Customer Reviews

Speed Train Your Own Bird Dog (Mind Body Spirit)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased this book when I unexpectedly had a new german shorthair puppy to train. I purchased it because it had an extensive section on puppy training and I was anxious to get started. I also soon purchased several other bird dog training books, including some very famous ones, but I kept coming back to Larry Muellers book. I like his attitude toward dogs and his willingness to go against commonly held beliefs and techniques. He is a very obsevant man who incorporates the latest dog psychology into his obsevations. The emphasis is on avoiding mistakes or techniques which cause setbacks and cost you time to correct. This gives you a lot of insight into dogs minds and training in general. Most importantly every technique he recommended WORKED! I cannot say that about any of the other books. Also every thing that he said to avoid that I did not manage to avoid cost me time. He was right. I have repeatedly received compliments on my dogs performance and manners even by pros. The biggest factor in that was this book. This is an excellent book to purchase before acquiring a pup. His puppy training section(2-4months old) is extensive, excellent and effective. He also has techniques for selecting a pup which make a lot of sense.

Larry Mueller offers his unique way of speed training a bird dog, however, I do feel that his techniques are stressing to a dog - especially a sensitive dog or a young dog (say six-months). Larry does offer some excellent ways to train your dog on the basic obedience/hunting commands, but his use of force training goes beyond my personal preference. If you are a first-time trainer, training your own dog, this book is excellent - if you approach training with love and patience. Remember, you are training a friend and companion, not a strickly business hunting dog.

This book has the best method of how to pick a puppy and how important it is to start training immedieatly. I got my English Pointer pup at 7 weeks of age and wish I had this book at this time. I had a CD with 4 volumes (Actually only one CD with slick marketing making you think that you were getting more than you were really getting.) Unfortunately, I did not discover this book until my dog was 14 months old. As I read this book I realized how lucky I was to have inadvertaintly done most of the things that was recommended in this book starting with visiting the pups over a several day period and manged to pick a pup with all the attributes that Larry recommends with the exception that my pup had a tendency to put his paw on top of all the other pups. This according to Larry, means that the pup was the dominate pup. However, if you follow Larry's advise you will have a dog that is smart, not too dominate or submissive, is birdy and has the instinct to retrieve and point. with dumb luck, I got all of that in my dog. What I did not do was get him onto birds between 2 and 4 months of age which Larry insists is critical to developing the dogs desire to hunt. I can see some of that in my dog. I did start obideance training at that young age and that has made a difference.

One thing that set Larry's book apart from others is that his training techniques do not rely on hundreds of dollars of training equipment and is designed for both those who are in a rural as well in a suburban setting. I would highly recommend this book. Especially if you are thinking about getting a bird dog of any breed or thinking about getting another dog.

Larry Mueller's Speed Train Your Own Bird dog is full of great tips, trick, and inventive tools to use when training your pointing dog.

If you are short on training space, don't want to keep loads of training birds, and not bedecked with all the latest training gadgets, this book will be extremely informative. While not my favorite training book, it is a great compliment to How to Help Gun Dogs Train Themselves, Taking Advantage of Early Condtioned Learning, Best Way to Train Your Gun Dog: The Delmar Smith Method, and Wing and Shot: gun dog training in your gun dog training library.

Purchased this book because a dog trainer that I met said it would be the key to helping me train my dog. How right he was. The book is awesome. Thanks.

I have baught the different DVD's on how to train your dog, and they where all right I know I can follow those DVD's and get a good dog, but after reading this book I am excited to train my new Puppy and know I will have a great dog. If you are like me and buying your first puppie get this book it will make life a lot easier. Thank You,

This book was recommended to me by a member of the local NAVHDA chapter. Being new to bird dogs, I had contacted them for advice on how to condition my German Shorthaired Pointer for possible field work. I sampled some of the contents and found it informative; the chapter on "how to pet a dog" was particularly refreshing - I have read a lot of dog training books but none have actually addressed and explained it this well.

I was not disappointed. I found the book very helpful in getting a general "feel" for how a bird dog thinks and how to condition the young pup for its future job. The instincts are there, serious training comes later, it's the in-between time where valuable conditioning can be applied that will make things easier for both dog and handler later on.

I deducted one star because I am not entirely comfortable with some techniques described in the book, like teaching the WHOA command. It's a little too old school for my taste. Then again, I am not familiar with what techniques work best to train a bird dog, so I give Mr. Mueller the benefit of a doubt. Old-school is not always all bad. At any rate, these techniques may not be as unsettling as they sound if applied by an experienced trainer, and reading about them does not mean you have to use them. Just pick the good stuff from this book - there is plenty, and I therefore recommend it.

I returned this book the day I rcvd it. All it took is for me to flip through the pages and see the trainer recommending giving a knee to teach the dog not to jump up and then the very disturbing picture of him teaching "whoa" using a rope thrown over a tree while tied to the dogs neck while standing on a barrel.
I have worked around horses and dogs for many years and certainly advocate force when necessary. However, I feel that there are many more ways to train a dog than using the types of methods mentioned above-hence why I returned it.