Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Tom Dokken
How to Properly Introduce a Dog to Water
Regardless of the long-range training and hunting goals you set for your retriever, there are three things you absolutely cannot afford to screw up while your dog is still a puppy. That is their introduction to water, birds, and gunfire. These three tenets of building a solid hunting retriever are non-negotiable. For this article, I’m going to explain my methods for properly introducing your pup to water.
How to Train a Bird Dog to Hunt Dead
The ability to “hunt dead” adds extra value to your retriever as an upland hunter. When a bird is down and dead, or—as sometimes happens—down but wounded, your dog is going to have to find that bird using its nose. There are plenty of drills you can do to help it learn how to use its sense of smell more efficiently. So much of what we do with our retrievers is visual. You throw a bumper (or someone throws it for you), your retriever sees it, and goes after it.
Finding Success Hunting Winter Roosters
Pheasant hunting after cold and snow have settled in for the winter is a radically different challenge than what you and your retriever experienced in the early season. Birds that escaped heavy pressure in October have learned a lot about survival. With instincts honed by successful escapes from the gangs of dogs and hunters that have been chasing them, even young birds may have taken on the wise characteristics of their older brethren.
Transitioning from Training to Hunting
Ahhh, October. Depending on where you live, you’re either already enjoying what many hunters consider to be the best month of the year, or you’re getting ready to kick off a new season full of hope. It’s finally time to trade in practice sessions for the real game. With the new season will come highs and lows, wins and losses, challenges and opportunities. My advice is that you view your hunting season through the lens of not only a hunter, but also as a retriever trainer.
Guided Hunt Etiquette - Gun Dog
Nothing makes a hunting outfitter’s eyes roll quicker than when a customer asks if he or she can bring their own dog on a guided hunt. That’s because most, if not all, outfitters and guides will tell you stories about guest dogs that have ruined a day in the field. Guides have their own dogs and routines. A new dog, even a good one, upsets the order of things and can make the host’s job more difficult.
Gaining Control of Your Hunting Dog
I use the last several weeks of summer and early fall to do an honest assessment of my dogs’ performances last year, what they’ve improved upon over the summer, and what we still need to clean up before the new season’s opener. For younger dogs, this pre-season period is an opportunity to continue teaching new skills as they advance beyond foundational obedience.
Keeping Your Retriever Engaged When The Hunting Gets Slow
It’s easy to outdrive your headlights when it comes to a new retriever. In my world, this often happens when people try to move their new duck dog through too much training, too fast. They want to skip the foundational work to move on to the double-blind retrieves, when the dogs are still in a stage where they need the basics, and only the basics. This too-much-too-fast mindset invades hunting, too.
Getting a Grip on Big Birds
I’ve seen even the most confident dogs run out to retrieve their first goose, attempt to pick it up and then drop it and look back as if to say, “Seriously? This thing? Come on!” It’s one thing to have a really great duck dog, but when it’s time for your retriever to pick up a goose that’s two to four times as heavy and broad, it’s a whole different experience.
Summer Workouts for Retrievers
Exercise during the summer months is critically important in getting your dog ready for fall. If you expect your dog to hunt hard all day, sometimes for multiple days in a row, starting a crash course in conditioning two weeks before the season opener is not going to get the job done. It’s worth your time to plan how you’re going to keep your dog in shape and build its endurance with exercises both on land and in the water, starting right now.
How to Use a Drone for Dog Training
Advancements in gear for retriever training over the past couple decades are truly remarkable. Remote-controlled bird launchers, retriever-specific e-collars and other advanced technology have made training easier and more efficient. Several years ago, I added another piece of technical my training regimen and it has had a profound impact on helping my retrievers become better waterfowl dogs.
How To Make the Most of Off-Season Dog Training
You have a few months until the next opening day. How are you going to spend it? You can sit around and relax, hoping your retriever magically becomes better than it was last fall, or you can get to work right now with the goal of continuing to build a better hunting dog. If you have a young dog, the off-season is the time to introduce new training challenges; for veteran dogs, it’s time to clean up problems that may have cropped up during last season’s hunts.
