Private Training: Diversion Drill

This was our first day training with Nate as our thrower. We were attempting to follow a written description of a diversion drill designed by Alice Woodyard, but I later found out that I had not positioned Nate correctly. Nonetheless, I'll describe what we did.

With Lumi and Laddie sitting near the start line, I placed two piles of five white dummies 30 yards from the start line on lines at 90° angles to one another.

I placed Nate and a cooler of dead birds five yards behind the pile to the left and tried to send Laddie to the pile. He veered to the left immediately after being sent, ran to the area of what would have been a fall if Nate had been throwing, and then went out of control, running to the woods, out into the field, over to the other pile of dummies, anywhere but the desired pile in front of Nate. He was unresponsive to whistle sit and any recall for some time.

I tried moving halfway to the pile to send him, and the same thing happened. Then I tried it about one yard from the pile and again the same thing happened.

Finally, I put Laddie into a sit, walked to the pile, threw one of the dummies straight in the air, walked back to Laddie, and sent him. This time he retrieved the dummy easily. I then ran with him to the halfway point and then the start line to send him to the pile, and each time he easily retrieved a dummy.

Next, I put Laddie in a sit behind me and had Nate throw three single marks with dead birds for Lumi, alternating sides. Because I wasn't sure if Laddie could honor Lumi's marks, I didn't have Nate use a gunshot, just quietly toss the birds.

Then I put Lumi back into a sit behind us, brought up Laddie, and tried to send him to the pile again. As before, he went out of control.

I was highly excited by the opportunity to finally have a regular helper who would throw birds, and was taken aback by Laddie's inexplicable inability to retrieve from the pile even from a few feet away, and shocked by his total lack of responsiveness once sent. Rather than beating my head against the wall, I decided to change the drill for today into a dummies-over-duck-scent drill.

To do that, I had Nate throw birds to each side for Lumi, then dummies to each side for Laddie, at both of the two piles with no gunfire. We then repeated it with Nate firing the pistol before every throw. Neither dog had any problem with any of those retrieves and we called it a day.

Comments. I realized later that the factor that seemed to be confusing Laddie so badly was having Nate standing behind the pile. That is not a picture either dog has ever retrieved to. Laddie has a long history of retrieving from piles, and a long history of retrieving thrown marks, but he has no history of running straight toward a thrower in the field and then stopping short to retrieve from a pile.

Checking with Alice via email later, I learned that that had not been the intent of her description. Obviously, we won't pursue trying to get Laddie to retrieve from a pile with the thrower behind it in the future.