While I was milking the cow this morning I was thinking about some of the discussions that have been around lately about control-how much, when, before upland or after, what standards to set, etc.  It occurred to me that pointing labs have a unique situation in which it is ok to disobey-when they are on point, and you call them.  I thought this might be an interesting discussion. 

Will your dog break point if you call?  Do you nick your PL if they don't come right away when upland hunting?  Do you while you are waterfowl hunting?  How did that all work when your dog was young and you were just starting training for everything?  Is it different for dogs who do retriever training first and upland second?  If your dog would come off point when you call, how did you fix it?  Or do you want it that way?

Marlana
I can't think of any time that I've ever called a dog off point (but as you know, we do sometimes allow our dogs to break point in order to make a flush).
When the dogs are actively hunting, they'd darn well better come when called. They are collar conditioned to "HERE" at about 4 months of age (ala Evan Graham).
With Tucker, we introduced him to birds very young. As soon as we saw that he had "decent point in him" we concentrated on obedience and the retriever aspects, and only once in awhile did some upland training. Once his retriever skills were good, we went back to upland training and once in awhile did retriever stuff.
I've never tried to call a dog back to me when it was on point, so I can't answer your last two questions.



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Doc, can you always see your dogs when they are hunting? Churchill sometimes ranges out of sight, most often in medium to heavy cover. If I "lose" him, and call, and he doesn't come, he's on point. That's what prompted the questions, I wanted to know if anyone else has this situation. I don't use a beeper on my collar, but maybe everyone else uses them....

OK, I see what you're asking now.
Our dogs are usually within sight, but sometimes not, but we do know their general location.
With that being said, if they've been 'out of sight' over a minute or two, we will walk to where we think they are
and so far we've had no trouble finding them.
But I've never tried to call a dog back to me when it was on point.



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I tried calling my younger pup off of point this weekend it didn't work so well and he is very obedient. We were on a preserve hunt, he locked up and as I walked up I saw the bird duck out the backside of the cover, dog didn't see that part (plus he's young and still learning about runner anyways) so I tried calling him off point. I tried HERE, OK, etc. from 6 ft away mind you, he didn't even flinch or even acknowledge me so I didn't push it too much, finally had to walk over and grab him by the collar and pull him away all the while he was still intent on that spot and even lunged back at it after a drug him 4 ft away and said FIND THE BIRD.

Have lost my other dog before in heavy cover as well (he moves sorta fast so its easy to lose track when you can't see him). I tried HERE, even a NICK till I realized we were probably dealing with a dog on point. Took 4 of us a decent amount of time to find him in the end, he was only 60 or so yrds away

That's my little bit of experience on the subject.....

Have it alot Marlana, mine are out of sight quite a bit. I use a beeper collar most the time with a remote control, so even when running him silent, I can turn it on or off and hear it.
He won't come when on point, he is telling me it's my turn to come to him, he is always right on that.

Yea this is a huge issue especially if you let your dogs range when they hunt. I wish I had time to better compose a meaningful post. In all my dogs advanced training in upland and retriever work, they were trained to pull off scent and pull off point.

Retrieving - it is an imperative when running real world blind retrieves. For me, the dog needs to ignore everything till I get him back to the area of fall on a blind, then "hunt it up!" and go independent of me until the bird is retrieved. That is one reason my dogs do not wear e-collars when we duck hunt the swamp. Once released to hunt it, they are on autopilot and I am a control freak so I shouldnt have an e-collar transmitter. I have been rewarded with watching some spectacular cold-trail duck retrieves and tracking of cripples.

On Point? Again I taught mine to pull off point and re-point the same bird as part of my advanced upland training. It generally does not work on wild birds (doesnt always work on pen birds either). When I am hunting just one dog I can keep pretty good track of (generally) where they are even out of sight in cover. I hunted with someone with PL's once who just yelled the dogs name and "fetch it up" in that situation. Dog flushed bird then came back - problem solved.

There is a medium in here for safety reasons. Yeager, for example, has a very high prey drive. Unfortunately he gets tunnel vision and totally tunes me out some times when he is working a bird. I have "lost" him several times because he will not pull off scent and come in (both retrieving ducks and hunting wild upland birds). His bird focus is an admirable quality and it absolutely produces birds. But when he gets lost or refuses to come in after dark when tracking a wounded duck, it is a pain( I worry about him) and my hunt is less enjoyable because my dog wont listen. The other two I have had will/would come in if I need them. It may take me being hard on the whistle and a collar nick but both would stop what they are doing and come back if I was insistant. I need to know my dog will do that.  They may not be on property I can hunt or may be in proximity of a hazzard.That is control when you need it and rarely used.

I have seen the opposite where dogs are so handler focused that they spend more time on watching their obedience than hunting birds. I would not want a dog that pulled off bird scent every time I opened my mouth.
 
GPS or beeper collar resolves the point issue plus has other benefits.  Maybe by next year I will own a GPS collar.