How to Add a Puppy to Your Pack
Plan ahead for the right pup and get them at the right time. Waterfowl seasons across much of the country are coming to a close. Much of the far northern water is iced up, and even the southern reaches of the migration are facing the inevitable end to another year of duck hunting. This is the time when a lot of us deal with cleaning and packing away our gear. It’s also the time when a lot of us look to our retrievers and do a little mental math on how many more years of hunting they might have left.
Setting Reasonable Expectations With Your Retriever
Gauge your dog’s fitness and hunt accordingly. This is the time of year when the dreamy hunts happen. Gone are the early morning sunrises where the temperature hits 60 degrees by the time you’ve finished half of your coffee. The mornings where you’re hoping for a few teal or wood ducks to save the day, and fantasies of the migration are just that, fantasies. This is the month, at least throughout much of the flyway, that real weather is going to show up.
Signs of An Unraveling Dog
Looking at the top three ways in which duck dogs fall apart and leave compliance by the wayside. While I have a deep passion for retrievers and waterfowl hunting, I divide my time up between ducks and deer each fall. I love bowhunting whitetails, and there is something that happens each season that reminds me of our dogs. It involves the frequency of target practice sessions. Throughout the summer, the motivation to try to shoot a few tight groups is easy to come by.
How to Avoid Over- and Under-Handling Your Dog
Handling issues and a dog’s range in the field are always linked. As long as you’ve done your part in the off-season, your dog will probably be at his sharpest point when the season kicks off—at least with obedience and control. But as the season progresses, some issues might creep in, and that early season sharpness might suddenly dull a bit. This, at least with flushers, is often most noticeable with range. For example, a good rule of thumb for pheasant hunting is that 30 yards is far enough.
How to Control Your Dog Quietly
When it comes to early season hunts, you have a lot of advantages. The birds are usually spread out pretty evenly through the cover—cover that isn’t often overly thick. You also have uneducated birds, and young birds, with which to work. Making a little extra noise then, to keep your dog in line, isn’t going to cost you a limit in most cases. But when it comes to the last weeks of the season, the rules change. The dumb birds are dead. The cover is always thick and unruly.
Retriever Communication 101
If you have the opportunity to watch a real, finished duck dog work, you’ll see something special. The relationship between the retriever and its handler will involve a lot of independence, but also communication. The dog will always wait for the signal to be released, and if the downed bird or dummy isn’t located quickly, will ask for help. When help is given, the dog will keep working toward the goal.
How to Train the Dual-Purpose Retriever
One of the biggest reasons why those of us who live for both upland and waterfowl hunting tend to lean pretty heavily on retrievers for our outdoor pursuits, is their versatility. Of course, being versatile in description is a far cry from an actual dog that knows how to perform in both types of settings. Getting to that point takes a lot of training and an understanding of how different the ask is for both types of hunts. They are, essentially, opposites to one another.
How to Push Past the Duck Season Doldrums with Your Dog
It’s easy to outdrive your headlights when it comes to a new retriever. In my world, this often happens when people try to move their new duck dog through too much training, too fast. They want to skip the foundational work to move on to the double-blind retrieves, when the dogs are still in a stage where they need the basics, and only the basics. This too-much-too-fast mindset invades hunting, too.
How to Make Your Early Season Efficient
Let’s say you live in the Midwest, and you’ve got a dream chukar hunt booked in Hells Canyon of Idaho, or some other tough-as-nails, up-and-down environment. You would not decide a week before the trip to lace up your hunting boots and head to the gym to use the stair-climber to prepare. You would start weeks, or better yet, months earlier. The same rules apply to hunting dogs and the early season.
The Problem with Overtraining Your Dog
Overtraining is a unique issue. We often think about it as if someone has worked and worked their retriever to the point where its skills erode, or the dog physically can’t function, but that’s not what happens in most cases. In reality, overtraining happens when any one of us goes beyond our dog’s attention threshold in any given training session. This is almost never tied to hours upon hours of training but can instead happen in a matter of a few minutes if you’re working a young-enough dog.
