Choosing a Bird Dog Puppy and Finishing a Dog

EDITOR'S NOTE: Many different philosophies exist on how to train a bird dog puppy. But John Cameron of Cameron's Hunting Preserve and Bird Dog Training School in Panola, Alabama, considers instilling in a dog the desire to find, chase and catch quail at an extremely early age the quickest and most-efficient way to train a bird dog puppy. Cameron never has known a time when he hasn't trained and hunted with bird dogs. His father, Bubber Cameron, trained and hunted bird dogs all of his life and had his two sons, Rush and John, always at his side. This week, John Cameron will explain why he believes the old way of puppy training is the best way.

Question: What are some of the advantages to training bird dog puppies using your training techniques?
Answer: Twelve weeks after a puppy is born, you'll know what kind of bird dog you're going to have. If you wait until the pup is 1-1/2-years old before you start training it, you've put a lot of feed and vet bills into that puppy and still may not have a bird dog. When you look at puppies after they've come out of puppy training, you can see the pups that have the most desire to find birds, the ones that are staunch on point, the ones that will back and the ones that are beginning to learn how to retrieve. From puppy training, you can really know what a dog's going to be in later years. At the end of puppy training, you'll know for certain if a pup is bird-shy, man-shy or gun-shy. Ninety-six percent of the pups that come through our puppy training will not be man-shy, bird-shy or gun-shy.

Most hunters don't believe that you can begin training a young pup as soon as it's weaned, but we've learned that if you start with the puppies at that early age, you train them much faster and much quicker. Puppy training makes a good dog a great dog, a fair dog a good dog and even a poor dog a pretty good dog with which to hunt. Very rarely do I see a dog come through puppy training that doesn't have the desire to find and hunt quail.

Question: What does puppy training coast?
Answer: Puppy training costs $250 a month per dog for one or two puppies. If you bring three dogs or more, the price is $175 per dog.

Question: Do you have a completed dog once it's finished puppy training?
Answer: After puppy training, the dog should point and back and hunt with you. But he's not totally obedience-trained, and he's not usually retriever trained. However, once a dog's been through puppy training, we can usually put another four to six more weeks in him of formal training where we take him out by himself one-on-one and produce a finished dog.

Question: You also raise and sell puppies?
Answer: Yes, we generally raise two litters of pointers and one litter of Boykin spaniels per year.

Question: What does the training after the dogs have been through puppy training cost?
Answer: Formal training costs $300 a month. If a dog hasn't been through puppy training, four months is usually the minimum time we have to spend training a bird dog. However, if a dog has been through puppy training, we can generally finish that dog with only one to two months of additional training.

For more information about puppy training, contact John Cameron at 1001 Rockway Rd. # 4, Aliceville, AL 35442; or, call (205) 455-2420 or (205) 455-2268; or, email cameron@froglevel.net.