Do bird dogs continue to learn all of their life?

Do bird dogs continue to learn all of their life?

Just wondering

Thanks

I think so just like people do

Mine learn till a year and a half, then forget everything an start again.

There's an old bird dog trainer saying that goes, "He come unbroke"

LOL! Exactly! But ....my electric collar seems to be the glue that holds them together. It helps serve as their ear cleaner, memory bank, and hearing aid.

But without the e-collar???? I had two NSTRA champions that became trial wise. I had to quit trialing them.

You really need to ask the dogs on that. If it is a smart dog he'll probably tell you that smart dogs keep on learning but there are some real dummies out there and you can't teach a thing to them.
I had this one dog that would obey my every command except running around with 10' sticks in his mouth. Why he did it I can't figure out. he would race by me but I'd never get wacked. One day he decided to pull up a small tree- run around with that (we were out in the woods). Well he dug it up a little and started tugging on it and the roots held the thing fast, he couldn't pull it out. He let go of the tree and stood looking at it for maybe 30 seconds and then all of a sudden he turned his head and started looking around at the nearby trees.
"What the heck is he thinking about?" I wondered.
He then got the tree and started dragging the top over against another nearby tree where he could get some leverage and snap the tree in two, which he did- thereby getting his big stick he could run around with.
I read about a famous Texas deer hound. This particular dog (might have been a Walker) started out like all the rest but after a while he would only run a strong buck track, no does. Then he finally figured the buck always turned, he would try to figure about when and where the buck would turn and he would leave the pack and head off where he figured the buck would end up. Outstanding dog.
You hear all kinds of stuff. Some coon hounds never figure out a coon will jump from tree to tree and run off, they just keep barking up the wrong tree, other dogs figure it after a while and just sense what's going on and start circling the area to pick up the track.
I heard about a cougar dog, I think it was a plot or black and tan- can't recall. It was a pretty good tree climber and would go right up after lions.
Dogs can be "smart-alecks" as well. I had this one dog, there was a crippled person that lived nearby and when ever the dog passed this person the dog would limp along on 3 legs until past that person and then start running again. I was a kid at the time and I used to play football with the dog. We would line up across from one another and on "go" this dog would try to zig and zag by me to the right or left and I'd try to tackle the dog. This crippled person thought I had injured the dog until I told them to keep watching the dog once it was off a ways and it would start running. Unbelievable.
One big regret of my life is we now live in a world without the horse being that common. Except for giving them a lump of sugar or carrot as a kid I've never had much to do with them. My father always said a horse was smarter than a dog and I have heard of some incredible stories on how smart horses are. I'm told mules can be even smarter than a horse.
Makes you sort of wonder about half the people out there

Thanks Dave for a good reply and stories. I have been around horses all my life and would question if they are smarter and it might depend on the definition of smarter. I can teach dogs obedience and I have trouple teaching horses to come, sit, stay, no, whoa and maybe I just did not try long enough

How old is the dog?
I think dogs continue to learn for most of their life.
It seems like in their later years they could learn, but just don't care to.
Kind of like people that get a little set in their ways.

I heard from several dog trainers that dogs learn up to 3 or 4 years of age. That is why it is so important to get them on birds early in their life. From what I have seen that is partially true. Most of my bird dogs learned up until 4 or 5. I tried to put them in as many different situations as I could. That is a good question.

I read a book while training Izzy that was about teaching the dog to learn and from there the dog will be able to learn in the future. Izzy just turned 7 and in the past month I have taught her not to kill kittens and I have started using her to heard goats as they escape. The goat thing was a little different. She would first attack them, but then I would call her off. She would return to me. I would send her back in and she would attack, then I called her off. A few times of those without the ecollar, she realized I just wanted her to move them and then hold them in an area. Now when the goats get out, I will send the dogs (Izzy and Deuce) and they will chase the goats around and push them into a corner or up against a fence and I will walk in and pick them up. This is much easier than the old way where I chased them.

I think the most important thing is to not dump all dogs in a "dogs" category- they are not robots,they are just like humans in the respect that there is a lot of difference in intelligence levels. That's why a lot of guys buy adult dogs for hunting, if they get a puppy that becomes a pet and then you realize you have a dumb dog on your hands, family members may object to you getting rid of the dog. Whether intelligence is inherited- I don't know but the general thought is the odds are better if you get the off spring of a super smart dog. I think the more you expect from a dog the better.

I have been able to train my older Vizsla Blaze to do different things later in her life. Training to stalk hogs, a turkey dog, and as a decoy dog for coyote hunting did not start until she was much older. When she started going blind at over 8 years old, I was able to teach all new commands like "near" to tell her she was near the object on a retrieve. "Careful" when she was near an obstacle she could run into or fall off of. To heal to a cat bell, to use sound as a radar and circumvent the echoes by doing a recall to a patting sound on my leg, or on the side of a boat, or repeating her name or "here" over and over. She learned on her own to develop mental maps of her surroundings to navigate. When Dash came home the second time I trained her not to kill Dash by using a clicker. If Blaze, now close to her 10th birthday is present during training with Dash, she gets in the way and tries to repeat or do anything I am training Dash to do. She wants to learn. She is stubborn in her old age and is the Diva of the house, doing anything she so chooses at times. But that is because I let her be that way. She is smart in that she knows this. An old dog just knows how to train a human better than a young dog. With her queen's heart in old age I don't think she would take well to negative reinforcement such as one would do with force fetch. But, using a clicker you would be very surprised what stupid dog tricks I could teach her to do in a very short amount of time without her knowing she is being trained. Much of dog training involves training ourselves more then the dog. An older dog still learns, but training has to be adapted to the dog you see, not the dog you had, to get the dog you want.

You bring up an interesting subject, one dog getting on in years and the new replacement. Years ago I went through that and just hauled in the new dog. It totally broke the spirit of the older dog, something I had not anticipated. I haven't been in that situation since but I've thought long and hard about it.
So far, I THINK what I might do is get the old dog out of the way for a while and put the new dog way out behind the place on a pinned run and don't pay any attention to it. It will not have formed any attachment to me so nothing is lost. Then I'll let the old dog "discover" the new dog but once again, pay no never mind to the new dog, let the dogs become friends on their own time.

I've seen pups add new life to older dogs.

Well, I think you have to do it the right way, as I said this one dog really had a nervous breakdown when it realized it was part of a two dog outfit instead the "only dog". I read a story about Roy Rogers, he and Dale wanted to adopt a second boy and figured the best way was to take the two boys camping before actually adopting. They became friends and the rest was easy. I never in a million years thought I'd have issues with dogs. Thought I'd just mention it. I'm sure if I had let the older dog find the new dog and bring it to me that the whole thing would have gone a lot smoother. The older dog would have thought the whole thing was his idea.

this is true with a lot of animals, when I was in 4H (many yrs ago) I decided to do 2 beef calves, well one got sick and wouldn't eat, well the other one didn't eat till the sick one got well.

My dogs IQ goes up a 100 points when his collar is on. I usually give mine the summer off. Start him on birds middle of Sept. after an hour or so there is no issue remembering. My biggest concern is overheating and my GSP's not having the ability to quit. Sometimes I think my male will die before he stopped working.