Patience is a virtue

Spring is in full flow, gardens need cutting, children are having various school holidays – all of which are great opportunities to build patience in our dogs.

People often ask me why their dogs won’t sit still on a peg or whilst picking-up in the line. Common queries I get are, “Ben, after a few minutes my dog gets fidgety, what do I do?” I say to them, but the drive lasts for 30-40 minutes, how often are you practicing keeping your dog patient and still for this time period? The answer is always, “never”. So how can we build this skill into our spring and summer training?

Ground rules

We have a few rules in our household. When the boys are playing rugby or cricket in the paddock, they must always take a couple of dogs and sit them in a position whilst they play and keep a close eye on them. Obviously, initially the dogs get fidgety and move, but after a few sessions during the half term or summer holidays the dogs soon become accustomed to sitting for long periods of time, with the distraction of rugby and cricket balls flying past them. 

My own rule for myself is that when I mow the lawns, I always sit a few dogs on the path or in the paddocks to watch me. For example, if we cut our lawns twice a week, that’s around eight cuts a month, so by the time we get to October that’s around 40 cuts potentially – which means our dogs have sat for long durations whilst there’s other things going on. Additionally, the time spent watching the boys play sports, and on top of this, lots of relaxing time in and around the house and patio areas, and that’s a lot of time spent practicing patience. 

The family gundog

Yes, of course we need to maintain the dogs’ command training, but this is a lot easier to do when the dogs are so relaxed and chilled. I call this the ‘family gundog’. 

I’ll give you a flip side to this regime: your children are playing football and rugby in the paddock with the dogs chasing and barking at the balls; I am cutting the lawn while the dogs are chasing after the mower and sneaking off hunting in the hedges, whilst we are concentrating on the lawn. We now have a situation of four or five months spent building all these bad habits. We then get to September/October and wonder why our dogs have limited patience and are unruly during the first month of the season! 

Also, allowing the whole family to buy into the training ideas, for me, is crucial, because the commands will be repeated continuously in a positive rewarding way by everyone involved. 

For younger children 

But what if your children are still too young to engage in an activity like the one above? Well, with my younger children, from day one, I got them to learn the BG Foundation feed training. This meant they would get the dog to sit at feed times with the food on the floor; I would teach them how to send the dogs left, right, forwards and backwards; I would teach them the Hunt, Recall and Stop whistle commands… it got to the stage where my boys enjoyed it so much, they wanted to feed the dogs 24/7! As long as, as a parent, you can mentally cope with this, then it’s a fantastic idea to really get your children to buy-in to your family gundog. And remember, with children, as with puppies, building the right foundations from the outset is the key to success. 

Problems you may encounter

If your dog is very fidgety and is constantly challenging you in this area, then I would suggest you go back to your feed time training in the garden, teaching your dog to be super patient with the added reward of the food at the end. Practicing this in an outside environment will really help make the transition to the patience exercises more seamless.

Going away

If you’re going on holiday and considering taking your dog with you, just remember that taking this training away from the family home can only really be achieved when you’ve mastered all the above in your own garden/paddock. Taking the dog away to a different environment with many other distractions will only highlight potential flaws in your training. 

BBQ times

It goes without saying that the merest hint of sunshine has us all dusting off the barbecue! At Beggarbush HQ, family barbecues are another opportunity to practice patience. I often sit the dogs in one location on the patio whilst we enjoy the barbecue. And then when it’s finished, all of our dogs get a treat, for example some steak. But they soon learn that this is only ever after we have finished. In the same way as waiting for a drive to finish on a busy pheasant shoot – the reward comes at the end. 

Younger dogs

If you have a younger dog, it can be helpful to let it slowly learn this training from an older dog. But if you only have a younger dog, then remember, setting early foundations is key to enabling you to progress to longer periods of patience with different distractions in different areas. So, don’t expect your dog at two or three months old to have a long duration of patience; it takes time. 

Next time we’ll look at building the dog’s fitness up for the start of the season.