Started Dogs

If you wade through enough websites, you’ll see many definitions for the term “started dog”. Our definition is a young dog between 8 months and two years of age, well socialized to people and other dogs, and having a sharp sense of obedience to the commands “Sit”, “Stay”, “Heel”, and “Here”. A started gun dog should be conditioned to the report of a gun, not gun-shy, and should have been force fetch trained, which means the dog should retrieve common hand-sized objects on command, including dead birds such as ducks and pheasants. The dog should easily load in a vehicle, should know to shut up when told, and should be retrieving single marked thrown bumpers at distances up to 50 yards. A bonus is if the dog is trained to sit and mark two thrown bumpers and retrieve them one by one on command.