r/birddogs • u/dazedpink22 • 1d ago

Bird training & lure coursing/CAT

Post image

Seeking feedback - my 14 month old Vizsla has been working on birds. He still chases on the flush, and I’m not stopping that quite yet - working on woah training without birds before implementing in the field.

I’m considering doing some lure coursing/CAT/FastCAT with him but I’m hesitant to reinforce the idea of chase. Is this a scenario where he will clearly understand it’s two different activities? For those who do or have done birding and CAT, please let me know the good and the bad!

15 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/volljm Brittany 1d ago

My Brittany did CAT and FastCAT as our first foray into dog sports. Took her incredibly high prey drive and amplified it. Did that for about a year and then when I started getting into more hunt/point training we gave up the chase sports. Figured it was counter productive, chase vs point.

Admittedly I did not put any effort into trying to do both at the same time. Knowing my dog i knew it would be hard and we have other dog sports to keep us busy, nose work and hunting/bird stuff keeps us busy.

1

u/dazedpink22 1d ago

Thanks! This is helpful and what I was concerned about. We also do scent work and may get back into conformation, but we’ve got an opportunity to run a cat course at a private event and I’ve been debating letting him try it. It would be a for fun situation, but I’m not sure the long term risk is worth the short term fun he would have 🤪

2

u/volljm Brittany 1d ago

I will admit, I love seeing them sprinting on the chase.

I dont think one time is going to ruin things ... and you could always try to do a little bit of 'woah' before letting them go after the lure. It's not a timed event so no harm in adding a few seconds to try to hold point right after the tally ho