Pets

Training Bird Dogs with Ronnie Smith Kennels: Proven Techniques and an Upland Tradition

With its combination of informative instruction and beautiful photography, this is the only training book you'll need to raise a great dog for home and field.

Ronnie Smith Kennels provides trainers, owners, and dog handlers with the most refined, developed, and proven methodology for training a pointing dog. The Smith family has spent two generations working thousands of dogs through a stair-step method of replicable techniques that result in a bird dog that is well adjusted, confident, and driven to fulfill its potential. Training Bird Dogs with Ronnie Smith Kennels shares that tradition of excellence and insight with a broader public.

A great bird dog is a combination of great genetics, optimal exposure to game, and proven training. This book provides clear, concise lessons that enable owners and trainers to see their dogs as individuals and maximize those individual talents. Yet the lessons go deeper too, illuminating frequent mistakes and the process for correcting them. Written with a keen understanding of how owners go astray, this book allows even a first-time owner the opportunity to work through the phases of training a bird dog. From developing a confident puppy to introducing live birds, this book is an essential reference for both bird dogs and their owners.

About The Author

Ronnie Smith has professionally trained gun dogs and field-trial dogs since 1982. He owns and operates Ronnie Smith Kennels with his wife and coauthor, Susanna Love, a fifth-generation rancher whose articles have been published in magazines such as Shooting Sportsman and The Pointing Dog Journal. Reid Bryant is an author, angler, and avid bird hunter whose work has been published in Gray's Sporting Journal and Covey Rise Magazine, among others.

  • Publish Date: October 01, 2019
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Category: Pets - Dogs - Training & Showing
  • Publisher: Universe
  • Trim Size: 8-1/2 x 11
  • Pages: 256
  • US Price: $45.00
  • CDN Price: $60.00
  • ISBN: 978-0-7893-3679-8

Reviews

“This book is unlike any other training book we’ve ever run across in over 40 years of building our sporting library… Training Bird Dogs is simply a beautifully produced piece of work that offers quite a bit of insightful and logical discussion about how we might go about training and understanding our dogs.” —Upland Almanac

“Ronnie Smith, professional dog trainer and owner of Ronnie Smith Kennels, and Reid Bryant, writer, hunter, and shooting services manager for The Orvis Company, bring to you a must-read book for both novice and experienced trainers. Training Bird Dogs with Ronnie Smith Kennels provides concise lessons to maximize your dog’s potential and illuminate frequent mistakes and the process of correcting them.”
— Gun Dog Magazine