Dog training in the 21st Century, sounds a little bizarre like what’s so different now than it was in the 20th Century? Well quite a lot actually. Oh, you still have to get out and do the things you would have done then like teaching your dog the two most important commands it can know (Whoa and Come) and it would have to be done in the same manner, hands on and in an area where you have 100% complete control of the situation. But where the differences come in is in the finishing training. Some of these are teaching your dog not to creep on point, teaching them to be steady, teaching them to pattern and a myriad of other finishing attributes and a complete line of 21st Century tools to accomplish this. In this series of articles we are going to chat about some of these and the way they have improved your training capabilities.
Capability of multiple radio controlled flushers. In the older days if you were trying to teach your dog not to creep on point you would have to have a bunch (4 or more to work well) pigeons manually put to sleep, clustered in a small area and hope they would all stay asleep till you flushed them. Well, guess what, it didn’t work the best all the time. Either they would flush prematurely or you’d put them to sleep to well and you would actually kill the pigeon (unintentionally but it would happen). So like I said, you would have birds coming up when they weren’t supposed to or they wouldn’t come up at all and all you got out of your training session is confusion and frustration. Along came the manual flushers which would work 95% of the time but that would entail you having several of them and all kinds of lines attached to the flushers so you could flush the bird when your dog went to creeping. Sounds like problem solved? Not really. First you had to hope all the lines wouldn’t get tangled up in the weeds and stuff along the ground because you had to have them partially camouflaged along the ground. Now if you’ve never done this you might ask why would you have to have the lines hid? Simple, dogs are a lot smarter than people give them credit and believe it or not most dogs after getting corrected a time or two for creeping they will start to notice these lines laying along the ground and associate them with the flushing of birds so you have to be careful. Also the manual flushers (or the ones I happened to be familiar with) the release springs would always have to be adjusted or replaced. However they were a ton better than just planting the birds and hoping they all cooperated. The best part of the flushers was that you didn’t have to put the bird to sleep, you just set them into the sling closed the sling together till it clicked into place and you were ready.
Now enter the 21st Century of dog training. Dogtra has developed a system of flushers and remote release units that allow you to remotely program and flush several flushers from one transmitter. No sleeping birds, No lines lying along the ground, just you the dog and the flushers. Not only are you able to flush the birds as necessary with one hand but you will be able to handle the dogs electronic collar in your other. Dogtras remote release flushers have an option of a Mallard duck call or not and they come in two sizes small and large. Then they have their Remote Bird Launchers which come in two sizes one for smaller birds (Quail) and the larger (Pheasant). Both of the lines of flushers Dogtra has to offer come with the capability of multiple units being used off of one transmitter.
In closing this is probably one of the best ideas to come along in the training category for quite some time and the best part is since everything is done electronically your dog can’t get wise to the training because there aren’t any giveaways. As far as the dog knows he’s/she’s pushed the bird. All they see are birds going up into the air.