#i can always revisit once she has better impulse control and foundations

[abirddogmoment]

would you do bird hunting with Aurora given the opportunity? (I dont follow anyone who does hunting with their dogs and it would be interesting to see!)

I'm back and forth on it honestly. Ideally yeah, I'd love to give her the opportunity to hunt and be fulfilled that way. But there are a couple of things I'm struggling with:

I don't have access to training birds myself, nor the knowledge (or desire) to go at training her seriously alone.

Most gundog trainers (incl. my local brittany person who's been helping me out) expect you to go all in, birds should be your priority over all else (including general good dog manners).

Currently, pointing dog training in North America tends towards "make dogs bird obsessed -> introduce gunfire -> reign in the dogs so they're steady". The problems with this (for me) is that I don't want a bird obsessed dog at all and I don't want to use the pressure expected/required for "reigning it back in".

I had a really demoralizing experience trying to learn more about shotgun sizing and I'm not keen to try again.

So in conclusion, maybe but probably not to a serious extent.

#waverlyofthewinds hunts with her brittany! #i have much bigger priorities for aurora #including solid little adventure dog and capacity to be offleash (with similar caveats to mav) #plus i dont like being harsh in training #and a lot of bird dog training is heavy handed #*and yes you can absolutely train bird dog stuff in a kind way #but do i care enough to put that management and effort in? ehh #i do have an air rifle and i had all my hunting permits last season for birds #so i may try again this year for grouse depending how shes doing #the last few weeks have been a jumble of trying to figure out my priorities for rory and how i want to get there #after my bird dog training session last weekend i think i might be done #im not enjoying the direction it's trending #i can always revisit once she has better impulse control and foundations #bird dog training