Field Training Test Series

Marking

2012-01-26T15:43:00.001-05:00

Time is limited, but a quick update is in order. This will briefly cover our last three sessions.

First, I'll mention that both of my feet are gradually improving. My right foot is still too swollen to fit in most of my shoes, but the pain is much better. Meanwhile, the heel pain in my left foot is also diminishing, probably thanks to some suggestions Renee made based on her experience working with clients with plantar facieitis.

Sunday, Laddie and I trained alone with Dave, so Laddie got four triples, each thrown with two Bumper Boy/stickman stations and Dave shooting a flyer as the go-bird. Laddie had a controlled break on the first series, was steady thereafter, including the fourth series, where Dave threw and shot from beside us and the bird fell 2y in front of Laddie. I think Laddie also ran a nice blind that day.

However, Laddie's marking was poor on Sunday. I expressed my concern, and Dave said not to worry. We were training with snow falling and patches of snow on the ground from an earlier snowfall, in 28 degrees. Dave said that those conditions were bound to throw off a dog's marking, because of limited vision, reduced scent, and unfamiliarity.

Nonetheless, since we have no way to train with Field Trial groups, I am concerned about how well Laddie will mark when we resume competition in the spring.

To work more on marking, I thought I'd try running Laddie on poorman quads, thinking that that might be help his preparation. So yesterday and today, we drove to the field at nearby Rolling Ridge.

Each day, we ran a single series, similar to each other though in different locations. I sat Laddie at the start line, then walked out to throw four marks and to drop a blind. I wore a white jacket and fired a pistol for the marks. The marks were three 3" white bumpers plus a 3" black bumper for the longest mark. The blind was a 2" orange bumper. The distances were in the range 150-250y.

I tried to make the blinds difficult, but they were too easy, just one whistle each.

Laddie did seem to have trouble remembering the go-bird yesterday, so much so that I suspect he wasn't paying attention when I threw it

The other problem is that he has become stubborn at deciding which mark to run to, both days repeatedly going for the longest mark when sent to a shorter one. Even when I called him back, lined him up carefully, and he took a good initial line, he'd then serve to his preferred destination.

I think Patty referred to that behavior as "lying", and it would make her furious when one of her dogs did it.

Calling Laddie back and sending him again doesn't seem to work, he just does it again. Yesterday, after four tries, I finally walked up closer, and then he held a good line. Today, on the third try, I blew my whistle and handled him as soon as he veered.

Neither of those solutions seems good from the standpoint of building marking confidence. Perhaps it would be better to let Laddie make his own choice before sending him. I don't think I've ever been in a competition where I could see any clear disadvantage to that approach, and more often than not, I've seen handlers who fight the dog's preference end up blowing the series.

I guess I'll see how Laddie does over the next few sessions to see if a pattern becomes clearer.

LL&L

A little training

2012-01-20T13:32:00.001-05:00

After giving my feet and legs as much rest as possible the last few weeks, this afternoon I took Laddie out for a little work.

Walking a nearby conservation trail, I put Laddie in a sit at the edge of the trail three times. Each time, I walked out into the field to throw three marks and to surreptitiously drop a blind. Within the constraints of training alone, I tried to make the lines a challenging as possible. At least all the marks were "retired". I wore a white jacket, but had to call hey-hey rather than firing a pistol, because I got in trouble for that here once.

The terrain was overgrown and very hilly with uneven footing, and much of the dead vegetation was thorny. My right foot is still too swollen for boots, so I wore running shoes. Inevitably, I turned my ankle over a couple of times, so we'll have to see whether the pain returns tonight.

Laddie took good lines to the marks, white bumpers all thrown into cover, and handled nicely on the blinds. His crazy-dog enthusiasm was flat inspirational. I didn't realize how much I've missed it.

LL&L

Marking down, steadiness up, handling holding steady

2012-01-08T15:09:00.001-05:00

Rixeyville, VA.

Mid 40s, sun and clouds, wind 5mph.

Without realizing it at the time, it seems I injured my right ankle about 10 weeks ago, and it's still not right. Some days, like today, it's just tender. Other days, it's swollen to twice its normal size and is so painful I can't sleep even with maximum dose of OTC pain meds.

On top of that, other injuries that I suspect are caused by adjustments I make in my gait also keep cropping up, on both left and right feet and ankles.

I've made several visits to doctors and I've taken the tests they recommended. All negative so far.

I think what happened was a simple sprain, which has lingered and spread its effects because I am unable to give it the rest it needs. My client is in a large complex of buildings and frequent long walks during the day are unavoidable. However, the last few weeks I have made every effort to at least minimize time in the field with the dogs. I think walking hundreds of yards on uneven ground to set up blinds and run marks for Laddie, and handle Lumi in tracking, was especially aggravating the injury.

So our training has been minimal. During the week, I throw bumpers and play tug with Lumi and Laddie to give them as much activity as possible. Most weekends, we train with Dave, and whenever possible his training buddy. We train on some hilly hay fields in the area of Warrenton, VA. He generally brings four birds, which he shoots as flyers. We use hand thrown dead birds or Bumper Boys and stickmen for the other marks.

Today was typical. We used two land triples, both Qual scale, each including a land blind that I ran Laddie on after his marks. Dave also set up a final blind for Laddie at the end of the session. For each series, Laddie ran the series first, then honored Lumi as she ran it. Lumi was sent only to pick up the flyer.

When we have another handler, that person handles Lumi so that I can stand with Laddie during the honor. On those days when it's just Dave and I, like today, Laddie has to do a remote honor (no handler at his side) as I hold Lumi while the marks are thrown. As soon as I release Lumi, she always goes straight for the flyer. I return to Laddie, heel him to the van, and play with him. Lumi generally marks well and runs hard to the bird, but takes forever on the returns.

After so many weeks of this kind of work, Laddie seems to have made great progress on his steadiness. We'll continue this way to the spring, whenever weather permits, and I'm hoping Laddie won't be DQing on breaks when we resume competition.

Laddie seems to be holding his own on blinds, too: generally good enough for Qual or Master, I believe, but perhaps not good enough for All Age at times.

My greatest concern is Laddie's marking. Laddie had always been one of the top markers on the field at every level of competition, but to me it appears that his marking is deteriorating this winter. I attribute this primarily to my inability to find a training group with whom we can train. I can only hope that when spring comes, I'll discover I was wrong and Laddie's marking is as good as ever after all.

LL&L

Lumi tracking

2011-12-03T15:07:00.001-05:00

Laytonsville Park. Still sunny, 47 degrees, light wind.

Both dogs stayed in the van while I laid the track. Laddie stayed in his crate when Lumi was working.

Track was aged 30 min. Treats (pieces of sliced ham) in footprints at irregular intervals, ranging 3-20 feet. Lumi was on a 30 foot line, which I kept off the ground but not taut.

The track: 60y with serpentine at 10-20y. Right angle corner to left. 70y straight. Right angle corner to right. 20y to the glove.

The track crossed a paved walkway, passed near trees, a picnic bench, and an outdoor grill, went over lawn, leaves, bare patches under trees, and over a branch, which Lumi went around.

Lumi stated motivated, kept her head down, scented every footstep, found every treat, and took every turn, working the entire track without any guidance from me. This was her longest track yet.

LL&L

Steady honoring a duck flyer at 20 yards

2011-12-03T12:13:00.001-05:00

Rixeyville. Delightful sunny day, low forty's, light wind.

To make the training environment more realistic, I set up a holding blind at both start lines. Dave, as gunner, wore a white jacket. Dave's training buddy handled Lum in both series.

Laddie and Lumi both wore their tabs, but I never touched Laddie's.

A) Land triple. First,180y money bird thrown by a Bumper Boy with a stickman. Next, a duck thrown at 60 yards with shotgun blast. Finally, a duck flyer thrown and shot in the middle at 70 yards.

First Laddie ran the triple, marking poorly but steady as a rock. Then he honored Lumi, making it look easy.

I'm not too worried about the marking. Laddie hasn't seen duck flyers in months. He was pumped. I think he can mark.

B) Another land triple similar to Series A, but new location and mirror image. Most importantly, the go-bird duck flyer was thrown in the middle at just 20 yards.

This time Laddie nailed all his marks, and was again steady both working and honoring.

Dude. Twenty yards.

LL&L

Other people laying tracks for Lumi

2011-11-27T18:36:00.001-05:00

I've found a few people lately to lay tracks for Lumi and me: nephew Evan, DW Renee, and today, son Eric.

Today's session, late this afternoon, consisted of two tracks: one that I laid, with Eric walking right behind me to watch (and I guess increase the scent), and then one laid by Eric alone while I played with Laddie and Lumi out of sight.

With Laddie in his crate, Lumi and I ran Eric's track first. Although Lumi missed the first corner and Eric had to call out some guidance, Lumi did a great job aside from that.

Next we ran (ran?) the track I'd laid earlier, which was now nearly an hour old. Lumi needed no help at all and made it look easy. Eric, who'd never seen a dog track, found it kind of amazing that a dog can do that, and I think he's right, it is amazing. Of course, it's always great watching a dog work.

As I've mentioned before, once I and whoever else is laying the track started placing treats in the footsteps every few steps, Lumi soon developed a lovely heads-down, nose in every footstep, form. That's how she worked today also.

I think Lumi may be getting the concept of tracking now, even though I remain lost in my role as "handler".

Lumi's arthritis seems to discourage her from following me around in the house as much as she used to. But I love the fact that she's started joining Laddie unbidden at the front door when I put on boots, etc., signaling that it's time to go training. I guess the discomfort is worth it to her, especially when she's learned that either she's going to get to retrieve flyers (I don't have her pick up all the marks, just the flyers), or hunt for all those treats as she does when we go tracking. Today she got to do both.

LL&L

Honoring flyers with remote handler

2011-11-27T13:08:00.001-05:00

Rixeyville, VA. Sunny day, 56 degrees, light wind.

Today, Dave brought four chukars, but no training buddy. I had Lumi & Laddie with me, goal as always for our Sunday sessions was to work on Laddie's steadiness, especially on honor.

Possible configurations for Laddie honoring Lumi included running Lumi on a long line while standing in normal honor position with Laddie (which I considered risky to Lumi and too unnatural a picture for Laddie's event prep), and having Laddie on a long line while running Lumi on a tab (which I considered risky for Laddie). As a third option I discarded, I was pretty sure Lumi would break if I tried to depend on her to watch a triple with flyer go-bird.

So, based on Laddie's recent excellent history of steadiness, I decided to have him honor with no handler while I ran Lumi on her tab. Laddie, as usual at practice, was wearing his tab, but I never touched it all day.

We ran two triples, similar but different distances, orientations, and positions. In each case, we used a Bumper Boy and stickman for the long memory-bird, Dave threw a pheasant for the second bird, and Dave shot a chukar for the go-bird. Hilly terrain made all falls invisible from SL. The go-bird fell at 100y from Laddie in Series A, at 25y from Laddie in Series B. Series B was a real breaking situation even for a normal honor, and this was a remote honor.

I think that for the honoring dog, it's difficult to watch the working dog run across your line of vision to the go-bird, and it's also difficult to watch the working dog run away from you toward the go-bird. We have seen both in trials and practice both. Today, I had Laddie watch Lumi run away from him toward the flyer go-bird.

For each series, first I ran Laddie on the triple. Then I got Lumi out of the van. I set up Laddie in honoring position 5y from the SL. I stood in my normal honoring position at Laddie's right flank and said, "sit, just watch [our honoring cue]," several times. Leaving Laddie there, I then ran Lumi on the triple on her tab at the SL, though keeping my eye on Laddie the entire time.

Laddie was explosive as always on his marks, but he didn't even creep while working, much less break. Honoring while sitting all by himself, he was alert but relaxed and never even stood up. I'd even say he looked a bit bored when honoring in the second series. Wow!

LL&L

Lumi tracking in corn field, rec area

2011-11-20T15:06:00.001-05:00

Two locations within 10 mins of home.

Overcast, 60 degrees, wind calm, no precip.

After training with Laddie all morning, I dropped him at home and picked Lumi up so she and I could train a little by ourselves.

First we went to a corn field with gentle hills. I laid a track with a single 120 deg corner and a total of three treats (boiled ham) in the track, plus another on the glove. Lumi's been with my daughter Cookie for a week so this was her first track in a while, but she did great: nose down, deliberate pace, found all the treats, took the turn, and of course found the glove, all without a hint from me.

Next we parked near a ball field, and I set up a track in the adjacent picnic area: hilly, grass not too long, dead leaves, trees, a wooden bulletin board, and a paved walkway. This track had two serpentine turns in opposite directions, then a square corner before the final leg to the glove. A total of 6-7 treats in the track, plus another three atop the glove. Lumi worked this track the same way as the first one, this time requiring no help after a little on the first leg. Perhaps her beautiful tracking form is becoming a habit.

By the way, except for the first day or two of Lumi and me tracking together, I've been laying tracks with a shuffling gait, keeping both feet in contact with the ground the whole time, and turning around to place treats directly on the spot I'd been standing. After I place the glove the same way, I take some large steps in the same direction beyond the glove and then circle around without coming near the track again. I'm not aging the tracks at all yet.

Also, except for the first couple of days when I tried using lining poles offset by a few feet to mark the corners, I'm no longer using any markers. I lay each leg by sighting a landmark in the distance, and look for a ground feature to remember the turns. I try to make the legs as variable as possible in length (though none too long yet), place the treats at irregular intervals, and never place them immediately before or after a corner.

I don't know how much of this is correct for AKC-style tracking, but it seems appropriate for Lumi at this stage. I'm pleased with her progress.

LL&L

Just a blind

2011-11-20T13:24:00.001-05:00

Close to home, 60 degrees, wind calm, light rain.