How to Train Your Soft or Strong-Willed Retriever
We often refer to breeds in generalities. With retrievers, it’s common to hear people say that they are always one way, or never another. While some traits and hunting styles are certainly endemic to specific breeds, the reality is that every dog is an individual and needs to be trained as such. This is true regardless of bloodlines, and often boils down to whether you’re dealing with what we’d call a soft dog, or dog that is strong-willed.
How to Choose the Proper Pedigree for Your Puppy
Our attention, training, opportunities, and environments all factor into a puppy’s development. They should all be considered before we decide on exactly what litter our next pick comes from. (Photo By: Mark Atwater) Puppy shopping can be a daunting process. Even when you’ve narrowed down your chosen breed, you’re still likely to have dozens of choices to sift through. In the case of popular dogs like Labrador retrievers, you might have hundreds of breeders to consider.
End of Season Retriever Assessment
As the season wraps up, it's time to make a training plan that acknowledges what went wrong. It’s not fun to look back on all of last season’s downfalls, but it’s worth it. (Photo By: Jeff Moore) March 02, 2022 By Tom Dokken Depending on where you live, the late season could signal some of the best hunting of the season or some of the last. Where I live it’s usually the latter.
Dealing with a Low Drive Dog
What to do if your duck dog just can't find a higher retrieving gear. All of us want a dog that lives to bring dummies and dead ducks back to hand and the good news is there’s usually something that can be worked with in a dog showing a low drive. (Photo By: Jari Hindstroem/Shutterstock.com) January 22, 2022 By Tom Dokken In the hunting dog space, we speak of drive in general terms that don’t separate upland dogs from waterfowl retrievers.
Late Season Pheasant Hunting Tactics
Follow these tips to get your dog on as many late-season ring-necks as possible. (Photo By: Tony J. Peterson) January 11, 2022 By Tom Dokken During the early and middle part of pheasant season, you can get away with a little bit more than you can when the clock is starting to run out and the temperatures have dropped. Late-season birds are survivors, and they really don’t tolerate too many mistakes from us, or our dogs.
Conditioning the Single, All-Season Gun Dog
Avoid burning out your only bird dog by setting appropriate expectations and practicing proper maintenance. (Photo By: Tony J. Peterson) December 03, 2021 By Tom Dokken The ability to rotate in fresh dogs throughout the duration of a hunt is a luxury most hunters don’t have. The majority of upland hunters are running a single dog, which means to avoid retriever burnout, they’ve got to think things through on a daily, or weekly basis.
How to Train During the Hunting Season
Even though the duck season is open, that doesn't mean it's time to stop training. Stopping training at any point is a major mistake so the best way to avoid a disruption is to continue training during and between hunts. (Photo By: Suzi Nelson/Shutterstock.com) November 29, 2021 By Tom Dokken Anyone who has ever tried to diet or get into an exercise regimen knows that there are moments in life that disrupt our best-laid plans.
Duck Dog Gear Checklist
Must-haves to assure your retriever's hunts go well. It’s good to be prepared so that you don’t miss a chance to stare skyward at sunrise with your retriever at your side—no matter where you end up. (Photo By: Tony J. Peterson) November 18, 2021 By Tom Dokken The list of gear you need for the first few hunts of the season could be minimal, or extensive. The small-water, bank-sitter looking to scratch out a few woodies or teal might be able to carry all of the hunt’s essentials in a backpack.
Training Your Gun Dog for Waterfowl Hunting
In some ways, training an upland dog and a waterfowl dog is pretty similar. After all, without a rock-solid foundation of obedience, neither is going to be all that much fun in the field or on the water. There are many skills that transcend hunting styles, locations and ultimately, desired quarry. There are also obvious differences between upland and waterfowl hunting that require specifics out of your retriever.
