This post is a continuation of the training we did last Sunday.  After we finished working with Freighter, it was Thunder’s turn.  We decided to run some long singles along side of the road.  As you may have seen from the other video, there are a lot of trees around and it is really the only place to throw bumpers where they do not hit some overhead branches.  We also are trying to stretch out Thunder’s marks because the next level tests will have long marks.  We would have liked to throw double marks for Thunder, but there wasn’t enough room.  We ran him diagonally across the road and I threw the bumper in the cover on the side of the road.  It was getting windier as we were training.  The wind was starting to swirl which made it more of a challenge for the dog to locate the bumper in the cover.

I also took some video of three of his marks.  For the first mark I tossed a teal training dummy in the cover.  Since it was a teal it was quite small so Thunder had to hunt for it.  He stayed in the area of the fall and found it.  For the next mark I threw a bumper on the opposite side of the road.  No problem, Thunder marked it fairly well.  He went a bit long, but that is OK.  Better long than short.  The third mark I threw in the cover on the same side of the road that I threw the teal training dummy, but a bit farther back.  By this time the wind was really swirling, which you may be able to see and hear on the video.  Thunder was headed for the bumper, but then caught the scent of the area he had picked up the teal and hunted that area a bit.  Every time you throw multiple marks to an area, it can make it a bit harder for the dog because the area will be salted with scent.  In a test if the dog is the say, the 30th dog to run, there may be a lot of scent from ducks thrown for dogs that have already run.  In training, you try to show something similar to the dog so they have the experience.  You might be able to see Thunder using his nose to try to catch the scent of the bumper.  Of course a bumper does not have the strong scent a duck has which makes it a bit harder for the dog to use his nose.  Finally Thunder slows down a bit, scents and sees the bumper.  Good boy!  (My “hey, hey, hey”, which is used to get the dog’s attention, is quite loud because the wind was blowing toward me and I needed it to carry to the dog. :))

If the video doesn’t play, try here.

Tomorrow Freighter outtakes.  🙂