On the way home from training with Dave, I thought about somewhere I could set up a long blind for Laddie without much walking, since one of my ankles is swollen and the Achilles tendon in the other side is tender. I came up with a location, and placed an OB to be run as a 280y land blind. I then drove Laddie to the SL atop a hill, put on a white jacket and Laddie's tab, and ran him down a hill, thru a break in a hedgerow, across a small creek, and up another hill thru medium-length cover.

Laddie needed no handling the first third of the line, then did a nice job on a few zigzag WSCs, including two at 250y+, to the blind. All his sits were prompt, he had that great Laddie alert posture as he awaited the cast, and all his casts were reasonably accurate.

Unfortunately, we had no diversions to speak of. Still, I felt it was a good confidence builder for both of us.

LL&L

Breaking birds

2011-11-20T10:21:00.001-05:00

Rixeyville, VA. Overcast, high 40s, light wind.

Today, it was just Dave, Laddie and me.

A) Bumper Boy with stickman used for #1 at 160y. Dave in white jacket threw a pheasant at 30y for #2. Then he shot a pheasant flyer at 30y for the go-bird. Laddie picked up the marks, then ran a blind at 240y.

I moved Laddie to the side of our previous SL, cued "sit, just watch," and Laddie watched as the same three marks were thrown. Then I took a step that placed me between Laddie and the flyer and heeled him back to the van for some chasing games with his softball. Dave picked up the birds.

B) Bumper Boy and stickman used for #1 at 90y. With the bumper lying there, I ran Laddie on a blind at 130y, the line just "behind the gun" of the first throw. Then Dave threw a pheasant at 30y and shot a pheasant flyer at 40y. Laddie picked up the two short marks, then the longer memory bird.

Laddie's performance: Laddie had a slow sit when racing downhill on the first blind, and a slipped whistle 20y from that blind when he had apparently scented or spotted the blind, which was marked with a lining pole. He also had a looping line to the bumper the final mark of the day, though on the outside, not getting behind the gun. Aside from that, his performance was excellent: nailing marks, taking whistles and casts, and steady both working and honoring each series.

Today, Laddie wore his tab but I never touched it. Instead I leaned over Laddie enough that I'd be able to push him back down if he tried to stand, which he didn't. My intention is to gradually fade that stance till Laddie can honor a breaking bird with me standing erect several yards away. We have several months to work up to that before Laddie competes again in the spring. Since the tab is currently irrelevant to our training, I may eventually start running Laddie without it, but for now I'll continue having him wear it in case we need to go back to restraining him that way.

LL&L

Re-socializing

2011-11-13T17:13:00.001-05:00

Germantown dog park

After Laddie was attacked in the holding blind at a trial this spring, he showed some signs of dog aggression on a couple of training days. He had a lot of socialization when he was a puppy, and I thought it might be time for a refresher. Therefore, we've been going to dog parks a few times a month for the last few months.

Today was typical: a well-socialized but rough-housing Pit Bull, a speedy young Weimie wanting to get Laddie's bumper and play keep-away, a grouchy Shibu Inu growling and baring her teeth at Laddie one time, a Shepard and a BC interested in the bumper for short periods, a growly Golden in a pinch collar more interested in shadowing Laddie than getting the toy.

I watch Laddie like a hawk, but it's been weeks since I've seen any hint of aggression from him. He pesters the females, parades his bumper in front of as many people and dogs as possible, engages in sniffing and chase rituals with new arrivals, shows good obedience skills in the face of major distractions, and is becoming increasing more interested in playing with me than activities with other dogs.

When Lumi was a pup, Renee and I took her to the dog park frequently. She had some regular doggie friends, became a sublimely adept diplomat, and then, after a few months, she gradually changed. A time finally came where she just had no interest in other dogs, all she wanted to do was play with me. After awhile, we stopped bothering with trips to the dog park.

I think I'm seeing a similar trend with Laddie, though I'm not sure. Even more, I'm not sure this kind of socializing will transfer to being around other retrievers in a field training scenario. At least I hope it's not doing his field work skills any harm.

LL&L

New honoring stance

2011-11-13T14:09:00.001-05:00

Rixeyville, VA. Hazy, 58 degrees, variable wind.

Today Laddie & I trained with my friend Dave, his training buddy, and the training buddy's retriever for Laddie to honor.

Dave brought four live pheasants, and I brought two dead pheasants and my Bumper Boys. We both wore white jackets, and we didn't use duck calls.

We ran two series. Location, distance, orientation, and throwing order were different, but both series had a lot in common: The BB with a stickman was the long mark (thrown first or second), Dave threw a dead bird as the other memory bird, and he shot a pheasant flyer as the go-bird. He threw the two birds from the same gun station, which was within 40y of the SL. A hot blind was also planted.

For the first series, at Dave's suggestion, I ran Laddie without his collar and tab. But I've gone to some trouble to negotiate Laddie to the tab by having him wear them whenever we train --honoring or not -- do for the second series, I put the tab back on.

However, I've been meaning for some time to experiment with a new honoring stance, which I've seen other handlers use occasionally in competition. Instead of standing at Laddie's right flank facing away from the field, today I kneeled at Laddie's right side, cueing "sit, just watch" as always. For training, I placed my left hand a couple of inches from Laddie's back. If he started to stand, he'd make contact and hopefully, I could immediately push him back down. Of course, in competition I'd keep my left hand clear of him.

If this approach works, I like it better than the tab for several reasons. The objective one is that it eliminates the issue of the dog becoming collar-wise. The other ones are more subjective, such as a heightened sense of companionship, and the ability to signal a relaxed state.

I don't know whether some judges would have a problem with it, either in Field Trials or in Hunt Tests. Something to look into.

It's also a little hard on my knees, the price for years of marathoning. But well worth it if it adds more reliability to Laddie's honor.

Today, Laddie never came close to breaking, either from the line or honoring. He also marked well-to-excellent, never getting behind a gun, even for the 310y BB/stickman memory bird in the first series. He lined the first hot blind, though unfortunately he was supposed to be running a mark at the time. I was more interested in seeing him run the mark without handling on a second send than worrying about a poorly placed hot blind.

For the second series' blind, on his one WS of the day, he sat pretty near the bird even though he had apparently scented it, which was good, I thought.

LL&L

Water handling, land marking

2011-11-12T14:00:00.001-05:00

Rolling Ridge. Sunny, blue skies, 58 degrees, light wind.

Lumi is visiting my daughter Cookie for the next week, so today it was just Laddie and me.

With overnight temps near or below freezing, and daytime highs of 40-70 degrees, I don't think Laddie will be able to train in water much longer this year. But the day seemed warm enough for one series today, anyway.

For the water series, I threw an OB to the left, on a line with a difficult water entry, a shoreline swim, and through a tight keyhole between a metal structure and the shoreline. Next I threw an OB far out to the right. Finally I threw three WBs out into the middle.

First Laddie picked up one of the WBs as a freebie. Next I sent him toward another WB, but when he got close, I blew WS and cast him to the OB on the right. Next another freebie WB. Next we ran the OB on the left as a blind, since the bumper has drifted out of sight from the SL. Laddie did not carry his casts well, wanting to pick up the last WB, but he didn't vocalize. Finally, I sent him to the last WB, by now drifted nearly across the pond.

Agree those give water retrieves, we ran only land. First, I threw three poorman triples, all lines featuring steep hillsides and most featuring strips of heavy cover. Those were all thrown from near the SL, so at HT distances.

Finally, I went out, planted a blind, and threw a long triple while Laddie watched from the SL. I then ran him on the triple, and lastly, ran the blind.

Laddie nailed nearly every mark all day, including all three of the long ones. He was also on the way to lining the blind, but sat when I whistled.

Without being trivial, this was a day well within Laddie's abilities, resulting in a 100% success rate. Good practice, good for endurance, good for confidence.

LL&L

Laddie land quints, Lumi tracking

2011-11-09T23:13:00.001-05:00

Field off MD-108. Sunny, low 60s.

Between my new job, the short days, and the end of Daylight Saving Time, I have less than an hour with Lumi & Laddie before it's too dark for training.

Today was typical of this week's sessions:

A) Lumi tracking

B) Laddie running poorman quintuple featuring one pair of teacup (near each other) marks and one pair of marks, short and long, on the same line, all guns "retired"

C) Lumi tracking (this time with treats in footprints every ten yards or so)

D) Laddie running poorman quintuple in a W shape, thrown right to left, sent to marks left to right; for #1 and #3, this meant running to a long fall not visible till the dog was close, past a short mark visible the entire time

E) Lumi tracking, again with treats in the track; the treats seemed to improve head-down and resulted in Lumi taking a rare unassisted turn.

Laddie frustration drill, Lumi tracking

2011-11-06T15:31:00.001-05:00

Rolling Ridge. Blue skies, high 50s, light wind.

Today I alternated tracking with Lumi (five courses) with water handling drills for Laddie (three series).

For the tracking, I did not try to resume Schutzhund style, which Lumi and I trained in years ago. Instead we did our best approximation of AKC style, though I've forgotten most of what I used to know, which wasn't much.

Lumi kept her head down and did well on straight legs, but for the first four tracks, she missed all six turns, a total of six, and I used the line as a restraint till she found the next leg.

Since I wasn't sure I was using the line correctly anyway, I decided to have her wear her harness, but no line, for the fifth course. She rewarded me by taking her first turn of the day without help. She did over-run the second turn, so I called her back onto to the second leg and cued "find it". This time she quickly found the third leg and followed it to the glove.

Each glove was rewarded with several high-value treats, and she also got to carry the glove back to the van, which she seemed to enjoy.

For Laddie's water drills, I would throw one or two 2" red bumpers way out into the pond, then two or three 3" white bumpers, which I can't throw quite as far, all of them in the same general direction. I would send Laddie to pick up the last WB as a freebie (no handling). Then I'd send him back out, headed for another WB. When he got close, I'd blow a whistle sit, then handle him past the WBs to one of the RBs. We alternated freebie WBs with handling RBs until they were all picked up.

Although this drill is hopefully beneficial in helping Laddie learn to deal with frustration when handling in water, it's easy enough that he can do it all day without vocalizing. I hope to evolve it to handling across points without vocalizing at some point, but it seems higher priority just to have him face any kind of frustration in water handling without vocalizing right now.

Lumi spent the time while Laddie was training, running long water retrieves to 2" WBs. Laddie spent the time while Lumi was tracking in his crate in the van.

LL&L

Four flyers

2011-11-05T11:53:00.001-04:00

Rixeyville, VA. Blue skies, 50s, light wind. Hilly, clumpy hay field ringed with trees. Just Dave, Laddie, and me, plus four live pheasants and two dead ones to start.

A) With hot blind (pheasant) at 210y down the middle, brought Laddie with me to watch me throw another pheasant RTL from a stickman on the right so he'd know where that one was. Then Laddie and I heeled back to the SL, so now that "memory-bird" was at 120y. I showed Laddie the stickman and said "sit, mark". Then we turned to face Dave on the left at 20y. I blew a duck call enthusiastically, but forgot to hold Laddie's tab. Dave threw a cock pheasant RTL. Laddie broke, I hollered, and he spun around and came to heel. I hollered a bit more, then walked out and picked up the flyer. I showed it to him, told him "This could have been yours" (he understands English, you know), and tossed the bird in the back if the van.

Under Dave's advice, I then removed Laddie's collar and tab, and we ran the same setup again. This time Laddie was steady as a rock. I sent him to the flyer, then to pick up the "memory-bird", and finally ran him on the blind.

B) On the right at 70y, Dave threw and shot another pheasant flyer RTL. Then I walked out a little way toward the left and threw a dead bird mostly straight out, a little to the right for visibility. I walked back and called Laddie to heel, watching to see if he had a strong pull toward the flyer. If he had, I'd have sent him there first. But he didn't, so I sent him to the short bird first, then to the flyer. I'm not sure whether Laddie being willing to run the flyer last spoke of mature patience, trust that he would get both birds eventually, high prey drive drawn to the closest and most recent throw, or a lower birdiness than a certain eight-year-old female Golden I could mention, or some combination. It was good to see, anyway.

C) Dave threw a dead bird on the left RTL at 50y, a dead bird in the center RTL at 50y, and a dead bird on the right RTL at 20y. Laddie picked them up on lasers in reverse order of the throws. Then I took a position a few feet from the SL with Laddie at heel, sat him, took up my honoring position facing away from the field off Laddie's right flank, and said, "sit, just watch," Laddie's honor cue. Now Dave threw the same series again, except that he threw the first two birds from closer in, and he used our last flyer for the go-bird. Laddie remained steady!

My plan was to walk away from Laddie without saying another word and pick up the first two birds, then walk back to the SL. If Laddie stayed in place, I'd let him pick up the flyer when I got back. But he broke toward the flyer once I was a few feet away in another direction. Again he allowed me to call him back to heel, and again I went out and picked up the flyer myself.

Dave commented that Laddie is what's called "controlled chaos," and said, "You can see the gears turning, he's putting it together."

I recognize that a high energy outrun has the potential to be reinforcing even without getting the bird, but Alice once told me that a controlled break can also be a good teaching tool for steadiness because the dog sees almost instantly the futility in breaking. Laddie's steadiness is obviously not complete, but his work today felt pretty good.

LL&L

Steadiness training with pheasant flyers

2011-10-30T12:35:00.001-04:00

Rixeyville
(This is the same farm previously identified as "near Warrenton" and "Clevenger's Corner".)

Sunny, no clouds, 45 degrees, light wind.

Two doubles with Dave throwing all marks and a stickman at the memory-bird: A) With both guns at 130y, the go-bird pheasant flyer landing the far side of a crest. B) With both find at 20y, the go-bird pheasant flyer down a steep hill.

