Saturday, February 21, 2009

Honoring and Retrieving Drills

Oaks Area 2

On a sunny day with temps in the 40s and light winds, the dogs and I went out with Nate to continue our work from previous sessions.

SERIES A. Land double

I set up two RLs, the one on the right at 90 yards throwing left to right as the memory bird, the one on the left at 60 yards also throwing left to right as the go-bird. Our sequence was as follows:
  1. With me waiting in the van with Lumi, Nate ran Laddie on the double.
  2. As Laddie waited with Nate, I came out of the van and reloaded the RLs. Then I walked to the SL to get Laddie and led him to an honoring position to the right of the SL. Meanwhile, Nate got Lumi out of the van.
  3. With Laddie honoring, Nate ran Lumi on the double. After Lumi had been sent to the go-bird, Laddie and I ran to an area behind the van to play fetch and tug with a dummy. As Lumi was completing her double, I put Laddie in the van.
  4. As Lumi waited with Nate, I came out and again reloaded the RLs. Then I walked to the SL to get Lumi and led her to the same honoring position as I had with Laddie. Meanwhile, Nate got Laddie back out of the van.
  5. We continued alternating in this way until both dogs had honored once on the right and once on the left.
I forgot to put their collars and tabs on for this Series A, but neither dog showed any inclination to break from the line nor while honoring. Hopefully this was good honoring practice for both dogs.

In addition to honoring well, Lumi also marked, returned, and delivered well on each of her retrieves. Her only weakness was a dawdling pick-up on most if not all of them. I'm not sure because I was focusing on playing with Laddie rather than trying to catch sight of Lumi's marks from behind the van.

By contrast, about the only thing Laddie did well was honoring. On his first series, he ran to the memory bird first and then had a long hunt to find the go-bird his second time out. On the first two of his three of series, he dropped a bird during his return. And on several of his returns, he ignored Nate on the returns and tried to bring the bird to me.

Because of Lumi's poor pick-ups, and Laddie's generally poor retrieves, I set up Series B to work on those problems.

SERIES B. Retrieving practice

We tried a number of set-ups, and pile work at 20 yards, with me waiting in the car with the dog who wasn't working, seemed to be the most effective. Nate was instructed to call "no, sit" and to go get the dog if the dog dawdled or shopped. Lumi had at least five excellent retrieves after being picked up once. Laddie had three excellent ones after a number of poor ones. While the third one was an excellent pick-up, return, and delivery, he took a detour on the send-out, which made me think he might be losing interest, so I called the drill off after that, and didn't let him pick up the birds that were still waiting at the pile.

It's uncomfortable watching both dogs showing more difficulties running for Nate than if I were handling them, but hopefully it's a valuable learning experience for them, helping to cement the pattern of a retrieve. Though they haven't achieved fluency as fast as I would have hoped, they have made progress since we began having Nate run them a few days ago, especially Lumi. In any case, it seems to be the only way we have of working on event-style honoring.

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