First, thank you all for the wonderful comments.  We appreciate receiving each and every one of them.  🙂  A couple of posts back, our friend Jodi Stone from Life with Sampson and Delilah…The 411 was wondering how we find the time to train because it seems like it would be a lot of work.  Well it helps to have a pro training one of your dogs.  🙂  But seriously, hunt test training is like any other training, you teach the basics and you build on that.  There are lots of books written detailing programs about how to train a dog for hunt tests.  Many people pick a program and follow it, or they mix a couple of programs, or they seek the assistance of a professional trainer.  Most people begin the basics when the pups are young.  Our dogs are also used for hunting so a lot of their early work was geared towards that.  I remember seeing some higher level dogs running a hunt test when Thunder was young and thought, “my dogs could never do that”.  But through patience and training our dogs have mastered some of the same skills I saw those other dogs demonstrate at that long ago test.  Obviously they are not ready for the Master National, but they have come a long way from where we started.

As far as actual training time, this past training session for Storm lasted about half an hour, (and that included chatting :lol:).  The trainer was training several of his client’s dogs on the same land/water set up that Storm was running.  We just timed our visit for when he was going to work Storm.   When they aren’t training with the pro, Thunder and Storm have a very dedicated owner/trainer (not me :)), who makes sure to work with them each day, (if not hunt test drills, then obedience).  As with any type of training, each drill/set-up is used to train certain skills that you may want to work on that day.  Generally our training sessions last about 1/2 to one hour per dog.  (Time to drive to our training spot and set up time is extra.)  If the dog demonstrates the skills you are working that day, then the session is sometimes very short.  If not, it may take longer to get them to understand, or you may need to alter what you are doing.  It may seem like a lot, but it really isn’t that different from training for obedience, rally, or agility as far as time goes.  You want a challenging training session, but you don’t want to overdo, and you always want to end on a positive note.

While we were with the trainer this past weekend, we worked Thunder a little.  It has been 5 weeks since his bloat surgery and he is still restricted as to what he can do, but he can run blinds.  (You can read about what happened to Thunder here.)  We ran him on the same set-up that Storm ran, but we altered it slightly.  First Thunder ran the two short blinds, and since he did not seem at all winded, he also ran the two longer blinds at the back of the field.  I re-numbered the diagram to show the order he ran them.

The trainer allowed Thunder a lot of slack since he is coming off a layoff.  Eventually, Thunder got one small correction when he decided to go off sniffing along the tree line to the right.  Thunder is a typical Chessie—give him and inch, and he will push it 10 miles.  🙂  Once he understood that he needed to stay on task, his handling was much better and he took each cast cleanly.

Thunder seemed a bit tentative as he was running these blinds, but by the time he got to the longer blinds, his pace was quicker and he seemed more enthusiastic.  Maybe he wasn’t sure if he was up to it?  Whatever the reason for his tentativeness, he did a great job and we were quite happy with how he worked.

We also did a bit of water work which will be the subject of another post. I am also hoping to put together some posts about the different events available for people to participate in with their dawgs and how to find them.  For right now, we are trying to stay cool so Thunder’s training this week has been limited to the training he can do in the basement.  He is starting to get a little stir crazy, but with this heat, we don’t want to chance working him outside in the evenings.

Related articles

• Do They Hunt? (2browndawgs.com)