In each case, Laddie ran first, then honored Lumi, who was being handled by Dave's training buddy. In each case, I honored Laddie from the flyer side, and closer to the gun than the working dog (Lumi) so that she would run past Laddie when sent to the flyer.

Laddie stood for the flyers in the short series, but his tab never became taut. He was a bit OOC heeling off the line, so that's something for us to work more on, but I feel his steadiness training is coming along well.

LL&L

Steadiness work with pheasant cocks

2011-10-16T11:23:00.001-04:00

Near Warrenton

Beautiful day, light wind, low 60s. Training Laddie with Dave and a training buddy, plus Lumi and the training buddy's retriever.

Dave threw all marks. He fired a shotgun and used no duck calls, and wore a white jacket. All birds were large, colorful, fragile pheasant cocks.

A) Land double. First mark (pheasant) on the left at a stickman, thrown RTL at 120y, the fall over a crest and invisible from SL. Second throw (pheasant flyer) on the right at an LP, thrown LTR at 90y, area of fall visible from SL. Dave remained at the go-bird station, while the stickman showed the first station.
Laddie ran first, then honored Lumi with Dave's training buddy handling Lumi. As always at training these days, Laddie wore a tab, but I didn't hold it for the marks. I did hold it, hopefully without him being aware of it, for the honor. He was rock steady both working and honoring. As an added bonus, Laddie's flyer was a "cripple" and he brought it back while it was still active when I called him in, rather than ignoring me and trying to crush it first. Also, Laddie nailed both marks.

Lumi's first mark was dead on, but she was so slow on her return with the flyer that she wasn't sent to the memory bird. Dave just picked it up.

B) Identical setup to (A), including same throwing stations, but with SL moved up to half the distances and on a different line to change the picture somewhat. I held Laddie's tab both working and honoring. After Laddie ran series, Dave's training buddy ran own dog for Laddie to honor, and unfortunately released the dog after Dave threw the dead bird, so that Laddie had to hang around to wait for the dog to get the flyer mark as a single. Perhaps this was to some extent a simulation of a"no bird" while honoring, but in my opinion it wasn't ideal training. Laddie actually seemed uninterested in the flyer when honoring it, and seemed primarily interested in heading back to the van to play. That's a good attitude for him to have on an honor, I think, but I'd like to see him have that attitude in a sequence that wasn't broken up by sending the working dog at the wrong time.

Dave suggested that I continue to hold Laddie's tab (loosely) as we continue working on steadiness thru the winter. We can see how his steadiness is without the tab next spring when we're actually running in an event. That's consistent with the advice Jody and Alice have always given me.

LL&L

Water T-drill

2011-10-14T19:08:00.001-04:00

Rolling Ridge, cloudy, 50s.

Progress! After four easier setups, Laddie was able to handle to an invisible (OB) water blind over a point with a WB as a diversion at a 90 degree angle in open water.

Granted, he had run the line to the OB at least a dozen times in last few days, and granted, he had significant difficulty with his carries, taking a cast for a stroke or two and then veering back toward the WB. But the important point, for me, is that he never vocalized.

This setup is almost easy for Laddie now. Let's not stop on it til it's all the way easy. Then we can start over at a different location.

LL&L

Land blinds, intermediate water T-drill

2011-10-11T18:34:00.001-04:00

Back field of church, then Rolling Ridge

Light rain, mid-60s.

A) Triple land blind. 150-60-130y. Found a good-sized grassy field with lots of bowl-shaped depressions, some nested, plus other obstacles such as gravel areas, sandy areas, and trees for keyholes. Tried to come up with challenging lines, but Laddie lined or nearly lined all of them.

B) Water T-drill. Yesterday I found one combo Laddie has been able to do for years, but as of yesterday could not do without vocalizing: a cold blind (OB) across a point with a WB diversion in the water on a line 90 degrees to the side.

So today I broke it down with various easier versions. Final version today: sight blind to a WB on a familiar line across a point, with a diversion OB far out in the water on a 135 degree angle.

Tomorrow I hope to run Laddie on several more versions in same location, perhaps ultimately getting back to the original combo, now more familiar, and hopefully now without vocalizing.

LL&L

Club training day, solo steadying with triples, water T-drill

2011-10-08T18:15:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham

Sunny, temps in 50s and 60s.

All marks were ducks, all blinds were bumpers. Duck calls and shotgun fire (blanks) for all marks. Dark clothing, holding blinds at all gun stations. Some wingers, some hand-throws.

A) Group land triple and two blinds. Master triple, one Senior blind, one Qual blind. Factors for all retrieves were primarily hills, and strips or large patches of high cover. Laddie did a nice job on all five retrieves.

B) Solo steadying with triples. Between series, I worked alone with Laddie in a meadow, using an idea recommended to me by Dave, the guy who shoots flyers for us sometimes.

In today's drill, first I would throw a triple from the area of the SL, and have Laddie pick up those marks. Then I'd put him in a sit, position myself as I do when we're honoring (standing at his right flank facing backwards) and say "sit . . . just watch" a few times. Then I'd re-throw the same triple, and then go out and pick up all the bumpers myself. While picking them up, I'd throw bumpers around in the field and pick those up as well. I used duck-call, hopefully adding some excitement. We did at least a half dozen of these drills in various locations.

Laddie never broke, so I don't know how much benefit this was, but he did stand on a couple of the honors, and I immediately cued sit, so he may have been getting at least a little useful steadiness preparation.

C) Group water triple with blind. Master water triple, Qual water blind. Laddie and I, however, did not run the group version of the marks. Instead, I had Laddie run singles from three different SLs some distance away from the group SL and with more difficult lines. All four retrieves were difficult enough for Laddie to get some learning in (I hope). However, one of the marks required handling to keep Laddie off a point, and he vocalized. He then vocalized again on the blind. I don't know whether a judge in the various FT stakes would tolerate that much vocalizing. I've heard there's significant variation in FT judges' tolerance for vocalizing in water, but we've only run three Qual water blinds. Laddie was called back from two of them, at least one of which included vocalizing. He was not called back from the third, but I don't think it was because of the vocalizing.

In any case, since my goal is to give Laddie several consecutive months of no vocalizing in water, it turned out to be a mistake to modify today's marks, since perhaps he would not have vocalized on the smaller group setup, which might not have required any handling. Then, since no point was involved in the blind, he might have been calmer and not vocalized on the blind, either. Sigh.

D) Water T-drill. With group training completed, this was some additional solo work. Laddie and I worked on the same drill I've described recently, and which we have been practicing (along with some land blinds and poorman marks, land and water) pretty much every day recently at nearby Rolling Ridge. The original drill involved sending Laddie down the middle on all five retrieves. #1-3-5 were freebies (no handling), while #2-4 required handling to left and right. However, the more recent version of the drill replaces either #2 or #4 with a blind across a point. Although such a blind would almost invariably result in vocalizing if done by itself, Laddie does not vocalize on these blinds when run within the context of the 5-retrieve T-drill. Today wee ran this drill in at least a half dozen locations without Laddie vocalizing a single time.

It is encouraging that we are able to practice water blinds without Laddie vocalizing, but as today's group work shows, it remains to be seen whether doing so over a period of time will ever have the effect of ending his vocalizing in a group situation. I guess we'll keep at it, and we'll know more in the spring.

LL&L

Land and water work

2011-10-02T17:55:00.001-04:00

Rolling Ridge, overcast with intermittent showers,40s. Not exactly typical late summer weather in this region.

A) Poorman land triple. Xmas-tree configuration, 280y RTL in middle (retired), 210y LTR on left with stickman, 110y LTR on right with stickman. White bumpers, pistol shots. Thrown longest to shortest, retrieved shortest to longest. Hilly terrain with various obstacles such as ditch filled with underbrush, fallen shrubs on lines to marks, patches of high, thick cover.

After Laddie picked up the marks, 190y blind.

B) Five bumper water T-drill as described in previous post, but increasing distances. The first set was all open water. For the second, the second retrieve did not start with a send down the middle, but instead was straight to one of the side bumpers, required Laddie to touch a point 10y from the SL. No handling needed. For the third set, again the second retrieve was directly at a side bumper, and again crossed a point, this time at 90y. This one required significant handling to keep Laddie from going to one of the center bumpers, which had drifted close to that side of the pond.

Laddie did not make a sound for a single retrieve all day, land or water. This seems good. Apparently mixing the on-point retrieve in with the high-value T-drill (high value in part because of all the freebies, I suspect) seems to enable Laddie to do the work without feeling a need to vocalize.

The plan now is to do as much water handling as possible over the next few months, maintaining conditions where no vocalizing occurs, and hopefully instill that as Laddie's new model for how to perform water work.

LL&L

Water T-drill

2011-10-01T16:09:00.002-04:00

Although Laddie and I have run the On/off drill in various locations nearly every day over the last few weeks, Laddie is still vocalizing on water casts too often, and even occasionally on land casts these days.

When we were at Cheltenham this morning for the club training day (previous post), while waiting for others to arrive, I tried an On/off drill with Laddie, and he again vocalized. So I decided to try something different: a single T-drill, but on water rather than the usual version on land.

First, I threw one WB to the left and one to the right. Then I threw three more straight in front as far as I could throw them. I had Laddie pick up one of the freebies (no handling) down the middle, then sent him that same direction but used a WSC to send him to one of the sides, then another freebie, then another straight ahead plus a WSC to the other side, and ending with the last freebie. Laddie never made a sounds the entire time. Yay!

After we ran the three series with group and helped pick up the equipment, I took Laddie to another part of the pond and ran him on two more Water T-drills. Again, he performed calmly, confidently, and without a sound.

This is what I've been looking for, a way to handle Laddie in water without him vocalizing so that we have a foundation to build on. My new plan is to run Laddie on a few more of these with unobstructed lines to the bumpers, then begin to run him in setups where he has to cross a point, or bypass a point, to pick up one of the side throws. Hopefully his confidence will carry over and he'll be able to negotiate the points without vocalizing.

LL&L

Land triples, water double

2011-10-01T15:50:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, light rain, 50s.

Today was another club training day, with nine dogs in the advanced group, giving us enough time for two land series and a water series and still finishing up in early afternoon.

Since these were mostly Hunt Test trainers, we used duck calls and hidden guns, except for the two go-birds where I asked the throwers to stay out (see below). All today's training was done with bumpers.

Laddie and I didn't run these setups like any of the other dogs, so I'll just describe how we ran them.

For the first series, I asked for the throws to be made around the horn, starting on the right. I requested the final thrower to stay out. After all the marks were down, I ran Laddie on a blind between the second and third marks. Then I had Laddie pick up the marks outer-outer-inner, that is, shortest to longest, go-bird first. Finally, I ran him on a blind outside of the first mark.

For the second series, I asked for the throws to be made around the horn again, this time left mark first. For the first mark, I started with Laddie in the holding blind and asked the thrower to place his bumper in cover where it would have landed if thrown. Then I brought Laddie to the line and asked that that thrower pretend to make a big throw, complete with gunshot, but not actually throw anything. Next the middle gun threw, and then the short mark across a road on the right. Once again I asked the last thrower to stay out. I then ran laddie on a blind between the two guns on the right, and then had him pick up the marks in the reverse order thrown, again shortest to longest. For the middle mark, he ended up picking up one of the bumpers that had been placed on a mound 30y to the right of the second mark, the same place he had picked up his second blind earlier and now being used as a senior/master blind for some of the other dogs. I decided not to interfere with his completing that retrieve, trading it as though that was the actual throw. I was pleased with Laddie's nice line on the money bird. The fake throw didn't seem to have confused him at all.

Laddie ran the water series as a double followed by a longish blind. The first mark down required the dog to run a short land segment, take a difficult angle entry into the water, swim a wide channel to the end, run across a narrow strip of land, and then re-enter water into a cove where the bumper had been thrown on an angle back, not visible after it landed until the dog was on the strip of land. The second mark was also thrown on an angle back. It was thrown into open water, with the line to the mark passing close to the point of the peninsula from which the throw had been made. Strong wind and current quickly pushed that bumper toward the peninsula, so even though that was the go-bird, the line to the mark got tighter and tighter to the point as Laddie was swimming. Although Laddie remained clear if the point, I decided to handle him once it appeared to me that he was uncertain whether to go on or off the point, my intent being to eliminate the uncertainty and perhaps reinforce his previous training and current inclination to stay off points on marks.

Laddie then picked up the memory-bird, taking the angle entry into the first water nicely, bailing out a bit early on the channel swim, and immediately launching into the far cove to the bumper. Finally I ran Laddie on a blind under the arc of the go-bird. I was pleased with how he did. He took an initial line onto the point, sat when I whistled, took an "over" off the point directly into the wind, stopped in the water after a few yards and looked at me when I again blew a sit whistle, and took a good "back" cast across a relatively big expanse of water straight to the blind.

It was great getting some group training in. I couldn't compare Laddie's work to the other dogs because we were running the setups differently, but I thought Laddie did a fairly good job all day.

LL&L

Two groups in two days

2011-09-26T12:31:00.001-04:00

Given the difficulties I've had finding groups to train with, this weekend was a good one. On Saturday, we participated in a club training day, and on Sunday, we trained with a new training buddy, and eventually a third trainer showed up and kindly threw some marks for us.

Because time is short, I won't provide complete detail about these sessions, but here were some of the highlights for Laddie and me.

On Saturday at the club training day, I was given the honor of setting up the series for the advanced dogs. I love that job, and I got some good advice from others in the group that improved the setups further. First we set up a land triple with a blind, providing four different possible blinds that each handler could choose among. Next, we set up a water double, with a choice of two blinds.

