Make Your Upland Retriever Mad for Feathers

There's nothing better than a hard-charging flushing dog that's absolutely mad for birds. But how do you make sure your young retriever will turn out like that? Here are the steps I use.

You can introduce your retriever to feathers when he's real young, say up to 12 weeks. I'm not on about live birds just yet. Instead, this is as easy as grabbing a fresh pigeon or pheasant wing and just chucking it for him to fetch. This is fun time – you want everything about feathers to be enjoyable.

Let your pup have a go at chasing the wing, grab it and lug it about. I reckon it's best to keep your pup on a check cord while you're at it so he can't nick off with the wing and gnaw on it. Next, you want to get him keen on the chase and catch. Tie the wing to a bit of string at the end of a stick and give him a bit of a tease with it. Let him snag it every so often so he stays eager.

At this stage, none of this is about serious retrieving exercises. All you’re doing is unlocking his desire to search, find and catch birds. After a few sessions of chasing and catching the wing, your job is done for now.

A few months later when your dog is around 6 months old – and assuming you’ve been working on your pup’s obedience training in the meantime, as you should be – it’s time to move on to the next stage.

Start with a frozen pigeon. With your dog on a check cord, do some basic retrieving exercises out in the yard. Toss the pigeon where it lands in plain sight and encourage your dog to fetch it. When he brings it back, really lay on the praise. Remember – feathers are always meant to be fun.

If your dog baulks at snagging the frozen pigeon, never, ever try to force him into grabbing it. In fact, never do that with any object or you risk turning him off from the very thing you want him to do. One thing you can try is to razz him up with the bird, get him keen on catching it and then chuck it into some very light scrub. With a bit of luck he’ll bolt after it and snag it and then want to get back out of the scrub and find you again. When he does, again, really lay on the praise.

The next step in really ramping up the excitement is to go to a wing-clipped pigeon. This is just a pigeon with its last six primary feathers removed. A wing-clipped pigeon can flap and flutter a short distance, but it can't fly away. You sparked the chasing instinct with that wing on a string when your pup was just a nipper. Now your dog gets to chase the real thing, and if he's got any go in him, this should really bring it out.

Get your dog keen with the wing-clipped bird and then give it a chuck out in the open and let your dog chase it down. Pay close attention the first time you do this and look out for signs of hesitancy. For starters, this is a brand-new object and experience. Secondly, those flapping wings might give him a slap to the face. The last thing you want is for your pup to develop a fear of live birds. If you see this happening, simply tape the pigeon's wings to its body until your dog builds more confidence.

After your dog is confidently chasing and catching clipped-wing pigeons, you can spin out and plant fully feathered live pigeons in very light scrub and have your dog search for them and flush them out. He’ll nab some, but others will scarper. That’s alright because you never want your dog to reckon any bird is a pushover. You want to keep him crashing through the bush and doing everything he can to try and snag every bird he comes across. Next, keep up these drills in increasingly thicker scrub so he has to use all of his senses to find and flush out the bird.

I should also mention to run these exercises on a big piece of property far from any roads. Your dog might chase a flushed bird for a long distance and you don’t want to risk a tragedy. Leave yourself plenty of room to work.

These searching and flushing drills should then progress to the use of game birds. I suggest moving on to a chukar partridge, which is larger but doesn’t have a real intimidating flush. From there, advance to hen pheasants and finally, when your dog is a confident and bird-crazy fiend, move on to rooster pheasants.

Always check your local and state regulations related to dog training and the use of game birds on private and public property.