Margaret Allen - In the Bag!: Labrador Training from Puppy to Gundog

First published in 2013 by
The Crowood Press Ltd
Ramsbury, Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2013

Margaret Allen 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 572 0

Acknowledgements
I am sincerely indebted to the many people I have met over the years who have taught me so much about dogs and how they think. I would especially like to thank the following people: John Brentnall, MRCVS, and Terence Girling, MRCVS, for vetting the veterinary bits of this book; Tony Jackson and Sue Orr for their encouragement and proof reading; Paul Quagliana, Hubert Watlington and Sophie Ross Gordon for photographs; Andy Hodder and his crew for their patience and help with photocopying; and Jenny Barber, Shirley Wood, Cheryl Wheeler and Ross Morland, who have helped in so many ways to enable me to get on with writing this book. Above all, I am so very grateful to my family, friends and the many Labradors who were the inspiration for me to start and complete this book.

The art of preparing a gundog for successful work in the field is a skill that requires in the trainer a subtle understanding of animal psychology, combined with the practical application of carefully considered training methods. So often for the amateur or the first-time owner of a young dog hopefully being trained for the shooting field, problems arise due in part to a failure to understand the mentality of the animal or, as is so often the case, an understandable but flawed desire to impose lessons well in advance of the dogs still juvenile comprehension.

Margaret Allen, whom I have known for many years, is one of that select group of gundog trainers who, having studied the behaviour and mental processes of gundogs, has applied training methods that are based on an understanding of just what it is that makes a dog tick. In the far distant past dogs, whatever their breed or purpose, were trained by breaking, involving methods that were harsh and today would be considered cruel. However, in the post-war era a new method of training was developed by the late Peter Moxon, a pioneer in the field of dog psychology and understanding, and this has been developed and adopted by subsequent successful trainers.

Many of Margarets dogs have won in field trials, working tests and in the show ring, and she and her team of Labradors are greatly in demand for picking-up at local shoots each season. Furthermore, as well as running a successful kennel business, she organizes popular training classes, both for beginners and for more experienced owners.

In this, her first book, Margaret has distilled the knowledge gained over the years, and while she accepts that there are many different ways to teach a dog, there are certain basics that are common to all, and as a result she has developed a method which certainly works for her and the dogs she has had the pleasure of training over the years.

Margaret has greatly helped me train my own Labradors , and I cannot emphasize too highly her skills and her patience, not only with her canine charges but also with their owners! This book is, I sincerely believe, essential reading, not only for the beginner setting out to train his or her first retriever, but also for the more experienced owner.

Tony Jackson
Tatworth
Somerset 2012