Salience Drill, Angle-in, Retrieve Shaping

Since the property our FT group uses on Sundays was leased to the Lab club for a Hunt Test this weekend, I dropped Renee off at the club where she teaches, worked with the dogs at three locations on various skills, and returned to pick Renee up a couple of hours later. We worked on the following:

• Series A. Salience drill, at Homecrest soccer field (both dogs).
• Series B. Angle-in drill, also at soccer field (both dogs).
• Series C. Retrieve shaping, at Fair Hill Area 3 (both dogs).
• Series D. Salience drill, at Norbeck ballfield (Lumi only).

Series A. I placed a lining pole as an SL and ran each dog on three blinds separated by 30&deg angles. This was the salience drill I devised, not a handling drill, so the dogs were expected to line each blind. The blinds were all orange dummies lain endwise at varying distances from the SL, and with prominent landmarks 20+ yards behind them, as follows:

1. One dummy out 40 yards in the direction of a large, light-green tree.
2. One dummy out 60 yards in the direction of a small wooden structure.
3. One dummy out 80 yards in the direction of a white sign on a silvery metal pole.

I ran Lumi first, then Laddie. Both dogs ran toward the landmark, did a double-take as they came upon the dummy, pounced on it, and responded to my recall whistle by enthusiastically delivering their discovered dummy.

Hopefully the dogs were learning the intended lesson of the salience drill: When Daddy sends you in a particular direction, find a target in the distance with your eyes, run toward it, and eventually you'll come upon the blind as you run.

Series B. This was our second angle-in drill of the sequence started a couple of days ago, and today we used a 70-yard backline rather than a 50-yard one. Today's series was as follows:

1. Send from right heel, thru to pile
2. Send from left heel, thru to pile
3. Send from right heel, WS, angle-in right
   
4. Send from left heel, thru to pile
5. Send from right heel, WS, angle-in left
   
6. Send from left heel, thru to pile
7. Send from right heel, thru to pile
8. Send from left heel, WS, angle-in right
   
9. Send from right heel, thru to pile
10. Send from left heel, WS, angle-in left

The pile was white dummies, and the angle-in was to an orange dummy that I threw while the dog was running toward the pile.

I ran Lumi on this drill first, then Laddie. Neither dog slipped a whistle nor refused a cast. Hopefully, both dogs (especially Lumi) are developing confidence in the angle-in cast.

Series C. Next we drove to Fair Hill Area 3 for a short session of retrieve shaping. We used a large depression in the ground, about the size of a future basement but with sloping sides, in the shape of a rectangle roughly 50' x 150'.

For both dogs, I used an unusual duck, which one of the trainers had called a "Black Head". I think that's what some people call a Ring-Necked Duck, but I believe this one was a Lesser Scaup. In any case, both dogs had previously shown some discomfort carrying this particular bird.

I ran Lumi first on a single 20-yard retrieve, with the SL on the high ground near the center of one of the long sides, and the fall near the right corner of the high ground on the opposite side. Lumi's retrieve was so good, including a lightning fast pick-up, that I simply rewarded her and ended the session.

I then ran Laddie on the same retrieve. Everything was excellent except that Laddie's hold on the delivery was a little weak. I used some walk-offs to strengthen the hold, and then ran a second retrieve of 40 yards: With the SL on the high ground at one end of one of the long sides, the fall was on the high ground behind the corner diagonally opposite. This time, Laddie's entire retrieve was excellent, including a firm hold on the delivery.

I had not before noticed that the sloping sides of the depression in the ground make this location a possibility for beginning to train the dogs an important concept: not to square up when crossing a ditch or road. They may have gotten some of that lesson today, but I think the lesson would be more emphatic on a send out to a cold blind, rather than on a mark as we were using today when the dogs may not have paid as much attention to the topography of the ground surface as they might when running a blind. Perhaps we'll return to this location to try the idea out in the future.

Series D. Finally, we drove to the Norbeck ballfield for a final single-blind salience drill. It turned out that I only ran Lumi, because as we worked, a softball team began warming up in one direction and picnickers showed up in another, making it too risky to run Laddie with such nearby diversions.

The drill consisted of an orange dummy lain endwise 100 yards from our SL, with a large tree standing alone in the field, 50 yards further back in the same line of sight as the blind. As before, Lumi took the line toward the tree, presumably assuming that the dummy was at the base of the trunk, and was then surprised and excited when she ran across the dummy earlier while running in that direction. She delivered the dummy, and we returned to the van and drove to pick up Renee.

Work Ethic? During Series A and B today, people and dogs on the fringes of the soccer field repeatedly distracted Laddie. While I tried to make sure that playing our games (that is, drills) were rewarding both intrinsically and extrinsically, I also moved quickly toward Laddie a couple of times, calling "no HERE," if he started to divert. I hope he was learning that working with me is both highly rewarding as well as not optional.

Perhaps the lesson is similar to what Alice Woodyard calls "work ethic". I only understand the term vaguely as it applies to dogs, but in private correspondence, Alice once wrote: "Work ethic, to me, is a dog who wants to learn and believes in learning, believes in his own power in controlling outcomes if only he tries . . . AND believes, also, that even if he does not enjoy something 100% of the time, the nonenjoyability is temporary and enjoyment is on its way. Therefore he perseveres when he does not enjoy something at the moment."