Training Tips

Station Kits, Training Tip and Holiday Gift

Treat your training buddies or treat yourself to gun station kits. Having a couple of these kits ready to go in the training truck saves time and enhances the throwers' ability to assist handlers and their dogs on marks, blinds and drills.

Each trainer should invest in a pair of good training pistols. That's going to cost a couple of hundred dollars. No getting around it. Search on line for equipment suppliers, such as: Dogs Afield, Lion Country Supply or Dobbs Training Center. They also carry many of the suggested contents for the gun station kits. What they don't have in stock, you can probably get from a good hardware store: Lowes, Home Depot, etc. come to mind.

Here's the holiday gift part. First, you need a hand tool bag to put all the stuff in. Mine are about: 8" wide, 15" long and 9" high. Look for tough, water resilient material, a rugged zipper and handles or carrying strap. These should cost $10 to 20 per bag.

Essential contents (beside the training pistol), include:

• Duck or pheasant calls for excitement and properties where you can't shoot
• Lanyard for the bird calls
• Extra training whistle (on the lanyard) to help get a dog stopped in an emergency
• Hearing protection/ headset
• Water proof pill bottles, filled with blanks
• Orange flagging tape, to mark fall areas or the blinds
• White flagging tape, to tie to birds or bumpers for hard to see throws
• Gloves for protecting the hands
• Bug spray
• Sun block
• Name/ address identification tags

These contents should run about about $50 to 60 per kit.

Add to that a good set of radios, compact folding chairs, camo umbrellas to hide behind and bags for birds and bumpers.

Now to keep all this straight, teach your helpers to remember their field gear, before they start out to the gun stations. Try the term: "CRUPPy Birds." They must always remember: "C is for chair," "R is for radio," "U is for umbrella" "PP is for pistol pack (the kits as described above)" and Birds/ bumpers.

-submitted by John Cavanaugh

Thanks John!!!

Natural Abilities and Abilities Acquired Through Training

As those of us new to the sport learn very early on, field training has its own language! Many of the words we use are bandied about - but do we understand their true meaning as they pertain to the field? A good understanding of these words as they pertain to the field can provide us with a better understanding of training and, ultimately, make us better trainers!

The following was generously submitted by John Cavanaugh:

Abilities: Qualities or states of being able. Competencies in doing. Talents or proficiencies.

Natural: Begotten (vs. adopted). Endowed or implanted by nature. Essential character or constitution. Fundamental. Innate. Genetically controlled qualities.

Mark(ing): To observe and remember the spot (where game took cover).

Memory: The power or process of recalling what has been retained or learned by (visual) process. Recalling something experienced.

Intelligence: The faculty of understanding. Capacity to know or apprehend. The ability to use one's existing knowledge to meet new situations and to solve new problems.

Attention: The application of the mind to an object of sense or thought. Consideration with a view to action.

Nose: The sense of smell. Olfaction. Ability to track by scent. To perceive or detect by smell.

Courage: Mental strength enabling one to venture, persevere and withstand fear or difficulty firmly and resolutely. A confidence that encourages and sustains.

Perseverance: The condition or power of continued or steadfast pursuit or prosecution of an undertaking or aim. Persistence in the pursuit of objectives or prosecution of a project.

Style: Manner or method of acting or performing. A way or manner of behaving that is deemed elegant. A quality that gives distinctive excellence to something. The overall appearance and carriage of an animal as an expression of competence in action.

Trained: Formed, shaped or disciplined by training. Instructed or drilled in habits or thought or action. Cultivated. Developed skills or habits. Taught to obey commands.

Steadiness: The quality of being steady. Firm in standing or position. Calm and controlled. Holding firm.

Control: Exercising restraint or reserve. Under influence or domination. Guided or managed. Effective and reliable skills. Under direction. Coordinated in activity in a way to achieve objectives. Possession and command of one's faculties.

Response to direction: act or capacity of responding or answering. Activity or inhibition existing in a relationship with drive, cue and reinforcement. Rendering satisfaction. Readily inclined to respond and react appropriately to direction, guidance or supervision of action or conduct.

Delivery: The act of delivering up or over. Transfer of the body of a thing. Release or liberate from control. Give. Yield possession. Hand over.

-submitted by John Cavanaugh

Thanks, again, John!!!

**see our events page for information on our Winter Training Days