Water Series, Ditches, Land Obstacles

Summary. At Cheltenham on a sunny day with temps in the low 90s and high humidity, we drove around from place to place on the property, each dog running various retrieves intended to build upon that dog's current training level. All work was with white dummies. Work included:

• Three water series
• Crossing ditches on an angle
• Running over a mound both ways on land retrieves

Notes on Laddie's Water Series. For Laddie, each water series was a double:

• #1: Cheater
• #2: LWL retrieve
  

Laddie had no problem with any of the LWL retrieves. Perhaps he will revert to marooning at some point, but for today, that problem was behind us.

The cheaters each included one or more challenges, such as channels, swimming past points, and angle entries. The most difficult one today was this one:

I intended to throw the cheater dummy into the middle of a channel for a 70-yard mark, but the dummy hit some tree foliage and fell short. Laddie ran the LWL retrieve, and by the time I sent him out on the cheater, the dummy on the cheater drifted to within three yards of the bank. After taking the angle entry on the cheater, Laddie avoided a point at 40 yards out, swam to the dummy, and then turned toward the bank. Not waiting for him to swim to it, I blew WS, then cued Over toward the middle of the channel. Laddie took the cast and returned without any further flirting with the bank.

Notes on Lumi's Water Series. For Lumi, each water series was a double combining two cheaters that she used to have difficulty with but that today generally required no handling. An example of one mark in one of those series:

From the SL, Lumi made an angle entry, swam 70 yards past two points — the first on the right, the next on the left — crossed a strip of land, and entered a stickpond to swim another 20 yards to retrieve the dummy. The dummy was not visible after the throw until Lumi had crossed the strip of land. Lumi required no handling in either direction.

Lumi also had a 140-yard channel mark thru a stickpond with a difficult angle entry and the fall in an area of the pond she's found scary in the past. She required no handling until she got near the scary area, then, 120 yards from me, she swam to the bank and climbed up, ignoring my whistle. I left the SL and came up to a position 10 yards from her, then cued Over to cast her back into the water. I then returned to the SL and Lumi completed the retrieve without further handling.

Notes on Ditch Work. I had both dogs run a 45° angle to the left across a ditch, and a 45° angle to the right. On the first one, I tried running them with 10 yards between the SL and the bank down to the water. Both dogs squared the ditch. I concluded we needed more work sending the dogs from the edge of the embankment, which is how we ran last time and also how we ran the second retrieve today. With a little verbal guidance ("over"), both dogs did fine on the second retrieve.

Notes on Land Retrieves over Mounds. We used longer distances today, 70 yards between the SL and the mound, and 50 yards between the mound and the fall. Neither dog tried to cheat in either direction. Good progress, I thought.

Notes on Honoring. For today's work, both dogs were out of the van the entire time, one running while the other waited. If I didn't think there'd be much handling, as on the ditch retrieves and the land retrieves over the mounds, I had both dogs at the SL and one honored while the other ran. If I did think there'd be handling, I had the other dog lie in the shade some distance away. That seemed less confusing to the dog who wasn't running, compared to hearing handling cues while sitting beside me and not knowing whether to respond to them.