Getting used to shots

For the gun dog shots means something very interesting is going to happen: Great! Where is the game? Where did it go? Where should I run to find it? But the shots isn’t just about the shot itself, it is also about the dog being able to calmly sit by your side and wait for instructions. The shots can’t be too much fun either, because then the dog might run off on its own or start to whine. We want the dog tp have just about right eagerness when it come to the shots. It should be interested, but not so excited that it whines. Neither should it be frightened of the shots. On this page you’ll find all our blog posts on training the dog to get used to shots.

Introduce Your Dog to Gunfire

I found some training notes on how I started to introduce Quling to gunfire a couple of years ago and thought I'd share them with you. I wanted to do it earlier – much earlier – but he has been a bit sick and I noticed that he felt low, so I didn’t want to start doing...

Training a Gun-shy Dog – Part 4

As I wrote in my previous post, I had to start by letting the launcher appear so that he could get used to it. I simply tried to turn his anticipation of it to something positive. This took a few weeks. I walked around, waving that launcher around all the time,...

Training a Gun-shy Dog – Part 3

After the setback where Quling got terrified of the gunfire at a hunt (covered in a previous post), we began further back in the training process and quite quickly built us up to where we had been before the incident. So, I figured I'd begin shooting for him myself....

Training a Gun-shy Dog – Part 2

In the first post on Quling's gun-shyness, I described at first not knowing what it was he was trouble by - was it having a group of people nearby (which has always been an issue for him) or was it the gunfire? When I felt that I knew for sure that it was indeed the...