Training a non-sporting dog...

I've got a big super mutt (german shep, black lab, bernese mountain dog & st. bernard mix) that is a stellar companion. I love hiking and playing with her outdoors and I'd really like to start bringing her along on my turkey scouting & hunting trips - primarily to hunt sheds.

She would love to chase all the turkeys, deer, 'coons and other critters we see on our walks but she's been really good leaving them go whenever I tell her to sit/stay/leave it, so i'm fairly confident she'd be pretty chill to spend an afternoon in a blind with me without risking ruining too many hunts.

She's a fetching machine - well, not the bringing back part so much (she prefers to play keep away from our other mutt), but she won't quit looking till she finds the ball or stick that's been thrown. She'll even dive 2-3 feet under water in our creeks to pick up stones we toss.
Even in the house, we have put a ball away in a drawer and not touched it for months and the second she heard that drawer open 4 months later she completely perked on high-alert waiting for the ball to be thrown.

So i'm pretty sure she's got the prey/fetch drive required to interest her in shed hunting... i'm just wondering if her breeds would lend her to it & the training required (pretty sure the Lab & Sheps are great, but the others I don't know) and would she have the sniffer for it?

Well....

As far as nose goes, there's research on that (of course), and it tells us that (with the exception of breeds with crippling short-nosed breeding), individuals vary more than breeds do. Simon Gadbois, who trains dogs to sniff out endangered turtles and snakes, doesn't use sporting breeds. German Shepherds are one of the preferred breeds in police work and as cadaver dogs.

If your dog has all kinds of play drive -- loves a toy as a reward -- then it has the qualities the police & military look for in a working dog. Train it to find sheds instead of dead bodies or IEDs (a good idea, as the police get excited if you build your own IEDs, for some odd reason). The dog will probably do a great job.

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Originally Posted by welsh

Well....
. Train it to find sheds instead of dead bodies or IEDs (a good idea, as the police get excited if you build your own IEDs, for some odd reason). The dog will probably do a great job.

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I'd expect you'd get the same excitement if you make your own dead bodies too.

Well, the cops haven't found out about all my hobbies.

You'd be surprised at what a smart dog, a competent patient trainer and lots of time can do with ANY dog.

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Originally Posted by Ugo

You'd be surprised at what a smart dog, a competent patient trainer and lots of time can do with ANY dog.

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Well... got the smart dog part down... likely SOL on the rest.

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Originally Posted by Ugo

You'd be surprised at what a smart dog, a competent patient trainer and lots of time can do with ANY dog.

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I agree. I've got a rescued JRT right now who backs the setter ( was taught that).
The OP should decide what he'd like his dog to do and give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/...psczmo2zbn.jpg

Sharon, is that JRT a male or female? I'm looking for a special dog and I think the infusion of your JRT to a setter could be the cat's meow.
Just think, if the hunter misses the shot the JRS goes right for his throat. Shooting would improve expeditiously once you got out of the hospital.
If you were out with one dog and a thief tried to take the other dog in your truck, you would return to find his digits near your tailgate. Hence, a reformed thief! It might be fun trying to find your JRS but isn't that what GPS trackers are for?
If you have your JRS on point and the other pointing dog failed to back......oh.....never mind.
Remember, I asked you first Sharon!!

By the mix I would say your dog would have a very good chance at becoming shed hunter. The first thing to do is find out what the dog likes as a reward, that can be food or a toy and use that ONLY for training/ shed hunting.

I've started training her already. After a fair bit of research i've decided to forego focusing on/worrying about scent. It seems like most experts end-game in shed hunting training is to switch the dog away from relying on their nose, and focusing on using their eyes more than. But they buy quite a bit of that antler wax early-on, to give the training antlers scent.

Well, since i don't go shed hunting during the time the deer are dropping their antlers (too busy with work and then maple syrup season) most of the time i'll be out the antlers will be weathered and mostly scentless.

So, I'm going to stress the visual training much more early on.

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Originally Posted by Oddmott

I've started training her already. After a fair bit of research i've decided to forego focusing on/worrying about scent. It seems like most experts end-game in shed hunting training is to switch the dog away from relying on their nose, and focusing on using their eyes more than. But they buy quite a bit of that antler wax early-on, to give the training antlers scent.

Well, since i don't go shed hunting during the time the deer are dropping their antlers (too busy with work and then maple syrup season) most of the time i'll be out the antlers will be weathered and mostly scentless.

So, I'm going to stress the visual training much more early on.

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Visual training is only to get them started and understand the 'game', this may take only a few sessions, after the dog understands what you want you can start to incrementally hide parts of the antler until it is all hidden. Durring this time you can also introduce a variety to your training sessions, change the location, time of day, etc. Add in as much variety as you can so your dog is not being trained to search only in one specific situation.

Remember to keep it fun for the dog, short repeated finds are much better than long hard finds to create drive.

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Originally Posted by Ugo

Sharon, is that JRT a male or female? I'm looking for a special dog and I think the infusion of your JRT to a setter could be the cat's meow.
Just think, if the hunter misses the shot the JRS goes right for his throat. Shooting would improve expeditiously once you got out of the hospital.
If you were out with one dog and a thief tried to take the other dog in your truck, you would return to find his digits near your tailgate. Hence, a reformed thief! It might be fun trying to find your JRS but isn't that what GPS trackers are for?
If you have your JRS on point and the other pointing dog failed to back......oh.....never mind.
Remember, I asked you first Sharon!!

