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mcotton

MH
Posts:87

12/02/2007 1:50 AM
2nd time I've sent this: Don's email I finally managed to get home so I could place it on here for further comments. I have read about prey drive as Torsti discusses i.e. behaviour in the pack and individual attack on prey, in relation to the work of cattle & sheep dogs but have never clearly understood what is meant. My 10 month old Springer spaniel male is developing now and is at a point where I am stepping up his obedience and field & game introduction . He is a major challenge because from the moment he leaves his kennel he is hunting with very strong drive. By that I mean, on a walk for instance, he is constantly focussing on birds flying and ground movement e.g. leaf movement or a movement in the bush. Around the garden ,when he is loose, he is constantly hunting for lizards & anything that moves e.g. bush turkeys that come into the garden. He catches frill-neck lizards and retrieves them to hand gently. He is quite obedient on lead , however at the local obedience class, if a bird flies within 150m it distracts him. He is not too biddable or people orientated but slowly is building up some regard for me. When he was younger it was food that was his main driver but now this hunting drive seems to dominate. If I let him loose in an open park or field situation he runs hard and v.fast (for a Springer) and if I give no command, heads directly for water or the heavy scrub where he chases scents and will quickly lose touch with me. He is otherwise a soft dog around the house & people i.e. very submissive . Torsti , my experience with soft Springers has been that they may be soft around people and everyday situations but that quite often they hunt like Zulu warriors . However often soft means that they are very obedient at contact with game or the flush of game and that is why the British have gone that way in their breeding perhaps. This fellow has none of that type of field softness however and control is purely based on taught obedience. Is it a surfeit of dopamine hormones that drive this pup? His brother from another litter won the National trial , but was a late bloomer. Another brother from that previous litter was offered to me at 2 years of age, totally out of control. I was told he would retrieve well. We went to a nearby piece of open ground and sent him for a retrieve, he ran straight to the fall of the dummy but kept going and we found him half an hour later hunting ducks in a reedy creek 750 metres away. So there are some genetic components. I have been around a lot of gundogs but only once or twice have I seen this level of hunting drive, so he will be a challenge to get to a steady dog on rabbits , let alone a trial dog. Any comments would be useful, Cheers, Don

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