A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with Robert Milner, the author of Absolutely Positively Gundog Training. I had sent him an email with a few follow up questions after doing an article on his book. He was very gracious and allowed me to ask him these questions over the phone. You can tell Milner is passionate about not only dog training but the science behind it. He’s not willing to settle for doing things because that’s how they’ve always been done. He knows the science and how to put that science into a practical training model. I hope you enjoy the questions and answers. After answering my questions, Milner recommended some books. I’ll be sure to share those recommendations at the end.
If you were tasked with writing a book on how to train the absolute best gun dog vs a book on how the amateur do-it-yourself trainer should train a dog, would the methods in these books differ at all?
Milner answered, “No, it would be 100% positive training for the best gun dog and the amateur”. (If you need a recap of this training style, it can be found here). Milner really came into positive training in 2002 after being tasked to fix a search and rescue dog program for one of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) task forces. This task force uses dogs to find victims that are buried under rubble during structural collapse incidents. Milner recruited 50% cops and firefighters to get an emergency response culture and began teaching them compulsion training methods (punishment and negative reinforcement techniques). A few months down the road Milner looked at the progress they were making. The numbers showed it was going to take 18 months to get operational. Milner said, “If you remember the climate after 911, everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop”. 18 months was too long. It wasn’t his dog training brain telling him this was too long. It was his disaster response brain. He knew he needed to find a quicker way. He decided the problem was probably the training model. After searching, he found the Navy dolphin training program. This program had millions of research dollars spent on it and produced great results. Milner decided this training protocol looked like the right one. He found the dog adaptation of the program and learned how to do it. He then taught the rest of his task force. They all loaded up on a plane and headed to a clicker training convention that taught the skills needed for this new style of training. He also brought in a couple of the top positive trainers to coach their team for a couple of weeks. Using these new techniques, Milner reduced the training time required from 18 months to 6 months and had a fully operational team in early 2004. Positive training reduced the training time required by 300%. That told him it was 3X easier for the novice trainer to learn positive training techniques than the traditional compulsion techniques.
For the pro who would know how to use the compulsion techniques, would they still get better results going to a positive training method?
Milner believes they would. He is a very skillful user of compulsion techniques including the electric collar, but using punishment brings a lot of problems with it. You have to know what affects you’re making with the punishment. When punishing a dog, you always create a punishment zone, an area around the location of punishment that the dog learns to avoid. If you don’t know about the punishment zone, you’re going to build a lot of errors in your training program that you’ll have to spend more training time to fix. I told Milner about a time I had seen a trainer at a hunt test using a choke chain to teach his dog to heel. The dog looked terrified. Milner then brought up a good point. If you punish a dog when he is right beside you, your training him to not be there. If the punishment is close to you, you’re going to be in the punishment zone. The punishment zone is also one of the main reasons a dog doesn’t deliver to hand. The dog may go out to get a dummy and then on the return come in close to that zone and start to hesitate. Usually, the first thing the dog does after hesitating is drop the dummy. The solution to the punishment zone is to reinforce the recall. Reinforce it all the way to you. He should get paid where you get the bird from him.
In your book, you recommend a training sequence that teaches obedience and blind retrieves before marked retrieves. If you were training a dog that did not have the genetics for a natural hand delivery, would you change the order of your training plan at all?
If a dog didn’t have a natural hand delivery, Milner would still teach blind retrieves before marked retrieves. Instead of using heavy handed techniques such as force fetching, Milner would use a tennis ball game to teach delivery to hand. Milner had one of his dogs near him while he was on the phone. The dog can be seen on YouTube learning how to deliver to hand using this fun tennis ball game. The dog originally had a good delivery to hand, but for some reason had stopped. Milner wasn’t sure why. Someone may have accidentally stepped on her or some other unintentional punishment. A punishment is judged by the dog not by us. If you step on his foot, it can still create a punishment zone. This dog for whatever reason had started dropping dummies. The video clip is only 57 seconds. That was lesson one. She only had one other lesson with the tennis ball game and hasn’t failed to deliver to hand since. That’s a small training investment with big results!
Milner says, “If a dog isn’t doing things right, it’s 99% probable that it’s a factor of punishment”. Milner shows a clip in his training course of a coyote in Yellowstone with a trout in its mouth. Nobody taught the coyote to do this. It’s an innate behavior. Just the same, well-bred retrievers know how to retrieve. We don’t have to train it. Milner says, “All you have to do is avoid punishing them and maybe pay them for bringing stuff to you every once in a while”. A classic error ridden scenario is the guy that’s sitting on his couch watching TV with his wife. His puppy comes over with his wife’s expensive shoe in his mouth. The guy calls the puppy over, whacks him on the mouth, and puts the shoe up. The next day he throws a dummy for the dog. The dog goes out. He gets the dummy and starts to bring it back. On the return, the dog reaches the punishment zone and spits the dummy out. If the punishment was too severe, he may not even pick the dummy up in the first place. The dog doesn’t know the difference between the shoe and the dummy. To the dog, he was retrieving.
