Thread: Rabbit aversion training ...

I have been thinking about this and I would like to run this pass you all on what your thoughts are...even on the wild game trials, dogs turn their runs to custard because of chasing rabbits...if you were to train a puppy on rabbit skin dummies then turn the whole thing upside down for them, would such a method deter them as a result...

Can't wait to see how to stop my 5yo Brittany from chasing bunnies.😁

Originally Posted by Penny's walker

Can't wait to see how to stop my 5yo Brittany from chasing bunnies.��

Some animals R a lost cause one of my clients hooked on possums, nothing's guna change that

What do you mean turn the whole thing upside down?

Originally Posted by Wirehunt

What do you mean turn the whole thing upside down?

Well if the dog is on its back with its paws in the air it can't chase a rabbit

Originally Posted by Wirehunt

What do you mean turn the whole thing upside down?

Sorry, @Wirehunt, I am not sure what I mean actually...my friends in the UK have the use of a rabbit pen where the dog is encouraged to go into the pen with the rabbits...I imagine it is to have them desensitized to them...??

Originally Posted by EeeBees

Sorry, @Wirehunt, I am not sure what I mean actually...my friends in the UK have the use of a rabbit pen where the dog is encouraged to go into the pen with the rabbits...I imagine it is to have them desensitized to them...??

Take your dogs to Tekapo , one big Rabbit Pen .

You triallers crack me up
That could go either way I think, but those brits do love them a rabbit! I hazard some electrical current used at the right time could be invaluable. Maybe in the said pen.

Originally Posted by EeeBees

Sorry, @Wirehunt, I am not sure what I mean actually...my friends in the UK have the use of a rabbit pen where the dog is encouraged to go into the pen with the rabbits...I imagine it is to have them desensitized to them...??

You mean a bit like putting him in with the chooks.
That didn't go so well for me some yrs ago,.

Of course you could just plan B any you can't get off the rabbits, they'll get plenty of work with me

Originally Posted by Wirehunt

You triallers crack me up
That could go either way I think, but those brits do love them a rabbit! I hazard some electrical current used at the right time could be invaluable. Maybe in the said pen.

First I want to address your comments, then I'll give my take on the issue.

Eebees is not a trialer! You struggle to grasp much of what is written in here because you run a rabbit pack, not that much different to a pig pack where the pack itself does the hunting and the handler is a bystander to the hunt. What you do with dogs and what most gamebird hunters do with dogs are so far apart neither really has bugger all relevance to each other. I guess I am politely trying to reinforce to you that you haven;t got a clue what you are talking about when training gundgos. You are no doubt a mine of information on rabbit packs. I have a handle on this as I grew up with a father who ran rabbit packs in Central since before I was born.The level of training, control and desire to work with a handler is pretty near absent, hence so much reliance on e-collars for this kind of work. However, using a e-collar for rabbit steadying, or any steadying is fraught with danger. 1) You may cause a dog to "blink" (Completely ignore) game by using an e-collar. I have seen a Brittany completely ignore Quail while galloping through a coevy, refusing to acknowledge their presence do to incorrect use of an e-collar. It's not that simple of a solution. E-Collars have their place for some issues, but I do not believe it is a good solution for this task.

Eebees I would have answered earlier but I too was a bit confused by the question.

A rabbit pen doesn't teach a dog steadiness or desensitize a dog to any particular game. The correct use of a rabbit pen requires doing the steadiness training, having the dog steady, before you go into the pen. What the pen does is give you a controlled area with an abundance of game where the previous lessons can be reinforced and polished, Give any high driven dog more game and it will want more game, it will not desensitize to it. Well, no dog worth feeding will.




For aversion training to anything you need two things in place first. A solid stop command and a solid "leave it" command. If a rabbit gets up in front of the dog you simply hit the stop whistle. When the dog stops you instruct it to "Leave it" and walk off in the opposite direction. The dog will soon learn you and it are not hunting that game. You can only achieve that if you have sufficient control and compliance from your dog already in place.

