Interrupted Single, LWLs with No Whistle

Oaks Areas 2 and Stadler's Pond

Today was a continuation of our recent training.

First each dog ran an interrupted single, with the mark a pheasant "thrown" (using an RL and weighted streamer) left to right at 60 yards, and the blind at 130 yards 90° to the left of the mark. I had two reasons for using a wide angle. First, I wanted to minimize the need for a Walk Out, for the reasons described in my previous post. Second, Bob Hux pointed out to me that dogs risk learning to return to old falls from running too many tight angles. It didn't apply in this situation, but he also said that tight angles on practice doubles tend to promote head-swinging.

Next, we ran LWLs at the pond behind Stadler's Nursery, randomly alternating 25-yard and 30-yard swims and randomly alternating dogs. Most of the placements were on land 3-4 feet from water's edge, and both dogs shook off at times, resulting in Walk Outs. One placement for each dog was in the water touching shore, because I want to continue to practice that at times, so that the dogs don't go back to carrying the ducks up on shore instead of turning around and swimming back immediately. Today, they both ran that retrieve correctly so I resumed focusing on retrieves that required the dog to get out of the water. Both dogs finished with at least two high quality retrieves in a row.

I left two ducks on the path as we were arriving at the pond, and the dogs could not see them when I said "Get your birds". The idea was that they are learning that birds lying around the start line are not to be picked up, but other ducks are waiting for them in the direction of the van even if they can't see them.