There are two approaches to gundog training with rabbits; it used to be common practice to teach dogs to ignore rabbits and other ground game completely, and I suspect some still take that approach. This gave rise to the use of the rabbit pen as a means of teaching dogs to ignore rabbits. It is still used to teach the dogs control in the presence of rabbits, primarily for those people who do not train dogs over ground with a lot of rabbits.
There is something about ground game that can drive some dogs to totally ignore commands. If you are entering dogs into competitions then they must be able to ignore rabbits if necessary. Since I rarely shoot pheasant, I am more than happy to train my dogs to point any game, and since rabbits are dead common up here in Scotland, I have dogs that are trained to point them. As it happens this is one of the best ways of hunting rabbits with an air rifle.
GSP pointing a rabbit
To show you what I mean, here are a few photos. The first photo is of my old pointer with a rabbit at the edge of woodland. The rabbit pays him so much attention, but feels fairly safe next to heavy cover…
Rabbit concentrating on GSP allowing me to stalk closer
…allowing me to get close enough to take this second photo. If you blow the second photo up you can see reflections in his eye.
Spot the rabbit in the bottom left corner of this photo of German Shorthaired Pointers
The third picture is of the old dog on point and the younger bitch backing him. If you study the photo closely, you may be able to see the rabbits eye in the bottom left of the photo.