You don’t talk a lot about upland hunting in the book. You explain how to teach quartering and sit-to-flush. If a trainer was mostly interested in upland game, would your recommendation still be to teach the retrieving skills in the book along with these two behaviors or would you add more upland specific drills/change up the training plan?
Milner explained, “There are 5 critical behaviors for a gun dog and he is born with all of them”.
- Recall – most important
- Sit/Stay
- Memory Retrieve – Retrieves something he didn’t see fall. To teach this, you walk out with the dog and let him see you drop a dummy. You then walk back with the dog and send him for the dummy you dropped.
- Whistle Stop – Doesn’t mean sit. You just need the dog to look at you so you can communicate a direction to him. Milner doesn’t care if they stop or not as long as they look at him and take his casting.
- Delivery to hand
For the upland hunter, solidify the above skills. Then, take the dog hunting. If there are birds around, he’s going to hunt. Every time the dog gets further then 15 yards call him back. The dog will eventually learn he needs to stay within this range and will start to quarter back and forth on his own. It sounds too good to be true, but throughout the conversation Milner gives plenty of examples of how smart dogs are. Check out Chaser, the dog that knows over a thousand words. Not only that but the dog is born with many of the skills we’re looking for. When I said it sounds too good to be true, Milner said “It sounds too good to be true because it takes away our rituals”. The only other skill you need to train the dog for in upland hunting is sit-to-flush. Sit to flush is taught to ensure the dog doesn’t get shot. If the dog sits well, it’s simple to get the dog to sit to flush. Change the cue from the word sit to the flush itself. You want the dog to see a bird flush and know that that is the cue to sit. When teaching this skill, don’t let the dog retrieve the flush. You pick it up. Every once in a while throw a dummy behind your shoulder to give him a payment for the sit to flush. This ensures you teach the dog restraint. On the hunt, you can have the dog retrieve the bird he flushed, but this should only be added after the sit-to-flush behavior is fluent and should be treated as a distraction to the dog. Milner also says if it is a young dog you’re hunting, make him wait 3 minutes before going on the retrieve. This ensures you’re paying the dog for calmness. When a dog sees a bird fall, there are endorphins and chemicals such as adrenaline coursing through the dog’s brain. It can take a full 3 minutes before these chemicals dissipate. Sending the dog after 3 full minutes have passed ensures these chemicals are gone and that puts the payment in the “calmness pot” and not the “wild pot”. You want to reward calmness. Milner agrees that this is damn hard for the trainer. He’ll usually take a book and a chair with him and read for the three minutes before he sends the dog. Milner says, “The most important thing for the gundog is to be steady and calm when he needs to be. Otherwise, you should leave him at home. He’ll get somebody shot or hurt.”
If you could give one piece of advice to a do-it-yourself trainer, what would it be?
Milner’s advice would be to learn positive training. He says, “You’ll go 3x faster, it’ll be 3x easier, and you’ll enjoy it more.”
Milner points out that most of the sporting dog sector is working in the stone age with information and principles of training. There has been more scientific research in the past 10 years than the previous 100. Milner used compulsion techniques for 30 or 40 years and is good at it, but after training a few dogs with positive training he realized there is no comparison in how much easier it is and more fun for the trainer.
If you are interested in learning more about Milner’s training methods, check out his book Absolutely Positively Gundog Training:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514221837/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
Milner’s website is www.duckhillkennels.com.
Milner does a 2-day class that teaches his training methods once a month at his kennel in Tennessee. More information and a schedule can be found at www.duckhillkennels.com/dogs/gundogs.php.
Milner also recently put this course on a distance learning site. It’s 8.5 hours of video divided into 16 sessions.
This can be found at https://duckhill-kennels.thinkific.com/courses/trainthetrainer.
I thoroughly enjoyed getting to talk to Robert Milner. He not only answered my questions, but gave me some tips and recommended reading. I’m sure you’ll be seeing some articles soon about the books he recommended.
Don’t Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training – Karen Pryor
The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter than You Think – Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods
Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words – Dr. John W. Pilley Jr. Ph.D and Hilary Hinzmann
What Is a Dog? – Raymond and Lorna Coppinger
What It’s Like to Be a Dog and Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience – Gregory Berns