Land/water Doubles, Shore-handling Toolkit

Summary

• Series A, B, C. At Cheltenham, three poorman land/water doubles (both dogs)
• Series D. At Cheltenham, beginning work on Tool #7, Over-LTW-W/O (Laddie)

Conditions. We started at 7:30 AM, but it was already getting hot. The day ended up in the high 90s with humidity pushing the perceived temp to 110.

Series A, B, C. Once again, I set up a poorman double for each dog at three separate locations, running Lumi first, then Laddie in each series. The structure of each double was as follows:

• #1: A relatively easy retrieve
• #2: A challenging retrieve

For Lumi, #2 involved swimming past nearby points without diverting to them, or swimming along a shoreline without veering over to it.

For Laddie, #2 involved land-water-land retrieves. Laddie has made great progress in that area. Today, he picked up the dummy and came straight back with every one, without dawdling on any of them. For Laddie, today's #1 retrieves were land retrieves of a duck.

Series D. After we completed the Series A, B, and C, I worked with Laddie for the first time on shore-handling toolkit Tool #7, Over-LTW-W/O. Here's the diagram from the standard set of diagrams I created for the toolkit:


In today's work, our set-up was different, as follows:

• I positioned Laddie in a sit at the end of a point, while I stood immediately in front of him. Over meant entering the water on one side of the point or the other.
• I cued Over verbally and with the standard arm movement, holding a dummy tucked under my other arm.
• When Laddie crossed what I call the swimline (that is, crossed from shallow water to swim depth), I threw the dummy over his head so that it landed in front of him.
• As Laddie was pouncing on the dummy, I blew a recall whistle.
• When Laddie delivered at heel, I tossed the dummy for him and cued Shake.
• Laddie shook off and came running back with the dummy, and we played a game of tug.
• I then fronted Laddie again for the next Over. I focused on Over left t0 right today, using right to left for variety if I felt Laddie might be getting a little distracted.

Although that was the main procedure, we used others as well, such as Over to the right and then, as Laddie came out of the water, immediately cueing Over to the left, continuing back and forth a few times.

In comparison to Lumi, who was able to execute Tool #7 without training, Laddie had difficulty with it. He would always take the initial Over cue from his sitting position to the shoreline, but then he would usually stop and look at me, waiting for me to throw the dummy, at the shoreline, the swimline, or both.

I tried several ways of getting him to take the Over cue into swim-depth water without stopping. For example:

• When Laddie stopped, I tried waiting without any prompting. That was generally unsuccessful, as eventually Laddie would begin to come back toward me and onto shore rather than completing his send-out into the water.
• When Laddie stopped, I tried calling him back, slipping on his lead, and running the same drill with Lumi a few times. That also seemed ineffective as a training method, since Laddie did not improve even after I tried that strategy several times.

Finally, I found a procedure that worked, a procedure I would characterize as errorless learning (EL). Each time Laddie stopped for more than a second or so, I prompted with Over, more than once if necessary. Eventually, Laddie would cross the line where he had stalled. Over several retrieves, Laddie's performance gradually improved, requiring fewer and fewer prompts and on one retrieve near the end of our session, no prompts at all were needed.