In October 2024 Aytee GSPs emigrated from the United Kingdom to New Zealand. Many things in our new life were different, but perhaps the greatest change was my and the dogs opportunity for working game birds. With such a vibrant game shooting industry across the UK, I had never needed to work our dogs on caged game in training or competition.
Arriving in South Island New Zealand, we were faced with an extremely low population of wild upland birds and little access to regular shoots of any sort for work or training opportunities. Learning how to work with radio controlled cages and making good use of homing pigeons for training would be a must if we wanted to compete in Field Trials.
I have always been aware that caged game are used throughout the world for training dogs, so I hope that by sharing my own learning experiences through these pages and videos, it might help or inspire people to work in this way.
Nothing will ever lift a dogs natural instinct and hunting response like working live game in its natural habitat, and nothing is as exciting for a dog handler, but who knows, with the changing world we live in, it may become increasingly useful for people with bird dogs to know how to work caged birds.
In time more videos will be added along with some additions to our Aytee Training Manuals.