Setting Up the Jonny House with Quail for Gundogs and Puppies Training.

Todd Agnew
Jun 14
2 min read

Setting Up The Jonny House With Quail For Gundogs And Puppies.

Our quail course is comprised of pen-raised quail in a recall pen that I “train” to come back to the pen by providing food and water in the pen. I start by holding the puppy and letting it see a couple (3-4) of quail walk out of the pen. I then let the puppy go. Usually, the puppy runs in and flushes the quail. At this point, a couple of things can happen. If the quail only fly a short distance (this would be great), the puppy may chase them and flush them again. Initially, the puppy may not chase at all. In almost every case, the puppy will return to the pen because it has associated that the pen has birds.

I will repeat this 3-4 times a week for an indefinite time period. I am looking to create a dog that when it gets out of the truck, it hits the ground running and hunting for birds. For a while, the puppy will want to keep going back to the pen, but in a short amount of time, it will discover it is more fun to find the birds and chase them. After a couple of times, I will let the birds out first and then go get the puppy and start the puppy walk.

I generally release 20 of the birds five days a week to keep the birds in flight condition. Each of the 4-6 puppies that we have in the quail field is getting about 5 bird contacts each session and the number of sessions each puppy gets depends on the puppy’s attitude to stay connected with me.

If you want a bird dog, you need birds. If you want your dog to learn to trust his nose, you need birds...