Gear Reviews

Has anyone tried to make their dog fetch or retrieve with no or little success? Well I sure had troubles as you probably have seen this fine sample of my pooch doing everything but retrieving the duck: Dog trying to retrieve duck video.

After a frustrating season of trying to force my dog to retrieve I was somewhat negative that he would never get fully interested. I then tried the Dokken Deadfowl Trainer Mallard and roofus went crazy for it. I had to hold him back to let him here the word "fetch" before I would let him retrieve the Dokken Mallard. Needless to say the weekend training session on the lake was a huge success, I could not have been more proud of my loyal retriever. He relentlessly retrieved the Dokken Mallard without getting bored or tired once. I was impressed, he has never been this focused and persistent with any other fetching tool, ball, or toy. So for getting your dog interested, I think the Dokken Deadfowl trainers are a great buy.

The Dokken Mallard measures 5"x18" and simulates a real weight. It is made of a strong foam that held up well considering the trials it went through. The feet and head are made out of a hard substance so the dog will not want to grip on to those parts of the bird. The head flops loose on a string so the dogs are discouraged from doing their death shakes on the retrieval tool. All in all I think it is a great tool its reasonably priced around the $25 mark. There are other models to simulate quail, dove, Canada goose and species. Cabelas has them for sale on their website. The only negative feature is that after a while the duck gets water logged and since it is soft foam, dogs can chew it. I recently tried the ATB retrieval mallard by Avery and found that the rubberized duck does not hold water or breakdown from use. I like it the ATB a bit better although the throwing string did break after a while. It still can be thrown by using the body. Check out Avery's dog training tools : http://www.averysportingdog.com/products/ATB.php

For hunting dog training tips refer to this article

Posted by Justin Ott