Professional dog trainers: Are you meeting the needs of your gundog-owning clients?

If you run puppy classes, adolescent courses or one-to-one dog training sessions, you are almost certain to work with gundogs.

Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Cocker and English Springer Spaniels are common family pets. You may also meet Vizslas, German Shorthaired Pointers, Weimaraners, Setters and popular gundog crosses like Labradoodles and Cockapoos.

Royal Kennel Club registration figures show just how large the gundog group is. 

Looking at data from over the last decade, an average of 95,000 gundogs are registered each year. That represents around 40%, nearly half, of all puppy registrations. 

More gundog puppies will also be unregistered, and more still will fall into the non-Kennel Club recognised breeds and popular crossbreeds carrying many of the same breed traits.*

Despite gundogs accounting for such a large percentage of dogs, gundog training is far from the top of most popular dog training disciplines and it is something very few professional pet dog trainers offer alongside their classes.

While times are changing thanks to an increase in ethical gundog training methods, too many pet gundog owners are still missing out on the joys and benefits of breed-specific training.

In this month’s blog, we’ll take a look at the dangers of not offering gundog training to your pet gundog clients, the benefits of getting involved in breed-specific training for those who don’t want to work their dog, and how our Gundog Assessment Programme might help you add some fun gundog training into your existing classes.

Why can pet gundogs be more difficult to train

Gundogs have been bred for hunting, flushing, and retrieving game. They share many common attributes, such as the instincts to hunt, chase, and capture prey.

Over the decades, they have also been bred for their sociability, friendliness, intelligence and trainability (biddable nature). These traits have made them extremely attractive and desirable for families.

And so, a large proportion of the gundog puppies born into the world every year head off to family homes, destined to be pet gundogs with no expectation of working in the shooting field.

Your clients may have bought a Labrador, Golden Retriever, Spaniel, Setter, or Vizsla with the expectation that they will simply fit into everyday life like any other breed of dog.

But they’re now in your classes, stressed and unsure how to cope with a hunting machine that pulls from scent to scent, that has so much energy it struggles to settle anywhere (even at home), and a dog that they can’t trust off-lead because there’s no guarantee they will come back when called. 

And on top of that, with no outlet for their innate desires to hunt, chase, and retrieve, pet gundogs are more susceptible to developing lasting and damaging behavioural problems.

Sadly, we have seen it all: resource guarding, constant frustration barking, obsessive shadow or tail chasing, destructive chewing, and general over-arousal and over-excitement.

Struggling to help a client with a pet gundog does not make you a bad trainer

Professional dog trainers can feel uncomfortable when their usual methods do not produce the expected results.

Perhaps the Labrador in your class understands every exercise but becomes over-aroused when they see a ball. The Spaniel works well indoors but appears to forget everything as soon as you move into a field. The Vizsla can recall at close range but disappears when it finds scent.

Indeed, those who are uninitiated to a gundog’s way of thinking and naive to their hunting prowess can find it a struggle to teach even the basic reliable recall and loose lead walking in the presence of distractions such as wildlife and scent.

But this does not mean that you lack dog training knowledge.  You may simply be trying to solve a gundog problem without enough gundog training in the dog’s life.

You cannot teach a dog to stop wanting to hunt, but you can teach them when, where and how hunting is appropriate. You can help owners become part of that activity and build trained responses around it.

The same applies to retrieving. Repeatedly preventing a dog from picking things up may create frustration. And throwing a ball until the dog is exhausted can produce a fitter, more obsessive retriever.

But teaching a controlled retrieve gives the behaviour a start cue, a clear sequence and an end. The dog learns to wait, collect, return and share what they have found.

Why pet gundog problems can’t be solved with more exercise

Many pet gundog owners think that they can simply tire their dogs out by giving them plenty of exercise.

However, allowing a gundog breed to free run for two or three hours a day is a recipe for disaster.

Gundogs were bred to work all day, week in, week out, during the shooting season. More exercise will only help to improve their fitness level and will create an athlete.

What’s more, letting them off the lead to go “self-employed” and do whatever they want repeatedly teaches them to disengage from the owner when out and about. No wonder they don’t want to stay close or come back to their “boring” human when called.

Similar problems also occur when owners focus only on the retrieve e.g., throwing an endless number of balls for their pet gundog in the park.

Yes, the dog is more likely to stay close (well, to the ball), but it will still be getting fitter every day, and the owner will soon create a “wired”, adrenaline-filled, ball-obsessed dog.

As long as they are getting plenty of mental stimulation and brain work (such as short daily training sessions), our gundog breeds only need 20 to 30 minutes of hard exercise per day.

Depending on what you offer in your existing training business, you might have also noticed that even those pet gundogs participating in other activities such as scentwork, canicross, agility, and hoopers can still present owners with challenges.

While training activities engage their brains and ensure they get plenty of exercise, they still do not allow them to express their natural behaviours.

Scentwork is a passive indication, whereas hunting is active. Agility and canicross may be physically active, but they are not what these dogs were bred to do, and so they can still lead to frustration-induced behavioural problems.

