In the city we train in the city parks. In early Spring the parks are fairly empty and we have them mostly to ourselves. However once the nicer weather arrives, the parks get very busy. Does every kid in our city play soccer? (Just kidding….we think it is really great to see the parks fill up!)
We finally had a nice day, so we ventured to a park which has a great training space tucked way in the back. It is a huge park, but there is a field which they leave natural (yay! cover for marks and blinds) and a really cool pond.
First we ran some doubles in the un-cut grass. One was thrown by the handler from the line and the other was thrown in the field into some standing water. Because there is waterfowl in the area, the field was full of scent. Thunder did very well on these and his marking is all coming back (thank goodness!). I took just a bit of video.
Next we moved to the pond. The pond is really two ponds with a land strip running down the center. The smaller pond has points and little islands. We have nicknamed it our very own technical pond.
- Irregular Shaped Pond With Points
- Land Strip Down the Middle
A “technical pond” allows you to work on a lot of different training scenarios. For example you can set a mark or a blind which forces the dog to swim straight across and will not allow them to cheat or run the bank. You can train a land-water-land mark which starts on land, requires the dog to swim the water, and then find the mark on land. Lots of possibilities with a nicely shaped pond!
This was one of the first times that we had Thunder in the water since the ice came off the ponds. The water is still very cold, but the sun was warm. Thunder has always been strong on water marks, rarely missing them and he isn’t a bank runner. He is usually straight out and back on water. Nevertheless, we started out slow and reviewed a bit. First we placed a bumper on the strip of land and sent him on a back, just to get him used to the idea and build his confidence as we work toward handling to a water blind. Then we threw some doubles and finally a short land-water-land with the mark being thrown on the strip of land and Thunder sent from the other side of the pond. I was able to get a little video (until my camera went to sleep….fixed that setting 😆 ).
Review complete, we threw a mark between the two islands which required Thunder to swim between them and return back between them. This is not the easiest thing because some dogs might not want to swim through that opening. Thunder did fine…stright out and back. Good boy!
There are some drawbacks to this park. As I said earlier it can be crowded. Technically dawgs should be leashed, but many were running off leash. We keep our dawgs on lead except when they are running a mark or a blind. These ponds are great in cooler weather, but they get very scummed over once it warms up and we stop using then because we worry about blue-green algae. Even with those drawbacks, we are very lucky to have this great little gem in the city!
But there are more…