As it turned out, every trainer from most to least advanced chose to run all the marks as singles Some trainers did this to focus on marking skill rather than the issues that running a multiple calls upon. I did it mostly because several trainers I respect have suggested running dogs -- not just Laddie, all dogs -- on a large proportion of singles in multiple setups. I ran this setup a little different than the others in the group when I ran Laddie: I had two of the throwers stand out of their holding blinds, with the station's white bird bags placed in front of each holding blind to improve visibility of the stations, and I even asked that those two throwers wave their arms as I heeled Laddie to the start line. At the line, I showed those two gun stations to Laddie, before lining him up on the third station, where the thrower was hidden behind a holding blind and further partially hidden by the curve of the tree line, since all the dogs besides Laddie were preparing for Hunt Tests. I then called for that mark, while asking the other gunners to stay out. Laddie watched the first mark, but quickly turned away to look for another throw. I used hand gestures to call him back to that first throw and sent him.

The goal was to strengthen Laddie's focus on the individual marks that make up multiples, rather than swinging his head while one throw is in progress to search for more throws. Laddie had excellent focus on multiples when he was younger, and still does most of the time, but on a few occasions the last couple of months, he's missed one of the throws on triples, looking for another throw rather than carefully watching the throw in progress. I think the primary remedy to this would be more group training, but my hope is that running some singles may be the best way to take advantage of those opportunities that we do get. Of course, I could have this backwards. It might be that running multiples would be the best way to take advantage of those opportunities.

In any case, on Sunday Laddie and I traveled to a private property near Baltimore to train with a guy I've talked to at club training days in the past. He was kind enough to send me an email invitation to train on Sunday a few days ago. The property has a technical pond, and we ended up limiting ourselves exclusively to water series, both singles and multiples, and a few blinds. Since his dog hasn't competed in Senior tests yet, we modified the setups to accommodate the differing requirements of his dog versus Laddie. As mentioned earlier, a third trainer eventually showed up and threw some marks for us, broadening our options for interesting setups.

For example, to wrap up the session, Laddie ran a triple with a 180y mark on the left, and a hip-pocket double on the right, the longer throw made by a remote launcher. With no stickman at the launcher, that was effectively a retired middle gun, and it was thrown into thick reeds at water's edge, with a difficult line to the mark featuring 60y land entry, an angle entry into the water thru thick reeds making the water invisible as the dog launched, a point on the right most of the way to the mark for the dog to bypass, and several decoys in that part of the pond. Laddie ended up running the middle mark as the final memory-bird, and nearly nailed it, the only off-line segment being when he veered fat around the point, before veering back and driving straight into the reeds. After the triple, Laddie ran a 170y blind that took him over the outer slope of a mound, then across a thin slice of a small cove, then an 80y swim across the pond touching a point midway, and finally to the OB halfway up a steep embankment on the far edge of the pond.

On that particular series, Laddie apparently never saw the first throw on the left, perhaps as a result of head swinging, and as a result needed to be handled to that mark, which he ran after picking up the shorter go-bird. Though not great for building marking confidence, a dog does need the ability to switch from marking mode to handling mode in the middle of a mark, so I think it's good to practice it once in a while. In any case, I felt Laddie did an exceptional job on the short go-bird, which was thrown over a large cluster of reeds and was invisible from the shore, the difficult "retired" middle mark, and the blind.

I would say that in each of the weekend's sessions, Laddie achieved the sort of 80% success rate we aim for. He ran some great marks and handled well on most of the blinds. But he also had difficulty a small number of times, and those were learning experiences for both of us. If not a perfect weekend of training, which would have featured training with an experienced field trial group, it was nonetheless a pretty good one.

LL&L

About group training

2011-09-26T11:22:00.002-04:00

As I've mentioned before in this journal, the greatest challenge to training a retriever for competition may not be training the dog per se, but rather finding groups to train with.

Based on my experience, training with groups is not optional, it is absolutely requisite to training a retriever for competition. The more advanced the competition, the more critical group training becomes.

One example is that a dog required to honor flyers off-lead in an event cannot be prepared for that skill without practicing in circumstances as similar as possible to event conditions on a continuing basis. Even highly proficient 4Q dogs, even field champion dogs, occasionally break from the line or from honor in trials. If those dogs cannot be made 100% reliable, with all the resources available to professional trainers, imagine how much greater the challenge is for a 2Q trainer, still trying to discover satisfactory 2Q methods, who doesn't even have an opportunity to train with flyers, throwers, other dogs, and the other contextual elements the dog will experience in competition.

Another example of the importance of group training is that group training provides exposure to training setups that a solo trainer, especially an inexperienced one, may not come up with alone. It's not unusual for a beginning trainer, or even an experienced one, to have no idea what problems the dogs will have on a particular setup until dogs are actually run on it. The more experienced the group leaders are, the more useful their setups will be.

And another advantage of group training is that 4Q trainers can often provide invaluable feedback that is as useful to a 2Q trainer as it would be to a 4Q trainer. For example, I didn't realize until just this weekend that on some of my casts, I was moving my non-casting arm as well as my casting one, which one can imagine might be quite confusing to a dog. I wouldn't know I was doing it even now if a friend hadn't pointed it out at a group training event a couple of days ago. Even videos never showed it to me, because the camera's on the dog, not on me.

I don't know whether the problem of finding a group is greater for a 2Q trainer than for a 4Q trainer, but I think that does make it even harder to find groups, which can nonetheless also be extremely difficult for a 4Q trainer. The additional problems the 2Q trainer faces aren't only because the 2Q trainer's methods are unfamiliar to the 4Q trainer, though that is one factor. Many 2Q methods are more experimental than 4Q methods and may even be freshly minted as an experiment the day of the training, experiments probably of no interest to the 4Q trainers and irritating for their unfamiliarity. But in addition, 2Q methods can annoy the group regulars because 2Q methods may be more time-consuming than 4Q methods on training day, wasted time from the regular's perspective. And 2Q dogs may develop their skills over a significantly longer period of time than 4Q dogs, disheartening the regulars who may feel they're watching a good dog's natural talents go to waste.

2Q methods can be irritating in other ways as well. For example, a 2Q trainer is likely to use voice, both for cues and for reinforcement, significantly more than a 4Q trainer, disrupting the auditory ecology of the session. If I could start over bringing Lumi and Laddie with all of us as beginners to group training again, I would do many things differently. My dogs would wear check cords until their recall was satisfactory, they would wear a tab until their steadiness was reliable if ever, I would have used less voice, I would not have repeatedly called a dog that wasn't coming, I'd have been more cautious about trying retrieves that were too hard and therefore too time consuming for the other trainers, and probably many other changes.

It's not always easy to know whether a retrieve will be too difficult for your dog. You need to take into account group-training discount factor, similar to event discount factor, the fact that dogs sometimes don't perform as well in a group environment as they do when training alone. Besides annoying the other trainers, another reason for not running retrieves that are too hard is that the dog can learn bad habits. For example, running a non-handling dog on a cheating water mark results in the dog running the bank, and learning that that's a good strategy. Actually, this also can affect your relationship with the group, because training mistakes can also annoy other handlers.

Another barrier to obtaining a long-term placement in a training group is that the 2Q trainers don't participate in the same kind of give and take of training ideas that the other group members do, forcing the 2Q trainer into a self-imposed social status of perpetual outsider. Perhaps a 2Q trainers with better social skills than mine -- that would be pretty much anyone -- might find ways to solve this problem, and the other problems mentioned, that I haven't found.

I can't provide guaranteed solutions to these difficulties, because after four years of active participation in the sport, I still struggle every day to find anyone to train with, much less a group, to say nothing of an ongoing group placement. But some ideas you might try if you also face this challenge:

Many retriever clubs run training days during the training session. The more clubs you join, the more such training days you'll have access to. In some cases, you don't actually need to join the club, but that may be the best way of learning when the training days are scheduled. I have not found this provides enough group training to prepare a dog for competition, but it's a start.
You can hire neighborhood kids to throw marks for you. It misses the key advantages of training with experienced trainers, and it may be expensive, but it might be better than nothing, especially for the dog's early training.
You may be able to find pros, or others with suitable skills, who run day training sessions. They might be group sessions, a regular part of the pro's activities. Or this may involve setting up something just for yourself, as I have in the past with friends such as Bob, Dave, and Tony, arranging for a skilled trainer to shoot flyers for my dogs to help us work on steadiness training. Again, day training might have some disadvantages, such as significant time and monetary expense, and perhaps the social cost of imposing on a friend, but it's one more possible resource.
You could try advertising for training buddies. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm thinking of putting up notices in nearby pet stores.
Every time you're around other trainers, you can make it clear you'd like to train with them, and make sure to provide contact information. This is simply networking. You're probably already better at it than I am, I'm just suggesting that you put those skills to use for this particular issue.

It's heartbreaking to me that I can no longer run Laddie in competition. But the fact is that without a group to train with, it's impossible to prepare him for the challenges he faces in events. Trying to compete him under those circumstances just wastes money, time, and credibility for me, my dog, and my methods, as the poor showings rack up. I can only hope that someday, somehow, we'll be able to solve this problem, get Laddie ready, and begin competing again.

LL&L

Resilience

2011-09-18T14:00:00.001-04:00

My analysis here may be faulty, but I was thinking about Lumi and Laddie's competition history. At most of the levels we have competed, the story was the same: a series of unsuccessful attempts, ongoing training, and finally success.

Along the way, I'd occasionally receive advice that my 2Q approach would never succeed, and I certainly had bouts of discouragement, even despair. But in the end, my dogs earned one title after another. Some of the problems that seemed insurmountable at one time are now but faint memories.

I cannot be objective, nor do I have the experience to accurately evaluate Laddie's ability, but to me it appears that he has not yet reached his full potential as a 2Q retriever. I think I owe it to him to continue our efforts together, both training, and competing when I feel we're ready for the next try.

LL&L

Finding water

2011-09-18T13:15:00.001-04:00

Still wanting to give Laddie a little water work this morning, I used a technology strategy to find a suitable pond.

I needed gas, and I knew a station more or less on the way home to get a good price. secret getting the gas, I went to my Android phone's "map" application, entered "Burtonsville, MD" (our location at the time), adjusted the zoom, and looked for a blue patch representing water, with promising contours. I then placed a marker on the map and clicked a few controls to request navigation directions there. I was there in 5 minutes, a location I'd never have found just driving around.

Finding a legal parking spot in a mostly reserved-parking residential area, I leashed Laddie and we walked less than 100y to a community walking trail that skirted the pond I'd seen on the map.

I tossed an OB into the water at one end, then ran Laddie on a 180y shoreline water blind from the other. It wasn't an ideal setup for my purposes, since it had no points. But it was a good, long swim, with the advantages of conditioning and overtraining, that is, making more likely shorter event swims seem less imposing. And at least it did have one "factor", the diversion of a flock of ducks, including babies, swimming only a short distance from Laddie's line to the blind.

Now I'll try to remember to use this same on-phone mapping strategy to find other ponds for us to work on, closer to home than the training properties we usually go to.

LL&L

Hillside blinds

2011-09-18T10:59:00.001-04:00

Mattawoman Drive. 56 degs, overcast, with a light wind that I think was irrelevant to this session.

I currently feel that Laddie and I have two primary issues to overcome in order for him to be successful in Qualifying stakes: 1) Steadiness with flyers, especially honoring but also from the line. 2) Calming of nerves on all blinds, especially water blinds that require him to cross a point.

However, we do have other things to work on as well, of course in addition to maintaining his current skills at or above their current levels. Two issues that have come up recently, one in a pair of trials, the other at a training day I have not previously written about: 3) Difficult blinds in an event context, twice leading to refused casts he would not have refused if we were training alone. 4) Socialization with other male dogs.

Each of the issues listed above, and all field training in general, has one particular challenge that I have not been able to solve: The need to train with a group. I cannot overstate how serious a handicap it is that we have no one to train with.

However, while I continue to make every effort to resolve that difficulty, my only choices at present are to give up on Laddie's career, or continue our training as best I can alone. Well, I'm not ready to give up yet, though I often think it would be the wisest course.

Today, Laddie and I made the one hour drive to Cheltenham for some water work, only to find a field event scheduled there for today. So I drove us to a nearby industrial area where I knew a small pond to be available, but the water there appeared stagnant and unusable.

However, another feature of this field is a large, rectangular bowl, with steep, grassy embankments more than 100y the length of each slope. The grass is currently somewhat overgrown with weeds, but suitable for field training, in fact perhaps more trial-like than if mowed short.

So Laddie and I hiked around the bowl, and as we walked, I placed an OB at mid-point on the slope at one end, then ran him from the other end, with our start line midway down the slope.

In general, I would prefer not to use my whistle a lot on practice blinds, because I feel it could lead to popping or even the dreaded no-go. However, for this drill, I needed Laddie to run a tight line along the slope, and stopped him every time he tried to veer to the top or bottom of the slope.

It was interesting to watch his progress as we ran each of these hillside blinds. The first one required a lot of corrections, including a couple of resets with a complete call-back and resend. The second, however, was much better, the third better still, and the fourth the best of all with just one correction at 30y. Throughout the session, Laddie was visibly developing a growing comprehension of the idea to maintain his line along the mid-point of the slope and not ascend nor descend as he dashed ahead.

I'd rather have trained on water or with flyers today, or most of all with a training group or even a training buddy, but failing those, this seemed a worthwhile exercise for Laddie's development.

LL&L

Laddie at Rock Creek, Part 2

2011-09-17T14:12:00.001-04:00

It turns out that the first dog finally ran a little after 11am. Laddie, running last at #14, came up a couple of hours later.

I didn't realize it earlier, but the judges had set up a blind on the same field. The dog would run the triple from the mat, then move to another start line 20y to the left, and run the blind.

