Who actually works their dogs?

[wrenside]

My Bella works, she's almost three now and she's getting a bit of experience at beating and picking up under her belt. She no longer gets overly excited by the shoot, you can see her relax into concentrating on what  you ask her to do now, because she's not so suprised by what she flushes or what she has to go and pick up for you.
She's still slightly unsteady on rabbits, there's just something about that bobbing white tail!
But we're trying to conqour this by going walling for rabbits along the dry stone walls in order to familiarise her with what rabbits and how she's not spposed to want to catch them!. She locates the rabbits in the wall by smell, then I reach into the wall and grab the rabbit (unharmed), we then go out into the middle of an open field and I have bella at my heel. I put the rabbit on the ground and it bolts. Bella is kept to heel and walked towards where the rabbit went and then I say 'leave' and walk in the oposite direction with her to heel, then I praise her and give her a dummy to go and retrieve for me.
 So far this all seems to be going very well and she will no longer chase after a bolting rabbit when we're out beating. However she has had a few mishaps where I've been lazy, on a walk for instance where she is off lead and she finds a rabbit when she's relatively far ahead of me and she does sometimes choose to chase. In that case I blow the recall whistle and walk in the opposite direction to where she's gone and she's always returned pretty much immediately looking rather sheepish! I doubt the issue of rabbits will ever be truely sorted for my little Bella, but apart from this weakness she's a joy to go shooting with and makes a lovely pet as well.

There's an absolutely gorgeous black working cocker bitch who works on the same shoot as us every year and she doesn't chase rabbits (or maybe her owner has just been very lucky!! ) and is beautifully behaved, so she is what we're wanting Bella to aspire to!

Mary

 

[crazyspaniels]

hmmm, the dreaded rabbits, my Willow will chase rabbits 

[Cazzie]

My labs are trained not to chase rabbits and anything other furry and dont. My cocker on the other hand has started to chase them and she is in training to stop this at the moment.

This is not just a good idea to train working dogs not to chase but all dogs as it is infact illegal to have you're dog chase certain other animals. ie hares/deer.

[Cob-Web]

This is not just a good idea to train working dogs not to chase but all dogs as it is infact illegal to have you're dog chase certain other animals. ie hares/deer.

Is it? 

[Nicola]

My labs are trained not to chase rabbits and anything other furry and dont. My cocker on the other hand has started to chase them and she is in training to stop this at the moment.

So is Alfie!    The thing with rabbits is that they just pop up out of nowhere, at least with sheep/deer etc. you can spot them in advance! 

[Nicola]

This is not just a good idea to train working dogs not to chase but all dogs as it is infact illegal to have you're dog chase certain other animals. ie hares/deer.

Is it? 

Yes, in Scotland anyway. It comes under the hunting ban although I have a feeling it only applies if you have two or more dogs. I think it's actually illegal to 'encourage' them to chase a wild animal but the difficulty would be in proving that you weren't encouraging them to do it so safer not to let them do it at all (and better for the wildlife as well!).

[Penel]

Well yes it's illegal for you and your dogs to hunt them.  But they have to prove intent to hunt.  So if my 5 dogs chase a deer, "they" would have to prove I went out with intent to hunt a deer....
I'm actually quite impressed with my dogs' hunting skills, not many dogs can catch healthy rabbits !

[Cob-Web]

Well yes it's illegal for you and your dogs to hunt them.  But they have to prove intent to hunt.  So if my 5 dogs chase a deer, "they" would have to prove I went out with intent to hunt a deer....
I'm actually quite impressed with my dogs' hunting skills, not many dogs can catch healthy rabbits !

Thanx for clearing that up, Penel 

[Nicola]

Well yes it's illegal for you and your dogs to hunt them.  But they have to prove intent to hunt.  So if my 5 dogs chase a deer, "they" would have to prove I went out with intent to hunt a deer....
I'm actually quite impressed with my dogs' hunting skills, not many dogs can catch healthy rabbits !

The Police only have to 'reasonably suspect' you are hunting with your dogs or that you are about to hunt in order to perform an arrest and they can also seize and confiscate dogs and vehicles which they suspect are being used in connection with hunting.

In February of this year two men in Lancashire were found guilty in court of hunting rabbits with lurchers and were fined and there have been similar fines for hunting foxes and hares also.

I do not let my dogs chase any wild mammals, it is not worth the risk imo.

