The Smith Way
Silent Command System Takes Emotions Out Of Training

Tuesday, April 01, 2008
by John Johnson

Their proficiency has a lot more to do with natural ability than with the training they've gotten from me, though. I've done my best with both of them and I've gotten a lot of help and good advice from books, magazines, online message boards and especially from a fine local pro, but I've made some mistakes along the way. Neither dog is currently as good as he or she has the potential to be.

My desire to become a better amateur trainer prompted me to plunk down $350 last weekend, plus another $100 for 2 nights in a dive motel in Dunnigan, Calif. The room (slanted bed, leaky faucets, noisy refrigerator, paper-thin towels and a maddening toilet seat) was a rip-off, but the rest of my outlay was money well-spent.

When I wasn't in that hell-hole, I was a few miles down the road at Quail Point Hunt Club, attending a Rick Smith Foundation Seminar. I came home a lot wiser about the ways of field-bred dogs, and my own four-legged hunting partners will soon notice a few changes in our relationship and the way we go about things around our house.

Photo: ShotgunFan Rick Smith works with a Vizsla on the trained-retrieve table during a recent seminar in Zamora, Calif.

Smith, a native Oklahoman and son of bird-dogging legend Delmar Smith, racked up a slew of field-trial championships before retiring from that game more than a quarter-century ago. Now he spends the fall and winter guiding bobwhite quail hunters on Texas' famed Mariposa Ranch and tours the country in spring and summer, teaching his family's Silent Command System of training. He's probably the most recognizable gun dog trainer in the world – he appears frequently on bird hunting TV shows and due to his numerous product endorsements, his mug shows up in just about every issue of every magazine in the genre.

Don't be misled here – his system isn't about telepathically conveying your desires to your dog, and it doesn't involve a lot of hand-signaling, either. It's based on building "points of contact" on the body of the dog during training sessions, and then applying stimulation until the desired response is achieved. The dog learns to "turn off" the stimulation through proper behavior.

In this case, stimulation is not a metaphor for pain. Oh, the dog might try to make you think he or she's in agony, but as Smith points out – and then goes on to prove way beyond any reasonable doubt – they're great actors. Such reactions have achieved their aims in the past, so they use them in any situation they want to get out of. When they aren't "rescued," they move on to a different response, and soon arrive at the right one. Through repetition, those correct responses become conditioned.

When you reach that point, then the action can be named and becomes a verbal command that can be used when appropriate.

"Naming it is the last thing you'll need to do," Smith said several times over the course of the seminar, which consisted of a Friday night orientation followed by 8 hours in the field on both Saturday and Sunday. "And it's also the easiest thing."

The major concepts in the Foundation Seminar revolve around getting the dog to come to you, go with you, and sit or stand still until instructed to move. That might not sound like much to many dog owners, but it's important to remember that in a hunting situation, distractions are numerous, and their allure is sometimes overpowering for an animal bred to pursue fur and feather. Such dogs are regularly confronted with temptations that ol' Duke down at the end of the block might encounter only once or twice in his lifetime.

The dog isn't supposed to do anything that costs the hunter a shot, and the hunter certainly doesn't want the dog doing anything to put itself in danger. In most cases, conditioned responses are the resolution to both issues.

Love Won't Work

The Foundation Seminar is as much a lesson in dog psychology as it is a primer on training techniques. Smith emphasizes early on that there's no way to love or praise a dog into desirable behavior – their brains simply don't operate that way.

Dogs must surrender to their owners' leadership, and they'll do so through acceptance and understanding rather than rough handling or intimidation tactics. He takes emotion entirely out of the equation and flat refuses to get angry or frustrated with a stubborn dog. They all come around eventually.

Dogs don't mind being lower in their "pack" (i.e. family) as long as they perceive you as a strong and trustworthy leader. And they can learn this stuff at any age.

"You'll get a lot more return on the time and effort you put in if you start when they're young," he said. "But the only time a dog can't learn is when it's dead."

When you watch how fast he gets results with dogs he's never seen before, you're inclined to believe it's possible to fully train a dog in a week – or maybe 10 days at the outside. But that kind of thinking is foolhardy.

"I have to zip through these steps in the seminars and sometimes I can make it look pretty easy. But in real life, there's no such thing as going too slow, and each one of them takes as long as it takes."

Notable

> To visit Smith's website, where you can find a video description of his seminars and a schedule of the remaining events for 2008, click here.