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LOL I know you and when you're kidding. Get out there and train those dogs! :)

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Originally Posted by Marker

Visual training is only to get them started and understand the 'game', this may take only a few sessions, after the dog understands what you want you can start to incrementally hide parts of the antler until it is all hidden.

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I'd go with that advice ... I doubt a weathered antler is truly scentless to a dog.

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Originally Posted by welsh

I'd go with that advice ... I doubt a weathered antler is truly scentless to a dog.

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A dog can smell an old antler - several years old, buried in leaves.
Teaching a dog to hunt for them by site rather than scent would seem strange. Why take away his best tool?
If you were going to train a bird dog, would you ever consider training visual and then going to scent? I don't think so.
Why would finding antlers be different?

My old ESS I trained to find antlers by tossing old antlers in the thickest crap possible. He'd go in and bring them back.
Then he started bringing them back whenever he found them in the bush.

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Originally Posted by werner.reiche

A dog can smell an old antler - several years old, buried in leaves.
Teaching a dog to hunt for them by site rather than scent would seem strange. Why take away his best tool?
If you were going to train a bird dog, would you ever consider training visual and then going to scent? I don't think so.
Why would finding antlers be different?

My old ESS I trained to find antlers by tossing old antlers in the thickest crap possible. He'd go in and bring them back.
Then he started bringing them back whenever he found them in the bush.

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The argument is that after the wax is weathered off the antler, the antler is as close to scentless as it can get. Dogs have to literally be tripping over it to catch what little scent remains.

Which is why the shed hunting trainers work towards switching their dogs to hunt sheds by sight.

Nothing I'm doing is taking away the dog's ability to smell. And through the repetition of training (and the fact dogs are hardwired to depend on their noses first) the dog will already develop a scent association, no prodding required.

There's no need to spend months/years focusing training in one direction if you're just supposed to switch to something different.

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Originally Posted by welsh

I'd go with that advice ... I doubt a weathered antler is truly scentless to a dog.

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Welsh, maybe you can confirm my intel as received via a British forum: That Cass is planning on importing an entire litter of Romagnolo Lagottos (pl. Lagotti), and after selecting pick for himself, will be distributing the rest of them magnanimously to other members of the Hunt Ontario forum including Spinster and myself and possibly you, for triple-threat non-gundog-but-sorta-gundog work: Sheds, truffles and possibly rubber ducks from his family bathtub up there in the Ontario Canine Wish-List Belt.

MG

My lips are sealed. You'd have to ask Cass.

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Originally Posted by Oddmott

The argument is that after the wax is weathered off the antler, the antler is as close to scentless as it can get. Dogs have to literally be tripping over it to catch what little scent remains.

Which is why the shed hunting trainers work towards switching their dogs to hunt sheds by sight.

Nothing I'm doing is taking away the dog's ability to smell. And through the repetition of training (and the fact dogs are hardwired to depend on their noses first) the dog will already develop a scent association, no prodding required.

There's no need to spend months/years focusing training in one direction if you're just supposed to switch to something different.

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Sorry oddmott but I think you're confused. You would be hard pressed to see someone training their dog to find sheds by sight instead of nose. It starts the opposite - first by sight then by nose. A dog's nose is unbelievable and as werner said they can smell antlers that are old and buried. Their nose is their greatest asset in finding antlers. I use my guy for antler hunting in the off season.

Nothing better to watch a dog use it's nose in the field. Unfortunately not all dogs have a good nose.

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Originally Posted by Cass

Sorry oddmott but I think you're confused. You would be hard pressed to see someone training their dog to find sheds by sight instead of nose. It starts the opposite - first by sight then by nose. A dog's nose is unbelievable and as werner said they can smell antlers that are old and buried. Their nose is their greatest asset in finding antlers. I use my guy for antler hunting in the off season.

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That may very well be. I don't claim to be a dog training expert. But i do research like crazy and pretty much every in-depth training video or article I've consumed in the last 3 weeks begins with encouraging the dog to use it's sniffer early on in the training because that's what dogs typically rely on... but that the end-game goal is to get the dog using it's eyes.

The only people who train their dogs to hunt shed solely on scent are those who are hunting sheds during Feb & March when the sheds are extremely fresh and their scent is quite strong.

This is one video from a reputable trainer (and channel) that's nice and short and gets to the heart of the matter. There are tons of 10, 20 and 30+ minute videos out there as well... and the best ones all end with essentially retraining the dog to use sight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO331Ev5L7I

And again, nothing i'm doing is handicapping the dog in any way. I'm using real sheds to train with, she's dealing with real scents. After hours, days, weeks and months of repetition, she is going to develop scent association just fine.

I'm simply not wasting time and $ on scent training that is going to happen organically anyways.

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Originally Posted by Oddmott

And again, nothing i'm doing is handicapping the dog in any way. I'm using real sheds to train with, she's dealing with real scents. After hours, days, weeks and months of repetition, she is going to develop scent association just fine.

I'm simply not wasting time and $ on scent training that is going to happen organically anyways.

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Have fun sounds like you are on the right track !

Maybe I'm the one that's confused. Didn't realize you could put a price on scent lol