In addition to training blinds and multiple marks, Freighter has been training the long retrieve or a long single mark.  Freighter needs this kind of training to help him in several areas.

First, throwing a long single mark for Freighter is one way to stretch his distance.  Freighter has a comfort zone which is about equal to the distance hubby can shoot a duck.  However, for tests marks can be at a distance of up to 150 yards.  Freighter has been training marks which are longer than 150 yards in the hope that he will be more comfortable when marks are closer.  A mark at 100 or 150 yards will be a piece of cake compared to these longer marks.

Another benefit of these of these long single marks is they can encompass a lot of terrine changes so that a dog can get comfortable with those.  Many dogs will be pulled off course when the ground changes or they have to swim to a mark.  The smells are different.  The dog may take his eye off the mark getting onto or out of a pond.  I have seen many a dog break down when grass turns to bare dirt.  It is as if the dirt is a fence to the dog, so we train this hoping it will make the dog more efficient when it comes to these terrain changes.

A couple of weeks ago Freighter had a chance to run a nice long single that encompassed many terrain changes.

Freighter started off on dirt.

He had to run a bit on the dirt and then hop in a pond to swim.

As you can see by the diagram, the correct line is parallel to the edge of the pond.  Sometimes, dogs tend to want to get out on the edge and run rather than swim.  They know it is faster to run, but for a test, you want the dog to stay in the water and hold the line.  Freighter did a very nice job of this.

At the end of the pond, the dog had to get out, cross a road, get in a smaller pond and swim across that, get out of the pond, cross some dirt and end up in an area of medium cover where the bumper fell.  That is a lot going on and each one of those changes can derail the dog on their way out to the bumper.  When the dog got into the small pond, it actually was out of sight of the handler for a time.  You hope the dog pops out in line with the mark, but some dogs ended up off line to the left and they had to hunt back to the mark.

Freighter did a good job staying on line and soon had the bumper without needing to hunt for it.

Freighter did a very nice job taking the same line back to his handler that he did going out.  Although technically at a test the dogs are not judged on the path they take to return, we like to have a nice neat return so we also train that.  If Freighter had strayed off, hubby would have stopped and directed him back on the correct path.

Freighter did an excellent job on this long retrieve.