They aren’t really poison, just an expression, and that is what we worked on Saturday with the 2 brown dawgs and their trainer.  The point of this training is to reinforce for the dogs that they need to go where they are sent, regardless of what else is going on in the field.

In this case we were working on the dogs completing a blind retrieve even though they may have just seen a mark fall.  Marks are fun and exciting.  Blinds not so much.  For dogs who might be inclined to want to go to a mark or the old fall of a mark rather than where they are sent for a blind retrieve, this is a good thing to train.

This was the set up.

The bumpers were placed in an area the dogs are very familiar with for working on blinds.  They were clearly visible, and to make sure the dogs knew where they were, we sent them to retrieve one.  Then a mark was thrown and dog was sent for that.  Now this is where it can start to get dicey.  The dog was again sent to the pile of bumpers.  Some dogs might want to go back to where the mark just fell, but you tell them “NO” and try to point them to the blind and recall and give a correction if necessary.  Next you sit the dog and throw a mark, but send the dog for the blind, again “No’ing” them off the mark and recall, correct, and resend if necessary.  Then we gave them a break and just threw a mark, but sent them for the blind.  These marks were thrown to the left, once the dogs understand this, you also want to throw marks off to the right.  Our trainer explained that you can also throw a triple in the water and use this technique to select which bumper the dog will retrieve, in other words “go where you are sent.”.

The 2 brown dawgs seemed to pick up on this with a few “no’s” and slight corrections.  Thunder seemed to pick up on it a bit quicker than Storm who sometimes likes to work her own program.  However, even Storm seemed to understand what was expected of her without too much correction.  We plan to work on this because we don’t want any repeats of Storm’s performance on her last water blind, (which you can read about here).  Also, since it can be worked in the water, it is a good thing for hot days when we won’t want to run land marks or land blinds.

I am happy to report that the issues with Thunder’s water blinds seem to have completely resolved.  He is now confident entering the water and seems to understand what is expected of him.  In addition to poison birds, we need to lengthen his water blind work and work on his casting on land and in water.  Our plan is to hopefully enter him in a HRC test in mid-July.  That should give us a good idea where his training stands before the AKC tests at the end of July and in August.

Some photos from our session:

Have a good Monday.  We are hoping for a good week of training!