Meet Indie

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2mo8Ujz]image5[/url] by aus23, on Flickr

Nearly 2 now and a fantastic dog, working cocker but a family pet. I have spent a fair bit of time on training with her and generally, it’s gone really well. Recall, steadiness, heel, focus on me etc is all really good. She’s an absolute pleasure to walk, run with the bike, camp with, sit in a pub garden. She’s definitely v working cocker spaniel like – always alert, heaps of physical and mental energy. So we tailor our days to cater for this. And generally, she’s brilliant.

The only issue, and it’s a problem, is she is v focused on pheasants, and we have a plenty of wild pheasants around us. If I spot/sense one before her, I can steady her and she will remain under control. However, if she spots/smells one first, she’s off after it and will return after 1-2 mins, but will not return on my command. If it’s a deer, any other bird, rabbit etc, she’ll instantly come back to me on command (whistle or a call).

How do I train her on this. Her recall (whistle) is great otherwise, and she is definitely eager to please me. I’ve had many compliments re her behaviour, including from trainers, but the pheasant thing worries me.

So I need training advice specifically for this – and the pheasants have suddenly appeared in plentiful abundance around us in the last week, so urgent issue.

Thanks

Beautiful dog. I have a 9 month old Sproodle (springer miniature poodle cross) and still early in the training journey but he’s being pretty good and progressing steadily. But like yours is focussed on birds and if he sees any bird will immediately want to chase it and completely ignores me and any commands he normally responds too even if there are other distractions around. My trainer says to just keep using tasty treats for them to focus on. So if you see a bird distract the dog with tasty treats until the bird has gone. But this isn’t working. He’s not massively treat led anyway so I have to find something else he prefers to chasing birds. Other than that I’m looking for any alternative suggestions too.

I just wish I could get my 3 year old Pointer to come back at all. Once prey is involved, he definitely loses all reason …

Definitely wise to train this out as much as possible for this breed.
When we were out walking my FIL’s Springer, he chased a pheasant thru a hedge into a lane, at the exact time a car was passing 😢

Ollie is a working Cocker, 16 months old and sounds very similar in temperament! 😁 We’ve been building up his training this year and will be hunting pheasant here in Sweden next month. The most difficult part has been applying the stop command when he has contact with birds/ground game. The stop command needs to be very well established before you introduce them to game (not easy if they’re plentiful on your regular walks). Once Ollie had understood to hunt with his nose not with his eyes, it’s a bit easier to be consistent. I would go back to basics with the stop command and then introduce him to successively more testing situations. Good luck! 👍

wobbliscott – my pup too is not very interested in treats when out and about, and we haven’t really incorporated them into training. But I’ll try some high value treats to see.

Managed to find a ‘flock'(?) of pheasants in a copse, so with pup on lead we just loitered, hung around and gently strolled through. Maybe 30 mins. She was absolutely focused on them, but loose lead, would sit on command, very steady. But v focused!

Is this activity worth repeating daily in the hope that familiarity will reduce the desire to chase them?

And will do more reinforcement on stop command – she’s very good at this when incorporated into fetching and retrieving a dummy/stick, and pretty good when out on a walk. But will do more – thanks

I will start this with I am not a dog trainer.

I have, however, spend enough time with a dog trainer for a totally different breed but addressing a not entirely dissimilar issue.

Unfortunately the solution probably won’t work well with your level of urgency as any solution to a behaviour issue such as this takes time. You are going to need to take action which will prevent her from giving chase – and I’m sure you can see the only way to do that is with a leash. This helps twofold… first up she doesn’t get the hit of adrenaline the chase will give and secondly you can reward her when she focuses on you and not the pheasant. The repeated rewarding from breaking focus on the pheasant is what you want to be working towards.

Now how you work that into your walks, which I expect require lots of off lead time, I don’t know. Maybe that is where a specific behaviourist with working dog experience can help.

Question: When she does return, what do you do?

Managed to find a ‘flock'(?) of pheasants in a copse, so with pup on lead we just loitered, hung around and gently strolled through. Maybe 30 mins. She was absolutely focused on them, but loose lead, would sit on command, very steady. But v focused!

Is this activity worth repeating daily in the hope that familiarity will reduce the desire to chase them?

Sorry, this post appeared while I was typing.

I’m sure this would be worth repeating, especially if you can use what I mentioned above about rewarding her when she breaks focus. This is the exact technique I used on our overly enthusiastic greyhound.

Our dog trainer told us spaniels are the Ferraris of the dog world. We’re on our third cocker. They respond well to food, so I guess recall with pheasant smell in the garden? Can you lay a scent to try and unwire him?

Our springer eventually worked out that no matter how fast she ran, birds would always cheat and fly away.

Now she contents herself with chasing down dead rabbits which are much easier to catch and have the added bonus of smelling amazing when you roll in them.

Let her kill the pheasants, especially if she’s not fussed about chasing any other wildlife. Pheasants are non native vermin and do untold damage to ecosystems. Either that or keep her on the lead and stop letting her run around disturbing other wildlife

seriousrikk – thanks, I’ll keep working on trying to break her focus. She’s remarkably steady on the lead i.e. loose lead, by my side, but her focus is the pheasant not me.

