By Bill Mosley

Photo by Lee Kjos of Kjos Outdoors

Presented by SportDOG® Brand 

(Originally published in Winter 2024 issue of California Waterfowl)

Try not to go more than three hours without taking a stop, especially if you’re going to be running hard the next day.

I train retrievers full time. That means a lot of hotel nights, since we’re on the road 25 to 30 weekends a year running hunt tests. I’ve learned the key to keeping your dog going on these trips is to not change things up too much. Dogs are athletes, and just like any athlete, they perform best when they stick to a schedule and feel comfortable.

One of the biggest considerations is feeding. For example, on normal training days, I feed once a day. So, if we’re on the road, I try to keep that as close to our normal schedule as possible. I’ll even take into account time zone changes and try to feed at the time it is back home. One exception is that I won’t feed before we leave. If we’re leaving on a trip in the evening, I don’t want to feed the dogs and then put them on a trailer. Other than that, I try to keep the schedule as normal as possible.

One change I do make for the better when we’re on the road is that I always feed wet. What that means is that after I put the food in the bowl, I fill it the rest of the way up with water. I do this because dogs typically don’t drink enough on a trip since they don’t have water available when we’re riding down the road. At home, they have it available all day, and they are conditioned to take a little when they feel like it. Since that’s not an option on the road, I take the opportunity to fill that bowl with water so I know they’re at least getting a quart and a half of water when I feed.

When we go to a test, the dogs are burning fewer calories than they are on a normal training day. So, I don’t really adjust the amount of food I give them. I worry more about the water. However, if I were going on a weeklong hunting trip, I probably would increase the food a little bit. If you’re hunting all day, that dog is going to burn more than it would in a normal day of training. I suggest increasing the amount of food about a half a cup. Feed a little bit in the morning before you get going just to get some calories in the dog’s system. Then, feed the normal ration in the evening.

I also make sure I carry my own water. I learned this lesson the hard way when I went to visit my family for a week in Florida and took my dogs and a couple of client dogs along. We used up the water I had in the tank on my trailer in the first couple of days, so after that I just got water out of a spigot at my parents’ house. It really messed with the dogs. Every dog in the trailer had diarrhea. I should have known better. Changing their water quickly and drastically can cause trouble, just like swapping brands of foods without weaning them off the old brand.

Today, if we go somewhere for a week, I fill the water tank on the trailer and take gallon jugs of water in the bed of the truck just to make sure I have enough. It’s also a good idea to pack extra food. For one dog, on a five-day trip, I’ll bring eight days’ worth of food. Even if it’s just for the weekend, I always bring another day or two of rations just in case something happens.

If you are hunting in brutal cold, or even in conditions that are just much colder than what the dog is used to, you might also want to pack a little energy boost. If it’s going to be drastically cold, or if we’re dealing with a lot of cold water, I’ll give the dog a boost. As soon as I notice that the dog is getting a little chilled, I’m going to use an energy bar. The boost isn’t so much for energy to perform, but for the calories to fuel body heat and to get the digestive system going, which will help create body heat.

Another consideration for traveling hunters is the trip itself. You really need to build in time to stop and give the dog a chance to stretch. We try not to go more than three hours without taking a stop, especially if we’re going to be running hard the next day. I’ll let them out, get them running a bit to stretch their legs and give them a little water. I’ll let them run for 10 minutes, give them a bathroom break and then load them up and get going again.

So, again, when it comes to traveling, the most important thing is to keep that dog on as regular a schedule as possible, but think about the overall situation so you can make the necessary adjustments with food and water. Plan ahead, and you’ll know you’re going to get peak performance from your dog.