Gundogs in pet homes 

With Labradors and Cocker Spaniels being two of the top three most popular breeds in the UK, I wanted to share some information about gundogs that may help you understand them a little bit more, and make your life with them more fulfilling.

Gundogs are a group of hunting dogs that have been developed over the centuries to assist hunters to find, flush and retrieve game (mainly birds). We bred them to have strong work ethics, stamina and determination.

Labradors, spaniels, pointers, retrievers, and their cousins – cockerpoos, labradoodles, springadors, sprockers – all have in their DNA a desire to hunt and/or pick up and carry.

Giving your dog a ‘job to do’ that fulfils that innate need to search and pick up, will help with the prevention of many potential issues – from your spaniel going ‘self-employed’ hunting, to your retriever developing a shoe fetish.

The good news is, you don’t have to go on a shoot to fulfil those needs, and retrieving dummies or balls is a good alternative to birds.

These are the things that I always recommend to my clients who share their home with gundogs:

• Rather than fighting against their instincts – work with them – your dog is likely to pick things up, it is in their DNA, so make sure they have plenty of toys to pick up. When they pick up a toy, praise them, tell them how smart they look carrying a toy (trust me, they look much better when they are carrying a toy, than your sunglasses!).

• Teach them to retrieve and drop/release items (if your puppy picks up a sock, they are unlikely to place it in the laundry basket, so I would rather they brought it to you than ingesting it).

• If they have picked up the ‘wrong’ thing, rather than creating a fun game of ‘keep-away’ by chasing your dog around the house for 20 minutes, run to the fridge instead, and swap the item for a piece of cheese and continue to work on teaching them to drop/release.

• Hunt together, so they learn that hunting next to you is awesome – hide a tennis ball in the long grass, search for it together, drop a few treats in the short grass, and ask your dog to find them.

• Avoid ‘free hunting’ – if your dog is having fun away from you, that is where they are going to seek the fun next time. I use a long line throughout adolescence to make sure my teenage gundogs do not learn how great it is to flush pheasants in the next field, while I am building value in hunting close to me.

• Gundogs have been bred to retrieve, so as tempting as it might be to get a ball launcher and spend an hour at lunchtime throwing the ball for them to chase, a much better activity would be for them to search for that ball in the long grass using their nose.