And when she does return, I always praise her and then quickly introduce a game to try and prove I’m more fun than a pheasant.

Bruner – she’s not esp disturbing other wildlife i.e. hunting down deer etc. She’s pretty relaxed when we come across wildlife, she does enjoy following a scent.

Our lurcher will chase any small furry that runs away, not so bad now she’s old. The only thing that stopped it was a squeaky ball and even that was hit and miss.

My parents’ springer would often bring back ‘free’ pheasants during walks, which would be hidden underneath my sister’s pushchair. I plucked a lot of pheasants as a kid. I don’t think they ever succeeded in training him out of it but then I don’t know that they even tried.

My Irish setter loves setting pheasants but ignores other birds. She’s generally happy to just make them fly then ignore them. As long as she comes back afterwards and it’s only pheasants I’m not sure there’s any reason to care. If she actually catches one it’s unlikely to be any more than stunned. If it is just snap it’s neck as they’re vermin.

Our Bernese mountain dog appears to have a prey instinct that we’ve never had in the previous 8 or so…absolutely blind to anything else around it including the fences.

She’ll chase anything and everything – loves chasing deer but never understands why she doesn’t go through the fence the deer have jumped over! When she catches a bird it’ll be consumed, anything dead tends to be rolled in then eaten.

We end up not letting her off the lead as she just won’t return if she sees something. We do take her to those free run dog compound things – a seriously lucrative gravy train for those with a spare bit of land!

If she’s from a good pedigr6 then she’s only doing what comes naturally and frankly trying to stop it is a bit pointless.
What you DO want to do is get her to come straight back to you once they’ve flown – “running in” is frowned upon on an actual shoot.
Keep going with the recall – it may take a while but hopefully you’ll get there.
Ideally she would spot the pheasant and wait for you to tell her to go get it!

{Owner of 2 working cockers that actually work}

Oh and liver cake. My new cocker would learn to ride a bike for liver cake. Easy to make. Apparently it stinks (I have no smell) but my god it beings the cocker to heel. Special reward for returning. Our trainer taught us three recalls ‘come’, ‘touch’ nose on hand and ‘middle’ to sit between the legs. The liver cake makes Henry an unfailing sucker for the third.

You’re trying to train out an instinctive attribute of the breed. Simply keep her on a lead near roads and acknowledge that she loves to do this and it’s completely normal.

You’re trying to train out an instinctive attribute of the breed. Simply keep her on a lead near roads and acknowledge that she loves to do this and it’s completely normal.

This totally ^^^^

Sorry but as a lifelong owner of high drive working dogs this thread has made me piss myself in recognition.

It’s not only instinctive, it’s ABSOLUTELY bred into the dog, especially a working line spaniel. They’re bred to flush game – the dog can’t help it..! It’s doing exactly what it’s genetically predisposed to do. It’s like telling it to stop being hungry.

As soon as you accept it’s something you’ll never train out of it (can you train it to stop shedding hair?), without causing a lot of stress all round, then work with it and try to control it in circumstances where it would cause big issues.

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Inbred456
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You’re trying to train out an instinctive attribute of the breed. Simply keep her on a lead near roads and acknowledge that she loves to do this and it’s completely normal.

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I read this earlier and didn’t think too much about it. I’m just back in from regular evening walk with our 11 month old cockapoo, who has reasonable recall, but not trusted. So part way into walk, in a fairly safe traffic free part, he was sniffing and trying to have his way with a lovely wee dog who must be coming into season, so back on the lead he went and we parted company.

Once other dog was well away and out of sight I let him back off the lead and he bolted straight after her. This ended, thankfully, in his favour, just, but only after he ran straight over a road, about 100m away from me, right in the path of a car which had to brake hard, to be restrained by the other dogs owner.

Never felt such a dick tbh 🙄. Totally me as owners fault for nearly executing my dog..

So he’s on the lead from now on, and we’ll see how he is after his big Op next month…

Very scary and only by the Grace of God and all that..

Esther our Labrador has a very strong prey instinct, fortunately she has a very strong ball fixation so if I take her out running off lead she can’t grab anything with a ball in her mouth. We live next to a nature reserve with a herd of wild red deer – they come into our garden. I’ve opened the door at night to let her out to find a dozen deer staring back at me. She trotted out across the patio and just ignored them!

You won’t train it out.

Its instinct, ours is the same – obeys ‘come, wait, steady-on’ or clicking the fingers to sit.

The moment it smells or sees a bird hes off, the same if you’re getting him to seek and you utter ‘find it’.

Kaboom, no stopping the little idiot.

Our working cocker is exactly the same. She’ll hear a pheasant call and will switch into prey mode. She has excellent recall, bonded with me, drops on demand etc. But I control where we go, and she’s on a lead if I know pheasants are likely.

