| spaniel training

ELECTRONIC TRAINING DEVICES & SPANIELS
By Rob Barlow, Stayton, Oregon
( published in Spaniels In The Field - summer 1996 )

The recent push from electronic collar makers has compelled me to write this article. If nothing else but to voice my opinion on the use and long term effects that the collar will cause on our spaniel breed: not any individual dog, but the breed as a whole.

First let's talk about what the collar has done to other breeds of dogs. I'll use the most popular breed, the Labrador Retriever. I have had years of experience training these dogs. I have seen first hand the effects of electronic training on these wonderful animals.

Years ago when one was looking for a good retriever trial prospect, he would select a dog that had a good nose, that marked well and had a good mouth. Sounds familiar doesn't it? These traits are what we should be looking for in every breed of dog that we use to hunt birds.

In the past these dogs were hard to handle, and train. The reason for this I believe is the burning desire they had to find birds. This made some of these dogs impossible to train with conventional methods. I have seen old timers shoot their dogs with bird shot, sling shots, and shotguns, just to punish the dogs for doing something wrong. (I've been told that this was common practice with the spaniels too, at one time).

With the introduction of the electric collar, these barbaric practices began to disappear. Although the first collars were crude compared with todays collars, they were more effective and humane then the old methods.

As the collar evolved so did the training programs for these dogs. People found that the "burn to learn" methods didn't work as effectively as the low intensity avoidance programs. As the avoidance programs were being perfected, something else was being changed also.
People started selecting dogs that were easier to train. Dogs that responded to electricity. No longer did they select dogs with strong bird desire, good nose, and natural talent; for these dogs pulled and yanked them around. With this selectiveness, the breed also started to change. With this change came disaster.

The precision control that collar training developed in the Labrador Retriever allowed the field trial tests to become all but impossible to do with a dog that had any natural talent to find birds.
Thus began the evolution of the new Labrador Retriever. No longer are people breeding dogs with natural bird finding talent or desire. What is being sought after is a dog that trains well and goes where it is pointed, regardless of what is in the way. No longer do they want the good nose, no longer do they care how well the dog marks a fall. Why? Because they can train the dog to run a straight line anywhere.

So how does this affect our sport. Let's take a look at who is promoting the sale of the electronic collar. It's not anybody that has made a field champion in the spaniel sport, or that has years of experience training these dogs for competition. It's people from the retriever sport, who want to sell you a product. That's right, these people make their living by training dogs, and I'm concerned about the outcome of the evolution of electronic training devices and spaniels. I do not want to see this breed change as did the retrievers.

When I first came into this sport, I had the idea that I could train these dogs to do anything. This is typical retriever mentality. Through trial and error I soon learned that these dogs were different from the retriever. They trained different, they needed more room to learn and develop their talents, and pushing and forcing these dogs to do something that they weren't ready to do usually came to the tragic end of what could have been a wonderful dog.

After making a few field champions and finishing two out of three nationals with several dogs. I have demonstrated my ability to train the springer and I do use the collar. But I believe that the present collar training methods being promoted to sell electronic collars will begin the new breed of English springer spaniels.

No longer will they have to find birds with their noses, for they can be taught how to run back and forth from one gun to the other. They will no longer need to use the wind or even have a good mouth. All these dogs will need to do is train easily.

I see it happening already with the new video tapes that are showing you how to correct mouth problems and how to force your dog into the water. Force training a spaniel to retrieve will be the death of these dogs as we know them, whether it's on land or in the water!

This type of training will change our sport as it did the retrievers. You won't need to worry about mouth problems, bird finding abilities, what kind of nose a particular line has, or any natural talents we so desire now. What we will be breeding for is trainability and nothing more.

As a trainer, I do not want to train dogs with mouth problems, or dogs that can't find a bird on their own. I have grown to love and respect this breed. I don't want to see it take the same road the retrievers did.

I'm not anti collar, I use a collar in my everyday training program. But my program differs from what is being promoted. My dogs run hard, use the wind well, and have good mouths. They also love retrieving on land and in the water.

My basic collar program stays in the yard. This method preserves the dogs natural abilities. I don't take control of the dog with the collar in the field. What this does is allow the dog to hunt and find birds without being robotic.

You can virtually control every step the dog takes with a collar. If we use the collar in this way we cannot see any natural talent only trained abilities. There will be no way to select for natural talent. As with the retriever, all the natural abilities will be lost.

The collar will not ruin our breed. How we use the collar can! By training our dogs to run in a robotic fashion and by judges selecting these dogs for placement we will ruin the breed.

For all of us who truly love to be a part of a team where the dog boldly and confidently quests for game, where a dog instinctively uses the wind, where a dogs will crash into the thicket cover following bird scent, for all of us who live for the hunt, the future looks bleak.