The blind was 220y diagonally across a muddy road, thru a diagonal keyhole formed by two trees, over a crest past the fall from the second mark (which I thought would be a diversion to the right but it didn't seem to affect any dogs that way), and straight on to a thick, black, leaning, lining pole.

Though Laddie's marks weren't lasers, he did a fine job on all of them. I wasn't sure he had seen the flyer, which several dogs seemed to have missed. But I had spent a lot of time at the line making sure he saw the long gun before calling for the throws, and when he got back to the line after picking up #2, he lined up on the long mark perfectly. After launching, he veered right on a line that would have taken him behind the gun, as many dogs had, but unlike the others who did that, he swerved left and back onto the correct line 2/3 of the way out. Also, unlike the last several dogs who ran before him, he didn't hunt short, in the area where a loose flyer had been running around for a while toward the end of the test. While Laddie needed a short hunt in the flyer, he never got behind the gun.

On the blind, he took a perfect line across the road and thru the keyhole, and I thought we were home free. But he veered left toward a large bean field on the left of the road, and refused several casts to the right. The bean field, for some reason, was just too much of a magnet. He ended up going for an OOC romp there, then coming back under control and finishing the blind easily.

Final stats for our time at the trial: 14 dogs entered, 12 dogs ran, 7 dogs called back to water.

This probably couldn't have been a better situation for Laddie: Only one flyer, and that a long way away, making a break unlikely. No flyer planned for the water, where the honor would be. No dog behind us in the holding blind as we were running. A triple difficult enough that Laddie's typically fine marking probably put him near the top in scoring. And a land blind easier than most we practice on.

Yet we were defeated by a bean field. Sigh.

LL&L

Laddie at Rock Creek

2011-09-17T09:25:00.001-04:00

Buckeye Field Trial, Qualifying stake. Overcast, 50 degs, wind calm.

Series A. Land triple

The first mark was in the center, a duck flyer thrown RTL at 260y. The second mark was on the left, a duck thrown RTL at 100y. The third mark was on the right, a duck throw LTR at 50y. The terrain was gently rolling, and the go-bird was on the far side of a small water crossing, the triangular corner of a pond on the right. The only cover in the series was at water's edge on the go-bird. No retired guns, no honor in this series.

My understanding from one of the judges is that the water series later in the day will have an honor, but no flyer.

Although start time was scheduled for 8am, as of 9:20am, it was evident it would still be a while before the test would start.

To be continued . . .

LL&L

Tune up for Saturday

2011-09-13T20:52:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, low 80s, blue skies, wind calm. Just Laddie & me.

A) 140y water blind with point. Handled well, no sign of nerves.

B) Big poorman triple (this all guns"retired"). Solid marking.

C) 180y poorman water mark with point as suction at mid-point. Did not require handling to stay off point despite big water before and after. No popping nor any other sign of nerves. Fairly big hunt, but systematic and confident.

D) Small, easy, well-practiced On/off drill, just for fun.

LL&L

Laddie's OFA evaluation

2011-09-13T10:29:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had Laddie's OFA X-rays taken for hips and elbows and mailed them in. Today I got the certificates back:

* Hips: EXCELLENT
* Elbows: NORMAL

I'm pleased, especially because at 4yo, Laddie was older than dogs sometimes are at the time they get their OFA X-rays. I've heard that it's more common to get the X-rays when the dog is 2yo, because the joints are sometimes in better shape when the dog is younger, resulting in a higher rating.

LL&L

[Jody Baker provided additional information about this:]

The reason, usually, for getting the x-rays done at a younger age, often times getting a prelim any time after 6 mo or so, is if there is a problem the person won't spend time and money with a dog who "might not, or can't" do the desired sport. The early ones are sometimes only evaluated by the vet who took the pictures, sometimes by OFA (with no certificate).

Steadiness training

2011-09-11T12:39:00.001-04:00

Hay field dotted with hay bales near Warrenton, VA. Blue skies, high 70s, wind calm.

My friend Dave brought four live ducks and another trainer to run Lumi. I brought two dead ducks so Dave could throw flower pot doubles. Dave wore a white jacket. Not a perfect Qual land setup, but as close as we could get. No technical water available.

We ran doubles from two different locations. For the first, Dave was at 100y. For the second he was at 80y. For both, he threw the dead bird first, then shot the flyer, throwing it so it would land out of sight over a crest, increasing suction. For each double, I ran Laddie first, then had him honor Lumi as she ran the same series.

Both dogs wore tabs. Laddie has been wearing a tab whenever practicing for several weeks, hopefully somewhat habitualizing to it. In addition, I held the tab slack for every retrieve. I can't say whether he was aware of it or not. I hope not.

Lumi's handler did a nice job, except for releasing Lumi after the first throw in the second series, so that Dave ended up shooting the flyer while Lumi was picking up the dead bird. Lumi abandoned the dead bird and went after the flyer.

In any case, Laddie was steady all day. On the marks, he moved around between the throws, but made no attempt to break, even though I used a long delay after both birds were down before releasing him. On the honors, he was rock steady.

After the second series, we finished the session with Dave setting up a nice mid-size land blind for Laddie. Dave in his white jacket, the bird crate, and several ducks were positioned a little off the line as a diversion. Laddie ignored them completely.

Except for Lumi's early send on the second series, this was probably about as good a practice session as we could hope for, given available resources. It would appear that Laddie has recovered enough steadiness to get thru a Qual, unless he has become wise to the tab or other contextual elements. I'm hoping we'll have at least one more session with flyers before our next event on Saturday, but if not, I'll just have to hope for the best.

LL&L

Judged Pee Wee stake, land blinds, On/Off drill

2011-09-10T19:35:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, MD. After days of drenching rain, today was clear and warm.

The day started early so that I could meet with my co-judge to set up the land series for the Pee Wee stakes we were judging together at a WC/WCX event. It was the first time judging a field event for both of us. We set up two land singles, and later two water singles. In each setup, we ran the older puppies first at a longer distance, and then the younger dogs from the same start line but with shorter throws.

Neither of us knew how to record our observations in a way that we'd be able to make comparisons later, but together we evolved a method of drawing diagrams, recording the line that the dog took, making notations of any additional observations (for example, "hesitated before entering water"), and adding a numeric score 0-10 immediately after each retrieve, which we might modify on second thought later, but which somehow seemed to make it easier to remember what we'd seen. We also compared notes after the land, and then again at the end (of course), bringing our scores into sync and then using the totals to assign placements. Of course, we'd rather have just given a blue ribbon to all the puppies.

Of the older dogs, the dog who would have taken First place was a few inches from picking up her last water mark when she suddenly barked and jetted back to shore. We never found out what happened, and she didn't appear to be injured. But I know they have fish and turtles, including dangerous snapping turtles, on the property. The puppy was spooked and wouldn't get back in the water again for a while, but later that morning, some of the trainers worked with the owner, and the puppy seemed to be performing normally again. However, we felt we had to give the dog a zero for that retrieve.

We finished the puppy stakes around noon, and it would be hours before the WC/WCX competition would be complete, so I took Laddie to a part of the property away from the competition for some training. First he ran three land blinds, 100-200-300y. The 100 and 200 included tight keyholes near the end of the outrun, while the 300 included a canal crossing on a diagonal. The field for all the retrieves was swampy with large swaths of high cover. I'd like Laddie to sit faster when I blow the whistle, but aside from that, he was responsive on both sits and casts, and in each case ran the "judge's blind" as I had defined it to myself when I set the blinds up. I didn't want to require extremely narrow corridors for this session, because I feel that too much of that can hurt motivation and/or lead to popping, but he got all the obstacles I'd planned for.

After the land blinds, we ran an On/Off drill, a total of four retrieves, at a new location. I set up an orange lining pole, which Laddie didn't appear able to see till he was fairly close. However, he ran every retrieve correctly, off the point or on the point alternately. They all required at least a little handling in the tight configuration and thick, high cover of the land entry, and I was pleased that Laddie never made a peep, he just took the WSCs as called for and in high spirits. I'm not sure whether it might have been a factor that a couple of trainers were throwing bumpers in the water for 4 or 5 young dogs nearby. I thought it was advantageous as a diversion, and possibly to increase excitement level (the better to simulate event conditions), but I could imagine that it also reduced or overwhelmed whatever internal factors produce the vocalizing. Or perhaps Laddie wouldn't have vocalized even if the others hadn't been there.

After that, we ran a variety of additional water retrieves: a few poorman marks that required shoreline swims, a sight blind requiring Laddie to go over a point 2/3 of the way to the blind, and plenty of happy throws into open water and the overgrown meadow. For this later sight blind, I didn't have my whistle with me, so I needed to use verbal cues ("sit", "over", "back") to get Laddie onto and then off of the point. Again, other (different) dogs were running open water retrieves nearby while Laddie was running his blind, and again Laddie responded to my cues enthusiastically, accurately and silently.

We still had a substantial wait before the awards ceremony and unfortunate picture taking ritual (my request to wait for the pictures until I'd lost 20 pounds was roundly ignored). Nonetheless, having the opportunity to get in a nice training session, where Laddie seemed to perform well, made for a satisfying day.

LL&L

On/of drill with call-back

2011-08-30T18:09:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, blue skies, 76 degrees, light breeze.

Today was another day of all water blinds. First, Laddie did On/off drills on four different setups (eight retrieves total). Then he ran one cold water blind we've never run before, an 80y land entry off a mound plus a 70y swim, then thru reeds to the blind set 10y inland.

Every retrieve was with Laddie's 2" white puppy bumpers, since I think they act as +R for completing the blind. All of the On/off drills were run as sight blinds, with an LP and a white plastic bag as the target. The sequence was always the no-point retrieve first, then the point retrieve. Most of the setups were repeats of setups we've used recently. In other words, except for the fact that these were all medium length rather than any short setups, my entire focus was on minimizing confusion, maximizing confidence, and reducing the likelihood of any vocalizing.

My ultimate goal with these sessions is to have day after day of no vocalizing until that becomes Laddie's normal behavior. Unfortunately, although I feel Laddie is significantly more familiar now with the On/off concept, I still haven't found a way to have a productive session with no vocalizing.

So today I added one more element: the three times that Laddie vocalized, I <i>immediately</i> called him back. The first time was a plaintive yelp, while the other two were tentative, perhaps experimental.

I am reluctant to use a call-back on blinds, since it would be terribly disheartening if I accidentally trained a no-go, or added to Laddie's anxiety and actually made the vocalizing worse.

On the other hand, call-backs seemed to be effective a few months ago in greatly improving Laddie's popping.

So perhaps now that Laddie's understanding of points is hopefully clearer, a mild +P for yelping will help Laddie make another step of progress.

I just need to watch carefully to see whether the problem is getting worse or better, and also to watch carefully for possible side-effects. That's assuming that I have enough skill to recognize them if they appear, not necessarily a sound assumption.

LL&L

On/off drill and Hurricane Irene

2011-08-27T12:36:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, low 70s.

Back in 2004, Lumi and I once practiced water retrieves in the rain and wind on the fringe of a hurricane. Today it was Laddie's turn. As Hurricane Irene was wending its way up the coast from North Carolina, Laddie and I took what may be our last training opportunity of the weekend to work on a set of six On/off drills here at the Cheltenham property in Maryland, southeast of Washington, DC.

Each On/off setup was run with OBs and no LP. Each was two retrieves, the first no-point, the second point. The first setup was short and familiar, while Laddie had never run any of the others as an On/off drill before. Few if any required handling on the no-point retrieve, all required at least a little handling on the point retrieve.

Although Laddie had some vocalizing today on the point retrieves (never on the no-point retrieves), it only occurred on blinds of over 100y. The first setup, which was familiar, and the last setup, which Laddie has never seen before, were only about 40y. For those two, Laddie required a little handling to get him onto the point, but he took the casts quietly and confidently. For some of the longer retrieves, Laddie vocalized when handled onto the point.

It's hard to see this as a boldness issue associated with big water, since Laddie had no difficulty with no-point retrieves as much as 140y. Yet it also doesn't correlate exactly to handling. The only model that seems to cover today's data points seems to be handling over a point on a fairly big retrieve.

What's the best Rx to address this issue? Ideally we would gradually work our way up from small to big setups, backing off as soon as we hit one that was a bit too big. However, its not easy to know what the correct distances are on any given day, and an On/off setup for that particular distance may not be available at the venue we're using that day.

In that case, do we err on the short side, and risk wasting a session (that is, four hours, at least one calendar day, and upwards of $50 in expenses)? Or do we err going too long, and risk strengthening the vocalizing habit? For this dog, I think the answer is the latter, since it's fairly clear that Laddie does not vocalize when confident, and a return to longer swims, which used to be fairly routine in our practices, might be the shortest path to gaining that confidence.

LL&L

Beating the rain

2011-08-25T17:35:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, low 80s, overcast.

Today Laddie and I ran our three most recent On/off drill courses on this property, from shortest to longest. I planted two OBs, and used no LPs, in each case. For each setup, I had Laddie run the point line first, then the no-point line.

Laddie ran the first setup exactly as I would have wanted him to: For the point retrieve, he started to skirt the point, quietly accepted a cast onto the point, and lined the retrieve the rest of the way. He then lined the no-point retrieve.

For the second setup, Laddie tried to go too far inland on the first point, and made a quiet yelp when I cast him back outward toward the end of the point. But aside from that, no handling was required on this setup.

For the third and longest setup, Laddie again tried to aim too far inland on the point retrieve, and again yelped when cast. On the no-point retrieve, which on previous days he has run without handling, he headed for the point, and when it didn't look like he'd self-correct, I cast him horizontally toward the correct line. This produced Laddie's most pronounced yelp of the day.

