This situation came up in our (4Q) training group a few days ago, for example. I asked the pro leading the group if he corrects the dog for just picking up the bird in this situation rather than answering the whistle and sitting there in the presence of the bird, awaiting further casting. He said "Mostly, No."
That pro has trained multiple National Open and National Amateur-qualified retrievers.
I am an 8-point AKC judge for both the major and minor stakes, and I can tell you that I would not ever score that pick-up as a cast refusal. Or score it down in any way. There are too many other things to score in a blind and retriever field work is not like the AKC obedience ring where the "obedience" requirements are that cut and dried.
I believe if you query a group of experienced judges of the championship stakes as to whether they agree with your friend's conclusion that it should be scored down as a cast refusal, you will not find all that many takers. I.e., most judges do not care if a dog does not sit on the final "safety" whistle that happens when the dog is adjacent to the bird, and just goes over and scoops the bird. IMO if a judge feels he needs to be taking points off for something so minor, they have not set enough blind and need to work on that side of their judging skill set.
I agree with you that every trainer, including 2Q trainers, should work to maintain the reliability of their retrieves' responses to the Sit Whistle. However a whistle (both the Sit and the Come-In types) that happens on top of a known bird takes on the meaning to the dog "you're there, pick it up" 999 times out of 1000. IOW, every time we hit a safety whistle at the end of the blind and the dog picks up the bird (which is what we want to have happen) we are "undoing" any training to the contrary. Big time. To be so obsessed with control as to try to over ride that natural response in a retriever -- assuming he's a normally compliant dog who does not take advantage (with a confirmed rogue you might want to make a big deal about a tiny infraction as an "attitude adjuster") -- is, IMO, well, to sort of forget why we train these dogs. This isn't the same set of precision values as we train on for, say, the obedience ring.
Also remember that probably 8 out of 10 times when running cold blinds, the WS means "don't go there." Often it co-means "don't do what you're thinking about" (e.g., succumb to a factor or diversion). That is because it is blown when the dog is heading somewhere we find not to be optimum. We blow the WS and subsequently ask for a different heading. So do you really want to train your dogs to be so obedient to a WS when the dog is on top of a bird that they put the non-natural "Sit" ahead of the natural "Pick it up." One risk you run is that you'll blow the WS when they are at the bird (and they know it) and because of the emphasis on "sit no matter what," they figure WS meant "don't go there," so they then interpret your next cast as "leave it alone" and they run off somewhere else, requiring multiple WS's and casts to straighten things out (often dog-visibility is dicey at the end of a blind, and it is the last place you want to be needing a bunch of extra casts--you can lose!
sight of the dog and then it can be curtains for the team). I don't see Laddie voting this way -- LOL -- but it is a risk for a highly compliant dog like Lumi who often "takes Daddy literally" (this tendency in her might be why she seemed to fall apart in your "unnatural act" drill whereas Laddie took it in stride).
If it bothers you while running the blind if your dog slips the final safety whistle to pick up the obvious bird, then you can "cover" the event with a quick toot toot (come-in whistle) right after the sit whistle. This quick come-in whistle obsoletes the prior direction to sit so the dog has not "disobeyed" anything.
To answer the question you ask in your final paragraph, quoted above, the change I'd make is that I would NOT scent the back line by dragging a bird to the blind, because it trains in an unwanted behavior that is very difficult to train out, even for the 4Q trainer. That is the behavior of dropping the nose while running a blind and trying to trail to the blind. Dogs which learn to succeed doing this learn that they do not need their handlers' casts or whistles to help them find the bird on a blind. They are all genetically programmed to prefer "nose data" to other data anyway, and your drill rewards them for this, in the context of a BLIND where they should be thinking any way BUT "nose data." Retrievers who "go into hunt mode" on blinds are quick to ignore the control input from the handler. It is a short step from "hunting your way to the blind" to slipping all whistles when at a distance from the handler, because they believe "they can do it more efficiently with their Goo!
d Ol' Nose. Also, Katie Bar The Door if you ever need to handle this dog off the blind planter's trail!! Fergeddit. Such a dog will believe that "trail scent is the way to the bird." So, as a trainer, I would NOT be looking to ever intentionally scent the way to a blind. I think you can get good results from your drill without this element and in any event, it presents far more negatives than it contributes positives to the drill.
The other response I would make is that one strong reason dogs slip the safety whistle when they are on top of the bird is that they SEE a bird. This is a huge cue to retrieve it. LOL. If you want to train your dogs that Whistle Sit Means Sit No Matter What, then you want to incorporate the cue of the visual at some point. IOW, can you sit your dog 2 yards from a visible white bumper and cast it away from the bumper?
Can you set a blind in a cross wind and handle the dog off a "poison" (= not intended to be retrieved) bird placed off to the side, upwind, that is 50% of the way to the blind, after he winds the side bird?
A final comment: I think the observation you make in the final paragraph I pasted above is terrific. It is totally logical. For some reason it doesn't happen as much as logic would predict, in the real world. I suspect experienced blind running retrievers tend to somehow grok when they are "nearing the end of the blind." So a gawk at this time (which is often rewarded by seeing a bird or the cues related to a bird like a blind marker or mashed cover) does NOT have the general effect of degrading all responsiveness to sit whistles. The mystery of how these dogs knwo they're nearing the end of blinds eludes me, but is one more example of how trained dogs learn to think like dog tyrainers (maybe the trainer subtly changes how he blows his whistle, the cadence of casts, or something...)
Just a few thoughts,
Alice Woodyard
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