>>624087It's really hard to say how many hours per week because honestly, it's been kind of a 24/7 thing. I always have a mindset of "how will this affect him as a hunting dog". Because of this we don't play tug of war with him or anything like that.
He never had to be taught to retrieve, he was retrieving toys and small dummies at 8 weeks old, but I did reinforce the behavior with treats, etc. The main things I focused on actually teaching him were regular obedience and steadiness.
To teach him to be steady me and a friend would take him to the lake, set up a bunch of decoys, shoot off a couple .22 blanks and throw a dummy into the decoys. If he broke for the dummy before he was told, he'd get a little jolt from the e-collar. This helped him win steadiness, made him comfortable around gunshots, and got him used to swimming through decoys.
For pheasants I'd go to a game farm and buy two or three live pheasants every couple weeks. I know it sounds ridiculous, but you make the pheasants dizzy so they don't run off, then you set them in some brush and let the dog sniff the, out and flush them. This doesn't hurt the bird at all, and after the flush, they're free to live out their lives in the wild!
Here he is at about 6 weeks old.
