We were able to get out to train yesterday even though it was still raining!  At least there was no thunder or lightening so we trained land marks, and land and water blinds.  Of course I have no pictures of last night’s training and if it never stops raining, I may just run out of new pictures and have to recycle my snow pictures.  😆

We threw the marks in heavy cover (with all the rain the grass is almost waist-high now).  Thunder did well marking, but had a bit of trouble catching the scent of the bumpers.  He finally found them after a hunt, but we thought afterwards that we probably should have taken a duck or two out of the freezer for this training.  His blind work was fine.  I think he actually handled better on the water than on the land.  It seems like his water issues have resolved.  We just really need to work on getting his whistle sits quicker and his handles more solid when he is out in an open field.  It was a real help for us to work in the field at that Master level test this past weekend.  They did 2 land and 1 water blind and we were able to watch many different handlers attack these blinds.

But back to the subject of this post…

The city park with the nice lake also has a nice big field.

It is an open flat field where we can throw marks or run pattern blinds.  In the summer, we can usually find a shady area so that the dogs don’t have to run in full sunlight.  Plus the lake is right there and available for a little cooling swim.

I took some video of our training session in early April.  After doing some work in the water, we set up a pattern blind.  A pattern blind is where you set out piles of visible bumpers and then handle the dog to them.  You can send the dog straight to a pile, or start out sending him to one pile of bumpers and stop and send to another.  In a “cold” blind there is one bumper (or bird) out in the field or by a pond and the dog is handled to it.  Pattern blinds are what you work on before you send the dog on a cold blind.  You want the dog to be confident on these and fairly solid on the stopping and casting before you move on to cold blinds.

Thunder is not a big fan of pattern blinds.  I think he finds them boring.  In the video, you will see him looking at each pile of bumpers.  It took a bit of training to get him to go to the pile of bumpers that his handler wanted him to go to rather than the pile he wanted to go to.  As I said, this video was early April and his pattern blinds are even more solid now, but he didn’t do too badly on this day.  His handler is using verbal commands with hand signals and at times just hand signals without the verbal command.  He had a bit of confusion, but he was worked through that and in the end he got to the right pile.

This pattern was four piles.

On the video it looks like we are running Thunder close to traffic.  However, I can assure you that there is still quite a distance to the road, and that line of trees.  There is a gully, a sidewalk and grass between where the bumpers are placed and the road.  When I zoom my camera, it looses perspective and background things seem closer than they are.  Also remember that we train our dog with an e-collar and his recall is solid, so if you train in a park like this be careful how you set your training.  Although we run pattern blinds in this direction, we would not throw a mark out in the direction of that road, we would throw them so the dog is not running toward the road.  🙂

We hope to get some training in this weekend, maybe some long singles and blind work.  Hope everyone else has a nice weekend!

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