Real Duck Premium Dog Training Dummies are advertised as super tough because they are made from a polyester fire-hose case tightly woven and double stitched for strength and durability. A sewn-in polyester cord provides a sturdy handle to make throwing this dummy easy and efficient.

"Adding commercially available liquid bird scent to the dummies, the streamers and the ground flags provides yet another sensory dimension that will help a dog find a dummy in the field," Bartz concludes.

The Sport-N-Dog Training Dummy by Kong Company is a lightbulb-shaped, all-rubber dummy with a rope handle for throwing and a built-in foam pad to hold scent and to add buoyancy. The Sport-N-Dog comes in two sizes and is advertised as the "world's strongest training dummy," made from a rubber material that is "resilient, durable, nontoxic, nonabrasive and non-splintering." Though also offered as a "chewing device," many gun dog owners prefer to use the Sport-N-Dog as a retrieving tool because of its erratic bouncing action, weight and shape and the ability of the user to throw it long distances.

Unconventional Retrieving Devices
Flying disks are most commonly made from hard plastic, which can be hard on a dog's lips and teeth. Nyla Bone manufactures a disk made from a soft synthetic that flies well without potential damage to a dog's dental structure. The Kong Company has recently come out with a disk made from a durable yet soft hard-rubber that is safe and comfortable for your disk-catching gun dog.

Ruff Wear has manufactured the HOVER CRAFT. It's made from a sturdy Cordura nylon in three sizes ranging from a "mini" that is seven inches in diameter to a "midi" nine inches in diameter to a "maxi" 18 inches in diameter.

Ball-Type Dummies
The Go-Frrr Ball, manufactured by Proball, started out as a kid's toy consisting of a firm sponge rubber ball in two sizes--21?2 or 27?8 inches in diameter--attached to two 12-inch lengths of surgical tubing that hook onto a plastic hand-held launcher. The ball is pulled back with the other hand and, when released, will easily fly through the air beyond 200 feet. The distance the ball travels is controlled by how far the surgical tubing is stretched when pulled back and released. Because the ball floats, it can be used in water as well as on land.

Hyperdog Tennis Ball Slingshot by Hyper Products is an oversized slingshot that shoots a full-sized tennis ball. At first it might seem like a mere gimmick...that is, until you shoot a tennis ball twice as far as you could throw it by hand and your gun dog chases after the ball with enthusiasm, fetches it, races back to drop it into your hand, then eagerly waits for you to shoot it again.

Or shoot the ball a long way into water, then watch as your dog learns to look farther out and harder for the "round fuzzy dummy" that has gone a greater distance than any conventional dummy.

Dummy Launchers
Small dummies, weighing eight ounces or less and made either from PVC plastic or fabric material, can be effectively propelled from a hand-held or shoulder-mounted launcher powered by .22 blank ammunition. These launching devices can shoot the smaller dummies from 75 feet to over 100 yards.

No gun dog should ever get bored during retrieving exercises with all the innovative, interesting and effective "smarter dummies" available. Though some of these products may look like gimmicks, every one of them has been proven as a sure-fire way to help hunting dogs become better retrievers.

"The advantage of this type of launcher is that one person training or exercising a dog alone can shoot a dummy up to 100 yards as a way of setting up extra-long-distance retrieves," says Jeff Luby, manufacturer of the Retrieve-R-Trainer and Lucky Dog Launcher.

"Along with the dummy flying through air, there is the gunshot 'bang' of the blank .22 shell as a way to gently break a pup to the sound of gunfire," Luby says. "Once most gun dogs have some experience with hearing the Retrieve-R-Trainer go off, then watching the canvas or plastic dummy fly through the air, the launching system will become their favorite training tool."

Conclusion
In addition to instilling and improving retrieving skills, training with any type of modern dummy also offers exercise and physical conditioning for any breed of gun dog. "A dog that will eagerly fetch a dummy is almost always in good physical condition," notes Dr. Jim Rieser, a veterinarian from Franksville, Wisconsin. "Even slightly overweight Labradors or chubby German shorthairs, if they regularly retrieve a dummy, will be in better shape than any house or kennel dog that just lies around all day and seldom gets daily exercise outside of the hunting season."