Prepare to Peak: Getting Your Gundog Ready for the Season

In mid-April 1996, the night before Patriot’s Day, Jeff Doyle told me he wouldn’t be at the dock at 3 am to go fishing. The evening-news coverage about the next day’s Boston Marathon had caught his fancy, and he’d decided to run as an unregistered, back-of-the-pack “bandit.” The next day while striped bass were bending my rod tip to grip, Jeff was grinding his way up Heartbreak Hill to the cheers of Boston College hotties, rumbling by Fenway Park and its raucous Sox fans, and crossing the Boylston Street finish line. His time of 3:40 was beyond admirable, especially seeing as it was his first run of the year . . . .

Getting a gundog ready for a competition or the hunting season has changed a lot since Count Gladstone IV won the first National Championship, in 1896. Although modern hunting dogs have unparalleled genetics, we need to prepare them properly so as to maximize their performance. Not just anyone can pull a Jeff Doyle.

Preparing for Takeoff

Before getting underway, it’s important to take care of a few housekeeping measures, such as:

• Visiting a veterinarian for a full examination. While a gundog’s overall health is important, the examination should focus on the cardiovascular, skeletal and muscular systems, as they’ll be getting a lot of work.

• Fighting weight. Check your dog against the Body Condition Score to determine if your companion needs to shed a few pounds before getting underway.

• Dog-specific routines. All dogs are different, so consider time and intensity as you create workouts for each dog in your string. Age and breed are two main considerations. For example, puppies are still growing and shouldn’t be roaded, while senior dogs do better with shorter, less-intense work that can include swimming.

• Warm up, cool down. Some light work opens blood vessels, warms muscles and gives the rest of the dog’s body a signal that harder work is on deck. Follow sessions with a cool-down period, to help return your dog’s body to its normal rate of function.

Garret Booth, the owner and head trainer at Maine’s Grey’s Outfitting, breaks down his work into two sections: conditioning and specific skills. “It’s no good having a bird dog broke through if he’s gassed at the end of the day,” Booth said. “Pre-season conditioning and endurance training require a lot of regular time, but they are the absolute keys to a successful season. My bird dogs need to have the strength and endurance to cast through the woods; my retrievers need to be fit to swim in cold ocean water with the strong currents typical of a 12-foot tide. Incorporate regular conditioning into your schedule, and you’ll be well on your way to a great season.”

Booth allows a minimum of two months of pre-season conditioning. To ensure that all of his dogs are ready to roll on the opener, he plans to have them ready to go a month before their first scheduled hunt. “I usually start workouts in July,” he said. “I begin with two- to four-mile conditioning runs every other day for two weeks. If they’re developing slowly, I’ve got time built into the schedule; but most dogs are ready to increase to between four and six miles for their third and fourth week of training. They’re running eight to 10 miles every other day in August. September is a blend of maintenance conditioning and finish skill-set work. Steadiness, casting, retrieving to hand and the rest are my main focus.”

Booth likes his dogs to put their best feet forward. Literally. “A dog’s paws sometimes get overlooked,” he said, “but dogs with pad cuts, broken nails and strained tendons might be out of commission for the best part of the season. Dogs with darker pads have more melanin, so their paws are tougher than those with lighter-colored pads. Keep an eye on the paws when you start workouts. I run dogs on soft terrain, like on a dirt two-track or in a field. Products like Pad-Tough and Musher’s Secret help nourish pads and fast track the conditioning process for dogs that go from kitchen floors and manicured lawns.”

Dogs are a big focus in the country’s top waterfowling state, Arkansas, and Brett Copeland of Webb Footed Kennels, in Jonesboro, has more than a hundred Labs to get ready. “It takes a minimum of 60 days to get ready for first season,” the Eukanuba pro trainer said, “but I would prefer to have them for 120 days.” Seventy of Copeland’s dogs run hunt tests every weekend for most of the year, so they just need to be refocused on hunting instead of testing. He gets another 25 to 30 tune-up dogs that are in to prepare for the season, and with them he focuses on four main things:

Conditioning

“If the dog hasn’t been worked much in the off-season,” Copeland said, “then I’ll run short to medium marks. The summer in Arkansas is hot, so I’ll make sure the dog is cutting water to stay cool. When a dog shows me he’s ready for more work, I’ll increase his training. My conditioning training goal is for a dog to have plenty of energy at the end of a day’s hunt and to be able to go all season long. Older dogs can run as good as younger dogs, but more time goes into conditioning older dogs.” 

Train for a Particular Hunting Style

“My tune-up dogs come from all states between Canada and Arkansas. To set up a useful training platform, I’ve got to know what kind of hunting they’ll do. They’ll get exposure to all different kinds of blinds, boats and stands, but I lean in on how the dog will hunt for most of the season. If he’s a timber dog, then we’ll do more stand work than pit-blind work. The main point is that preseason training will include everything they’ll see during the season and more.” 

The Training Trinity

“We have a joke around here that we train dogs because we’re too lazy to fetch ducks ourselves,” Copeland said. “But outside of conditioning, I’ll make sure that my dogs can do three things well all the time: be steady to shot, be force broke to retrieve and deliver to hand, and be in the kind of condition that they can do it all day. If a dog can do these three things all the time, he’ll have a good season.”

Train as You Play Every Day

“My training sessions have to resemble hunts,” Copeland said. “I’m releasing live birds, blowing on duck calls, shooting and working multiple dogs together. Hunting season comes with a lot of distractions, so preparing your dog for what he’ll experience is key.”

Whoever said “the extra mile never has any traffic jams” must have been a dog trainer getting ready for the season. The more time and effort you put in, the greater the reward will be—especially because your dogs will have been prepared to peak. 

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