Fundamentals of the Retriever
Thus, for example, in Germany, hunting sacredness was given to some functions of the dog, extraneous to its first nature, such as aggression towards harmful people, in the clear concept that the dog, before being something that allowed richer game bags , had to represent a means to increase the fauna consistency of the hunting area, thus collaborating for the reduction of predators. Guarding the game bag, recovery of wounded ungulates even at very long distances, work on tracks, were required by pragmatic Central European hunters a long time ago.
And in the midst of all this stuff, which also had the indirect purpose of limiting the game bags, and therefore of making hunting less pernicious, and consequently of allowing the hunting territory a greater capacity to satisfy the demands of the armed men, in the midst of all this stuff, it was said, the retrieval of the wild dominated sovereign, whether it be from feather or fur, from water, from earth or from thickets, alive, wounded or dying, seasoned, in short, in all the sauces that were there.
And there is nothing more unfounded than thinking that this than tracking down at any cost the head of game that somehow had been reached by lead was an isolated whim of the Teutonic mustachioed, dressed in loden, and armed with drilling.
In Great Britain, in fact, before our own uneducated interpreters drew fantasies about the ways of hunting of those people, it was expected to carry over from Pointer and Setter.
The carry-over function, innate in the dog, cannot therefore be the exclusive prerogative of a small number of stopping breeds, but is a common heritage, albeit to varying degrees and frequency, of all those that are now bred with differences of exclusive individual ambit.
Already with us, especially among the traditionalist users of the pointing dog, retrieving, as a hunting performance, was considered indispensable by those who carried the shotgun for a walk with serious intent to fill the game bag, and very few were those who gave up having this service. , from the dog, whatever its name was, whatever color its fur had.
It was, I remember well, the very first task that the puppy was asked to, convincing him to take an interest in the exercise for the fictitious moment, in anticipation of more concrete trials.
However, the problem remained, not always easy, of imparting this teaching to the puppy in a convincing, rational, non-alienating way.
In many texts, starting with that of the historical and irreplaceable Dauphin, methods of teaching the carry were described, with more or less precise details, more or less verbose descriptions, more or less certain effects.
I for one, needing to reconstruct the report to a casual kurzhaar engulfing a pheasant (female, and starting from the wing) in competition, used what the consultation of a classic text had taught me, and with a very brilliant result, so much is true that in three days that bitch returned to her place and won, consecutively, a series of successes in hunting trials.
But now, Vincenzo Celano, a shrewd writer and careful observer of dogs and wild animals, has prepared a surprise for those who, and there are many of us, need, without losing a lot of phosphorus in complicated readings, to train his dog to retrieve, effectively. .
"Quick Retrieval Training Guide" (Ed. Olimpia) starts from the concept, which is often the real condition, even if it is not always the most convenient, of having a puppy (coincidentally, English setter) to be trained to carry, and, starting from the terrace of the house and with a tennis ball, he arrives at the retrieval from the water, at that of more wild ones, and at recovery, also passing, obviously, for all those accidents that can happen along the way (refusal to bite the wild, hard tooth, tinkering, eating ...) and gives you, if you have the patience to follow him, an excellent retriever, which is certainly no small thing these days.
But, very intelligently, Celano took great care not to describe at length the methods and norms of this "reporting training", limiting himself to marking in a few pages of text, which is also very juicy, some basic concepts, to keep in mind, for those who are about to to read it and adopt it, its practical manual.
The bulk is in fact illustrated, with very rational sequences, by a series of very clear photos, which, if they do not completely exempt from the complete reading of the text, are mostly an invitation to read the text as well, as well as observe the images, which on their behalf are already, for those who have a dog to train to bring back, already more than enough.
Today we go hunting in man-made areas, wild or artificial (for which it is worth talking about retrieve?) Or really not only natural, but graduates in relentless self-defense, which is not the case to lose, once they are ballistically achieved, through the sloth of a dog which is, in the end, nothing but our inertia at the moment in which something serious had to be taught.