I’m thinking about getting a new hunting dog training/tracking collar. I saw one at Cabela’s that I really liked, but for a hunting dog training collar it’s a bit pricey. However, it has a GPS in it that allows you to track several hunting dogs (provided they have the corresponding collar) and you can also use it as a standard GPS when you don’t have the dogs down. So it kills two birds with one stone so to speak.
This is the collar:
If anyone has any experiences with it, I’d be interested to hear from you.
I also like this hunting dog training collar, as it’s a bit more affordable. However, its not as full of features (less to break perhaps.) But you can get it in one or two dog models – I’m still optimistic I’ll get the second Brittany!
Opinions on this one are welcome as well.
Whistles really seem to come down, at least for me, to what you like. The pitch or tone never seems to matter much to Ruby, while I have one whistle I use primarily, I’ve used others and even used my steel “coaches” whistle when I forgot my usual one.
What’s my usual one? I really favor the orange Ray Gonia Special training whistle. I think I paid about five dollars for it. 
So I picked up Richard Wolter’s GUN DOG book. Its pretty much supposed to be the defacto standard in training gun dogs.
Until she goes to the trainer this summer, I’m going to focus on “come” and”whoa”. I’ve had a grouse tail my Uncle Roger gave me and she’s pointed that consistently. 
As far as Ruby’s training, we withdrew her from the obedience trainer here as she (the trainer) was a little over the top. She wanted us to use a pinch collar on her, only pet her when she sat (which we told her we weren’t teaching her) and was generally too strict in her approach. Ruby seems far too bright to need such a strict type of training.