Millie’s Education (and Mine) the E-collar

Arizona Outdoorsman / AZOD

Millie’s Education (and Mine) the E-collar

By Linda Dightmon AZOD

After this summer my GSP bitch will be a respectable hunting companion. At least that is what my mentors are promising. Her formal training began last summer but a gigantic litter of puppies whelped in November messed up our hunting season. This year there will be no puppies and no heat cycle either. The vet made sure of that. So, we have no excuses.

I train with Tony Marquez and Ryan Crockett. I don’t know why these two young men have taken a middle aged woman and her hardheaded bitch under their wing but I sure am grateful. This year two of Millie’s pups have been added to our canine class. It is fun to watch the brothers develop. Every once in a while (when there is no tee time) Geno, my husband joins us for the morning’s activities.

Like many quail hunters, I have no interest in competition trials. I am not too concerned about my dog’s pointing style nor do I really want my dog to hunt in the next area code. I do, however, want my dog to point, hold through shot and fall and have decent manners in the field. The first is a given, it is the other two that takes all the time. This is why I drag my butt out of bed in the pre dawn of summer weekend mornings to train.

Millie has always done extremely well with the basic obedience stuff. She knows that a long blast on the whistle means for her to come in. I noticed a couple of weeks ago while training that she took an extra big circle before coming back to me. One evening the following week I went out to the “green belt” in our subdivision and put her on the check cord. A blast of my whistle and her head came up and she immediately came back. Could it be that she knows when I don’t have complete control?

Tony confirmed my suspicions. “It is time for the E-collar,” he counseled. The E-collar or electronic collar stimulates the dog with an electric current. The handler pushes a button on the transmitter that goes to the receiver on the collar. Today’s E-collars have different settings giving the handler a choice of stimulation. They go from ‘nick’ (1) to (5) depending on the brand. The setting used can be changed due to the dog’s sensitivity or the occasion.

Last Sunday, Millie was fitted with a collar and sent out to run.

mornings to train.

Drake Models an Innotek E-collar

We let her get out a hundred yards or so and I whistled her back. Of course, she didn’t turn right away. Tony hit her with “a number one” (the lowest setting) and guess what…. That dog came back on the double. She went right on by though so Tony nicked her again. She did a one eighty, came back and stopped, just like she was supposed to. The rest of her training session went great. She pointed two pigeons for us, held through to the shot and after a couple of tries, held to fall and retrieved on command.

Later, Tony asked me if I could tell when he nicked her. I have to admit that she gave no visible sign of stimulation. Other than performing the desired action, there was no reaction whatsoever from my dog. The key here is that she already KNOWS what she is supposed to do. The collar is there to remind her that the handler is always in complete control.

So far my only training supplies have been a pinch collar, a check cord, a whistle and a pair of batting gloves. An e-collar will be the most expensive training device that I will have to buy but, used properly, it is worth the bucks. Anybody got one cheap????