As a test of whether handling on a water blind when no point was in the picture produced vocalizing, I had Laddie run a Master-like water blind: 20y land entry, sharp angle entry, 30y swim with a keyhole between two decoys amongst a group of about six decoys, angle exit onto shore thru thick cover, and a diagonal slope climb halfway up a 20y embankment. Laddie took a good line almost to the decoys and I was afraid he was going to line the whole blind, defeating the experiment, but then he veered a little and I got a chance to use three WSCs in the water, and one on shore, to keep him on a tight line. He took every whistle and every cast quietly, accurately, and with confident, enthusiastic demeanor.

I tossed a few happy bumpers for him, and ran him on a couple of little "singles" for fun. But then the sky opened up and we headed for home thru the downpour.

LL&L

On/off drill, poorman marks

2011-08-23T09:14:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, 6:30am, 55 degrees, sunny, wind calm.

Retrieve A. 80y cold water blind, no points in the picture. Though intended as a confidence builder, this was the only retrieve today that triggered yelping. I have no definitive explanation. Perhaps the relatively big water compared to most of the work we've been doing lately bothered him. Or maybe he found it confusing that there was no point in the picture.

Retrieves B-C. On/off drill in same location as A-D yesterday, but with no LP. Laddie ran the no-point retrieve exactly as I would want him to run a cold blind with a point in the picture: He swam toward the point, then calmly accepted a WSC bypassing the point when he was a couple of yards from the point. He also ran a good line over the point, but needed a cast off the point because he started munching grass.

Retrieves D-E. Poorman land skimming marks through large patches of thick, high cover with swampy footing, with an easy, obvious cheat available, one on the left, one on the right. Laddie needed to be handled on both.

Retrieve F. A big, mostly land single, but with three water crossings. I put Laddie in a sit, walked out to throw the mark, then called his name from my throwing position as a remote send. Because of a crest, we could not see each other, but my high throw, preceded by a gunshot, must have been visible. A few seconds after my remote send, Laddie appeared over the crest, then completed the retrieve on an excellent line, stepping on the bumper.

Retrieves G-H. On/off drill at a location we used a few days ago, but this time with an LP and white plastic bag. No-point line was 110y, point was at 70y. I had Laddie run the point line first. He tried to square the point's shoreline too much, so I needed to handle him more to the end of the point. Then I stopped him as soon as he started onto the point, and cast him horizontally. He took both casts well, and did not need to be stopped again to put him back on line after the second cast. He just made the turn himself once he was clear of the point. He required no handling at all on the no-point retrieve, and this time the big water did not seem to bother him.

Retrieves I-K. Short poorman skimming water singles. No problem on any of these.

Retrieves L-N. A fairly difficult poorman land triple, all guns "retired", featuring a 140y mark on the right as the first throw, a 220y mark on left as the second throw, and a 40y mark in line with the first throw as the third throw. The line to the first throw included a diagonal slope ascent and a keyhole between a mound and a barn. I had Laddie pick up the marks in reverse order of the throws, trying to make the 140y memory bird, which had been thrown first and had possibly been erased in Laddie's memory by the short throw on the same line, as difficult as possible by waiting the longest to retrieve it. It was also unusual for the second-longest mark to be thrown first and picked up last. However, Laddie nailed that mark and of course the short one, and required only a small hunt on the long mark after taking a good line to the immediate area of the fall.

Hopefully this was a fun way for Laddie to wrap up the session.

LL&L

Cooler temps, a little more work

2011-08-22T08:30:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, starting at 6:30am, high 60s.

Retrieves A-B: On/off drill at same location as retrieves E-H yesterday, with LP and white plastic bag. Handling needed to keep Laddie off point on the bypass retrieve, no handling needed for the retrieve across the point. No vocalizing.

Retrieves C-D: ON/off drill at same location, this time no LP. No handling needed on either retrieve, no vocalizing, no popping.

Retrieves E-G: A poorman triple with WBs and pistol. First throw a big "bridge", also featuring a point, that is, LWLWLWL. Second throw all land, almost as long as the first one, with a road crossing. Third throw fairly short, across a cove into a patch of reeds, dog not visible after going down embankment to the cove on outrun until he comes back with the bumper. With all guns "retired", Laddie did a nice job.

Retrieve H: An LWLWL retrieve featuring a tempting cheat from the middle land crossing. When Laddie attempted to run that bank, I decided to call him back rather than handling him, though I would have handled him if he had done it again. However, he ran it nicely the second time.

Retrieves I-F: Similar to the On/off drill, but with throws rather than planted bumpers. Perfect lines, no hint of nerves.

Retrieve G: A poorman mark featuring a swim between two points, one of which he had just crossed, and then across another point further out. Again, Laddie nailed it with no hint of nerves.

For me, today was primarily about the first four retrieves. The rest was to maintain motivation, build confidence on pictures similar to the On/off drill but run as marks, and perhaps remind Laddie what a triple is.

LL&L

Laddie's tab

2011-08-21T13:14:00.001-04:00

By the way, I don't think I've mentioned this before.

For the last several weeks, and for the foreseeable future, Laddie is wearing a collar with a tab, a 9" lead.

If we ever have a chance to train with flyers, I'll keep a firm grip on the tab, but keeping slack unless Laddie attempts to break. Because Laddie wears the tab all the time, he won't associate it particularly with flyers. He'll just re-discover that breaking doesn't work.

Beckie we can compete again, it's essential that we practice in situations that look as much like events as possible to the dog. If Laddie figures out that an event context predicts the availability of a self-reinforcing break -- at the minimum, the immediate pleasure of a high-energy outrun -- we may never dig out of that hole.

I don't know whether we'll ever have an opportunity to give Laddie that training. But at least we're laying the groundwork by habituating Laddie to the tab in the meantime.

LL&L

A time for training

2011-08-21T12:20:00.001-04:00

It is, of course, sad to think that Laddie's competitive career is over because we have no group to train with and therefore no way to work on steadiness in an event-like context.

However, it does have a silver lining. If not for the steadiness issue, I would be tempted to run Laddie in many of the continuous string of Qualifying stakes being run over the next few months in our region. After all, his vocalizing hasn't actually cost us, as far as I know, in any event, and it might have taken more discipline than I had to forego competition, and a reasonable chance of Laddie getting QAA, with all those opportunities available.

However, it probably would not have been good for Laddie's vocalizing, which then might have become a more serious issue in All-Age stakes.

This way, we can work on the vocalizing issue, and any related issues of nerves, without any temptation to run in competitions as well.

Perhaps someday we'll find an opportunity to train regularly with a group, work on steadiness with flyers in an event-like context, and be able to compete once again. To be honest, I don't actually feel hopeful about this, I think it's more likely we'll never compete again. But it's at least theoretically possible.

LL&L

More nerves

2011-08-21T11:56:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, low 80s.

Today, a Weimeraner group was training near the part of the property I had planned to use, but rather than sending Laddie and me away, they said it would be ok for us to train on the other side of the property.

Laddie ran a total of eight water blinds as our On/off drill, all 2" bumpers, some white some orange (irrelevant, since in cover), and all with an LP and white plastic bag as the target. In each pair, we ran from the bypass SL first, then the crossing SL.

We used two setups, four retrieves each. I wasn't that happy with the first one, since it had significant amounts of high, thick cover at both the water entry and exit, which I felt distracted from the lesson. The second setup was longer but visually clearer.

Laddie showed behavior that I interpret as nerves in each setup: not only quiet vocalizing, but also a few pops and also eating grass when he was on the point. In each setup, the nervous behaviors were most prevalent on the first pair of retrieves, and were minimal or disappeared entirely on the second pair.

I liked the second setup a lot. Besides providing clear optics and nice deep water for the On/off drill, it also had a relatively narrow cove behind the point, helping Laddie practice a good re-entry rather than running the bank when presented with that picture. If possible, we'll use the same setup for several more On/off sessions, until he can run both retrieves, in either order, eventually with no LP, and with no display of nerves.

LL&L

Lengthening the On/off drill

2011-08-20T15:49:00.001-04:00

Cheltenham, mid-80s.

Because of the on-going heat, I'm reluctant to run Laddie much on land, and even on water, I feel I should keep down the distance. So today was all water blinds, all 2" bumpers, and none too long.

Retrieves A-D were at the same location as last time, about 35y, all orange bumpers. A & D were off the point, B & C were across the point. Laddie ran all of them silently. I liked the way he ran B & C: He took a wide line, then accepted a cast onto the point.

Retrieve E was 180y. I set up an LP with a WB, then ran him from the other side of the pond. The line was wide of one point on the right, then across the next point on the right. Laddie stayed responsive to the whistle and took every cast correctly, but he didn't carry them well so we needed a lot of WSCs. I felt it was a reasonable performance. The best news is that he didn't vocalize on any cast.

Retrieves F &G were at a new location. I lay two WBs where they'd be visible from the SLs. The distance was 45y. F was on a line wide of the point, G was on a line across the point. Again Laddie required no handling on the bypass, a little handling on the line across the point, and we had no vocalizing.

Retrieves H & I were once more with white 2" bumpers, but at 90y, I now think they were not sufficiently visible from the start line. In any case, H was across the point, and unfortunately included one bark, when I cast Laddie horizontally off the point. But other WSCs were also needed to get him into the correct location on the point, and he took those silently. No handling was needed for the final retrieve bypassing the point.

I'd like to try this again next time we're here, with better visibility of the destination, and see if Laddie can take that cast without vocalizing. Then, in another session, we'd do it as cold blinds.

LL&L

On/off drill at Twin Ponds

2011-08-17T08:43:00.002-04:00

Training at sunrise on a gorgeous morning, temps in high 50s, blue skies, in Monrovia, MD.

Besides lots of happy bumpers, Laddie did a total of 13 water blinds, as follows:

A. 30y, LP with white plastic bag, to a pile with two white 2" bumpers and two 2" orange bumpers, past a point on the right. Laddie easily lined it without touching the point and without a sound, picking up one of the white bumpers.

B. Identical setup except that I moved the SL so that the line was across the end of the point. Again Laddie lined it easily, running over the point and making no effort to veer around the point, again picking up a white puppy bumper. He did bark when he leapt into the water on the initial entry, but made no sound after that.

C. Same as A, except that I took down the LP, and only orange bumpers were left. Identical performance to A.

D. Same as B, except with no LP and now only one orange bumper remaining. Laddie again lined it, running over the point, without vocalizing.

E-H. New setup, 60y, point on the right. Otherwise identical pattern and performance as A-D, except no vocalizing at any time.

I-J. New setup, 70y. Point on the left, 10y shoreline swim on the right, creating a sort of keyhole 10y from the far shore. No LP, but white bumpers placed so as to be clearly visible. First retrieve was on a line thru the keyhole, second retrieve was on a line over the end of the point. Laddie lined both without a sound.

K. 110y swim on diagonal across stick pond, with no point but a tight keyhole between two stumps a few yards from far shore. Orange bumper on hillside, not visible to Laddie till he was close to it. Laddie took excellent line, started to square the shore about halfway across, took a WSC on an angle back, which he carried the rest of the way, including thru the keyhole. He vocalized on the cast, possibly because of the somewhat big water remaining.

L-M. 30y, point on the left, two white puppy bumpers visible from both SLs. First retrieve was on a line over the point, second bypassed the point. Laddie lined both without vocalizing.

To me, today's work showed excellent progress. It appears that Laddie now understands that some retrieves are past points, and some are across them. He also now has one way of knowing which is which: line of sight. Eventually he'll have to learn a second way of discriminating between them, which is to comfortably accept handling, but for now I'm just trying to lay a foundation. Both of these ideas seem to be important new concepts for Laddie compared to just a few days ago.

I don't think Laddie is "learning" not to vocalize per se. Rather, my feeling is that as his understanding and confidence increase, his nerves steady and the vocalizing subsides.

With respect to the question of why Laddie sometimes vocalizes, using only today's data points, a reasonable theory is simply that Laddie vocalizes when handled in water. However, I don't think that matches all the recent data. We'll learn more in future sessions.

Training at Mt. Ararat Farm

2011-08-16T20:00:00.000-04:00

As previously arranged, Laddie and I made an early-morning drive to Gaby's farm to run our On/off drill on her technical pond.

As it turned out, Laddie also ran three singles (two that included water) in a triple-style configuration, ran one land single where the bumper was pre-planted and the throw was faked, and ran one land blind.

Laddie ran the On/off drill in the same location as we used in previous sessions, with the high-visibility LP in place. He ran the drill twice, once before the group work, once after. In each case, he ran one retrieve on a line that bypassed the point and one on a line that crossed the point. In each case, he lined both retrieves without vocalizing.

Taking advantage of this rare opportunities to train on multiples with throwers, I ran these as singles, but showing Laddie all of the gun stations, then calling for a bird, and then sending him on that first mark. The idea is for him to learn not to swing his head after watching a bird thrown, but to stay locked in unless and until he hears another gunshot (or duck call, in the case of a Hunt Test setup).

On one of the water singles, Laddie cheated both the entry to and exit from water, so that's something we'll need some tune-up work on.

However, my primary focus at this time is Laddie's nerves on water blinds with points, and in that regard, I'm pleased with our progress.

Second day of On/off drill at Cheltenham

2011-08-15T16:28:00.001-04:00

Today I ran Laddie on a wide open water blind and used two WSCs to make minor adjustments in his direction. Not a peep.

Then I ran him four times to the same target as yesterday, from the same two SLs. The only difference from yesterday was that today I used two white bumpers, which, predictably, he picked up first, and two orange bumpers.

The two times I ran him down the middle (the first and third retrieves), he lined it with no vocalization.

The two times I ran him in a line across a point (the second and fourth retrieves), he veered wide and I used a WSC to correct his line. He vocalized a little when cast, but took the casts without difficulty.

Today's work suggests to me, not that Laddie considers a WSC aversive, but that he considers crossing a point, or being directed to cross a point, aversive.

