# Training a young intact male outdoors



## nolefan (Nov 6, 2009)

He needs more obedience work. He thinks working with you is optional.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

Collar conditioning, force fetch, and following an established program (aka Mike Lardy Flowchart system) to train him to do field work...and you won't have to ask this question anymore
But bottom line, boys can be jerks, but it's very easy with a modern retriever training program to overcome that.
Best of luck


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

Thank you both for the advice. I have given thought to things you are suggesting before and I agree that they make sense. Here is a reason for my hesitation with being more strict at this point. 

I really like field training, but have no prior experience with it. I know our progress will be slow because of it. I do not want to put a pressure on him, when I am not fully sure what I am doing. He originally was not interested in retrieving on land. He has always been good with obedience. He is a calm dog. His excitement comes when we go outdoors from swimming, smelling, chasing birds. I worry that if I push with obedience, I will loose the confidence, drive, enthusiasm - all that has been built during the last year.

I do plan to get Mike Lardy's program. I have Jackie Mertens' and Bill Hillmann's videos, but they cover more introductory staff. I personally wish there were more sources to study from. Probably, it might be easier to follow a flowchart, especially for a novice, but I always feel more confident when I hear what multiple successful people have to say.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

Your dog being an intact male has little if anything to do with the issues you are having. 

Lardy's DVD's will help you, I also recommend Training with Lardy volume 1.

Where are you located? The best help you can get is a group of experienced amateurs to train with.


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

SRW, you have given me a list of clubs in my area in another post.

We have started to train with a group. When we train alone, he is doing very well. He does not need to sniff. But with other dogs and some new (but not all) fields, he gets interested in sniffing. I am not looking for excuses because he is an intact male. I am hoping to learn how have people dealt with it. If there is a bitch in a car close by that is in heat, aired in the same area as other dogs, it is hard for me to believe that an intact male, no matter how well he is trained, is not going to get excited. 

I have a suggestion. It would be nice if people would take time to contribute new things on this forum. I have seen people not being lazy to post long texts about the same topics over and over again, e.g. opinions on breeders of English Cream Goldens, or get into fights for meaningless things, but when someone poses a question about something real and not trivial, the answers are often very short. Don't get me wrong. I respect when you give me even a one line answer. Last time, I asked if interest in retrieving can come with age and just telling me yes was enough for me, and I worked on it knowing it is possible. So, thanks again to everyone for taking time to answer.


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## nolefan (Nov 6, 2009)

green branch said:


> I have a suggestion. It would be nice if people would take time to contribute new things on this forum. I have seen people not being lazy to post long texts about the same topics over and over again, e.g. opinions on breeders of English Cream Goldens, or get into fights for meaningless things, but when someone poses a question about something real and not trivial, the answers are often very short. Don't get me wrong. I respect when you give me even a one line answer. Last time, I asked if interest in retrieving can come with age and just telling me yes was enough for me, and I worked on it knowing it is possible. So, thanks again to everyone for taking time to answer.


You seem like someone who is a thinker. I think what you're seeing is some of the unique personalities. And honestly, this is particular topic "sniffing, intact animals" is about as basic as it gets. People deal with it every week. MANY of the dogs running are intact. Dogs need a foundation of obedience and structure to 'get' that listening to you is more important than following his nose or instincts. It's a training issue. He needs foundation obedience work, which you say he has - so now you need to up the level of distraction - which you are = by training new places with new smells. Everyone here is telling you what has worked for them and why their dogs don't do this or are quickly re-directed if they forget themselves. You can't come up with anything that hasn't been dealt with by someone in your training group at some point. Lardy and a group who is familiar with it in addition to plenty of 'yard work' so your dog knows that sit means sit and here means here will solve this problem but it takes time and if you will invest it and let some experienced people guide you 'in person' it will mean more to your learning curve than any paragraphs someone could type out here. Don't be afraid of pressure for your dog. I struggled with it and my dog is not a tough, hard headed dog she loves the retrieving game more than anything. You can do this and I promise you won't ruin your dog, you're too much of a thinker for that.


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## SRW (Dec 21, 2018)

green branch said:


> SRW, you have given me a list of clubs in my area in another post.


