re: Update on poodle training

Good stuff. Keep up the updates please! I think it is a grand idea to continue the practice of all sporting dogs being trained to hunt.

I started a yellow lab female at about 30 months once. A friend was dying of cancer and asked that I take her in. He was a duck hunter but his medical condition started when the dog was about 10 weeks old and he just did not have the time or stamina needed to train her. She turned out pretty good...and it wasn't that difficult really...she was much more mature and focused but she never had the drive that she would have had if she had been hunted in her first year and the game drive was instilled when she was impressionable. She would retrieve, handle and was well disciplined but she was never as interested in doing so as a dog that was started earlier.

My current lab was started at about 16 months. I got her at 7 weeks and disciplined trained her but I had a pinched nerve in my back that nearly crippled me for about a year and I couldn't do much more than bench train and work her in the yard from a lawn chair. She is a damned good dog but I chalk most of that up to genetics. It is never too late to train them it just takes a different approach....and of course they will have been trained in bad behavior of course which is much harder to overcome