HGD Community

The Art of Dog Training

Reagan and I were in the field this morning working some dogs. Here is Ekahi showing beautiful mental steadiness and good decision making. Signatures of the Higgins Method.

Congratulation to our recently certified Higgins Gundog, HGD Griffonpoint X’Bomber and his owner Chad Woods. Chad drove here from Kansas and stayed for four days. It worked out great with Bomber even earning his Higgins Gundog Certification. We worked a total of 65 great flying (and running) Higgins quail. Below is a…[Read more]

(HGD) Kepa and Ekahi, demonstrating steadiness and energy management until released using the Higgins method.

Steadiness is a strategy, not an obedience command from the dogs point of view , energy management (dog and handler) is the prelude to steadiness , which leads to success (bird in the mouth) from the dogs…[Read more]

Learning the Higgins Method. First, Forget Everything You Know

Been working on the upcoming book, The Higgins Method. Here are some thoughts taken from various chapters on the differences between my method and conventional, obedience based training methods. You’ll find that many things are opposite of conventional obedience training.

(1) I…[Read more]

Here is our newest, certified Higgins Gundog Sage, and her owner Ron. We took her from bumping and chasing birds, to steady to wing, shot & fall in three days. In addition, she does a nice aggressive flush/stop on cue, honors another dog’s point and has a nice, gentle retrieve.

This is a short clip of some work Reagan and I did this morning with a client and his pup. Here, I’m starting the steadiness process, showing the dog a new, successful hunting strategy that includes the shooter. Before coming here, the owner had done some retrieve work (force fetch) and taken the dog on a few hunts.…[Read more]

Here is one of our black pointer pups, Olive, in the field today during one of our training hunts. Here, she finds a bird and waits for us to catch up. Once we arrive, I get the shooter (Reagan) in place and give Oliver her Flush/Stop cue. She did her beautiful aggressive flush to present the bird to the guns, but the…[Read more]

I had Nigel and Glenn in the field this morning for some New Year’s bird work. Here they are Pack Hunting some quail. The only rules are, nobody flush the birds until I say, nobody chase, and everybody share the kill. I had to put the camera away to shoot but all did well. I’ll get the GoPro going so I can film the…[Read more]

Had Nigel (Des x Fizza) out this morning showing off for some prospective owners. Here he is demonstrating steady to wing, shot and fall, waiting for my verbal release to retrieve. In this video, I am filming and the bird flushes behind me.

This is a short clip from a longer video that will be going up on my website…[Read more]