Where most people get buggered up on possums is they have no "Leave it" command in place prior to encountering them so while the dog starts to scrag said possum the handler comes in yelling and growling and making a fuss. To the dog they appear to be joining in the pack kill. This encourages the dog, even those that add a kick in the guts or a wallop. Your actions do not tell a dog it is doing anything wrong, quite the opposite. This is why many believe a dog that catches possums can't be fixed, because the seemingly obvious Human solution, to give the dog a reprimand for what it is doing is ineffective and misunderstood by the dog. No one I know has ever "cured" a dog of chasing possums using aggression as the deterrent. In trying to separate the two animals the dog merely believes you are "joining in". Only really good solid training and rapport with the dog can address this issue! If your training has been solid, your dogs hunts with you and knows you run the show then when you give a "Leave it" command and use your body language to go in any direction away from the possum the dog will most likely back off the game wondering why you are not interested. This hesitation is when you give a recall, bring the dog in and walk off. The dog will quickly realize this game is not on the menu. Word of caution though. This only works if you have done your groundwork well. If the dog 1) Doesn't know what you want or 2) Doesn't give a flying fox terrier what you say, these actions will achieve nothing. It will only work if you have the proper relationship with your dog AND CONTROL.

Chasing rabbits is not a fault in the dog, but a fault in the training and handling. If your "Stop" command means "Stop" then why is it chasing? The issue is not the rabbit, but your control level.

I am copying and pasting an article I have published previously on steadying which I hope will be some help. I couldn't see the need to type out a whole new fresh version.

