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Thank you. He is definatly a character. Slightly off topic But what age is good to start him on field work.
Regarding taking the pup to the gun range: I got a lot of conflicting advise on this, mainly guys telling me they do it, and every expert or trainer I talk to and book author I read says dont do it.To summarize their advice to me - you want total control of the situation where the pup is introduced to guns and for him to associate guns with birds and fun. A gun range is totally random meaningless noise and some percentage of the time pups will get freaked or just have a bad experience and you'll create an apprehensive gundog. I was out at Sunnydell this weekend and one of Chucks friends is a GSP trainer/owner prepping for the NAVHDA hunt tests, she said use a cap gun at meal time. Joan Bailey's book and George Hickox also recommend staying away from the shooting range. I'm not sure achieving a general disinterest (i.e. falling asleep) with gunfire is the ideal association you want him to have, especially if you want him to be steady to the shot.Rowdy's advice is right on with the advice I've gotten, get the pup excited about birds first, then introduce gunfire as part of releasing a bird/decoy to retrieve. In the George Hickox video he introduces a distant .22 crimp when a bird is released, then close .22, then distant .410, then close .410, etc.
