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I admit I have had my moments of frustration when training or hunting with bird dogs.
I raise my Brittanys from puppies, putting lots of blood, sweat and money into their early formation and training and moving them on to the next stages of their development.
In the end, I have a mostly reliable bird dog, although they each have their own strengths in the field. I respect their job and their ability to do it. They respect me too, and they are part of my family.
So imagine my shock when I read about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s handling of her 14-month-old bird dog. In a recently released memoir, Noem admitted to shooting and killing her dog in a gravel pit after it went berserk and chased birds during a hunt, killed chickens and then allegedly showed aggression toward her.
The dog, named Cricket, technically was still a puppy.
The first few months up to at least 2 years old in a dog’s life is the perfect window to form good relationships and habits and to quash negative behaviors. If it does not happen, bad habits can become irreversible problems.
While I understand Noem’s response on one level — truly aggressive behavior is never OK — I feel she probably caused the problem in the first place by not training her dog properly. Then she shot it out of anger.
Noem claimed in a statement cited in a Guardian article that Cricket was not trainable and that it had an aggressive personality. The dog became excited and chased pheasants when she took the juvenile wire-hair pointer on a hunt with older dogs to train it for hunting that type of bird.
I want to point out that if you cannot successfully train your bird dog to do the basics in your own yard, it is not going to “get it” when you throw it into a hunting situation with veteran hunters.
Young dogs chase birds. It’s part of the process to get them excited about hunting for them. A good trainer uses that to keep the job fun but also teaches discipline. Young dogs also mature at different rates, even within the same breed.
Training is repetitive, tedious and frustrating. But it is also rewarding. It’s a series of taking one step forward and three backward. It’s always starting over with basics.
Believe me, it’s never done.
If you don’t have the time and patience to do it yourself and don’t hire someone who knows what they are doing to train the animal, it is going to act like Cricket did in a real hunting situation.
Noem admitted in her book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward,” that she didn’t like Cricket.
Dogs know when you don’t like them, so it makes me wonder if Cricket was displaying defensive behavior and not aggression.
I have hunted with bird dogs for several years now. I have had dogs that could smell a bird from several yards away; that would not budge when on point; that would stop a few feet behind the lead pointing dog, honoring that it was second or third to find the bird; that would retrieve dead birds; and that hunted with heart.
I have also dealt with dogs that hunted for themselves, not for me; that have grabbed birds out of the air; that have decided not to wait for me and plucked the bird out of its hiding spot and then not want to give it up; and that have flushed birds instead of pointing them.
But never did I take my dog to a gravel pit and shoot it. Instead, I took it back to my yard and worked on basics again because ultimately I take responsibility for my failure as a trainer.
Noem was wrong and should take responsibility for her own failure as a dog owner, not blame a puppy for acting like one.