How to Avoid Mid-Season Burnout With Your Retriever
Slow hunts can create negative behaviors for inexperienced duck dogs. There may be times between opening day and the final flight of the season when our retrievers may need a little extra encouragement to maintain their drive to hunt. (Tony J. Peterson photo) October 18, 2021 By Tom Dokken Ask most duck hunters when they really want to be in a blind and you’ll probably get two answers—early season and late season.
Tune-Up Time vs Teaching New Skills
Dog training never ends, but you’ve got to be careful about what you ask your dog to learn if you’ve got a limited time-frame. (Tony J. Peterson photo) September 26, 2021 By Tom Dokken The excitement of the impending season does a couple of things to us retriever owners. The first is that it tends to cause us to ramp up the training with our dogs as the opening bell looms ever close.
Overlooked Retriever Training
Three pre-season considerations to alleviate unwelcome surprises once the season opens. Retrievers need to learn to retriever farther than we can physically throw a dummy, both on land and in the water. This necessitates the help of a training partner or the use of a dummy launcher, but is a necessary skill. (Tony J.
Embracing New Technology for Your Duck Dog
Advanced retriever training tools for today and tomorrow are a win for both dogs and hunters. As technology advances, so does our capacity to bring cutting edge tools and outside-the-box training methods to enhance the abilities of our retrievers. (Tony J. Peterson photo) August 05, 2021 By Tom Dokken I’ve been training dogs for nearly 50 years. This has allowed me to witness plenty of changes in how we do things, and what tools we have in order to do those things.
Bringing in a Fresh Set of Eyes
Sometimes, pinpointing issues involves seeking out a second set of eyes. (Tony J. Peterson photo) June 21, 2021 By Tom Dokken If you were struggling with your golf game, the worst source of advice you could get would be from a non-golfer. The second-worse source would be your golfing buddy, because he’s not likely to tell you the truth, and quite possibly, is totally unqualified to offer up anything worthwhile.
Avoiding New Puppy Burnout
How to keep your enthusiasm up after the novelty of having a young gun dog wears off. Your best bet for avoiding puppy burnout is to develop a long-term training plan and stick to it. (Tony J. Peterson photo) June 07, 2021 By Tom Dokken There’s a curious thing that happens when most of us buy a gun dog pup. In the days leading to pick up and then in the first few weeks after the youngster enters our home, the enthusiasm usually red lines.
Winter Ice Safety for Retrievers
Late season conditions demand extra caution for duck dogs. Keep your retriever safe around late-season ice with a combination of training, situational awareness, and common sense. (Tony J. Peterson photo) May 24, 2021 By Tom Dokken Part of the reason that waterfowl hunters often welcome misery is because when Mother Nature dishes out nastiness, it tends to bring out the ducks.
Thick Cover Considerations
Train your dog in the tall stuff during the off-season to promote a good late-season, gnarly cover work ethic. The process of working dummies and live birds in high, nasty cover takes time but is worth it to devleop a solid all-season gun dog. (Tony J. Peterson photo) May 23, 2021 By Tom Dokken Anyone who has spent some time hunting upland birds, especially pheasants, knows that the late season can be magical.
Starting Your Puppy the Right Way
Three basic retriever behaviors to shape early in your early training. Start small and dream big by building on your puppy's basic retrieving instincts. (Tony J. Peterson photo) April 23, 2021 By Tom Dokken I’ve written many times about how important it is to have a training plan in place as soon as you bring your new retriever puppy home, but what I’ve never touched on is a couple of easy-to-overlook behaviors that start out as little tendencies, only to bloom into something much bigger.
Tips for Traveling with Your Retriever
Bird hunting road trip? Considerations for your gun dog before hitting the highway. (Tony J. Peterson photo) By Tom Dokken The desire and willingness to travel in search of upland adventure has never been stronger than it is these days. The availability of information on potential hunting spots combined with the opportunity to experience new species in new places is enough to get many of us to plan at least one hunting trip every season.
