Absolutely Positively Gundog Training: Positive Training for Your Retriever Gundog

Good book with detailed directions on each step of training a gun dog. I have been around hunting labs and retrievers since the 1970’s and will say for sure that positive reinforcement is far better than beating and punishing a dog. This book is one tool of several I have used in training my 20 month old field bred golden. She has never been whipped or yelled at and folks are amazed at how well she works. We just finished her first duck season, did pretty well and I look forward to tuning her up for next year.

Robert Milner is a highly experienced retriever trainer (30 years and loads of high-level competition training in his background). He cut training time for first responder search and rescue teams in Tennessee by 2/3rds by using positive training methods. Extraordinary. He doesn't force fetch. He knows it works, but trains an absolutely solid retrieves to hand using a tennis ball reward. I've just done it with my versatile hunting dog and it works beautifully. This is one positive reinforcement training book that isn't written by someone who's a clicker trainer who just explains clicker theory with the subtext, "and this SHOULD work with gun dogs..." :-D This guy knows what he's talking about. Great book.

Robert Milner's latest gun dog training book is a good book for novice owners desiring to train using positive reinforcement! This is a popular method that was used in the past and currently by conventional trainers. I personally have used these training methods for almost five decades.

As an amateur dog trainer I found this book to be very helpful. I have two lab pups from the same litter . One is very high strung, fitting the creeper personality described in the book. The sibling is much calmer. Both dogs are smart as expected. The creeper goes a 100 miles per hour, all day long. She makes mistakes occasionally because she acts impulsively. The calmer dog is more methodical, but he learns fast and he gets the job done. Reading Robert Milner's book has armed me with training strategies that can (and must) be tailored for both personality types. This is a great book.

I’m using this Milner technique to train my new duck dog. His writing style gets me out of my own way and trains me into being better dog owner and trainer for my dog. This might not make sense on the first read. Milner think that IF your dog isn’t preforming that’s it probably the trainers fault and in my case he’s right.. Get rid of those shock collars fellas. If you wouldn’t use them on your kids, why would you use them on your best friend?

This book has quickly become my go to book. If you are a hunter looking for a guidebook for producing an excellent hunting companion, this is your book. Notice that I didn't qualify it with something like, "if you don't want to use coercive techniques." It is my experience that using positive methods produces an excellent hunting companion much quicker than force methods and will be much more reliable. Don't believe the hype that force fetching will teach a dog that retrieving is a command, not an option. As someone who has used both, I can say that I get way fewer refusals using positive methods than force methods. One of the really nice things about this book is that it is written specifically for the hunter not the field trialist. Many of the methods developed with lots of marking and teaching the dog to avoid using it nose to find the retrieve are for AKC hunt tests where one is likely to have 300 yard retrieves with lots of distractions and such. Having hunted for years, I have never had a dog that needed that kind of precision nor have I ever wanted a dog that didn't want to search. Mr. Miler has a well written and thoughtful training plan for your next hunting dog. It is simply the best training plan for a hunting dog available to date.

As my three star rating indicates, my feelings are by and large positive about this book. But it does have its flaws and drawbacks. I'll talk about a couple of those, because no other reviewer has mentioned them. 1) The section on upland hunting is weak. Milner doesn't seem to like upland hunting. He doesn't believe Labs should be doing it (he says that in his previous book). He doesn't understand upland hunting. I'm guessing his upland experience is mostly with preserve pheasants and plantation quail. Planted birds in controlled situations. Those are really the only situations in which his 'windshield wiper pattern at 15 yards' works. With wild birds in wild country, things are a whole lot trickier and Milner doesn't address the topic at all. (Mike Gould's book is far and away the best on that subject, if you're interested.) He also advocates a rigid sit-to-flush which, again, is great on a preserve, but to me is like teaching your middle linebacker to sit-to-fumble. I realize opinions differ on the matter. Maybe it's just regional bias. Maybe in the South and East, Labs are just duck dogs. Here in the West, we expect them to do a good bit more and Milner doesn't effectively address anything outside of waterfowling. . 2) The author's 'totally positive' approach is good but only goes so far. Most of us have, tender-heartedly, wanted to buy into this philosophy at some point in our training careers. And most of us have seen an unwanted behavior or two pop up, tried to 'positive re-inforce' our way out of them, and realized later that the behavior could have been extinguished much sooner with one crisp, timely swat on the behind. There is a stitch-in-time aspect to dog training and it's almost always kinder to just nip a behavior in the bud. 3) Milner dislikes what he calls excessive drive in a dog. My experience has been that the dogs with the most drive are the easiest to train. Their intense, almost addict-like need to hunt and retrieve can be used to control them. I'd sure as heck rather train a dog with too much drive than one with too little. 4) The writing is good but very repetitive, with certain phrases cropping up again and again. Also, his two stories at the end, attempts to make the teachings of the book into parables, are an example of this repetitiveness. They are also too derivative of The Old Man and The Boy. I like Ruark, too, but there's a fine line between homage and a lack of originality. On the positive side: 1) Milner's emphasis on calm and obedience is right on the money (and not addressed at all in some training books). 2) He's right about field trials. 3) A few of the techniques in the book are truly ingenious. The way the author uses feeding time to lay the groundwork for blind retrieves is very slick. I'll try it with my next pup.

Robert Milner did an exceptional job explaining the standards, explaining drills and exercises that are easy and straightforward for any handler

Brilliant. Nice to see positive and reward training methods used in this discipline.

pleased with the Gundog training book, lots of informative information, my son in law likes it

Very good book, good explanations of how a dog views the world and how that can be harnessed to improve training, and some great tips on how the trainer can change their approach and be more effective. Also suggests why and how some common problems are the result of poor breeding. Great book for any working Gundog owner

The book is well written. It’s easy to read with lots of information! I highly recommend it!