The weather has turned freezing again and the east coast is bracing for a blizzard.  However, for our group training on Saturday at Farpoint Retrievers the weather was in the mid-30’s, pleasant weather for January in Michigan.  The weather was so nice that we were a decent sized group with Labs, Goldens, Chesapeakes, and a couple of Standard Poodles in attendance.

The first set-up of the day was a mark in combination with a blind.  A mark is where the dog sees a bumper or bird fall in the field (or on water), and then is sent to retrieve it.  A blind is where the dog is sent to retrieve a bumper or bird that it has not seen fall in the field (or on water).  To make the first set-up more difficult, the dog watched the mark but was pulled away from it and not allowed to retrieve it right away.  First the dog had to run a blind.  After the dog completed the blind retrieve, it was allowed to retrieve the mark.  We call this kind of mark a “poison bird” because the dog must leave it alone to run the blind.

This is a higher level set-up which all the dogs training for Master tests ran.  (The lower level dogs ran a modified version of this set-up.)  The difficulty with this set-up is that the mark is fairly close to where the dog will be running the blind.  We were running over a frozen pond and the blind was up on the opposite bank and back a bit from the edge.  It can be hard for the handler to pull a dog off a mark and get them to pay attention to him/her since the dog’s preference is to retrieve the bumper they just watched to fall and that is visible in the field.

Storm was up first.  She has run Master tests and has a couple of passes, but we haven’t done all that much training since hunting season started last Fall.  She did a decent job on this.  She took a bad initial line to the blind but her handler put her back on line and she finished the blind with a couple more casts (or hand signals to direct her to the bumper).

Even though Freighter is still working on his Senior title, he ran this set-up too.  Normally we train to the next level of difficulty.  Unlike Storm, he took a nice initial line but needed a few more casts than Storm did to get to the blind.  Freighter is still learning so for his level, he did an acceptable job on this.

The second set-up was another mark in combination with a blind.  This time the dogs picked up the mark before running the blind.  However, the blind had to be run under the arc of the mark and right past the gunner (the kid throwing the bumper).  The blind was way back in the field up on a mound.  This set-up can be very difficult for dogs.  The dog’s tendency is to go back to where they just picked up the mark and they can tend to avoid passing so close to the gunner.

Storm was up first.  Her bumper landed in a big pile of snow and was buried.  She had to put on a big hunt to come up with it, but she hung in there, used her nose, and literally dug it out.  Her blind got a bit messy at the very end, but on the whole we were happy with it.

Freighter did great on the mark.  His blind was a bit of a mess but in the end he got it.  He needs to work this kind of set-up because it is a weak area for him.  He tends to ping-pong when there are factors in the field (like a gunner, or passing that island where the gunner was sitting).  When he is out at a distance, he tends to break his sit and go into hunting mode which you don’t want.  It was ugly but it was an improvement from last year because his handler was able to work him through it without having to shorten it up by walking out to him.

Freighter’s marking has been really good and I will have more on that in a future post.