I remember now. 
What you are describing is typical behavior for a young dog. Everything new or different is a curious distraction. As he matures it should become less of an issue. 
One thing I always do in training or at a trial is maintain discipline on the way to and from the line. In time this will teach the dog that it is time to go to work.
Bitches in heat are always a huge distraction but even that can be overcome. Our winter training group in Texas had four females in heat at the same time, one of them being my Lily. Most of the males were intact and plenty distracted but when they got to the line they focused on the task at hand.


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## DblTrblGolden2 (Aug 22, 2018)

I always have intact males. The rules for hunt tests are that no bitches in heat compete. I assure you they do. I always know because my boys, Cruz in particular, will chatter in the holding blind on the way to the line. This doesn’t effect his performance at the line. I still expect him to do his job. 
It sounds like your boy is having an issue distinguishing between play time and training time. Many of us can’t give specific advice because we haven’t dealt with it. We start training young and this isn’t an issue. 
We also allow bitches in heat to attend our training groups. They run last through the setups, but that’s not to say my boys aren’t going to run after them if I want to redo something. 
I guess what I’m saying is exactly what everyone else has said, it’s not a smells or sniffing problem. This is a training problem. 
There’s a saying “You own what you condone” raise your expectations. My key to training is to be fair, teach the concept, and if the dog doesn’t succeed ask yourself what you can do to fix it. Training time is fun, but it’s not play time.


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## PalouseDogs (Aug 14, 2013)

Need more info. How old is your boy? How often does he get out of his own yard to visit new places? When you meet with your training group, do you "air" him before you start? How motivated is his retrieving when there aren't any distractions? 

I have 2 intact boys, a 1-year old and a 6 year old. The 6-year old is a fanatic and experienced retriever. He's been out and about to the training grounds, to OB trials and hunt tests, on recreational hikes with other dogs, etc. He knows there is exploring time and working time. He is all focus on the line. 

The 1-year old has been to his first group training days within the past month. There was too much toxic algae in the area at the end of last summer and early fall and I was campaigning my older dog in OB. He got virtually no retriever training until this year. He's excited about bumpers at home, but in his first experiences at group training days, he had swivel-head, trying to take in all the other dogs and people and smells. I didn't put any pressure on him. At his second big group training day, he was more focused, although still clearly very aware of all the commotion around him. Again, I wouldn't put any serious pressure on him at this stage. 

You don't say what the circumstances are with your dog. He may just need experience. Sniffing can also be a reaction to stress. Number one: build up his retrieving desire in a non-distracting environment. Most goldens have innate desire, but it needs to be cultivated to develop it. Take him alone or with just a single training partner to novel locations. When you arrive at a location, get in the habit of airing him first to let him relieve himself and do a little recreational sniffing. Develop a routine that signals "Time to get to work." By yourself or with your single training partner, do a few confidence-building, fun retrieves. Quit before he's worn out. At his first group training days, keep things fun and simple. 

If you are unsure about an e-collar, don't start by using it for retriever training. Work on the basics, with the most critical being the recall. I think Connie Cleveland's online e-collar course is one of the best for beginners. It costs about $100. She and Pat Nolan (her husband) cover recall, sit, stay, and go to a platform. There is a lot of discussion about reward markers and a little bit about force fetch in the discussion webinar at the end. Even if you never use the e-collar specifically for retriever training, you should have a reliable recall so you can safely air your dog off leash and call him off enticing scents or rabbits. 

You can train at the hunt test level entirely without an e-collar. (Probably not at the field trial level.) My 6-year old was trained without an e-collar and has had minimal training experience outside his own yard, except for a brief couple months in spring 2020 when the pandemic closed all the OB trials and I suddenly had a bunch of free weekends to drive to the training grounds. He got a crash course in triples and improving handling in water during that period. He has an SH, but it wasn't quite enough to be ready for Master. I am focusing on hunt training this spring, to the extent that I can before I get my lenses replaced. The cataracts are making it pretty darn hard to see my yellow/orange dog among the tan vegetation of the western US. (So jealous of those people running their dogs through uniform green meadows.) I have more confidence that I know what I'm doing (HAH!) and so am using the e-collar on the 1-year old. I've already made some mistakes on him, but I think he's a resilient dog. They both love the water, no matter how cold it is.

Have fun and try to put your ego aside on training days. 

