[UniversalFrost]

I agree you need to work with the dog and get it used to your type of hunting and make sure to break them of being gun shy. I only have had one dog that was a natural born bird dog and all the others I have had to spend endless hours training and more training.

You will never get a "finished" bird dog no matter how much you pay. The only way a dog turns into a bird dog is by lots of practice and training.

my one "self taught" bird dog is a white/yellow lab and he is afraid of water (previous owner threw the pups into a lake to teach them to swim at around 5 weeks old), but he is the best field/retreiver I have ever owned. This dog points on his own (never taught him to do it) and he instinctively knows the best way to "work" a field. He is also calm under fire (except for one time when my idiot neighbor took a shot directly over my dog, which almost got shot and I proceded to beat the stupid out of him (the neighbor that is) with a vest full of pheasants).


Go out and get a few good books and videos on training the dog for the types of hunts you want to do (water and ducks, fields and geese, upland birds in a field etc...) .