Mountaintop Natural Pets

Source: PRWeb.com, June 25, 2009

TrainPetDog.com, a website devoted to providing breed specific training information for dog owners, is offering donations to 500 needy dog rescues.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) June 25, 2009 — Finding funding for dog rescue shelters is difficult to do, especially in the current economic recession. That’s why TrainPetDog.com is offering a total of $25,000 donations to be distributed to 500 needy dog rescues. The donations can be in the form of either cash or dog supplies, depending on what the rescue needs.

“Our world has a serious dog overpopulation problem,” said Nipa Roy, spokesperson for TrainPetDog.com. “There are tons of rescues out there, making a noble effort to save and re-home dogs, but every day they struggle to get enough funding to stay open another day. Donations are an absolute necessity for these rescues.”

Our world has a serious dog overpopulation problem

There are tons of rescues out there, making a noble effort to save and re-home dogs, but every day they struggle to get enough funding to stay open another day. Donations are an absolute necessity for these rescues.

With the current economy, many dog rescues are struggling to survive even if they were doing okay before

Fewer families can afford to care for their dogs, so more dogs are being surrendered and fewer are being adopted out. That is when we decided to donate a total sum of $25,000 for as many as 500 Dog Rescues. We hope that our donations will provide much needed food and supplies to the dogs in these rescues

Someone has to try and help in whatever way they can and we’d like to do our part.

“With the current economy, many dog rescues are struggling to survive even if they were doing okay before,” Roy said. “Fewer families can afford to care for their dogs, so more dogs are being surrendered and fewer are being adopted out. That is when we decided to donate a total sum of $25,000 for as many as 500 Dog Rescues. We hope that our donations will provide much needed food and supplies to the dogs in these rescues”. Roy continued, “Someone has to try and help in whatever way they can and we’d like to do our part.”

With more than 875,000 subscribers to their free dog training mini courses, TrainPetDog.com has always held a passion to help the canine community at large.

TrainPetDog.com will select 500 of the neediest dog rescues to receive donations. To be considered for the donation, a rescue must fill out the online form on TrainPetDog.com’s web site. The form requests contact information for the rescue, allows the rescue to choose whether they want the donation in cash or goods, and asks questions such as what dog breeds they rescue and why they should be chosen as one of the 500 to receive a donation.

To find out how your rescue organization can claim its donation, please visit www.trainpetdog.com/rescue-form.php.

In addition to their philanthropic activities, TrainPetDog.com provides dog breed specific information for owners who want to learn more about dog and puppy training. Rescues can link to the website to provide foster and adoptive owners with the information they need to train their dogs. Dogs that are well trained or receive good training are more likely to find a “forever home” with their new owners, keeping them out of rescues so the space can be saved for other needy canines.

More information on Dog and Puppy Training can be found on their website at www.trainpetdog.com.

About TrainPetDog.com
Founded 5 years ago by dog enthusiasts, TrainPetDog.com was created with the intention of providing a much-needed resource to help owners train their dogs and puppies, based on their natural breed instincts. Today, the website has more than 875,000 subscribers to their free, breed-specific dog training course. It also has information about all kinds of dog breeds – from small breeds like Italian Greyhounds to large breeds like the Great Dane.

The website’s staff is constantly researching, conducting surveys, and experimenting with dog training techniques to ensure that the information provided is the best and most current available. For more information, please visit www.trainpetdog.com.

Source: Star Tribune, by Dennis Anderson, October 23, 2008

SANDSTONE, Minn. — Art takes many forms, not least those fashioned by hands, as clay is turned by a potter, or oils put to brush and canvas by a painter.

Jerry Kolter is that kind of artist, and more. In his hands are nurtured dogs of a special kind — those that can run like the wind, carrying their heads high, processing one scent from another and dismissing most before detecting the target aroma, that of a ruffed grouse.

At which time these pointing dogs lock up board stiff.

King of the forest. Queen, too. In the entire world there flies no bird more delectable — nor, when undertaken properly, more challenging to find and fell, to bring to hand, than the ruffed grouse.

“Hunting grouse is very different from hunting other birds, such as pheasants,” Kolter was saying the other day, on the eve of Minnesota’s 2008 ruffed grouse season, which opened Saturday. “Grouse take a special kind of dog.”

Kolter, a former software developer, and his wife, Betsy, a horticulturist, are refugees from the Twin Cities and owners of Northwoods Bird Dogs (www.north-woodsbirddogs.com), located near this east-central Minnesota town.

Surrounding the kennel is deer country, bear and wolf, too, but perhaps especially a land hospitable to grouse and woodcock. These last often are found in forests of mixed deciduous trees, aspen particularly, much of it interspersed with meadows and clear cuts, high-bush cranberries, and alder thickets in the lowlands.

In Kolter’s case, the dog-trainer-as-artisan analogy is no stretch. With his tutelage, promising puppies born from reputable parents and grandparents are continually encouraged and occasionally coaxed toward futures that place them among the planet’s best grouse finders.

