Just looking for opinions on this. Anyone had success with it? Anyone against it? We are very much considering hunting Brogan. Everyone I have talked to says to start force-fetching him around 6 months. I'm currently trying to get ahold of a reputable chessie breeder around here who also hunt trains labs and chessies for her advice. I still have much much much research to do on it, and for right now we are simply playing fun games of fetch, which he absolutely loooooves. He is so very cute when I throw it and he does a flying leap after it can't wait to see him in the water once the weather is nice! Anyways, looking for some opinions or experience here! Hope you guys are doing well.
Force fetch as a method is vile and abusive imo. There is simply no need to do it to any dog for any reason For people who don`t know what Force Fetch means, here it is, [ written by a `trainer` I debated with many years ago ] Part one http://www.oakhillkennel.com/library/force/force1.html Part two http://www.oakhillkennel.com/library/force/force2.html Readers who abhor abusive methods, don`t read the links with throw-able objects to hand, you might break something
never heard of force fetching but dont sound nice, heard of forced ret in obed, not nice, dont work dogs hate it and it shows when trained in that manner, the dog sculking back pissing himself has been forced end of
force fetching is for LAZY trainers, who frankly dont deserve ANY dog to work for them. Much better to find a clued up trainer who is willing to teach YOU the best way to teach your dog, together, as a team, than a LAZY trainer, who teaches you (incorrectly)that the only way to get results is through bullying and fear.
Oh dear, looks like an extreme and unpleasant way to train a dog. The dog should enjoy the job it's been bred to do, not be bullied into doing it and therefore hate it's role. I'm just glad Flynn has plenty of enthusiasm when it comes to hunting and retrieving as he starts his gundog training in May.
thanks for the article Patch, i meant to google this term earlier as i'd not come across it before. these were the bits i found hardest to read: it just seems like another 'quick results, minimal effort' approach which seems to be rife in gundog training. at the moment Freda, at 11 months, is still running in on game, which, as a pointer is completely undesirable! she has chased but fortunately hasn't killed anything. if i wanted to stop this behaviour i could do it quickly, with minimal effort and use an e-collar. however, after seeing one of these in use, i would never use one. it will take time with Freda, but one day she'll get it and i'm sure she'll be as enthusiastic and useful in the field as the others.
OMG that looks horendous! Why would you need to do that anyway? Any well bred retriever will happily retieve anything, if it doesn't then simply don't use the dog for gundog work?! Isla loves retrieving, but even so we had issues with a "to hand" delivery. This was eventually solved by back chaining the retrieve, took some time, but now she retrieves dummies to hand no problem at all. It took a long time, but at least it was humane, which force fetching certainly isn't IMO!
O dear. This doesn't sound very pleasent now does it.. I just wonder why it is that nearly every person I have talked to (that I know personally, or over the forums) who hunts their dogs has trained them this way! It just seems so very unnecessary. Patch, thank you for pulling up those articles for me. I really appreciate it, despite that they aren't so nice-sounding. I don't think I could pinch poor Brogan's ears for the life if me if I was asking him to do something and he was trying to do it Thanks for your input guys. It was just something that everyone I'd talked to had been mentioning to me, and was looking for more opinions on it-obviously hadn't done my research on it just yet, so really honestly thank you. I wonder what other ways there are to train retrieving? I'll have to do my homework for this obviously
There are trainers who dont use that method I was flicking through the horse and hound mag in a q a coouple of months ago and found an article with trainers who use positive methods for gundogs you know when I saw the title of the thread I felt sick - I heard about this on another forum a wee while back and I think it is a sick way to train a dog I couldnt bring myself to even read patches link but I know in the one I read it went on about having a big spike coller so you could pinch the dogs ear hard onto the spike Honestly if I heard of anyone using that method I would call the RSPCA, have the dogs removed from them - and apply a big spike to their ear-lobe as I made them say sorry to all the dogs they had abused!!
I went on a holiday course with my dog many years ago with a lady who trained gundogs. She trained using positive methods, but did warn us about the `old school` who train with pain. You can find enlightened training methods out there if you look.
