Okay Joy,
You win.
Kaleah, my view is ill informed, the GSD is absolutely the perfect bird dog.

Joy, while you're training your GSD, mind if I actually get some bird hunting done sometime within this life time?

 Quote: randy allen

Okay Joy,
You win.
Kaleah, my view is ill informed, the GSD is absolutely the perfect bird dog.

Joy, while you're training your GSD, mind if I actually get some bird hunting done sometime within this life time?

Randy,

I know you are being sarcastic but I see no place where Joy or Kaleah is saying they are the perfect bird dog. Personally I agree with them. If someone wants to take the time to work a herding breed in hunting and the dog enjoys it, it is his/her time to waste <shrug>

Hell, I "waste" plenty of time doing schutzhund with my ACDs. Ain't hurt them or anyone else yet by my doing so and the mere fact that I don't scoff at the idea of an ACD doing schutzhund does not mean I think that they going to be on the podium anytime soon nor do I think that my opinion is any more ill/well informed from the next person.

To each their own.

addendum to my post since it is too late to edit:

nor do I think that the likelihood of finding an ACD that can do bitework is anywhere near 5% of the likelihood of finding a dog such as a mali or GSD suited to do bitework.

At the end of the day, I guess I figure there are worse ways to waste time than that of training a breed such as an GSD in hunting. But that is just me ;-)

Ok, back to lurkdom now :-)

Happy holidays everyone!

Ingrid,
I said more then once in this thread, if that's what she wants to do she should go ahead.

I never said that a GSD, or my GSD, is going to be or is the perfect bird hunting dog. I just think it's good to think outside the box, in terms of training dogs and giving them some new activity.

If we decide to train our GSD to hunt birds, I'll let everyone here know how it goes, but as it looks, we most likely won't. Not because of anything said here, just because, as I said before, my husband has an affinity for Labs not GSD's. And we know who the better hunter is out of the two dogs without even training

Our Lab has a ton of drive when hunting, should I train him for SCH? No.

We like hunting. If we choose to use GSD's for hunting we will. Will we? Not likely.

Randy, I know you said that if it's what I want to do, then I should. But you ask why, and why go against nature. I didn't think of it like that. I looked at it as a way for my hubby to BOND with our GSD, because in all honesty, if all our dogs could be Labs, my hubby would love it. He doesn't care as much about our other two dogs, and I KNOW that if he could work (hunt) with Shaed, that would be a good thing. But the time it would take to train her to hunt, it would take a while (having to start from scratch, back to basic puppy-like training).

I appreciate everyone's input, including Randy's. It's nice to know that there are people who are open to trying new things with their dogs, regardless if it was what the dog was bred for or not.