Joe Skaggs keeps the light lead on Raven, a four-month-old Lab, whenever she's in the house. The training is exactly the same for pointers.

Years ago, I ran across a cartoon that perfectly depicted a bird dog's selective hearing. A man is scolding his dog, which sits watching him, wanly thumping its tail. The first caption contains the man's actual words, the second what the dog chooses to hear: Gypsy! blah, blah, blah, blah, Gypsy! blah, blah, blah, blah. I've remembered it all these years because it captures so precisely the personality of every dog I've ever owned. I'll bet I'm not alone.

Let's forget the frills for a moment--the commands "sit" and "heel," hand signals, forced retrieves and all the other niceties that make a good dog a pleasure to live with and hunt over. The huge majority of pointing dogs I see in the field (as opposed to those I've watched in my limited experience with hunt tests and trials), would be vastly improved if they obeyed–really obeyed–just two basic commands: "whoa" and "here." Trying to write about two things at once makes my poor head all mushy, so "whoa" will remain grist for a future column. Today, I'll talk about "here."

There seems to be a need in this country to accomplish any task, no matter how difficult, with the least effort and in the shortest possible time. But it doesn't work that way with bird dogs, certainly not with mine. I have no doubt that the pros, many of whom train more dogs in a week than I'll train in my lifetime, have methods that will bring a dog along more quickly than the ongoing process I use, and with that caveat I'd shamelessly like to plug the other columnists in this magazine as among those you should read for similar thoughts on this subject. I do. But there are so many variables among dogs and so many different situations they run into in the field, that it's probably safe to assume that "here" is a command you'll never stop reinforcing.

That's right, never. That means you can't teach your dog to come and then rest on your laurels, smug in the belief that he'll perform the command flawlessly forever after. Life should be so easy.

There's nothing complicated about the "here" command; you whistle and the dog comes in. But a command performed in the distraction-free vacuum of your backyard doesn't mean squat when your dog is nipping at the heels of a running deer or racing out of sight under the peculiarly canine impression that if he just runs hard enough or long enough he'll catch the bird.

I was inaugurated into the realities of dog training early on when one of my first dogs, a springer, developed a hankering for aircraft. We'd be hunting or training someplace, my anxious eyes scanning the heavens, when, to my horror, a plane would buzz over and off he'd go. I didn't have an e-collar in those days--no one else did, either, back then--so when my screams and whistles had zero effect, I was resigned to chasing him down on foot.

In retrospect, I should be grateful for the lesson. It took Poke only a year or so for the command to sink in, but to grasp what he was teaching me took decades. And that is this: If I wanted my dogs to come when called, I had to be ready to back up my words with immediate action.

The two pointers I now own, Powder, a Brittany, and Scarlet, a setter, come reliably maybe 95 percent of the time in the field and 85 percent of the time at home. That's not perfect by a long shot, but it's a far cry from what I used to settle for. That they're not both at 99 percent I blame entirely on my own laziness.

Having learned the hard way that I need to call my dogs once, and once only, before lowering the boom, I still sometimes let things slide if, for no good reason, I'm just not in the mood to enforce a direct order. My dogs, of course, know exactly how long they can ignore me and invariably do just that before responding. Consequently, they're usually less responsive at home than in the field, where the power steering I strap to their precious little necks allows immediate corrections. Of course, they know that, too.

Ian Munn with Rabbit, the author's last setter. Rabbit was well accustomed to a check cord.

E-collars aren't a panacea by any means. It might feel good, really good, to slap a brand-new collar on your dog and light him up the next time he ignores your whistle, especially since it usually works. But save your urge for instant retribution for bad books and cops & robbers TV shows. This is going to sound strange to my friends, who know how hot-tempered I can be, but keeping your thumb off the button until you've figured out the ins and outs of electric collars will pay big dividends in the long run. I mean, really try. E-collars are great tools, but only if used judiciously.

Teaching "here" is one of the first things your new puppy should learn. Consequently, I start home-schooling when they're just a few weeks of age. My method doesn't differ from anyone else's: I call the puppy and then praise it when it runs to me. A half-dozen times at one sitting is plenty for a youngster.

Joe Skaggs, a friend of mine who trains and trials Labs, has a different wrinkle. He attaches a light, 12-foot lead to the pup's collar and leaves it there. Permanently. That way, he can enforce compliance instantly whenever he gives the "here" command, and he never gives his pups the command unless he's already got the cord in hand. Joe says his young dogs get used to dragging their cords around, but in any event cords are cheap, and if the pup chews one up, it's easy to tie on another. I think it's a great idea and I plan to try it on my next puppy.

My training progresses from reeling in the dog on a check cord to doing the same in the yard, then in the field. I teach the dog to come on a voice command first, then overlay that command with a whistle, and then use the whistle alone. Eventually, I transition to a collar. The specifics of how I go about doing that vary from one dog to the next, but they're really not that important. Where we invariably fail--you, me, and your sister Kate--is assuming, despite evidence we could plainly see where we not so willfully determined to block it out, that our dog has somehow put his training behind him and no longer needs work.