No easy task, this, considering that a trainer of ruffed grouse dogs must be as knowledgeable about the quarry as he is the dogs in his charge.

Grouse often anticipate approaching hunters and their dogs and seek escape on foot rather than flying. Or they don’t.

Indeed, some ruffed grouse seem almost diabolical in their abilities to confuse pursuing dogs by acting one way on a given day and another way the next.

“A young dog needs to be put on a lot of birds to know how to handle them,” Kolter said. “And not just liberated (planted) birds. But wild birds.”

A master falconer who once hunted with goshawks and other aerial predators before turning his attention full-time to grouse dogs, Kolter grew up in southern Minnesota near Henderson and flew his first red-tailed hawk at age 12.

“When I was a kid, I couldn’t have a dog, so the first thing I did when I went to college was buy a Brittany spaniel puppy,” he said.

That dog years later gave way to an English setter, and soon Kolter cast an eye toward field trials.

Now, some 20 years after he first entered grouse dog competitions, and having won many of them, he still runs 10 or so trials a year, some in Minnesota, some as far away as Pennsylvania.

Add to these travels an annual August training trip to North Dakota to run young dogs on wild sharp-tailed grouse, and another monthlong winter trip to Texas or Oklahoma, and the process of shaping English setters and pointers — some owned by far-flung customers — unfolds in alternating installments of yard training and field work.

“When a puppy is 12 to 16 weeks of age, I put them on birds,” he said. “I start with liberated birds but move fairly quickly to wild birds.”

Much is made of a pointing dog’s “range,” or the distance a dog works from its handler. Owners of flushing dogs such as Labrador retrievers and springer spaniels, for example, want their animals ranging no farther from them than shotgun range, or about 35 yards.

Pointing dogs typically move out more expansively, and Kolter said he is less worried about an animal’s distance from him than whether “he is working with me.”

As an owner of not only a hunting breed but a dog that has already wandered off chasing birds, only to be found 4 days later… I have seriously reconsidered my opinions about using a training collar….

by Elizabeth Shaw | The Flint Journal

Wednesday September 24, 2008, 8:03 PM

FLINT TOWNSHIP, Michigan — Ever wonder if an electronic collar could help improve your dog’s hunting performance? Successful collar conditioning starts with training the trainer, said Tri-Tronics field product specialist Jim Trotter, a retired Haslett teacher who’s been training his own retrievers for waterfowl and upland birds since 1971.

“When I first started working with dogs, all there was were shock collars, which a lot of people felt were inhumane — and for good reason,” said Trotter. “Over the years, the technology has evolved so that now we have the ability to turn them down (and) fine-tune the stimulus to suit even the most sensitive dog.”

But seeing is believing, Trotter said.

“They’re now truly training collars, not shock collars anymore. In demonstrations, I actually let customers feel the stimulation and show them the ability they have to control it,” he said.

An electronic collar, or e-collar, delivers an electrical stimulation controlled by a remote device. When used properly, the dog quickly learns it can avoid stimulation by obeying the trainer’s commands.

“It’s allowed us in the dog training world to speed up the training process and allowed us to increase what we’re able teach by a good 30 percent,” said Trotter.

But it isn’t magic, and it isn’t instant. One of the biggest mistakes novices make is using an e-collar on an untrained dog.

“The dog should already know the basic obedience commands of here, heel and sit. Once they’ve got those down, then you can begin to reteach those commands using the collar for reinforcement,” said Trotter. “If you start your dog’s very first teaching sessions with a stimulation, the risk is the dog not understanding and not drawing the right conclusion to what is going on.”

Some dogs can become “collar-wise,” learning to obey only when the e-collar is on. A trainer can avoid that pitfall with a good understanding of how behavioral conditioning works, said Trotter.

“Before doing any stimulation at all, the dog wears the collar every day for a full two weeks. Every time we go out, the collar goes on. They get to associate the collar with something good happening,” said Trotter. “After two weeks, all of a sudden in association with your voice and a base command he understands, he gets his first stimulation. So he associates it with your command, not the collar.”

One of the biggest benefits is the increased range it’s given trainers for reinforcing commands.

Until the early 1970s, a typical long blind in a field trial might have been 100 or 120 yards. Today’s dogs are running open blinds at three times that distance.

“It’s like an extended leash. It has totally changed the retriever aspect of things, what we’re able to do with dogs today and how we’re able to get dogs to respond 300, 400 yards away from us,” said Trotter. “I can put a dog out on a water blind and he will respond flawlessly at 350 yards and handle right to a tee. The dogs of 30 years ago couldn’t do the tests the dogs of today are put through, and it’s because of this kind of advanced technology.”

It’s improved real-life hunting situations too.

“Guys don’t have to walk nearly as far to pick up their birds. Now they can send the dog because the dog is under full control even hundreds of yards out,” he said.

Ultimately, the dog’s safety might be the best payoff of all.

“He may be running deer or chasing birds halfway across the field. Or maybe he’s running straight for the road. That’s when you just want to know you have total control, to stop him when he’s doing something wrong.”