In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that Saturday was another freezing cold training day.  It may have been freezing, but it was still a good training day.

We worked on the dogs taking the most direct route to the marks.  We did this by running a series of doubles with the gunner stations (throwers) fully exposed in the field.

This will be easier to explain with pictures.

The first set-up:

The marks were thrown in the order numbered and picked up in reverse order.  The gunners stood to throw the marks and then sat down.

The object of the first set-up was for the dogs to go in between the gunners to retrieve mark #1 (first thrown but the second to be retrieved) because that is the most direct route to Mark #1 (white arrow).  The reason that we work on this is because at the Master level, it is important for a dog to take the most direct line to a mark to obtain the highest score.  A nice high score in one area can sometimes give a dog the benefit of the doubt if a judge is deciding whether to pass or fail a dog that may have had a bobble in another area of the test.

Storm and Thunder had no issues with this.  They have retrieved a lot of marks and understand that they are to take the direct route.

Freighter did what you would expect with a young dog.  He picked up Mark #2 but when he headed out to retrieve Mark #1, he tried to go around the gunners.  The trainer explained that this exercise was not about marking, but about teaching so Freighter was called back and resent.  Again he tried to go around the gunners so he was recalled again.  This time the far gunner stood and simulated throwing Mark #1 again.  The gunner remained standing and that did the trick and Freighter took the correct route between the gunners and made the retrieve.

The second set-up was a variation of the first.

This time the dogs needed to go to the right side of the near gunner to pick up Mark #2 and to the left side of the far gunner to pick up Mark #1.  The direct line is marked with the white arrows.

Again Storm and Thunder did great on this.

Freighter had a bit of trouble with this one too.  He appeared a bit confused, but worked it out and that is really what you want.  You want the dog to understand that regardless of what else is in the field, they should take the most direct route to a mark.

The final set-up (and by this time I was frozen 🙂 ) was on the other side of the field.

The dogs needed to go to the left of the close gunner and to the right of the far gunner.

All three of our dogs did a very nice job on this.

I included all three set-ups in one post so that hopefully you can see the progression that can happen during a training day.  Even though we make think a dog has a concept, we spend a lot of our time revisiting and reinforcing.  We will run similar set-ups to this one in the future.  Some people think that once a dog has a concept, it is good to go.  We hear it from newbies at training quite often.  I wish it worked that way, but at a test there will be these kinds of distractions and more that can throw a dog off.  Over the course of our dogs’ training we will throw hundreds (maybe more), marks for them.  We try to come up with scenarios to trip them up.  That is one key to successful training…challenging the dogs to learn something at training sessions.

So despite the cold, it was a very successful day.  Thanks to our trainer for braving the cold!