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Thoughts on pet training / gundog training income

David

By David,
in Earning a Living

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David Newbie

David

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Hi folks

My wife and myself are looking to relocate from the uk to France in 2 years . Maybe sooner ?

Needless to say we are trying to get well equipped with all necessary plans and following advice to make the move trouble free ( nothing in stone on the area we will move to but likely the Dordogne region at the moment anyway.

Please can I say my wife and myself are in our fifties .

My wife will have her NHS pension and I will be working part time .

We plan to purchase along with our new home a couple of adjoining Geets .

I would like to set myself up also as a part time gundog trainer / pet dog trainer .i have done this for 30 years or more part time in the uk .

Any thoughts on my idea would be gratefully received.

We are fortunate that we have the finances to purchase our French property cash and will also have some savings .

I have read the posts on Geets and income and I must say it’s not so straight forward as these holiday programs would have us believe

Many thanks in advance

Regards

David
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idun Rookie

idun

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Interesting post. Some of the hunters in our village had hunting dogs, and from friends in the region, I heard of too many hunter's dogs getting shot. So not just in our village.

You have made me wonder if they were better trained that they would avoid this?

Pet training, do french people do this. Most seem content to buy a dog and simply leave it in the garden, and that is it's excersize...... apart from our old postie, who used to take his little dog for a walk and carry it.......

And yet, for all it is actually illegal for dogs to constantly bark, so many do, so if you could find a good and easy way to stop barking, then that would be good, that is pet training isn't it?

Nothing IMO is as straight forward as these holiday programs say, and I am too often in doubt about the legality of some of the things that they do. Do your research properly, not just on here.

You need to see how you register properly for your businesses etc etc so contact those authorities. Put a search in, obviously in french about what you want and find these people. Good way to get to grips with french officialdom.

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David Newbie

David

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Oh thanks for the reply .

Much appreciated.

Yes I had also read an article that french shooters dogs

Being shot albeit accidentally.

Wild boar shooting seems to be a very popular sport in rural areas ( not my cup of tea) and shooters would march forward and let their dogs range and hunt the boar , sometimes the boar would double back through the line of guns and in hot pursuit would be the hunting dogs ,

Some dogs would be Cocker’s and cocker size or smaller .

As the guns catch a glimpse of a dog their excitement levels become too much and they let the guns go thinking they had just aimed at a Boar . This is the only

Reason I can see but no excuse whatsoever .

This does scare me !!

I used to be gun guide on a vast Scottish estate when I was in my teens and we used to get on a regular basis

French shooting party’s coming over to shoot snipe and

Hares.

On many occasions they would aim at protected species believing them to be the snipe .

No excuse here either and many times their gun handling safety was highly spec’..anyway i do love the french and the culture hence the wanting to relocate .

I saw a tv programme 2 nights ago about a chap and his wife relocating to Dordogne and they purchased a Geet as well alongside there main home .

Anyway this guy practised hypnosis and set up a small

Business getting two clients at the beginning and a few months later it had increased to about a dozen a week . Not quite gundog training but an obscure business I would of said would never of got of the ground , amazing and hats of to the guy ! “He who dares Rodders!

Anyway a lot of water under the bridge to come before the move. On your advice I will try and contact the specific French shooting websites ( in french, God I will need to start learning )) and start getting the feel for any likely business or what’s the likely need or requirement for trained Gundogs in the rural areas and locations

Thanks again for your reply , most helpful .

David

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Weegie Newbie

Weegie

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David,  As has been pointed out, it's Gites not Geets.

Unless you have some knowledge of French you are going to find it very difficult. 

Not saying it is impossible but French bureaucracy can be a challenge even for the French.

La chasse (the hunt in French) is somewhat different from hunting/shooting in the UK!

Bon courage

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idun Rookie

idun

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Not just for clients, but registering with the authorities as a business.

When

I see french people start things up, they seem to need all sorts of

registering and authorisation, so I don't get how people can just move

and start say practising hypnotherapy, unless say, their qualification

is transferable. Not everything is automatically transferable.

Hunters

in my old village bof, double figure IQ's I think for most of them, a

neighbour who lived next to us for a couple of years was originally from

the Villefranche area and a hunter. He only went out with our locals

once, called them butchers not hunters and was disgusted.

There

are too many deaths with the hunts in France, from dogs to people, some

will shoot at anything at all and I would not go anywhere near the

areas they hunt in.

All the french people I know seem to have to have special qualifications to do just about anything, and as not every qualification is transferable I don't know how so many of these programs seem to suggest that someone can come and just set up shop.

I didn't really mean Chasseurs official sites, but more like government things to register your business.

And please the word is GITE. The french are hot on spelling, I know only too well, as I am not very good at spelling in english or french.

Yes, learn french. I moved back to the UK after a long long time in France and it disgusts me that so much is done for non english or should I say non british isles languages.  As far as I am concerned a BIG waste of money, move to another country and use their language as we chose to move there, no one makes us.

Don't get any ideas that I sound french I don't. My french is what it is, still have my english accent, but I do everything in french  in France and that is how it should be, and no one will convince me otherwise for those who move to another country permanently.

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Meek Megan Newbie

Meek Megan

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One point that has not been made is that the relationship between rural French people and their dogs is very different to that in the UK.

French dogs are working dogs, including hounds. As long as they are good hunters the owners will be happy with them and unlikely to spend any money on any other kind of training. Rural French people are thrifty any way and I doubt that you could compete with the locals when it comes to training them for the hunt (or that is the way that they will see it).

It seems to me that the only potential clients might come from within the expat population or the small number of French dog owners who treat their dogs as family members. Most of the latter are likely to live in more urban areas.

Personally I like to see the hunts in progress and my experience is that the hunters are usually well organised and have safety marshals out to prevent accidents.
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mint Newbie

mint

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"my experience is that the hunters are usually well organised and have safety marshals out to prevent accidents."

Don't know about that.  There are not many years when the first day of the hunting season do provide news of people shot dead.

As for the casual way in which some of the hunters swing their firearms about, it's positively frightening[:'(]

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Hoddy Rookie

Hoddy

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My experience is closer to Mint's than Megan's. I grew up within the sound of the Meynell kennels on days when the wind was in the right direction. The dogs were big strong, related to each other and the huntsmen knew them and probably their grandparents too and they obeyed him.

La Chasse near me in Perigord was a bunch of four or five men with a motley crew of assorted dogs which only met on hunt days. The proceedings usually began with a swift dram or two to counter the cold.

The aim of the two hunts was different. The English dogs were out to hunt down and kill foxes. The French dogs would have been no match for a boar; their aim was to flush them out of the maize so they could be shot. This is where the many mistakes Mint mentions

happens.

As for the general attitude to dogs. When ever I've mentioned that it might be better if a dog was neutered you might have thought that I was suggesting depriving them of their human rights !
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BritinBretagne Newbie

BritinBretagne

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Are you British? After the transition period it will become far more difficult for British citizens to work in France. A huge number of people have taken advantage of freedom of movement, moved to France and set up a small business, that just isn’t going to happen in the near future. If you have the skills, acceptable qualifications and the language to compete for an advertised job that’s a bit different but you will still come at the end of the queue of French and other European applicants who also apply.
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