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The last few weeks have
raised a couple of issues. These include a 'query'
over Lottie's 'soft mouth' and other aspects of her
behaviour which are causing some problems.
Excitable behaviour
in the car
This is an existing
problem, previously mentioned, which I am fairly
confident of solving. Repeatedly refusing to reward
Lottie in any way for her excitable behaviour
(spinning and foot paddling) in the vehicle is
gradually improving the problem. However she
is by no means cured and I do not want to provide
her with the huge reward of participating in a shoot
day until she is able to control herself in the car.
Unfortunately I suspect this is going to take
several more weeks yet.
Squabbles
For some time now,
Lottie has been increasingly irritated by my
springer, Annie. She is quite
happy to mix with the other dogs during exercise and
training, but clearly resents sharing the car crate
with Annie and I can no longer safely kennel them
together even for a short while. Whilst
this on its own is not too much of an issue (Annie
can ride in the front of the car with me when I take
the dogs out together) it is annoying,
especially when the dogs are muddy. What is of
more concern is that Lottie now appears to be
developing a similarly grumpy attitude towards one
of my cockers, Meg.
Until now, all my
dogs have always travelled together without problems
in my vehicle or indeed any vehicle they may find
themselves being transported around in on a shoot
day. Lottie is such a big powerful
dog now, that I am very aware of the potential
for disaster should a fight start up whilst I am
driving, or away from the car.
To add to these
problems, I have also been faced with a
potentially disastrous problem which could put an
end to Lottie's career as a gundog before it has
even begun
Is Lottie hard
mouthed?
After spending several
days establishing a nice calm delivery of the rabbit
skin dummy, I asked Lottie to retrieve a cold
and cleanly killed rabbit. She picked up the
rabbit gleefully, without a second's hesitation,
but on being asked to hand it over, instead,
crushed the animal quite severely. This was
worrying. Although some dogs inadvertently
maul their first couple of real retrieves this tends
to be because they mess about with it whilst trying
to pick it up. I have not previously had a dog
deliberately crush what she is carrying in quite
this way. I have also never had a hard mouthed
gundog and have no experience in dealing with such a
problem, or recognising the early signs. I am
aware though, that most professional trainers in
this country consider 'hard mouth' to be
incurable.
With Lottie, I felt it
was a possessive thing, and so I decided to
repeat the retrieve after several retrieves of the
rabbit skin dummy and whilst offering her a tasty
reward. This resulted in a more willing
delivery though I hasten to add my usual reminder:-
* please note: it is important not to use
food during delivery unless you are following a
structured 'clicker delivery' procedure -
incorrect use of food will result in delivery
problems.
If Lottie is 'hard
mouthed' I really needed to know sooner rather
than later, as this would be render her unable to
work as a gundog. I decided to leave the
retrieving of fur for a while and try a
different approach.
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