In any case, the vocalizations were minor, little whines rather than yelps. Hopefully that represents a diminished level of anxiety compared to earlier, more emphatic vocalizations, and a trend in the right direction, though a backsliding from yesterday.

On/off drill at Cheltenham

2011-08-14T15:09:00.002-04:00

Today, Laddie & I drove to Cheltenham. Temps were mild, in the high 60s, but we were training in a driving rain.

I found a perfect spot for our On/off drill. Rather than bothering with an LP, which would have involved a lot of driving to get to, I just tossed four white bumpers to the far shore. I then ran Laddie to each of them, alternating between an open line between two points (and between two decoys), and a line across the point on the right.

With respect to what side I was running Laddie from, during the last three sessions, I've also taken to running him on the inside if he's to cross the point, on the outside if he's to bypass it. I recognize this is a temporary measure since it often won't provide enough information in advanced blinds with multiple points, but since our immediate goal is to develop a habit of running water blinds involving points with no nerves/yelping, it seems like a reasonable addition for now.

Laddie ran all four sight blinds perfectly, without any need for a whistle. Yay!

Is he starting to understand some approximation of "go straight"? Well, here's an interesting data point:

On the fourth run of the blind, the second across the point, Laddie took a somewhat fat initial line, as though he were planning to bypass the point. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have blown a WS and cast him on angle back to the point. But I decided to watch for awhile and see what he would do.

The answer: As he got even with the point, he suddenly veered right. Lightly prancing across the end of the point, he then swung left again and leapt into the water directly toward the final bumper. Wow, I thought, what an interesting way to run that line.

I recognize that that wasn't necessarily a perfect approach. If the requirement were a keyhole off the end of the point, I'd want him approaching the point from the inside, not the outside.

But in terms of Laddie running a confident, non-yelping water blind with a point, apparently figuring out some way to know whether or not to touch the point without needing to be handled, I felt this was excellent progress.

While we were there, we also ran a few fun, somewhat challenging poorman water marks, complete with pistol, to help keep up Laddie's motivation for the training game.

Second day of On/off drill at Gaby's

2011-08-13T14:58:00.000-04:00

I felt I had seen a good trend working on Laddie's nerves/yelping with our On/off drill at Gaby's farm yesterday.

Today we returned to the same location to run the drill again, after crashing at today's trial. I expected a little back-sliding, but hoped for the same positive trend. Instead, Laddie was back at Square One on the point-crossing line, and began having increasing difficulty with the bypassing line.

I concluded from his behavior that this was not nervousness but rather that he was not enjoying it. Boredom, perhaps.

Anyway, I stopped the session and went to chat with Gaby. Among other topics was Trouble, her good-looking and wonderfully affectionate new 4mo Chessie, whom Laddie seemed to be having fun playing with there in the kitchen.

After a couple of hours, I wanted to head for home, but I had an idea and asked if Gaby would be willing to come out with one or more of her dogs to watch Laddie run the On/off drill. I speculated that having a human and canine audience might perk up his motivation. She grabbed the puppy and we headed for the pond.

Sure enough, Laddie ran both blinds perfectly: no veering, no yelping, no popping. As a bonus, Gaby threw a few long water marks for Laddie, surely more fun for him than all those blinds.

Laddie's sixth Qual

2011-08-13T14:36:00.000-04:00

Today's trial at Cheltenham, the second in two days, started with a land triple, no honor. Since Laddie broke on the honor yesterday, and I have no group to practice honoring with, I had come up with a plan while driving to the trial.

My plan was to run as many series as possible, in today's and future events, till Laddie had to honor a flyer, then run that series but put him on lead without giving him a chance to break on the honor. So today's first series with no honor meant, under my plan, we had a chance to get to the last series, maybe even to the end and a possible ribbon if the last series didn't require honoring a flyer.

However, at the line, Laddie broke on the flyer go-bird, which I believe is the first time he ever broke from the line in competition. Since he ignored me when I called HERE yesterday, I didn't say anything today. I didn't need him to practice ignoring recall.

Well, since he's now breaking from the line, my brilliant plan to work on his honoring flyers at events won't work. I'm glad I haven't signed up for any more events.

How in the world am I going to fix this without having a group to train with? It's a rhetorical question. I don't think I can.

We'll continue to work on whatever skills we can training alone, but unless we find a group, Laddie's competitive career is now over.

On/off drill: declining vocalization

2011-08-12T14:48:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day I've felt I had a clear, unambiguous indication that if Laddie is confident on a water blind with points, he doesn't yelp. The alternative, that yelping was becoming operant and possibly reinforced by success, does not seem consistent with today's results.

After I checked out the trial's water blind (which I think Laddie could have done, possibly without yelping), I felt the best use of time would be to use Gaby's technical pond, about half an hour from the test site and on the way home, for our On/Off drill: a water blind with a point, a highly visible LP, several bumpers (I used Laddie's beloved puppy bumpers), and two SLs, one bypassing the point, one crossing it. The pond had swim-depth water in front of the point, which I believe is a requirement for the drill. It had running water on the back side of the point, but our drought in this region is making it hard to find deep ponds. I didn't see running water on the far side of the point as a problem. It might even be +R for negotiating the point correctly.

We ran the retrieve a total of twenty times, ten from each SL, random alternation, with lots of rest breaks.
Laddie never once tried to veer to the point when running the bypass line, and also remained quiet for those the whole session.

When running the point-crossing line, he was noisy in the early reps: He yelped as he leapt into the water, he yelped quietly as he swam toward the point, he yelped when I had to cast him to the point if he attempted to veer off it, and he barked when I cast him off it.

Once he began getting on the point without help, at first I was still stopping him to cast him horizontally off the point, and that would elicit a bark. Since he clearly knew where he was going, I decided my first priority was to get a quiet dog, and stop casting him off the point.

His noisiness declined on a nearly linear curve. He was nearly quiet on the next-to-last set of four. And he was entirely quiet on the last set.

Oh, also, in the early going, he did some popping. That went away by the end, too.

To me this seems like promising results. I have not yet proven the whole path to a solution. Will we ever be able to avoid yelping if handling is required? Will we ever be able to avoid yelping on new setups with the LP? Will we ever be able to avoid yelping on cold water blinds? Will we ever be able to graduate to high-difficulty blinds without the yelping coming back?

A long road, but a good first step, I think.

Laddie's fifth Qual

2011-08-12T14:22:00.001-04:00

First series was a wide open land triple with the long mark retired and a flyer as the go-bird. Then you ran a blind, and then you honored.

Laddie, running #1, nailed the go-bird flyer and the middle bird, running both better than any other dog I watched. The retired bird was thrown from a runway of grass into a soybean patch, not too hard for the later dogs once the path thru the soybeans was worn down a little, but more of a challenge for the test dog, Laddie, and the other early dogs. Laddie took a great line, but veered onto the runway, then homed in on the bird with little difficulty, never getting behind the gun station despite the fact that the gunner was retired. Laddie also ran the blind well.

Then he broke on the honor, ending our day. Gaby, who was here because she lives nearby and knows several of the trainers, said that several people told her the flyer Laddie had to honor was extremely difficult: lots of feathers flying, lots of flapping on the way down, lots of white belly flashing. In addition, the honor position was difficult: on the flyer side, with the honoring dog closer to the flyer than the working dog. It was too hard for Laddie.

I guess all those practices with Dave aren't doing the job. Not surprising perhaps. We practice singles or flower-pot doubles instead of triples. We practice with small birds -- chukars, pigeons -- but see only ducks in trials. Since I don't have anyone to run Lumi for me, I have to remote-honor Laddie while I run Lumi. We use short distances and lots of noise to try to create excitement, but it's hardly the same picture as an FT triple. Those practice setups might actually be more difficult than a Qual honor, but nonetheless, we're not practicing what we see in a trial.

De-vocalizing water blinds

2011-05-23T22:16:00.000-04:00

[For now, this is another unedited concatenation of tweets on @LindsayRidgeway.]

Cheltenham

Laddie and I trained with Gaby and Gus. Lumi also got to run some water retrieves, and I think Gaby ran Wes a little after I left for home. Laddie and Gus both having confidence issues on water retrieves. For Laddie, my main concern right now is his vocalizing on casts. To work on that, we ran at two venues, with two set-ups at each venue, one with shoreline on left and one with shoreline on right. For each setup, a pile of white bumpers was visible on the shore across a cove at approx 20y, and a duck was planted on the enclosed shoreline, so that the line to the duck was at least 15 degrees inside the line to the white bumpers. The handler had the working dog watch from the start line as the other trainer placed the bumpers and the duck. Then the handler brought the dog behind a holding blind, and then brought the dog back out to run the set-up. The dog was sent to pick up one of the WBs as a freebie (no handling) a random number of times, at least twice. Then the dog was sent in that direction again, but when the dog got about halfway across the cove, the handler blew whistle-sit and cast the dog to the duck. I used silent casts for Laddie. For all retrieves, we used the double-alignment line mechanics suggested to me by my friend Tony, and for retrieves with the duck, we worked on delivery mechanics by moving our hands around the duck as the dog held it for delivery before actually taking the duck, this to strengthen the dog's hold. We'd also touch the dog's muzzle and chest, and the duck itself, before taking the duck. Gaby would use Gus's verbal release cue ("leave it"). Laddie has a verbal release cue ("out"), but it wasn't necessary. In any case, despite the auxiliary parts of the process, our primary goal for both dogs was to instill confidence in running these blinds. In Laddie's case, the primary symptom I was focused on was Laddie vocalizing when I used a whistle sit and/or a cast. Since I'm operating on the assumption that Laddie's vocalizing is a classical rather than an operant response, I'm attempting to eliminate the classical stimulus (uncertainty, stress) from the context, in the hope that that will eliminate the vocalizing. On the first set-up, Laddie made a low whining sound when I blew whistle sit. But he didn't vocalize on any of the other whistle sits, nor any of the casts in any of the set-ups, so it was an encouraging session. Oh, another important part of this drill was that the duck was planted so that the dog had a difficult angle entry, and a tight shoreline swim, for the dog's return after picking up the duck. When Laddie would enter the water with the duck, I'd fire my pistol, which seems to be a high-value reinforcer for Laddie. In some cases, I'd also run away in mock terror, introducing a merry chase for Laddie when he reached shore. And in some cases, Gaby and I would throw the duck back in the water for the dog after taking delivery. All of this had several objectives: to improve the dog's attitude and performance on the returns and deliveries, and also to sweeten the pot for taking the cast to the duck after initially being sent to the WB. Gaby and I both felt our dogs benefitted from this drill and plan to run it some more, gradually transitioning over a series of incremental steps toward practicing cold blinds such as those the dogs will run in tests and trials in the future. Our intent is that if we can establish confident and unstressed performance in this drill, and we perform the transition gradually and slowly enough, we'll be able to resolve our dogs' confidence & performance issues in competition water series.

Laddie's Fifth Master Test

2011-05-23T08:29:00.001-04:00

[At present, this is nothing more than the stream of my tweets on @LindsayRidgeway for the two days of the test, with a couple of minor spelling corrections. It requires a great deal of editing to be a satisfactory blog post, but I simply don't have time. I'm posting it in this form just as a starting point, and will attempt to edit it when I have more time. If I had known in advance that we wouldn't pass, I wouldn't have bothered with so much detail on the test description. I just tweeted it because I wanted the information for a detailed post if Laddie passed.]

MAY 21
Seaford, DE. Susquehanna Hunt Test,Master B. 125 dogs in Master. Laddie is #13. A) Land triple with flyer as go-bird, plus land blind. Walk-up. First mark on the right, throw with a winger on an angle back in tree grove. Second mark 180 deg to the left, thrown with a winger LTR onto front of a mound. Third mark 150 deg back to the right, a flyer thrown RTL to base of tree, in high cover, with to the fall past a mound on the left. No direct line from SL to the first fall, by the way, because of fallen tree. If dog goes around on the left (that's what most dogs did) dog is on line toward flyer station at same distance as the fall for #1. If dog goes around on right (Laddie only dog I saw do that), dog goes behind #1 station and also can see pond on right. This was relevant because Laddie had had his tongue lolling out for 20 mins, but had not been willing to drink water before his series. He has a history of detouring to ponds on returns when he's hot. First time to the line, the first bird was thrown into a tree, so judges called a no-bird. Second time, we got clean throws. Laddie nailed the flyer and#2. As mentioned, he took an unusual route to #1, but as one of the spectators commented, he knew where the bird was the whole time. He came back that same way, but it was a poor return because he was clearly tempted to take that last mark for a swim. However, he did finally bring me the bird without too much of a detour, though it was slow. The blind involved threading the needle thru a stand of trees, with the bird planted behind a dead shrub on the front of a mound. I did not attempt Tony's suggested new line mechanics, but I did try to minimize our time lining up. Laddie was only dog I saw who took such a good line from the SL (which was between the original SL and the first gun station) that he did not to be handled thru the stand of trees. He came even with the blind just a yard or two to the right, so I blew whistle sit and gave easy cast to the left. "You're all right. He marked the bird, he knew where it was." Laddie's heeling was pretty out of control, and he had that poor return so I'm not completely confident we'll be called back, but we'll see. Oh, one more thing: the diversion shot for the blind was made from the #1 gun station. For most dogs, this was heard behind the dog on the dog's return from the last memory bird. But for Laddie, Later, I saw other dogs go around the obstacle to #1 on the right, and other dogs get thru trees on blind without handling. So Laddie he was past the gun station and behind it, still thinking about going swimming, when the judge called for the diversion shot. I don't know whether that affected Laddie's performance differently than the shot affected other dogs, but to me it does suggest that the issues could prevent a call back. This is a long, slow series. I don't know whether they'll run Series B today. judge was impatient with Laddie's return route and reluctance to give up his intent to go swimming. I could imagine that some of those wasn't alone for either of those. I just heard from someone that the flyer's entrails were hanging out on Laddie's flyer. I'm sure that was from the shotguns. I was wondering why Laddie was standing over that bird until I blew a come-in whistle. I hope the judges don't blame Laddie for it. Laddie got called back to the second series...yay! Had a lot of company: 60 dogs ran, 55 were called back. They've started Series B, but they're rotating the running order, starting with #20 this afternoon, so Laddie at #13 won't run till midday tomorrow. I can describe Series B now: Water double with two water blinds. No flyers. The memory bird is winning water, the other three retrieves are swimming depth. Not much opportunity to cheat, one fairly wide keyhole for the shorter blind. The honor is fairly difficult, since the running dog runs in front of the honoring dog, but not that bad since no flyer. If Laddie has a problem on anything besides his returns, I'll be surprised. If course, I'm hoping his returns will be good, too.