The youngster, Hawthorn, on the left, and his daddy, Pinyon, on a frosty training day in eastern Washington state last month.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

Hi! I would recommend Rick Stawski's Fowl Dawg DVDs (there are three of them, all of them together cost about $60). Start at the beginning and work your way through. Watch the video section then go train your dog. 
Our answers may be short because they are simple and we speak from experience. FF and CC gives you the tools to very quickly tackle obedience issues and they build the commitment in the dog to retrieve despite the distractions.


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

Thanks, everyone. I will work to resolve this new challenge. This discussion has been helpful to me and gave me some ideas.

Let me address a few questions that came in your posts. 

He is almost a year and a half. There is no doubt in my mind that he likes to sniff. The first time we saw him at the breeder he was sniffing, and he continues to enjoy it till this day. Is it stress? I don't think it is, in his case. 

Now to the question about mixing training and playing. I do formal obedience training with him and we are all business. I let him take off the steam before it, but once we are there we are training. He is focused on me. He is not distracted by other dogs, or smells, even when we do it outdoors. A distraction can happen, like there was an interesting unspayed female recently, but it was clear to me what was going on and I got his focus back with no issue.

Now, the field training is a bit different for us. The main difference is that it is a lengthier ordeal, and we have kids and jobs, and this becomes a part of a family outing for us. I am the one teaching him basics, particular drills, making sure he understands something, and so on. I do that with him at home, in our yard, and at a field next to our home. We live in a semi-urban area, and this field next to our home is a large sports field owned by the town. There is nothing challenging in terms of the terrain or smells of wild animals, but there are smells of other dogs and at this point, he is able to ignore this when we train. It is usually the weekends, when we go to some more challenging terrains to train and we do it as a family. Maybe that means that the distinction between playing and training is not clear, but I am not ready to change this. My husband is the bird boy and I am the handler, and I usually let the kids handle the dog for a few throws. When we train, we are focused on doing it properly, but the whole outing is mixed with fun and play. We don't do many throws, as I don't want him to get bored. We can do more water throws because he is very interested in them.

He loves water and from the start was enthusiastic to retrieve from it. We worked on bringing enthusiasm for land retrieves. Making it fun was important for that reason too. He now wants to do land retrieves, but to bring that out, we relied on activities he liked such as swimming, sniffing, tugging, etc. As an example, I would throw a bumper on land, but he would need to go over a small stream to get it. Currently, I think he is not the best marker as he is doing a lot of hunting, but I am not rushing to fix that because I see his tail up in the air while he is sniffing excitedly to find the bumper. That is one of the reasons why I am cautious to discourage sniffing. 

Now, let me explain what actually provoked me to write the post. I felt that we are at a certain point where he can ignore the smells and be focused on getting the bumper and bringing it to me. So, we arrive to train with this group and as he is getting out of the car I see that he is all excited about the smells. I am not sure what it is exactly, but I just take notice. It was announced there is a bitch in heat. OK. She is going to run last. I air him and it looked to me I had his attention. I am getting ready to get to the line and focusing on the things that we are going to do. I hear him whining a bit and I take it as a good sign - he will do it if he needs to wait for a retrieve. I go in first holding blind, ask him to sit, but he is restless and eventually drops on the floor with his face where the other dogs' butts were. I get him to sit again. Then we go to the next blind and the same thing happens. We go to the line and I am working on setting him in the right direction and he just slides and again he is in a down position with his head stuck to a particular spot. It's not sniffing, it is I want to rub in this. In the end, we do the exercise - it was a double - it wasn't so bad, but he dropped a bumper and started sniffing at a particular spot again. So, now having a chance to think about this, I am wondering if there might have been another female in heat that was running before us. On the spot, I was not sure what was going on. I will be better prepared if this happens again. 

I am like a driver who just got a license. With no experience, you have to think to pay attention to all sorts of things. When you have driven for a long time, you get somewhere and have no clue what was there on the road - it's all automatic to you. 

For us humans, we do not know where interesting smells on that big field are. You only realize there is something once you see all dogs sniffing there. I guess I knew I can expect something like that on his way to retrieve, but have learned a lesson that I need to expect to deal with smells at the line. 

Inexperience is my problem, but there is something sweet in all this. I know how it is when you reach a professional level at something - it can get less pleasurable. So, I will enjoy the phase.

