How To Help Gun Dogs Train Themselves: Taking Advantage of Early Conditioned Learning

by Joan Bailey

An easy to read, step-by-step format that assists gun dog owners by providing proven methods emphasizing socialization, exposure and conditioning during the critical first 12 months of a dog's life. Over 130 photographs show the reader how to bring your pup along, using the easy, informal, time-tested methods. Now in the new, 4th edition, revised, this book continues to help hunters avoid making mistakes during the critical first months of a dog life, mistakes that could ruin an otherwise fine dog.

Genres: Dogs

226 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Nicholas Charriere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book full of good advice for the early on (less than a year) conditioning that can then lead to training a great gun dog. This book could also be read by any future dog owners, although they might want to skip certain sections.

Full of great insights, Joan gives advice on many different aspects, from the tactical plan for the first few days, to the introduction to water, gun shots, WOAH training, retrieving, etc...

She places extra emphasis on patience and positive, reinforcing techniques, while still defending that some correctional methods can work well (I'm not saying they don't, but this is proof of the age of the book, since clever positive methods have shown to be more reliable to bring out the dogs instincts without ever taking the risk of breaking it's spirit).

I personally prefer Ben O. Williams focus on finding and pointing only, without caring so much about the retrieving, but Joan's book is a better all rounder.

[Alice Harbin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written book that was informative. She emphasized the importance of working with your dog as soon as you got it. This early training she termed "conditioning" as contrasted to "training" which is specific for gun dogs.
She believes that playing tug with your gun dog will make him "hard mouthed" and will damage the downed bird. Also, playing "fetch" too much will result in a dog that doesn't want to retrieve. This advise comes a bit late for our dog.
Encouraging for our dog was the discussion of slowly getting your dog accustomed to being in the water.

[Bre · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book talks you through getting and training a puppy, specifically to train a hunting dog, but the first several chapters are a good foundation to any puppy training. I'll be delaying gun dog ownership and training for several years due to circumstance, but I plan to implement the principles this book advocates with any and every pup I own in the coming years.