From what I’ve seen of by BILs dogs that he works, you need to train a stop command (different from recall). He starts with dummies (throw it, dog sets off, then stop the dog) but you do need to expose them to game eventually as part of training.

I’ve a similar problem with my border collie. He behaves just how I want around livestock and deer. But can I get him to kill the pheasants in my garden? Wind him up and let him go and he runs at them and slams the anchors on at the last minute. Maybe I need to feed him pheasants to give him the idea.

Of course it can be trained out. As it was never trained in, its even easier. You see spaniels all the time on shoots that arent running amok 500m ahead of the line.

Collar, long clothes line and when she takes off and wont recall stick your foot on the brake.

I read this earlier and didn’t think too much about it. I’m just back in from regular evening walk with our 11 month old cockapoo

Don’t confuse the instincts of a dog who’s ancestors have been trained to do one job with the behaviour of a “mix” of two different breeds from probably unknown backgrounds.
There’s working dogs, with great pedigrees, that know exactly what to do from day 1 and then there’s “working dogs” who haven’t got a clue.
Just because someone has bought a working cocker that doesn’t mean it has the same instincts.
It’s all about the dogs ancestry.

She’ll hear a pheasant call and will switch into prey mode

This. My dogs couldn’t care less about any other bird and will ignore them completely – but if they see/hear and pheasant then they’re immediately in work mode.

But can I get him to kill the pheasants in my garden?

This is a joke right? A proper working dog would never kill a bird.

The issue I think I have is however much success we have training her in a controlled environment with treats and toys, it’s very different to when she hears/smells a pheasant when out. If I’m paying attention and early enough she’ll stop or recall and I put her on the lead. But IMO you need to be working around game with them to get them 100% reliable in that scenario.

I’ve got a working Cocker too. I see similar traits, although my dog is a bit younger.

Meet Lulu

She is a few days from her first birthday

She’ll chase anything with wings. Absolutely loves it, you can see its instinctive too, she drops and creeps forward until she is close enough to have a run at them, but never really gets near anything.

Otherwise her recall is pretty good, I don’t trust her off the lead anywhere near a road yet and we are still working on getting her to walk to heal, but she is a clever girl and I’m sure with patience we’ll get there.

Will I try and train out the bird chasing? I’m not sure I accept that it can’t be done as its instinctive, I guess if I want to be 100% confident with her off the lead then I’ll need to.

Absolutely loves it, you can see its instinctive too, she drops and creeps forward until she is close enough to have a run at them

Except this is absolutely not how a working cocker acts when working!!
Well trained they should basically never be more than 25-30m from you* (well within gun range) and should simply stick their nose under the birds to put them in the air. No chasing and no barking.

She’s really young so you’ve got time but keep up the training – it’s not out of the question to eventually have her walk to heel without a lead.

Lulu’s cute – both of mine are all black.

* unless they’re picking up in an open area

OK, so have spent the last few days, twice a day, popping over to the copse that’s inundated with pheasant. Dog on lead, walking to heel, very slow, just trying to get her familiar with the birds. Have introduced a tasty treat so I can easily now divert her focus to me rather than the birds. We spend 20-30mins.

There’s an open ridge next to the copse, no roads nearby. Walked there this lunchtime, lots of pheasants who gently and gradually flew down the ridge to the hedge 200mtrs away. We’re doing everything v slowly and calmly (or trying to). Got dog’s attention, let her off lead and did ‘fetch’ with her toy. Worked well bar 2 occasions when she inadvertently sent up a pheasant,, she instantly chased but returned to me promptly on the first recall. Rewarded heartily.

Have ordered a 10mtr lead, not sure what to do with it tho!

Am I on the right lines with this? I’m working on the assumption if I can familiarise her to the pheasant sufficiently, they might be seen as less exciting? She’s still getting her usual walks etc.

Suggestions please!

Sounds about right, there’s always the risk you’ll inadvertently train the wrong thing like “chase pheasant, wait for recall then treat”, don’t forget to keep doing regular recall as well so it’s that that she’s learning.

cockapoo

The pitfall with crosses is there can be a world of difference between a “Cockapoo” and a Cocker X Poodle. One is a breed that’s been bread with its own traits, the other is just a random chance of mum and dad’s traits. They’re not the same at all.

So you might be able to go off what is said in books or online about training them, or you might just have to figure it out from scratch.

Yes – you’re on the right track. 10m lead is just a check cord so you can stop her if she’s not listening. You may not need it if she’s coming back when told. But if you’ve made this much progress in a few days then you’ll be ok. Don’t rush things, don’t expect overnight solutions.

And don’t be afraid to chastise her if she does chase (especially when on the lead and you can control her) – she’s got to know it’s carrot and stick, not all carrot. No sound thrashing required but use a deep growly “NOOOO” to get her attention (and higher pitched praise when she does what she’s told). Deep voice = bad, squeaky voice = good.

Our previous Working Cocker did this too, but it’s the Working Springer that chases deer that’s more of a problem, as he’s out of earshot by the time we realise…

He’s never caught one yet, as eventually they outrun him, usually by fence ‘hopping’.