This will be the first installment on how I was able to find my first bird dog and then train her up.  My hope and goal is that listeners of the podcast can learn from some of my mistakes and triumphs over the first year. Let me start off with a little background to let all of you know exactly how rough it was in the beginning.  Currently, my wife and I live in a townhouse in the middle of a city of 120,000 and have no front yard, so finding a dog that would work indoors and also outdoors was a must. I knew the goal was finding a good family pet that could not only run with the wife but also work in the field and become a hunting machine. So with that little background let’s get started…. Mistake number one started right off the bat with scouring the internet and reading every article I could on bird dogs and how to train them.  Probably the worst thing I could have done since every trainer and writer has a different approach when finding a dog and picking out the right pup.  If I’ve learned anything in one year, it’s that every breed is different and needs to be treated as such.  Don’t get me wrong, the articles are worth reading but just remember to take them all with a grain of salt until you speak with a bird dog trainer face to face and get some real life stories.  The best possible thing you can do is find a few breeds that you think you might like and visit some in your local area. Make sure when you talk to these trainers and breeders you have a list of up to 10 questions you’d like answered.  Use this for all the different breeds you are looking at, and it will definitely help you level the playing field. The good part of looking through all of that electronic information was I discovered Ron and the Hunting Dog Podcast. So through the advice of listening to him, I lined up a few visits and took the wife to see some different breeds.  We went to visit someone who had what they called ‘big boned GSP’s’ and sure enough they were massive, over 65 to 70 pounds.  That wasn’t going to work in a townhouse of course so we went on the next breeder and they had GSPs and English Pointers and Setterss.  After spending over an hour talking to the breeder about GSPs, he did the best possible thing by telling me ‘Joe that dog is not for you based on your experience level’.  We took a tour of his facility and I started asking about Pointers and what I had read about their temperate and drive which I liked.  But again, no go because I didn’t have space for them to run free every day.  Feeling a bit defeated, we were getting ready to leave when we saw this small female in the kennel, and the wife asked about her. Sure enough it was an English Setter.  Not knowing much about them we talked at length on the breed, its temperament, and field presence.  Needless to say I was hooked before I got into the car to drive home.  We put the down payment on the next litter, and we were ready to go.  So basically within 9 weeks I had to get a crash course on English Setters and get a house ready for a puppy…..