Fellow dog people,

For what it's worth, I thought I'd post the results of a little experiment I'm trying and to see if others had any experience along these lines.

To set the stage, my wife and I are owned by three Jack Russell Terrorists: Max, Lori and one of their pups, Gus. Max and Lori both hail from South Africa, in fact I hunted leopard w/ Max's mother in Zim in '02.

Last year my wife and I purchased some ranch property where we'll retire in a few years, and I've been working diligently to improve the habitat for game, especially quail. The local bird population has had a rough go of it in the past few years and has been significantly reduced. While my habitat work is far from complete, I couldn't wait any longer (like a kid at Christmas) and released 100 "flight conditioned" quail onto the property to bolster the native population. If nothing else, it provides some shooting opportunities in the near term.

So I've got the property, I've got the birds, but I haven't had a bird dog in years. Since a sizeable part of the enjoyment of bird hunting for me lies in watching the dog work, what to do? Then the idea struck me: why not work Max on the birds and see what happens? I ran the idea past Jane (who's trained pointers in the past as well) and she agreed that the idea was worth a shot, especially since we couldn't very well "ruin" a dog that wasn't a bird dog in the first place, could we?

My plan was simplicity itself: work an area where I knew some of the quail to be, bump a covey and drop ONE bird. Let Max start, from square one, making the connection between quail scent, actual birds, the shot, and a hot, bloody quail in his mouth. Really no different than with other bird dogs, but realizing that he'd need to make the mental leap to recognizing a specific new quarry that he'd had no previous experience with.

I was on pins and needles looking for the first covey, knowing I'd get likely get no warning and that it was IMPERATIVE that I kill a bird for him the first time. When we bumped into the first birds, I was trying too hard and promptly stopped my swing. The recoil must have knocked my head out of my butt though, and I puffed my bird with the second barrel. Max was of course blazing around with a nose full of quail stink, and no earthy idea about what the hell just happened. Bringing him back to me, I worked him onto the downed bird from downwind, and he had his first quail in his mouth!

Well, long story short: after just a few sojourns with Max against the quail, he's really getting the hang of things! We're staying really focused on the process, with only one shooter (so far that's been me) with one objective: one bird at a time. Max has been a much quicker study than I'd had any right to hope for, and is even getting into the retrieving business. Being a JRT, he's a bit hard-mouthed (now THAT'S a surprise!), but is really much better than I'd suspected and is even getting better at that as well. Jane went with us the last time to see the show and agreed with me that she's seen papered pointers that didn't have the nose or the "want to" that our little furry apprentice does.

Make no mistake; I lay no claim to being a dog trainer. The credit for what's happened so far lays deep inside fifteen pounds of rough-coated hunting machine, my little Terrorist buddy: Max.

Mark

Nice work. I think we need some pictures!

If this works, you'll see a pic of the Maxster...

IMG]http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u110/218Bee_photo/Maxinprofile.jpg[/IMG]

Or maybe this...

Yes, that's much better. No pics of him on the birds yet...first things first!

Good-looking JRT!