Over the Winter months Freighter’s marking seems to have fallen off some so a couple of weeks ago we gave him a refresher with a Y Drill.

One of the skills a dog must demonstrate at a retriever hunt test is “marking’.  Marking is where the dog watches a bumper (or a bird) thrown and must “mark” the area where it falls and then go and retrieve it.  Marking is a natural ability, but in higher level tests multiple marks are thrown which can be challenging.  It is a matter of the dogs watching the bumpers fall and remembering were they are.  In training we throw a lot of marks for the dogs in all different configurations; however, sometimes it is good to get back to basics with some drills.

Y Drill

The Y Drill is a series of three single marks thrown in the order indicated in the diagram: angle back, flat or straight out to the opposite side, and angle in.  The person throwing the bumpers should be fairly close, maybe 50 yards away and visible (wearing a white shirt or coat).  A shot should be fired before each throw to get the dog’s attention.

We are using orange bumpers because we are in an open field so they should be visible as they are thrown, but not so much when they land in the field with cover.

Unfortunately Freighter has been running a lot of marks in the local park on cut grass where he can easily spot the bumper.  We want him to be proficient at watching the arcs of the various throws, going to the area where the bumper fell, and then using his nose to hunt them up because he will have to do this at tests where there may be higher cover.

The Y Drill is a good refresher and seems to have helped Freighter because his marking, including multiple marks, seems to be coming back.  At the end of last season he was consistently marking triples.  He has a test in a couple of weeks and will need to be consistently marking triples again by then.