So I have an 8 yr old male GSP with great bloodlines. When he was young, I apparently shot a 22 around him too early. He's been gunshy and quite the wuss ever since. He still puts his nose to the ground and chases any small animal that comes in the yard but has never been hunted. Through some convincing of a couple new friends, I'm going to try and break him of being gunshy and take my chances at trying train him enough to do some quail hunting. I'm a realist so I'm not expecting him to ever be a great upland bird dog at this point but if I could get him to hunt at all and retrieve birds, I'd be thrilled at this point. These two guys are gonna help me some but I thought I'd post on here to see if anyone else has ever been in this kinda situation and how their efforts worked. Thanks in advance.

Not what you want to hear, but my thought on this is that your probably not going to be able to hunt that dog under a gun during this season. If he has been gun shy all his life, it will take time and patience to reintroduce the gun, to steady to the shot, and to teach a controlled retrieve, etc. He is also about to be considered a Senior. By the time you get him where you can hunt him, he may be too old to take hunting or soon will be. Average longevity is said to be 10 to 12 years by at least one website. http://www.gspca.org/Breed/FAQ.html My advice would be to get a 2nd pup or started dog now that you can introduce to the gun the right way and start training for hunting next season and many seasons to come. You could still work with the old dog on the side while your training the pup and maybe get one or two seasons or more seasons out of him if your lucky. Competition with a pup may very well help override his gun-shyness.

It took 2 years to "fix" my gunshy GSP. She was ruined at the trainer at 9 months old. She made her first successful hunt last year in Kansas at three years. I just subjected her to lots of noise, gunfire. She wanted to be with me more than she was scared, so that helped. Patience and lots of it. I tried to find another trainer to help but no one wanted to take it on. I was winging it all the way but I love that dog more than life itself and was not going to see her wasted if I could help it.

paraphrasing sniper ------ but putting it much more bluntly--- dont waste your time. If you want a bird dog, get a puppy and put your efforts there.

I concur.

I disagree with the others. I think it's too soon to write the dog off. I would find a place with birds without a gun and just see what happends. Let him do his thing. Not saying to out in tons of time and everything but I think he might deserve a chance.

How and when did you introduce the 22?

I got invited to a King Ranch lease that Delmar Smith managing. He said that gun shyness was one of the easiest things to cure when you are training several dogs. He'd simply tie them out on the chain gang and ignore them. He went on to say that they all eventually come around wanting attention. But he was not talking about an eight year old dog.

Thanks for all the info guys. Just to be clear he'll be 8 on Christmas not that it changes much.

I introduced the 22 when he was probably 4 months old back in nc. He was just running around near me and I was sighting it in. Prob a big mistake but I didn't know better. He's just a scared dog period...guns, fireworks, thunder, even loud shutting Tupperware! I'm gonna try a cap gun while eating, the pop gun idea, and maybe cap gun during fetch. I don't live somewhere I can go far enough from fetch to actually use a gun.

Anything is possible and you have nothing to lose to try.

A Lab I saved from the gallows came to me gun shy. I have no idea how old he was. I was able to cure him, but it took an entire summer. Along the lines of what Bill is talking about part of what I did included tying the Lab out while I was working with my Brittany nearby. It was an OK retriever in the end.

Another rescue of sorts I took in was an adult Redbone that had never been away from his home, never had been in the woods, and never seen or heard a gun before. She was unsure of everything and I mean EVERYTHING. But this was only because she had never been exposed to anything. I introduced the gun same as I would a pup and simply ran her with my three Walkers. Not wanting to be left behind by the other hounds, that Redbone soon overcame all fears.

Glad to hear there is hope! The plan is if I can get him to tolerate guns, I'm going to try him in the field with an older GSP who is a very solid upland dog. I'm hoping being with with another GSP will help him catch on son.

I just played fetch with him and fired off 100 paper caps while doing it. He only acknoledged them a couple of times but never stopped fetching.