PROFESSIONAL GUNDOG TRAINING: THE TRADE SECRETS. By Joe Irving.

2006 1st edition. 4to (196 x 252mm). Ppxviii,172. Colour and b/w photographs, illustrations. Dark blue boards, spine titled in gilt.

This book "covers all aspects of training [with] advice on field trials, breeding and general care and management of gundogs. [A] wealth of sound, practical advice based on forty years' experience of training gundogs ...of benefit both to the new trainer and to those who are more experienced." Chapters include: The MacSiccar Training Plan; Absconding, learning by association, amateur trainers; Behavioural boundaries, boundaries vs hunting; Car sickness, case hardening, creative imagination, crowd shyness; Dangerous venues; Ears, eye colour - hard; Field trials, first season's experience; Game, game sense, genetic insight, gun shy; Habits, hand training; Inheritance, indiscriminate breeding; Judges and judging; Kennels; Line breeding, lineage, lining ground scent; Mistakes; Neurotic aversion to scent; Out-cross breeding; Prankish gun, predators, preparation for a field trial, professional trainers, professionalism; Quartering; Rabbit pen construction, retrieves; Scent, sheep dogging, dropping to shot, substitute judges; Taking signalled directions at distance, trust your dog; Unmarked retrieves, unseen multiple dummies; Videos, voice; Water - introduction to, retrieving from, whistles, wind; Yapping, yipping, giving tongue.