<P>How do you teach your dog to stay in the boat. Last weekend I ended up putting Jackson on a lead in the canoe. If some one close to me would shoot he would run toward the shot. After the second time he did that everyone in the swamp knew his name. Can anyone help me? Jackson is about 2 and half years old. I did not have this problem last year.</P>
<P>Get ahold of Jim Beverly, he gave me some advise on boat training my dog, if you look back through the posts you will find it There, or just give Him a call or email. Andy</P>
<P>Call Jim Beverly 1-716-474-4661 He will help you out, it's a steadying issue not a boat issue. Have to get your dog steady and teach them to retreive on command, not retreive on the shot. He goes when you tell him to retreive. Get with Jim he trains 2 of my dogs now. I have a 3 year old chocolate female lab, she would break if a duck hit the water. Try holding and 85 lb muscular female when she breaks. I have had to tackle her in the blind just to get her steady and to stay. Jim took care of that for me and now she is steady and won't budge unless you tell her to. He is also training my 6 month old chessie that is pretty steady already but just needs some fine tuning and more practice. Good Luck.</P>
<P>I know this is an old thread but opening weekend I had the same problem same age dog and did not have this problem last year, I am going to try tying him to me w/ a cinch knot, but that maybe dangerous to shoot with. What was the solution?</P>
<P>Do not tie him to you. That is counter productive. If you think about what you said, he did not do this last year, that tells me you need to go back to kindergarden with him. You also need to do the same things in the field as you do in training. A dog will develop two different patterns. One for training and a different pattern for hunting if you do not treat each the same. Dogs learn by patterns. When you hunt, that is a different pattern in the enviornment than training. For example, you can put a bird and gun over the dog in training, but when you go into the field the pattern has changed in many ways. Now you got multiple birds coming in or circleling and multiple gun shots. That raises the level of intesity of the dog. You have to follow through with the same pattern of what you can control such as the way in which you steadied and corrected the dog in training. You need to do the same in the field. The dog thinks breaking is OK unless you show him otherwise. You did it in training, now you need to follow through in the field. Good luck and let me know if I can help. Jim</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px">Thanks jim, sounds like I'll be hunting w/o a gun the next few times, probably go out b/t the splits for some training also. </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">This morning I noticed that he is dropping the duck as soon a he gets back to shore also, it is like he does not like having the duck in his mouth. He has done this a couple times this year now and I have tried some holding drills where I placed it in his mouth sit stay and come, he holds it then but he keeps wanting to drop it. Should I stick w/ those holding drills? Other than that he did great. It was a long retrieve on a cripple in moving water, he got it back to shore and that was it, he dropped it and started nosing it until it stopped moving.</P>
