Pheasants—From Season Opener to Closer, Part I of III
You don’t hunt deer in January the way you hunt them in October. The same should hold true for your pheasant hunting. By Jennifer L.S. Pearsall The pheasant, while part of the family that has evolved into fast-food nuggets, is no dumb cluck. I don’t think there’s a game bird out there that educates faster when it [...]

Grouse—The Stealth Approach, Part III
Jennifer L. S. Pearsall guest authors a great group of  articles on the art of Grouse Hunting with our favorite sporting dog breeds. The ruffed grouse is to the forest what pheasants are to the grasslands. But unlike the flashier, bigger plains bird, you can’t bully a grouse around. The “we-got-’em-surrounded” mentality that often works with [...]

Hallmark Dummy Launcher Product Review
Hallmark Dummy Launcher – A Must Have Retriever Training Tool The Hallmark Dummy Launcher is a must have tool in your retriever training bag of tricks. It gives you the sound of the shot and the fall of the bird. Pups learn at an early age to focus not only on the flight of the dummy [...]

Grouse—The Stealth Approach, Part II
The ruffed grouse is to the forest what pheasants are to the grasslands. But unlike the flashier, bigger plains bird, you can’t bully a grouse around. The “we-got-’em-surrounded” mentality that often works with pheasants—big crowds pushing a section of real estate to pinch birds and force them to flight—won’t get you anywhere in the grouse woods. No, this is one bird that requires finesse.

Grouse—The Stealth Approach, Part I
Jennifer L. S. Pearsall guest authors a great group of  articles on the art of Grouse Hunting with our favorite sporting dog breeds. The ruffed grouse is to the forest what pheasants are to the grasslands. But unlike the flashier, bigger plains bird, you can’t bully a grouse around. The “we-got-’em-surrounded” mentality that often works with [...]

Flagman Stick-em Up Product Review
The Flagman Stick-em Up bumper is a new product for an old training issue of how to teach lines and blinds.  The Stick-em Up is a bumper with streamers that you stick in the ground which makes it highly visible to the dog.  You will start at 10 yards and then continuously move out until [...]

Preparation equals Success in Events and Hunting
Marley Sporting Dog Supplies spent the weekend of October 23 – 25, 2009 at the Bird Dog Challenge World Championships and did not do as well as we wanted. It came down to a lack of preparation with the dogs and their endurance level. I needed to do more work on their endurance and get [...]

Training Consistency to bring Consistent Results
Training consistent obedience means enforcing every command every time. This will lead to a more consistent dog.  All dogs, not just sporting dogs, need to have a job in order to become a great dog. Well after several recent training sessions, it was pointed out by a training partner that I was not consistently enforcing [...]

Overcoming Two Years of No Work for a Lab named Goose
A lot of us know what it is like to not have a job for a period of time. We get lazy, cranky, and don't understand why people get upset with us when we don't do what people think we ought to do. The same is true for dogs. Dogs need a job to be completely happy and fulfilled. A life living day-to-day in just a kennel without much interaction with people and other dogs can make for some tough training. This is the story of Goose, who now has a job and has made a complete turnaround after being "on-the-shelf" for two years.

Retracing Steps in the Training Process
There are times in your training sessions and in groups of training sessions that you must re-trace your steps with a specific dog for a specific training goal. Also, you must be willing to try new tactics in order to get past a sticky training situation. This past month I have been working with some novice [...]