Thunder’s weekly training session with the golden retrievers was cancelled this week due to severe weather.  We had buckets and buckets of rain and thunderstorms on and off all day long.  Not safe to train in that kind of weather.

Since I don’t have many new training pictures, I thought I would get back to sharing some of our favorite training spots.  When the weather cooperates, there is a nice little park with a lake close to the house.

There is a lake over that hill.
It is a nice big lake.

This was our favorite park to use while we were training for Thunder and Storm’s JH tests.  It is the one city park where Animal Control has told us that dogs may be trained off lead.  The lake stays clean all summer long (some weeds, but no worry over blue-green algae).   The one problem is that residents like to fish the lake.  We never see anyone really catch anything other than small fish (it is overstocked), but they like to go through the motions.  As a result, we can’t always get to the areas where we like to set up marks because others are there before us and we try not to get too close to disturb their fishing.

On this particular April day, we could not get to the corner of the pond so we set up a simple double from the shore.  We were fine with only being able to set a simple water double since it was one of the first days this season for water work.  We used the winger to get  a bit more distance on one mark. Here is a crude drawing of what we set.

Another  big drawback of this park is that since dogs are allowed off lead, you never know what random park dog is going to show up and try to be part of your training session.  People don’t always have a good recall on their dogs and when the dogs see bumpers, well I guess they just can’t resist.  In the video, you will see one such dog arrive just at the end of Thunder’s second retrieve.  Luckily Thunder’s handler saw the dog coming and Thunder was focused on his work so there was no scuffle.  You can also see that there were other distractions in the water, but again Thunder was nice and focused on his work.  🙂  The sun was directly across the lake, and unfortunately it shows on the video, but it isn’t too bad.

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Next post I will show the area where we train land marks and pattern blinds in this park.

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