Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Blinds and Focus/Pick-up Speed Drill

Riggs Road

They've cut the hay on the large field on Riggs Road, leaving around many large bales that will probably soon be gathered up. But for now, this makes the field better than ever for our training, combining reasonable footing with plenty of interesting features for lining drills.

Today was sunny with temps in the 80s, and time was limited as has been so much the case lately. Still, we had time for a nice double blind and a couple of short "quads" for Lumi to work on both focus (rather than head-swinging) and pick-up speed.

All of today's retrieves were with ducks from the refrigerator. Two were fairly old and still soggy from water retrieves in the previous day's session. The other two had been transferred from the freezer the night before and were still frozen and nearly solid. Both dogs have gotten good at picking up older birds on land retrieves, but both dogs had some difficulty getting a good grip on today's frozen birds. It didn't seem to present too much of a problem for either dog.

SERIES A. Double land blind (Lumi, then Laddie)

The first blind was to the right at 150 yards. The blind was planted midway between an offset keyhole formed by two hay bales 30 yards apart, that is, away from the closest salient features.

The second blind was to the left at 230 yards. The blind was planted just to the right of a hay bale, that is, near the closest salient feature.

The line to both blinds also passed close to other hay bales on either side.

Obviously one goal in this course was to remind the dogs that they could make no assumption about whether a blind will be near, or away, from features on the course.

SERIES B. Focus/pick-up speed drill (Lumi only)

I saw no advantage to run Laddie on this drill, which would have prolonged our time in the hot sun without working on any area of weakness in his current performance. So I kept him on a slip lead tied to my belt while I ran Lumi.

Series B was actually two series, the same except that the distances on the first one were 10-15 yards while the distances on the second one were 20-40 yards. For both series, as Lumi and I positioned ourselves at the SL, I threw four ducks out in four directions. Before the first one, I used our line cue of "sit, mark", saying no more as I went on to throw all four of them. I delayed a few seconds between throws, a bit longer than would normally occur in an event, because I was specifically working on Lumi's focus. As I threw each duck, I watched her to see whether she took her eye off the fall before I began to swing the next duck. On the one occasion when she did so (looking at me in anticipation), I silently walked out to the duck I'd just thrown and brought it back to the SL, then threw it again. It seems clear to me that Lumi understands from this procedure that the way to keep the game going is to keep her eyes on the fall until the next throw begins. Actually, I don't mind if she looks away earlier than that in anticipation, as long as she does not look away while the throw is still in the air.

The other part of the drill had to do with Lumi's pick-up speed once she was sent out to each bird. Again, she had one slow pick-up, which I interrupted with a Walk Out. Her other pick-ups were excellent, and were not only intrinsically rewarded by the overall retrieval process but were also extrinsically rewarded with praise and treats. One of her pick-ups was a spectacular scoop on the run, and that was rewarded with several chunks of fried chicken liver, delivered rapid-fire one after another as soon as she arrived back at the SL with the bird, amid cheers and applause.

Someday, I'd love to see her pick a duck up that way on every retrieve.

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