Urban Gundogs: Training Flushing Dogs for Home & Field

Immediately prior to my purchase of Macy I stumbled across this book written by Tony Roettger and Ben Schleider III. What intrigued me most about this book was that it was written by guys who train Cockers, and it was written for guys living in town (like me). In my juvenile dog training state, I figured that reading a book written by Cocker guys would make sense. It turned out to be a very beneficial purchase for my particular situation. In the introduction chapter, Ben gives the objective for the book quite well when he says, “this book is written primarily for the novice gun dog owner who is a working stiff.”

The book is written in a very readable style, and follows a logical progression the entire way through. It has has lots of high quality pictures in it of different dogs; the pictures obviously don’t help with the training, but it makes the book more entertaining. I especially appreciated the portions of the book that discuss preparing for competitions, and avoiding pitfalls. It was also beneficial that this was written urban dog owners. The authors don’t assume that you have lots of land at your disposal, so they mostly cover training methods that you can use with limited space.

While there is no earth-shattering material in the book, it is a good solid read. In fact, I picked it up last night to skim through it again (I’ve already read it a couple of times) and picked up on a few things that I’d like to start incorporating into my training. I would also recommend that anyone who is looking to get their first Cocker buy this book prior to getting their puppy. It has good information about choosing the right breed, finding quality puppies, etc. I am sure there are books out there that are more comprehensive, or that are stronger in particular areas, but overall I don’t think you can go wrong with this book if you are new to gundog training, or if you’ve been training for a while but want some new ideas.