Training your dog to be able to cope and be happy, but not excited or fearful of shots starts with your young dogs during early socialisation. Before 16 weeks old. It would be hugely beneficial to introduce your dogs to bangs and noises from a young age. This can be done initially by simply clapping your hands around the dog or by gently tapping the metal feed bowls together while you’re getting the meals ready. This will help develop a positive association with the noise and food. You could then move onto clapping your hands as your dog drops into the sit position. Remember to praise and reward after the sit. We like to introduce the shots at the right time. So we would do this while the dog is engaged in a fun activity such as hunting or retrieving. Certainly something that the dog enjoys.

You’ll need to enrol the help of a family member or an assistant to help with training when it comes to introducing the shots, as you won’t want to fire shots over your dogs head at this stage. We recommend the early introductions to shots to be made at a significant distance and ideally your assistant will need to be out of sight. Before the training session starts arrange with your assistant to ensure they fire the pistol in to a game bag. This will muffle the sound. Fire a single shot only to start with. If you have dummies in the bag it will leave some shot residue on the dummies. This will come in handy later on in your training. Make sure the dog is engaged in work or play. You’re looking for the dog to show little or no attention to this. You can use Radios or mobile phones to communicate the progress. If everything is okay, ask your assistant to move a little closer and fire two more shots into the game bag. Don’t do too much of this to start with. You are much better off coming back out in a couple of day time and run through the same process again. Over a number of days and weeks you’ll be able to move closer until your assistant is in sight of you and the shots are still only being fired into the game bag. Once you’re happy that the dog is not worried or excited by the shots, with the continued help of your assistant repeat the process from the beginning but with the pistol outside of the game bag. The firing pistol should be fired pointing to the ground, low and by the side of your assistant. There is no reason to wave the firing pistol around over there head. This will only create extra excitement. Remember your dog should still be out enjoying themselves during this stage of the training. Hunting or retrieving.