[cazza]

Fern's been out working a couple of times 

But we need some more training and I've recently (well today in fact) found what i hope is going to be a brill trainer to help me, have to speak with / pick the persons brains i'm meeting tomorrow 

(I've been looking for pheasent pens and rabbit pens to help me in her training )

[Penel]

The Police only have to 'reasonably suspect' you are hunting with your dogs or that you are about to hunt in order to perform an arrest and they can also seize and confiscate dogs and vehicles which they suspect are being used in connection with hunting.

In February of this year two men in Lancashire were found guilty in court of hunting rabbits with lurchers and were fined and there have been similar fines for hunting foxes and hares also.

I do not let my dogs chase any wild mammals, it is not worth the risk imo.

oh c'mon, it's quite likely those two men were very obviously poachers, they probably had bags to put their kills in, knives, etc etc.... a vehicle used for hunting is likely to be a 4 x 4 with lamps on the back, and camouflage equipment in it.  I am guessing you don't know many working lurchermen do you....(pest controllers I mean, not poachers...)
They are really not likely to arrest me when my dogs occasionally catch a rabbit 

[Helen]

Well yes it's illegal for you and your dogs to hunt them.  But they have to prove intent to hunt.  So if my 5 dogs chase a deer, "they" would have to prove I went out with intent to hunt a deer....
I'm actually quite impressed with my dogs' hunting skills, not many dogs can catch healthy rabbits !

The Police only have to 'reasonably suspect' you are hunting with your dogs or that you are about to hunt in order to perform an arrest and they can also seize and confiscate dogs and vehicles which they suspect are being used in connection with hunting.

In February of this year two men in Lancashire were found guilty in court of hunting rabbits with lurchers and were fined and there have been similar fines for hunting foxes and hares also.

I do not let my dogs chase any wild mammals, it is not worth the risk imo.

hmmmm.... but these cases actually sound like they WERE intending to hunt?

with the best will in the world sometimes a dog WILL chase a rabbit/deer or worse, horse/cow/sheep no matter how well they are trained, so I don't think any of us can be over confident about our dogs training - we can do our best.

I think these 'cases' were pursued to make a point about the hunting ban, and I really cannot see the overstretched wiltshire police coming out to arrest Jarvis and me if he 'accidentally' pursued a rabbit.  As he doesn't, through luck not training (happy to admit my training fallibilities) we will just have to rely on the duck and pheasant police catching us for now....working on that.

[Nicola]

The Police only have to 'reasonably suspect' you are hunting with your dogs or that you are about to hunt in order to perform an arrest and they can also seize and confiscate dogs and vehicles which they suspect are being used in connection with hunting.

In February of this year two men in Lancashire were found guilty in court of hunting rabbits with lurchers and were fined and there have been similar fines for hunting foxes and hares also.

I do not let my dogs chase any wild mammals, it is not worth the risk imo.

oh c'mon, it's quite likely those two men were very obviously poachers, they probably had bags to put their kills in, knives, etc etc.... a vehicle used for hunting is likely to be a 4 x 4 with lamps on the back, and camouflage equipment in it.  I am guessing you don't know many working lurchermen do you....(pest controllers I mean, not poachers...)
They are really not likely to arrest me when my dogs occasionally catch a rabbit 

I actually know quite a few people who have working lurchers and also working terriers who are not poachers so don't make assumptions about me. I have no idea what equipment they had with them, the point I was making is that people have been arrested for letting their dogs hunt wildlife.

You may be quite the expert but not everyone who reads this forum is and people should not be under the impression that it is ok to let their dogs go after wildlife without realising that they could in fact be breaking the law and get themselves into trouble. You are clearly of a different pov but I'd rather be safe than sorry in this situation and I would imagine that many other people would too.

[Nicola]

I think these 'cases' were pursued to make a point about the hunting ban, and I really cannot see the overstretched wiltshire police coming out to arrest Jarvis and me if he 'accidentally' pursued a rabbit.  As he doesn't, through luck not training (happy to admit my training fallibilities) we will just have to rely on the duck and pheasant police catching us for now....working on that.

Helen, as I've already said above, this is not the point I was trying to make - police coming out to arrest people with ONE dog 'accidentally' chasing a rabbit    Apart from anything else as I've already said the law only applies to groups of two or more dogs. As has been pointed out many times on COL not everyone who reads these posts has the benefit of the vast knowledge that some seem to have and therefore I thought that in this case where the hunting law is concerned it was best to make it clear what is actually permitted and what is not. People can then make informed decisions about what they do and don't let their dogs do, that's up to them. 

[Helen]

for goodness sake, i was only trying to inject a bit of humour as this was starting to get a bit heated