NEW PRODUCT: Why We Designed the Kugae Pheasant Body Dummy

 

At Kugae, many of the products we develop start with something we've experienced ourselves while training dogs or working them in the shooting field.

The Kugae Pheasant Body Dummy is a perfect example.

The idea came from something Carl and the team had seen repeatedly with smaller gundogs, particularly Cocker Spaniels and English Springer Spaniels.

These dogs may have no shortage of enthusiasm when it comes to retrieving. As Carl often says, spaniels have the heart of a lion – if they can't carry something, they'll quite happily try to drag it!

But retrieving a full-sized cock pheasant can present a very different challenge to retrieving a conventional training dummy.

The Problem We Were Seeing in the Field

A cock pheasant is a large bird for a smaller spaniel to retrieve.

When a dog isn't confident about getting a good hold of the body, it may try to find an easier way of bringing the bird back. That can mean taking hold of a wing or the neck rather than carrying the bird securely by the body.

For us, the answer wasn't simply to wait until shoot day and hope the dog worked it out.

We wanted to find a way of introducing the size, shape and feel of a larger retrieve during training, where we could help the dog develop the right habits before it encountered the real thing.

That's where the idea for the Kugae Pheasant Body Dummy began.

A Different Shape for a Reason

Rather than following the shape of a conventional gundog dummy, Carl wanted something larger and fuller.

The Pheasant Body Dummy is designed to encourage the dog to open its mouth, take a good hold around the dummy and carry it confidently through the retrieve.

We've also deliberately made it softer.

A bird isn't completely rigid when a dog picks it up, so we wanted a dummy that gave the dog a softer, more realistic object to carry.

It's not intended to look exactly like a pheasant. Instead, it's about recreating some of the characteristics that matter when teaching the retrieve – particularly the bulk and feel of the body.

Why We Started at 1lb

The first Kugae Pheasant Body Dummy weighs 1lb.

There's a reason we haven't simply made it as heavy as possible.

When introducing a dog to heavier or more awkward retrieves, we believe in building confidence gradually. Starting with too much weight can create problems of its own. The dog may begin dropping the dummy, changing its grip or losing confidence in the retrieve.

That defeats the object.

The 1lb version provides a useful starting point for introducing a larger, heavier retrieve while still encouraging the dog to pick up, carry and deliver confidently.

We plan to introduce heavier versions in the future so handlers can progress their dog's training gradually.

Why Four Colours?

The Pheasant Body Dummy is available in:

Red • Green • Orange • Blue

These aren't simply colour choices for the handler.

We use different coloured dummies throughout our own training because dogs perceive colours differently to us. Changing the colour can alter how easily a dummy stands out against different backgrounds, giving us another way of changing the difficulty of a retrieve.

It means the same style of dummy can be used as the dog's training develops and in different environments.

Built for Training

As with the rest of our Kugae dummy range, we wanted this to be something we'd be happy to use ourselves every day.

Each Pheasant Body Dummy is made using high-quality, water-resistant canvas and features a strong throwing toggle, allowing it to be used for practical retrieving exercises across different types of ground.

But ultimately, the most important part of the design is what it encourages from the dog.

Train for What You Want to See in the Field

Our approach to gundog training has always been to prepare dogs for the situations they'll eventually encounter.

If we want a dog to confidently retrieve and deliver a pheasant on a shoot day, it makes sense to introduce the skills needed for that job during training.

The Kugae Pheasant Body Dummy was designed to help bridge that gap.

It's about giving the dog the opportunity to practise taking a fuller hold, carrying confidently and completing the retrieve properly – so when the real situation arises, we're not asking the dog to solve an entirely new problem.

Train for what you want to see in the field.