I was needing some info on how you guys get your dog to stay still. I have a year and half old lab he does good on the retrieving end but cant get him to stay when i throw bumper or when trigger is pulled on gun. He is not scared of gun he takes off as if i threw something just having trouble on getting him to stay at side while hunting.

Sounds like your dog is breaking. Work on sit and tie the dog up if needed until you can get it under control.

Look at the video that came with your e-collar. Get an e-collar if you don't have one.

Need to teach the sit command. If you've taught it then you need to reinforce it with either a check cord, heeling stick or e-collar. You need to get someone to help so that you're not shooting and trying to handle the dog at the same time. If you're a member of a club, training days are a perfect time to work on this. My club did this very same thing last Saturday.

I literally just had my 3rd successful day in true steady. I didnt use a collar at all. I built a place table about waist high.(makes sense in a min) Worked place. basically getting my 6 month old pup to place on the table. Once he had that (2days) I started releasing him from the table. Once he got used to that I used my hand and grabbed right behind his ears on the neck. (on the table he is right there where I dont have to bend down. So holding his neck and throwing the bumper I keep saying sit , sit , sit then release to name. I went away for a week so I had a buddy work him. Today after one hold and the sit, sit sit, name , I was able to have him return to the place table. Gave him the sit command he sat and I threw the bumper. He held until his release.

I did screw up tho, I threw some fun bumpers and was going to do one more steady release and sure enough he broke. Repeated the before steps and he held for about 5 more retrieves.

I dont think he is old enough the understand fun bumpers over actually working. So I may stop fun bumpers for now and give A LOT of PRAISE. He retrieve drive is so high i feel just getting to retrieve he is happy. This dog will urinate everywhere if you even grab the bumper.

Thanks for the info i will put some of it to good use.

Here is what I did with my dog. Throw bumper, make dog hold steady, fire blank gun, a breaking dog will want to break, so correct right there. Fire another shot, dog will want to break again, and correct. Keep at it till dog will not break on gun fire. Too many times hunters allow their dog to break while hunting, the dog learns gun fire means "go"! So you gotta fix that. Gun fire should mean sit steady and look for birds falling and mark birds, not go.

In order to protect your dog, you had better keep it on a leash. When you keep it like this for a period of time, it may become obedient.

At the same time, you can send it to some training clubs. With some effective training programs, I think it will follow your order.

PLUS, I usually keep my dog docile with tasty food. If you think the methods mentioned above are not practical, you can try this way. No dog can resist the yummy and I think your dog is not an exception.

What happens when you don't have the dog on a stand? Are you going to transition this to the ground? Why not start on the ground to begin with?

Thats exactly what I did, I now transitioned him to the ground. The reason i used the stand was so he was high enough so that I didnt have to bend over to hold the skin behind his neck. The correction was immediate and I could still throw a bumper with losing control of him. Now that i no longer have to hold him, he is back on the ground.

I did this so i didnt have to hit him with a collar. I am not bringing a collar in until I know for a fact he knows the commands. Sit means Sit. I dont want to be saying sit, stay etc.....

Plus at the same time I was teaching him the place command. So when we are in shallow water I can bring a stand with me and he is used to sitting on one.

I bought duck dog basics with chris akin and one thing he point out to folks is to teach your dog not to retreive on each throw. What has happened is you've made over a 1000 throughs and your dog was sent after them. Your dog is just conditioned to fetch.

In the video he recommends that on a few trhowughs is to leave your dog sitting and you pick it up and bring it back.

My guess is you've got a great dog with a lot of drive, so don't give up. You probably need to do some drills (no more than 5 or 10 minutes) with the dog sitting and tied when you pitch a bumper. Alternat the untieing and letting the dog retreive the bumper.

Once you feel the dog isn't breaking, untie the rope and continue the session. Eventually, remove the rope.

That makes a lot of sense, never watched Chris Akin. JMO, best experience is hunting and making dog stay while ducks are dropping. There have been many times I did not even send my dog till all six ducks were dead on the water. Dog learns to sit, watch and mark. And blind retrieves are needed here of course. But any time dog marks birds, holds, that is good stuff, giver her a “good girl” for holding and send. Make them hold on every retrieve.

Here's a video from today of my 14 week old pup that I began training 11 days ago. The second video is from last week when we were doing some steadiness marks.

Sit is a command that you have to teach at an early age and make sure they know it. Bill Hillman states in his video that you do not teach a pup to sit by restraining them. It's a process of patience and repitition.

http://s155.photobucket.com/albums/s306/kbobbjr/Jake/?action=view&current=79ea7a65.mp4

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s306/kbobbjr/Jake/a7b39484.mp4

nice!

Don't teach em stay.

Sit means sit until I tell you to move.

Put dog in sit and walk back a few feet, the reward w/ treat. Gradually increase distance and time, always rewarding with treat.

Make the dog sit every time you go through a doorway, you always go through first and the dog remains sitting till you give the release. Make the dog sit every time you feed him. Make it sit when you come home, walk in the door and before you pet it. Make it sit for every treat.

If he's not already, you need to collar condition the dog to sit and the rest of the obedience commands.

http://www.uklabs.com/index.php

good tips, vids, and articles on here I have tried some of the stuff on there on my 7 month old knuckle-headed black lab and he took to it pretty fast, granted all dogs are different, but maybe some help for you.

I hear that a lot, but I like the word stay. Sometimes I’m ok with my dog standing, say it is cold and we are walking thru shallow water, she don’t like sitting in cold water and I don’t blame her, she will sit in the cold water if I tell her to, she would even lay in it if I asked, but sometimes standing and staying makes more sense.