Fetch without force

Approaches to training a hunting dog to retrieve vary widely. As novice trainers, we trained our oldest dog Ari more by instinct than anything else, playing games and utilizing his natural desire to work. He is an excellent retriever capable of persistent long-range blind searches and it is very rare that difficulties occur. (He has other issues, but retrieving is not and probably never will be one.) With Ajax, things started out differently. His breeder has been very generous with his time as a hunting mentor, and in the beginning of my time with Ajax I trained with him as he worked with two bitches from the same litter and various other dogs and hunters. This was my introduction to the traditional force fetch. There are many variations to this, but the one that I was exposed to is on the extreme end of force, so much so that after twenty minutes of a “lesson” inflicted by his breeder, my dog was emotionally battered and did not respond in a normal way for days. As a result, in later sessions I made it clear that no one would work with my dog but me.

Teaching Ajax to fetch has been a very different process than with Ari. A very slow process. Although the traditionalists like his breeder believe that only extremes of pressure and relief will produce a truly “reliable” dog in the field, my own observations contradict this. Once I backed off on the pressure and pain and used positive reinforcement instead real progress began. The learning process stalled only when I began to rely on forceful methods, such as pulling the dog forward with a choke chain to get him to open his mouth and take the retrieval object.

I remembered a story – I think it was in the infamous book by Carl Tabel, a German dog trainer who is probably burning in Hell for the misery that interpretations and misinterpretations of his writings have caused to be inflicted on dogs – in which a dog who did not respond at all to force methods suddenly learned quickly and became a reliable retriever after the desperate trainer started to work with a ball the dog had discovered. So I began to use objects that Ajax wanted to take, like pheasant wings and dummies covered with rabbit fur (and doused with scent). When these were alternated with wooden measuring sticks and other less desirable objects, he took everything gladly and enjoyed the praise for doing so.

But we stalled trying to get him to move forward to take the object, and he would not pick anything off the ground. We stayed at this stage for weeks while I tried the awful methods I was told I must use, which involved a lot of strangling and ear-pulling. Actually I cheated there… I took a pass on the ear pulling. My mentor lectured me repeatedly that the failure to progress was my fault and that I must discipline myself to be harsher to the dog and inflict more pain to break him to my will. The fact that I wasn’t using a spiked choke chain was probably also a further sign of my weakness and incompetence. But no matter how many stupid lectures I listened to about the Way of the Wolf and how my dog will thank me in the end for brutalizing it (I wonder if some child abusers think that way), all I had to do was look at Ajax’s body language and the body language of his sisters, mother and other dogs in his breeder’s kennel, and it was clear that not only was this not the way for this dog – this could never be the way for me. I am perfectly capable of harsh discipline for a dog when I feel it is necessary, and sometimes I carry it too far. When Ajax tried to kill my cat after she scratched his nose I might have hurt him very badly if Monique had not intervened. But to hurt a dog to effect so-called learning is simply repugnant to me, and I think it is counter-productive.

In the end, the solution was simple. Very simple. I simply told Ajax to sit, and I stepped back a few paces and offered a desirable object to take. He moved forward and took it in his mouth. Then I put it a few paces on the ground and used the same command, reinforced occasionally by a “come”, “sit” or a reminder to hold tight (a no-brainer if he’s chomping down on a deerskin dummy). Then I started trying it with canvas dummies. It worked. Wooden dowels worked. Staplers. Ball point pens. Keys. Bottles. Chains. Pine cones. Whatever I offered, Ajax retrieved gladly with no force applied. Now I’m sure that when the local hunters hear this, many of them will continue to tell me I am at risk of ruining the dog by being so soft, that I must set up a situation where he will refuse or fail so I can impose my will and make him truly “reliable”. All that shit sounds a lot like military training in the days of Frederick the Great, where soldiers were supposed to be more afraid of their own officers than of the enemy. Well, modern armies know better. Modern dog trainers too. But just to shut the idiots up, I went out and bought a spiked choke chain. Next time I meet up with the breeder and his hunting companions to train our dogs, I’ll pull that instrument of torture out and display it with the tale of how all I had to do was “show” it to Ajax and he began cooperating. And it’s true. He was with me when I bought the damned thing, and I promised him he would never wear it in training.

Not as terrifying as a comfy chair, but effective nonetheless