle later as chasing kangaroos can be a real problem not to mention hares and foxes.