Bob West is one of the legends in bird dog training, a writer, hunter, and all-around font of wisdom when it comes to hunting dogs. He joins me for reminiscences about what's changed in dog training,and how different today's trainers are from the old timers.
Bob suggests what we should be doing differently in our own training, his choice for hardest birds to hunt, how dogs think, answers some specific questions about steadiness training and we venture down a rabbit hole on the topic of - what? - Chinese field trials (which, it turns out, were really Japanese bird-dog buyers in the 1980's). Bob also offers advice on bringing a new dog into the string: match your current dog's sex, or go opposite?
"Fix It" offers a poor man's bird launcher, and listeners tell us what they're training right now.
You get a chance to win a free day of private land hunting from LandTrust.com, value $150 in our furfeathersfriends.com sweepstakes, but only if you listen and know the Word of the Week.
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