Tom Dokken's Dead Fowl Trainer may be one of the best tools ever designed for training retrievers. Once my pups get old enough to carry them, I switch over to them for the majority of their work.
While you can't substitute using real ducks, the Dokken Ducks allow you to train with the natural weight and feel of a dead bird all the time. It can make a huge difference in your dog's attitude over time. My labs absolutely love them!
Transcript from Steve's Video:
This is a Dokken dead fowl mallard. This is one of my favorite products that we sell. Designed by Tom Dokken, this is the closest you can get to a real duck for your dog to retrieve. Dead fowl trainers are made of a foam that has the weight and the feel of a dead duck. It is designed for your dog to have the correct hold on a bird.
The dead fowl trainer has a hard head, has a foam body, has hard feet, and then the throw rope is included and it actually passes through the body. It's the same rope that attaches the head, so real secure.
The design with this, because of the foam, you can actually inject scent straight into the body. It's just designed to teach that dog to go for the middle of the bird. You will find, too, that if you have a dog that shakes, if he shakes the head is designed to actually give him a small correction. So it will stop dogs from shaking birds. Just a really neat device.
This is a great tool. It's a great way for your dog to get used to picking up birds. We start dogs on them as young as four or five months with the smaller teal, then we move them up to the mallard. Just a really great product. My dogs absolutely love them.
We occasionally run across a dog that once you move over to dead fowl trainers, they don't like to go back to dummies. They only want to pick up these and they want to pick up birds.