The best dogs thrive when owners combine these dog sports with gundog work.

What is the point of gundog training if the dog will never work on a shoot? 

Incorporating breed-specific training and gundog activities into pet gundogs' daily lives is essential if you want to help your clients avoid the long list of problems associated with bored Labradors, Spaniels, and HPRs.

Traditional gundog training is not every pet gundog owner’s cup of tea. It is very outside and in the real world - in all weather and covering all terrain. 

Owners may also be reluctant to get involved in a hobby related to field sports due to personal beliefs.

However, it is very easy to keep things fun and practical for your clients and the basic gundog behaviours do not require shot, game or access to a shoot.

As you can see from the behaviours below, a lot of it is just general obedience skills which will improve any dog-owner relationship and where it’s less obvious, we have also added how training these will benefit pet gundog owning clients.

Come/Recall

In gundog training, recall is ‘proofed’ around lots of exciting distractions and paired with very high-value rewards, which means that your clients’ gundogs will learn that it pays to return even if there are scents, other dogs or wildlife around.

Heel

While most owners will say that they just want a dog that walks nicely on a lead, pet or working, if a gundog is in the heel position, by the laws of physics, they cannot be simultaneously pulling on the lead.

Steadiness

Gundogs need to be steady and not run in on retrieves or when the hunting line has stopped for safety reasons. Teaching pet gundogs steadiness helps them self-manage their impulsive desires and can stop unwanted behaviours like suddenly lunging on the lead or running after a squirrel they’ve just spotted.

Stop whistle

We need to teach our hunting gundogs to stop to flush, and our retrievers need to stop to look at us for directions if they cannot locate a dummy or bird. For pet gundogs, the stop whistle, like the recall, is a safety feature. It’s an emergency stop that might prevent them from jumping a barbed wire fence or jetting off to greet a reactive looking dog on a lead.

Retrieve / Delivery to hand

We harness natural retrieving instincts by teaching our gundogs to fetch and return items gently and efficiently. This is of paramount importance when working to guarantee that all game ends up on the table as part of a nutritious meal.

If a client’s pet gundog does not have a suitable outlet for their retrieving desires, you might have noticed their intense passion for picking up an array of items. This can be a daily frustration - especially for those who have expensive shoes carried off to be ‘killed’ and ‘consumed’.

Teaching gundogs to retrieve on cue and to learn that not everything is theirs to retrieve can significantly reduce this activity in the house. Even if they persist in carrying, by teaching them to deliver to hand, instead of destroying things, they should learn that it is more valuable to share their treasure.

Hunting

We can teach our hunting dogs to put their noses down and follow scent on cue while staying close to us. This is used for finding and flushing game. While this doesn’t seem useful for pet gundog owners, the games and exercises used to teach our dogs this skill can help them to learn that hunting with us, and listening to us while hunting, is much more rewarding than going self-employed and becoming deaf to our calls.

Hopefully you can see how these behaviours will all positively impact your pet gundog clients’ lives. It should also be noted too that gundog training is great fun and a fantastic way to establish and build a wonderful relationship with a dog.

How to add gundog training into your pet dog training business

You do not need to turn a puppy class into a working gundog course to help your gundog-owning clients.

Small changes can make a big impact without overcomplicating the myriad of other behaviours your clients are already working towards. 

If you notice your client’s gundog pulls on the lead because they are constantly and urgently trying to reach scent, you might want to give the dog planned opportunities to search and hunt, as well as working on lead skills.

If another client tells you that they’re struggling to cope with their gundog stealing belongings and destructive chewing, you could help them to train a retrieve - giving the dog an appropriate outlet for picking up and carrying and also teaching them that returning an item to the owner has value.

If clients are worried about letting their gundog off the lead because their recall isn’t reliable you might want to teach the dog to check in and how to ‘bumble’ as well as proofing the recall around distractions, and providing structured hunting opportunities. 

These additional gundog exercises do not replace your existing training skills. They simply help you apply those skills to the needs and motivations of a gundog.

That is a valuable skill for any professional trainer who works with pet gundogs.

Learn how to help the gundogs in your classes

If you regularly work with Labradors, Spaniels, HPRs or other gundog breeds, learning gundog training skills can add a valuable area of knowledge to your work and can help you support a large section of the pet dog population. 

Our 2027 Handler’s Course is open to professional dog trainers who want to understand gundogs, improve their practical handling skills and offer more suitable support to the dogs already attending their classes.

The course is designed to teach you how to get started training the foundation gundog skills using ethical, positive reinforcement methods. It will also give you games, exercises and teaching material that you can use to support your pet dog clients.

You will work with your own dog, learn how to break exercises into achievable stages and see how different breeds and individual dogs respond.

Find out more and sign up for the 2027 GTA Handler’s Course

You do not need to become a traditional gundog trainer to make a difference. Adding sound gundog knowledge to your existing skills could help you and your clients understand these dogs far better.

***The average annual registration total for each breed group has been calculated from The Royal Kennel Club comparative tables of registration https://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/media-centre/breed-registration-statistics/