Thank you all.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

That was a wonderful post and a lot to address. I'll try to get back to it today if I can. I think you're doing a great job.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

OK hi again, you are doing a great job and being very cerebral about your dog training which is wonderful.
A few comments.
First, dogs rely on their amazing sense of smell more than we can imagine. They use it as we use our eyes. It is completely natural for dogs to always sniff and be very interested in what they smell. This isn't just your dog, it's every dog. So while it's a good observation that your dog likes to sniff, and is distracted by different smells, it's not particularly unusual or noteworthy and certainly would not be a consideration in field training. I would correct a dog for sniffing on the line or in the holding blind. BOYS ARE BAD ABOUT THIS. They KNOW many other dogs have sat at the line and in the holding blind and will habitually drag you to those locations to smell. I have established rules with my dogs (and up until my 11 month old bitch...I have only trained dogs...I have four MHs and one QAA intact male show type goldens). Fisher had a zero tolerance sniffing policy. He was NOT ALLOWED to sniff the ground in the holding blind or at the line. He would get a big boot in the face for doing that. Bally is allowed to sniff in the holding blind but he cannot lay down or move from a sitting position. When we are imminently ready to go to the line I say "SIT" and he is to stop all sniffing and watch me. It's more leeway than Fisher got but it works for us. Brix is allowed to lay down and sniff in the holding blind, but again when our turn is imminent I say "SIT" and he has to pay attention. Slater is the least macho dog ever and never ever would think about sniffing so I didn't worry about it. NO dogs are allowed to smell the ground or equipment or me at the line, period. 

Re: dogs using their nose on marking.
My thoughts on that : Dogs should not RELY on their noses for marking.

If your dog is doing a lot of hunting it means you have taught him bad habits and to rely on his nose rather than his eyes. We want them to use their EYES to locate the fall, NOT their noses. We never, ever need to encourage or train them to use their nose to find a bird. It is completely natural and their "default" method. It is a BAD method to use to mark. If the dog properly uses his eyes and travels directly where his eyes told him the bird was, they don't need to use their nose. Relying on your nose to locate birds means falling for dragback and wind scent, hunting early and often and getting hung up in cover. Bad habits, all of them.

How to combat this? That wonderful sports field you have access to should be your primo place to train marking. Use large white plastic bumpers to train him to mark on this closely mowed grass. He should SEE THE BUMPER ON THE GROUND from the line and proceed directly to it. He won't use his nose because he doesn't need to, he can see the bumper the whole way. You are training him to use his eyes, not his nose. Repeat this sort of marking setup 10,000 times and you will have a dog that is a superior marker. 

Again I would encourage you to seek a modern training method, follow it to a T and stick to the program. If you can find someone to teach you private lessons and help you along the way, great, but that is rare, and mostly you have to be independently motivated and do it yourself. Best of luck.


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

Anney, this is very much appreciated. It's all clear to me what you are saying. Let me get to work. I know what to do now. He is a great dog, and we move quickly once I understand where the issue is. Merci.


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

I wanted to report that we went training this weekend and I just didn't let him sniff in the holding blinds nor on the line and it went fine. Thanks for the tip. Now it seems silly why I let him do it last time, but when you transition from working alone to a group, some things catch you unprepared, if you are inexperienced. We worked in a group last year, but he was younger and not that obsessed with the smells of other dogs.

There are at least two other things that are different from working alone to working in a group which I see dogs are struggling with. The first is stopping to pee where another dog peed. How do you stop the first dog from peeing initially, and others repeating it? The second is when returning to the handler, when one works alone the dog is running towards you only, but in a group, there are other people, dogs, holding blinds, etc. Also, when alone they get to retrieve multiple times in a row, but in a group, they get one round per set up and they go to the car. It makes it less fun to come back to the handler. Any thoughts?


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## green branch (Oct 24, 2020)

... and this message is a late message to Kelly. 


PalouseDogs said:


> The youngster, Hawthorn, on the left, and his daddy, Pinyon, on a frosty training day in eastern Washington state last month.


Kelly, I remember reading the story about your dog, Pinyon. Happy to hear you have his offspring now.



PalouseDogs said:


> I think Connie Cleveland's online e-collar course is one of the best for beginners. It costs about $100. She and Pat Nolan (her husband) cover recall, sit, stay, and go to a platform. There is a lot of discussion about reward markers and a little bit about force fetch in the discussion webinar at the end.


I didn't take this course, but I have been thinking about it in the past. I like Connie. I think she is a good trainer and a good person.


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