Closer to Home (Part 1)

Why Train my Dog to Hunt

A member of our group came up with an issue of her five Beagle dogs who hunted and killed all of her neighbors’ chickens. Her remark inferred was what I posted in our news feed on Facebook entitled the ‘playbook’ of using toys to hone the dog’s skill to hunt. This prompted me to respond that the goal in honing dogs to hunt is never to kill their prey but to retrieve or take it to their handler in good condition. After I posted that reply, it then crossed my mind that I just also newly publicized that ‘project preview’ in raising quails for Aubree’s’ hunting activity. Now, there stands an issue that needs to be clarified before decoding further renowned dog trainers’ proficiency in training. You see, the upturn of a hunting activity in our developed world has drastically changed where terms used has to be aptly grasped by new learners. We now have a synonymous word for hunting to mean a true-to-life hunting expedition where the hunter will have to shoot the bird then let the dog retrieve the dead stalked. We also have a ‘Field trial’ which is nothing but allowing each dog to work in the field in an allotted time and be judged in a competitive setting. Criteria varies including which dog has the keenest desire to hunt, their intelligence, ability to find the decoy, style and courage. ‘Hunt test’ on the other hand resulted because most astute trainers saw a disconnect between field trials and real hunting which is non-competitive. Each ‘hunt test club’ developed its own testing systems to provide handlers and their dogs an outstanding preparation for real hunting in general which includes tracking, pointing and flashing in order to startle the bird under a bush to fly and be shot at, in other words, it’s not only retrieving. Now, having seen the broader scope of what is going on in the dog hunting interest will help give you a clearer picture that makes sense of the needful exercises that are set to be practiced or to measure a skill, and the value of drills to teach something by means of repeated exercises known by distinguished handlers as conditioning.     

But surely, the dilemma that most in our group have to wrestle if they intend to train their dog to hunt is to ask the question, up to what extent should I go? Is my inclination up simply to go over those exercises to hone the dog’s instinctive skill to hunt for a narrower end, or is it to prepare the dog to go for a real hunt expedition? If the motive is merely to go over those retrieving exercises, drills, and how it is communicated by the handler, then the use of artificial decoys and toys is more than enough to do the work, and retrieving is its only doable objective. There are however now a lot of other extended matches or competitions associated with any of those narrower exercises in field trials which one can train a dog, like obstacle match wherein training the dog to jump over fences to fetch and retrieve is its objective conditioner, catching Frisbees in the air and giving it back for another toss, and retrieving objects in a body of water, etc. hence one can alternatively go into this instead of going into a field trial competition. In the same manner, one does not have to necessarily stick to those narrower exercises but include tracking skills, pointing skills and flashing skills for the purpose of joining those other associated popularized matches these days. The point I want to make is that each corresponding exercise has a match of the types of sports event being promoted these days where one can either go for it for fun, to join those specific competitions, or make your dog or you as its handler win a certified credential.  

  

My life-long goal and long-term disposition however is to really go for a real hunt expedition here in the Philippines, but this involves a lot of hard work because other than defamers who are intense in propagating half-baked information of our hunting heritage, we also have a weak legislation in enforcing our protected areas, and no effort to engage hunters to manage wildlife populations through sustainable hunting practices. I know that this task is high but I am bent to start somewhere or something that I can pass to the next generation.    

Conditioning Handicap

The term “Functional Conditioning” is actually a utilitarian brush-up of the dog’s natural tendency to be encouraged as well as the avoidance of that adverse consequence when not taking what it has been trained to do. This does not only include the positive and negative reinforcement undertaken during its learning process, the positive and negative punishment imposed to make the dog realize its painful consequence, but also taking into account the dog’s internal capacity to act favorably or indifferently; its lack of inertia; thoughtlessness, etc. In other words, Functional Conditioning does not only involve the behavioral bearing of the dog in taking its chances of the physical reinforcement and the concrete punishments as an outcome of its behavior, but it includes its mental inertia as well. The idea is that task will be performed as taught because the dog also chooses to perform it well and not simply been made as the result of some ‘reflex reaction’ carried through by a stimulus-response. It must take the dog as a whole. This, as compared to the limitation of a maimed schoolwork that we often take to simply mimic the behavior of that sharp tack dog but without the spirit that is behind them. Simply put, you cannot let the dog do a task as quickly as they should by coaching them to do just that, but you can condition it to also want to do it as quickly as it can.

This holistic approach implies redefining a kind of response that is already built in a dog and not largely something that originates from us. It means admitting the reality that they have a very strong instinct to hunt or a craving for prey. You start to condition a dog to get just that and you have in your hands the most powerful patron dog on earth. But to be unaware or neglect this would only mean a costly trade-off, which only stifles the dog’s ability to perform a task with an unflinching energy. It will only make success more difficult to attain and at best, having an inconsistent dog that is oblivious because it is charged to behave in such a way that has become a nagging coercion. Viz., you will then have a handicapped dog despite all its training simply caused by an inert behavior of indifference. 

However, when your method of conditioning is rewarding your dog to be able to hunt or get hold of prey, if you succeed to persuade the dog to deliver what you want because in return it will earn what it really wants as its reward, and this instead of simply phrasing or patting it for a good work. Your conditioning process will excite the dog to play the game with you. Your phrases and patting that accompany that particular task will reinforce their confidence that they are on the right track of getting that reward and so swiftly takes the fastest possible way to get what it really wants.

However, the reality that dogs misjudge or misunderstand your command and even at times get lured by a different enticement or maybe because of exhaustion; not because of an instinctive drift to hunt, but merely a blunder or a misdirection, then you need to make a correction. This is where waves and waves of topics got big nowadays, the victor however, are those that attribute their method of approach is the combination of a positive reinforcement operant conditioning or P.R.O.C. along with the negative punishment approach. It has become so huge and critical that trainers tend to explain it rather than train the dog back to square one. Rather than that, you can instead calmly lead the dog back to where he was before it committed the lapse, to reorient and recondition the dog, then reinforce the verbal command again as you taught it, or using the indirect pressure by utilizing a leash; to have complete control, then see if it has outdone its mistake(s) this time around. To the dog, the recap of the same procedure all over again, is in and of itself, already a form of ‘punishment’, ‘reinforcement’ and ‘pressure,’ that has been polished off, in one short and unsophisticated setting. What’s more, to the dog, the sooner it can self-correct to do what you like it to do, the quicker will you give out its desired reward.