The process of training puppies on whistle commands and retrieving begins as soon as they come home from the breeder. Plenty of training books go into how-to details, but training springer puppies can start with an aggressively retrieved balled-up sock.

Teach the dog to "Hup (sit)" to a whistle pip and "Come" to a whistle trill.

Incidentally, springers are normally trained with a high-pitched whistle without a pea inside, which makes much less noise than a normal whistle. By 4 months of age, we would have worked on the dog's innate "windshield wiper" searching pattern and will have introduced blank pistols.

Once birds are introduced into the equation, instincts should take over from there. Springers love to chase birds and love to please their owners. Springers are simple to train but difficult to completely tame. Because of their enthusiasm, it is a challenge training them to be steady to wing and shot, and darn near impossible to stop them from the hot pursuit of a running rooster pheasant or a flushed covey of quail, though the professionals can do both.

For springers and other breeds that are naturally close working and constantly relate to their master, electronic training collars are generally unnecessary in field training and may even thwart natural hunting instincts. Very few springer professionals use them as a primary training tool.

Such collars do have their place, especially if you are on the far side of 50, but only after the dog knows what a command means and appears to be running wild or disobeying intentionally.

A situation like this occurred with my Skipper well after he became a dependable bird-finder and retriever. He liked to take a victory lap with thrown dummies during yard training and he would play "keep away" occasionally with retrieved birds in the field. My chasing after him had also become a game to him. One session with a training collar fixed that problem.

AROUND THE HOUSE
Springer spaniels also make great pets. Springers are strong, durable dogs -- plenty of people kennel their springers outdoors during days and even nights with proper shelter. The spaniel personality blossoms with attention, however, and belonging to a family just brightens the dog's temperament. Set the necessary rules and boundaries and welcome your new hunting partner into the family.

BECOME A TEAM
After a year or so of training, there are still lots of things a handler can teach a springer, like unmarked retrieves and hand signals, but there is little more that anyone can teach them about hunting and finding birds. They have the nose, they recognize game birds and they know how to find them. This is where most of us make mistakes, and for me it happened more than once because I'm a slow learner.

A wing-tipped grouse that Missy flushed fell along a hedgerow. Because the dog did not see the fall, I directed her quickly to that area and told her to fetch. She could not find the bird and soon set out running across the field. Because I was the boss and thought I "knew" where the bird was, I called her back repeatedly to the hedgerow until the scent trail was lost. We never found that bird, but it wasn't the dog's fault. Lead your springer afield, but also learn to follow.

Hunt quickly, hunt hard and have fun -- that's what a springer is all about. The joy they emote while bounding through the woods is contagious. It's what upland hunting is all about!