Steadying
Steadying a dog to flushed game is the thing that most handlers find the most intimidating and the most difficult. It doesn’t need to be. If you have followed the methodology I advocate up to this point you will be dealing with a dog with a different mentality to game, game finding etc than you have previously. If you, like me, had allowed previous dogs to run at will find and chase game and then try to steady it you will know how bloody hard it is to keep or gain control over a dog that has learned far more than we ever wanted it to know... that chasing game is fun and gives a reward with access to prey drive. However, if you have been diligent in your training to this point your dog will have learned it is through you it gains access to prey drive and we are about to ramp this up another level or three.
As has been our approach so far we are going to control the circumstance by which the dog encounters its first real game. There is some prep work to do first. Following on from our previous lesson in this series we will, by now, have the dog quartering nicely and hunting over barren ground. We now want to bring in the stop whistle while hunting. We must do this very sparingly, relying on quality and not quantity, Pick a moment when the dog is a little distance from you (8 – 10 meters) and give the stop command with both the whistle and the hand signal. When it stops let it settle, give it time to ensure it remains calm and then release it on to continue hunting. If the dog ignores your stop then you need to immediately step in, maintaining your hand signal until it stops. The absolute second it does stop you stop and step back. As we’ve discussed before the stepping in creates psychological pressure on the dog, and this is why we get compliance. The stepping back relieves the pressure. Most handlers “get” the applying pressure but massively under rate how important it is to be right on the money with your timing to relieve the pressure. The dog finds, in that instant, that compliance relieves the pressure. Pressure being relieved feels good so in itself becomes somewhat of a reward for its correct behavior.
I don’t do more than two of these stops in early sessions avoiding making a young dog “sticky” and reluctant to hunt freely. I will then go back to the paddock and away from the hunting area for the next step. Having solidified the stop I bring in two things that will also represent a “stop” command to the dog. Game running or flying and the gunfire. To condition the dog to be steady to shot I use a starter pistol. If you don’t have one even just a shotgun cap will suffice. Get primed, but not loaded shells. You don’t need heaps of noise, you have already accustomed the dog to gunfire, and you just need the recognition of a gunshot. Simply let the dog run, I am assuming you have the stop at a run well ingrained and at a random time when the dog is running within range, but not under your feet, give the stop whistle, hand signal and fire a shot, all as simultaneously as you can manage. You do this sporadically in training over a week or so and you will soon see the dog now recognises the sound of the shot is also a stop command. Once established this rarely disappears so less is more, no need to overdo it. Having got this in place we continue in a similar style but instead of firing a shot we pick our moment, hit the stop whistle and the second the dog stops we throw a dummy high into the air. If the dog is calm and not anticipating the retrieve we send the dog to retrieve. If, however, the dog tries to break or even shows signs of anticipating the retrieve then we leave the dog stopped and go and get the dummy ourselves. The lesson here is not just to stop to the thrown dummy, which it should quickly do, but to know that staying calm and compliant will bring the reward of the retrieve. To anticipate or try to break removes the reward. With spaniels we hunt ground game (Hare’s, Rabbits) as well, but even if you don’t hunt these you still want steadiness to them. In the same way we have with the dummy this becomes another use for the tennis ball. A tennis ball bowled underarm in front the hunting pup simulates very well the running hopping motion of a rabbit being pushed out of its seat. The tennis ball bounces on anything it hits. Using the stop and bowl approach, basically a land based version of what we did with the thrown dummy we will cement steadiness to this prey image in the dog also. There will be more to address with this but we will do so later...
Within a week or so we should be able to throw a dummy with no other command and have the stop. We will also have the dog stopping to the sound of a shot. When we are hunting we will not be yelling a command, possibly using the whistle but there should be no need. Simply the object flying through the air and the sound of the shot should bring the dog to a prompt halt.
Now we have to progress this low level exercise to have meaning later when we are on real game and as is always my method the more increments we can maintain between the training ground and the hunting field the better our result will be.
Having got all of this in place we are now ready to put the final pieces of this puzzle together. I use live homing pigeons. If you are a fanatic you may have your own loft, if you are it is doubtful you need my help here. But find someone with a loft, explain you need live birds and none will be harmed. I take a young dog out, having cemented the entire artificial steadiness in place, and get it hunting and quartering as we previously have done. This time however I will have two or three live pigeons in a shoulder bag. Choosing a time where previously we would have thrown a dummy for the dog, we instead give a stop whistle and throw the pigeon out and above where the dog is sitting. We simultaneously step in and maintain the “Stop” with a hand signal and whistle. This is the transition to live game. The dog gets the excitement of wings flapping the bird hitting high speed and flying and you still insist on steadiness. This is the final piece that really cements things in place. It will still be natural for the young dog to rise up and try and grab the bird (Don’t throw it too low whatever you do, you can start quite high for the starting lessons) I have no issue, at this point, with this so long as the dog does not move off the spot.
To cement this lesson we need to be creative... It is not legal to release any animal for it to be immediately shot so we cannot pick a cull bird to be shot and used as a reward for getting the lesson right and relying on a cull bird coincidently having a heart failure as it flushes to provide a retrieve might be a bit much to ask for. We can however, as the bird departs throw a dummy retrieve which the pup can see.... when it has shown it has been sufficiently steady to the live bird it can be sent for the dummy and still get it’s reward for correct behaviour.
We are almost ready to take this pup hunting for the first time, but not quite. There will be issues we can see like anticipation and maybe a little unruliness at times of excitement, it is imperative we shut that down. It is also very important to reconsider as we have addressed earlier that all control will diminish drive to some degree. It will vary with the relative personality of your dog also and at all times we must, if we think the dog is absorbing too much pressure and diminishing the drive too much to stop all lessons and go back to “fun” exercises to restore drive and keep things light. It is acceptable though, throughout this process, to lose some drive, trust me when the dog is waist deep in blackberry with a big angry rooster bouncing off its nose it will have plenty of oomph and you will want to be wary that all your good work does not come undone in the heat of the moment.
We also need to transition our tennis ball training to real ground game and we do not have the luxury of having homing rabbits or Hares to practice this. The secret is to really ingrain the stop to the bouncing tennis ball, then dedicate your training time to the flushed birds. Next issue we will move on to hunting over our dog and encountering real game but we will try to do so in an area that has little ground game. We will instil the steadiness to wing and try to control the first rabbit encounter, we need patience and more than a bit of luck, but with the building blocks in place we have a solid foundation to do so.

Really good advice there Ruff, wish I had read that when I started with my dogs 15 years ago.

Originally Posted by stug

Really good advice there Ruff, wish I had read that when I started with my dogs 15 years ago.

+1

Well, that was embarrassing! Never work with kids or animals!
Client picking up a young springer after some remedial work this morning. Having concluded everything I offered to get "Grace" out so they could see a well mannered, trained, compliant gundog. I don't know if it is because of the 70 kpm winds, or that the young dogs have had my attention this week but I let her out. Put her in a "stop". She saw a swan on the water 100 meters away and was off like an untrained unruly shithead!
She came back on the recall but if the wind dies I think we might need a refresher training session later today! They keep you on your toes.
The irony was I had just finished, before going out to meet the clients, the long arse post above on how to properly steady a dog... LOL.....