Teaching Your Retriever to Handle Big Birds
Geese demand special consideration given their size and occasional nastiness. Dogs with decent prey drive can be developed into goose-retrieving machines, but it takes the proper steps and plenty of patience. By Tom Dokken Multitasking dogs are more common than ever, which means that the retriever that used to be dedicated to upland hunting might now spend a fair amount of time each fall in a duck blind.
When A Retriever Requires the Pause Button
Reading behavior so you know when it's time to re-set that retriever. By Tom Dokken It’s a common belief that the more hunting you do, the better a dog will become. This is true with young dogs who are learning the ropes, because improvement in the blind or boat can be so obvious (and so welcome). With older dogs, however, the opposite often holds true. This is because duck dogs are constantly looking for a way to bend the rules.
Teaching Your Gun Dog Field Awareness
Tom Dokken Thinking about, and training for, the most common dangers found in upland environments. One of the most common injuries in the field is caused by bird dogs hitting barbed-wire fences. Field awareness and a good first-aid kit can go a long way toward keeping these encounters from spiraling into serious danger. (Photo by Tony J. Peterson) Back in the early 1980s, I was hunting pheasants in Iowa when my dog flushed a rooster.
Duck Dog Manners and Boat Safety
Tom Dokken Your goal should be to get your retriever comfortable with the idea of being in, and working out of, a boat. Here's how. © Tony J. Peterson In past columns I’ve covered duck boat introduction, which involves confidence building steps with the boat first on land, and then on the shore, and finally in the water. Throughout those steps, the goal is to get the dog comfortable with the idea of being in, and working out of, a boat.
Professional Dog Training Follow-Through At Home
Tom Dokken How to uphold your end of the bargain once your dog is home Tony J. Peterson Photo One of the biggest questions I ask myself as a professional dog trainer is: What is the skill-retention level on dogs that we send home after we’ve trained them? The answer, of course, varies a lot. Skillsets aren’t homogenous across a group of sporting dogs any more than training skills equally transcend individual dog owners.
What You Must Understand About Dog Containment Systems and E-Collar Training
This content is provided by SportDOG® as part of a Sponsored Content package and Sporting Dog Spring Training. By Tom Dokken Just like modern e-collars, the newest in-ground fencing systems, also known as containment systems, have improved life for dogs and their owners. A containment system helps keep your dogs from wandering out of the yard, which is great for their safety and your own peace of mind.
Reach Your Duck Dog's Full Potential
Tom Dokken Are you asking enough of your retriever? Maybe your good gun dog could be great. Photo Credit: Tony J. Peterson When it comes to training dogs, it is very easy to hit a point that either feels like it’s “good enough” or that it’s as far as the individual retriever can go. I realize this is highly subjective, but most of the dogs I get my hands on are sitting on more potential than their owners realize.
Retriever Training from Day One
Tom Dokken Puppy training should start the moment you pick up your new gun dog. Photo Credit: John Hafner It’s all too common to talk to puppy owners who delay training so that their dog can get a little older and understand things better. This is a big mistake. The best window in which to introduce training is the moment you get your hands on your new puppy. In fact, I recommend you literally start the moment you pick up your puppy.
Size Versus Drive in Hunting Dogs
Tom Dokken Times have changed, and so has the size of our retrievers. When I started training hunting dogs four decades ago, the general belief was waterfowl dogs should be big or they simply couldn’t get the job done. This meant that a lot of the Labs I worked with (especially males) approached the 100-pound range. As far as most hunters were concerned at the time, size certainly mattered. Today, not-so-much. At least, not as much.
Keep Your Duck Dog Sharp Throughout the Year
Tom Dokken Don't let personal bias get in the way of making improvements during the season and beyond. Photo Credit: Tony J. Peterson A typical scenario for duck hunters is to train dogs hard in the months leading up to the season and then rely on the time in the blind to keep retrievers moving in the right direction. This can be enough with well-trained, seasoned dogs that have years under their belts. With young dogs, or retrievers that don’t get much hunting time, this is generally a poor idea.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Tom
Contact Tom, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack