Wind direction is not something I mention too often when explaining training set-ups.  It is not because it does not matter.  It matters and is something we take into account whenever we are setting up a training scenario.

A strong wind blowing toward a dog can make a set-up easier.  Wind coming from behind a dog can make a set-up much harder.  A swirling wind can throw a dog off completely.  This is because a dog with a good nose can smell a bumper or a bird long before he ever gets to it.

When we are training blinds, the ideal is for the wind to come from behind the dog so their nose is of no help to them.  They will not smell the pile of bumpers until they are on it or just past it and will have to rely on their handler’s direction to get them to it.

It is the same with marks.  When we want to work on the dog watching a bumper fall in a field and going to the spot where he saw the bumper fall, we don’t necessarily want the wind to help the dog get there so we may want the wind to come from behind the dog.

Sometimes the wind will blow across a field and that adds a whole new difficulty because it can push a dog off a mark or pull them off the best line to a blind retrieve.  No wind can add just as much of a challenge because it gives the dog no help whatsoever.  If a dog runs over a mark, there is nothing to pull him back to the bumper or bird.

It is not always possible to get the wind direction that you want for the field that you want to use.  You can change your starting position, or you can make do.  On Saturday we were using a rectangular field and we decided to set-up our scenario with the wind coming toward Freighter.  That gave him a bit of a break, but we also decided to use orange bumpers which add some difficulty because orange bumpers are more difficult for a dog to see.

The bumpers were thrown in the order they are numbered.  The field was sort of narrow so we set up a double with a blind off to one side.  The marks and blind were tight together, again adding difficulty.  One of the marks was thrown over the road which also adds some difficulty because a road is considered a hazard and some dogs are reluctant to cross them.  Freighter has been training with hazards like roads for a while now so they are not much of an issue for him.  One other thing hubby did was to make the starting point to the corner of the field.  Starting from one corner of a rectangular field rather than in the middle can throw a dog off, so we try to change it up.

Freighter did very well with this marks.  His marking which was not solid a few weeks back is really coming back.  He went right to the bumpers with no hunting.

The first bumper thrown was the second bumper Freighter retrieved.  It is also called a “Memory” bumper because the dog must remember where it fell after picking up the other bumper.  But Freighter had no issue with this bumper.  He could have taken a straighter route, running diagonally down the road rather than on the edge, but his route was acceptable.

Finally Freighter had to run the blind.  It was what is known as a “hot” blind meaning the bumpers were already in the field when he was running the marks.  This adds a bit of difficulty especially where the blind was placed in fairly close proximity to Bumper #2.  If Freighter got too far off line retrieving that bumper, he would have run into the blind and you do not want that because that would be an immediate NQ at a test.

The difficulty with this blind was that there were two pipes in the field and Freighter had to go in between them to get to the blind.  The closeness of Bumper #2 to his path to the blind also added difficulty because it worked to pull him toward it.

Freighter needed to be stopped a few times and given direction, but eventually he got to the blind.

We did a few more marks in this field and then went to the field across the road and had Freighter run a triple blind.  I will have more on this in future posts.