MAY 22
I had a scary thought around 8:00 pm last night, and saw it was still fairly light out: What if the test organizers figured out a way to finish Series B last night, and already had callbacks?

We are headed home. Laddie dropped the bird several times on his returns from marks, had several cast refusals, and barked in seeming protest on every cast in water The judge did not let him run the second blind. I now feel he is not ready to run a Master water series. This was an easy one. Oh, I think the judges also said that Laddie had a pop. I didn't notice that with everything else he was doing.

Walk-ups, water blind, and land triple plus double blind

2011-04-21T21:27:00.002-04:00

Rolling Ridge

Sunny, 60°, training with Nate.

SERIES A. Walk-up diversion with water blind

As Laddie and I came from behind a holding blind, Nate was hiding behind a nearby stand of trees. Without warning, he fired pistol and threw a white bumper. Trajectory of throw was behind another tree, then into a depression. I then cued "sit", swung Laddie to my other side, and ran him on a big water blind, which he lined without popping. Then he picked up the diversion mark.

SERIES B. Walk-up land triple plus two blinds

First mark was thrown RTL on a walk-up from behind trees at the right edge of the field and into a ditch, with the thrower on my right and Laddie on my left. I had planned to have Laddie facing in Nate's direction by the time he threw, but he threw too soon. Laddie heard the pistol shot but did not look past my knees fast enough to see the throw, which though not planned was actually a good thing for us to work on, since an unseen first throw of a triple was the same situation that led to our being dropped in our last test. The Bumper Boy for the second throw was in line with the first mark, thrown RTL like the first throw, so that the first two marks were a hip pocket double. The third mark was the longest, thrown LTR across a ditch 90° to the left of the second fall. I ran Laddie in reverse order of the throws, which also had unusual result of being longest first, shortest last. After Laddie picked up #3 and #2, I lined him up carefully for #1, the mark he had not seen, and sent him on "back" rather than his name as though it were a blind, but he nailed it without a need for handling.

The line to the first blind ran near the fall of the first mark, then a little behind the Bumper Boy used for second mark. Just past the BB, the line ran to the left of a tree, forming a diagonal keyhole with the BB, then across an old driveway.

The second blind was on a line between the second and third marks, across a ditch, then to the right of a pile of downed trees. Just past the pile, the dog had to be stopped and cast left behind the pile and thru underbrush in front of a tree, making it a sideways keyhole. Coming out of the underbrush, the dog had to be stopped again and cast straight back, keeping to the left of the tree, then across a dirt road. The blind was in a depression beyond the road.

I tried my best to create challenging situations in this session, but Laddie made everything look easy all day.

De-popping on water marks

2011-04-19T00:42:00.004-04:00

Rolling Ridge

Today was sunny with temps in the 70s, though the ground was soaked from torrential rain last night.

I decided to start Laddie's session with a big water triple. I thought the marks might be a bit challenging, and Laddie would also get in some conditioning. I even brought Lumi along for some water retrieves with one of her puppy bumpers. She was injured recently and shouldn't be doing much land activity, but I thought the swimming would be good for her.

It turned out, however, that Laddie's work turned into one of our most intense sessions, while Lumi was primarily interested in playing tug with me when I had a spare moment. :0)

The reason for the intensity was that the set-up I designed happened to trigger pops on two of the retrieves. I didn't plan it that way, but once it happened, I decided to take advantage of the situation to really work with Laddie on it.

The strategy I chose was somewhat controversial based on conversations I've had with others on the subject of popping in the past. The problem was that I've already tried freezing when Laddie looks at me, and I've also tried calling "back" when he turns or, if possible, just as he's starting to turn. I haven't noticed either strategy causing Laddie's popping to diminish. I don't think either one set up a structure of operant outcomes that produced changes in behavior. Worse, I was and am concerned that the behavior was becoming somewhat habitual because it has gone on for so long, however rarely.

So I decided on this strategy: At the moment that Laddie turned to face me, I would call him back to me. In some cases, I'd then leave him at the SL, run/walk around the pond to where the mark was, show it to him or re-throw it, run/walk back to the SL, and send him again. In other cases, I'd just spend some time with him lining him up and chatting to him for encouragement, and then send him out again.

The reason that's a controversial strategy is that a trainer might be concerned that being called back — quitting and returning to Daddy's side — is exactly what the dog is hoping for when the dog pops, so calling the dog back would act as reinforcement for popping. Today's work showed in no uncertain terms that that is not the case with Laddie. To Laddie, it meant having to come back without the bumper, which is highly undesirable to him, and worse, it meant having to make another long swim back, and then another long swim out, just to get back to where he was when he popped.

Laddie and I worked on this for a long time, I'd estimate six attempts on each of the two retrieves where he popped before he made it all the way across without popping. The swim was a good hundred yards, so Laddie got in a great deal of swimming, more than I had planned on and enough that by the end, I think he was starting to be a bit tired.

He was also frustrated enough to yelp a few of the later times I sent him. And as he started his long swim, a couple of times he barked, as if talking to himself and reminding himself not to look around this time.

It was fascinating watching Laddie fight his urge to turn around and look at me. In the later outruns, getting closer and closer to a full traversal of the pond, he would start to turn, then catch himself and turn back toward his destination. These visible displays showed how habitual the popping behavior has become, and it showed how effective today's callbacks were in training him not to pop. Apparently he figured out fairly early in the day that it was the pop that was causing me to call him back and repeat the send-out, but then the urge to pop would take precedence and he'd lose that battle. As with any extinction process, he also needed to learn that I was being 100% consistent, and that no pop would result in being permitted to continue that outrun.

The fact that he finally made it across for the first retrieve, but then had to relearn not to pop all over again on the second one immediately afterwards, shows how ingrained this behavior has become and how difficult it was for Laddie to combat it. I looked for every way to further reward his eventual success, running around to meet him on the side of the pond so that he didn't have to swim all the way back, and of course lots of extrinsic reinforcement as he reached me.

But before those successes, the amount of swimming and frustration were clearly grueling for Laddie, not the kind of day I'd want him to have very often. It was also grueling for me, first because I felt deeply for the frustration Laddie was experiencing, and second, because of my own physical exertion when I sped out to show him the marks and back again to re-run him.

By the way, apparently the trigger for popping on today's marks was a combination of two factors. One factor was the fact that the fall was either invisible (one of the marks was behind a stretch of reeds) or had a confusing picture (the second mark was among a repetitious assortment of saplings and debris on the hillside beyond the pond). The other factor was the big water.

I'm not sure that a confusing fall and distance are what cause popping when Laddie does it on land, but it's a working hypothesis.

I'm also not certain that a callback on land would work as well to discourage popping, since that's a lot easier for Laddie to carry out. However, a Walk Out, the same mechanism I've used to discourage refused whistle sits and delayed water entries on returns, might be the ticket for land popping if we can find a set-up that triggers it.

Meanwhile, over the next few days, I'll try Laddie out on more set-ups like today's, though not every day in a row, lest he suffer any damage to his motivation. I'd certainly like to stamp out this problem entirely, and get Laddie to the point where the habit is gone, and he can just focus on carrying out the retrieve without having to fight an urge that costs him. But I just have to remind myself that we don't have to keep working on such an uncomfortable project day after day, we can spread the training out and have some easier sessions in between.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH A FRIEND ABOUT THIS POST

On Apr 19, 2011, at 9:15 AM, Jody wrote:

My thought is the fact that you "forced" him to do it correctly is a good thing. Laddie hasn't had much force work (or you could call it pressure) of any kind. This should help him understand that he is to do what he's "told" to do.

Good job in my opinion.

On Apr 19, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Lindsay wrote:

Hi, Jody. In terms of OC, I think it's no different from interrupting an unsuccessful trial -- the no-reward marker was "Nope, come on back". However, it shows that +R training can be unpleasant at times, no matter how much we try to make it a positive experience. Frustration, and in this case some physical exertion, still occur. I saw no way to obtain a high success rate on this particular session once we started, though ordinarily that's a mainstay of our training.

I didn't mention in the post -- I probably should -- that there wasn't the least recrimination when I would call Laddie back, and I praised him when he would get back for responding. To be honest, I was immensely proud of the spirit Laddie brought to this session. I wish the learning could have been easier for him.

If I had had access to more variety of water, and if I had anticipated the popping, it's possible I could have found a smaller crossing to work on first. But I don't know that that would have triggered the pop, and I also would not have want to quit venue A, to switch to easier venue B, once he did pop at venue A. I think switching might have reinforced the pop -- "Oh, if it's too hard, you can give up on it and we'll find something easier and more fun for you to do instead." Nope, we'll just have to keep trying -- it was getting dark and I was soaked from Laddie's shaking off by the time we quit -- until you can do the job.

Thanks for your feedback, Jody. It always means so much to me.

Laddie's Third Master Test

2011-04-16T13:02:00.000-04:00

Remington, VA

I'm afraid Laddie is now 0 for 3 in Master Hunt Tests. I see little advantage on dwelling on yesterday's event, but for the record, here's a brief description.

Basically, Laddie had no trouble with the first series, a land triple plus honor, though one clue about what was eventually to come did appear: During the honor, Laddie was far more interested in sniffing the ground around him than in the test that the working dog was about to run. He did look up when the guns started firing, but by Laddie standards, it was practically an afterthought.

Because of test logistics, we had a long delay between the first and second series, and Laddie was one of the last dogs in the running order when the lengthy second series did begin. As a result, I took Laddie out of his crate several times that morning. He exhibited similarly distracted behavior whenever I aired him: Instead of his usual ball/bumper obsession, all he wanted to do was follow scents, and in certain locations that he found, intensely sniff and even lick the ground.

Talking to the other handlers, I learned that one of the female dogs had been in heat recently, though was supposedly past that. Apparently someone forgot to tell Laddie.

The second series was a land/water triple with a walk-up and a flyer, plus two blinds. Although it was not a gimme, I didn't expect Laddie to have trouble with it

However, during the walk-up, he caught a scent and rushed forward ahead of me, nose to the ground. When he reached the start line tape a split second later, the judge called for the first bird, an angle back LTR from a nearby hidden gun way to the left of the field, thrown with a winger into reeds just beyond the embankment of the closest shoreline at 20y. This mark was intended to take the dog by surprise and happen very quickly. Laddie looked up too late and never saw the fall. He then watched the center throw across the pond, thrown LTR at 90y from a gun station 30 degrees to the right of the first mark, and a flyer 180 degrees from the first mark and thrown from behind a sprawling stand of trees RTL at 60y.

Laddie picked up the flyer, and then, like all the previous handlers, I lined him up on the very short first mark. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Although I couldn't tell from Laddie's body language — perhaps a more experienced handler could have — Laddie had not seen that bird and did not know where it was, while he actually did know where the long mark was. Therefore, I now think I should have run him on the long mark first, though no previous handler had run the series that way. Once that was out of the way, and Laddie's mind was cleared about the long mark, I should have treated the short bird as a blind, cueing "dead bird" and sending him with "back". Laddie and I had actually had a similar situation at a training day a few weeks ago, and I had come to the same conclusion of how to handle such a situation, but I didn't recognize that that's what I was seeing during yesterday's test, and didn't follow my earlier advice to myself.

Instead, I lined Laddie up on the short mark, saw that he was locked in, and sent him on his name. He ran the correct line till he got near the shoreline, and if the bird had been visible, we'd have been OK. But he neither saw it nor scented it, and immediately veered right and leapt into the water. I let him go for awhile, but he seemed confused, apparently struggling with whether to loop back to the mystery bird I'd sent him toward, or take matters into his own hands and go out to pick up the long bird. It was beginning to look like he might get called for a switch, since he had already been pretty close to the short fall, so I decided I better handle him.

Now of course Laddie has had a ton of handling, and I've often handled him on marks without difficulty when needed. But this situation where he's sent to a bird that he apparently knows he was supposed to have seen but doesn't know where it is seems to really mess with his mind, and he handled poorly. He just didn't seem able to believe I knew where the bird was. He eventually did pick up the bird, and then ran a nice mark to the center bird, as good as any dog had done on that rather difficult mark, which had knocked several dogs out. But the judges wouldn't let Laddie run the blind, because of the refusals during handling to the short mark.

I won't describe the land and water blinds, but I don't think Laddie would have had any trouble with them. I don't recall any dog going out because of the blinds.

Interrupted land triple, blinds with bulldogs

2011-04-11T20:23:00.000-04:00

[Transcribed from @LindsayRidgeway tweets]

Rolling Ridge

Hazy, 86°, SW wind at 11 mph. Training with Nate again. With Master test coming up on Friday, today was mostly tune-up for that. My plan was to come up with something difficult, see what problems Laddie had, and use that info to plan work for rest of week. It didn't work. Laddie made mincemeat of both today's series

SERIES A. Interrupted land triple

First mark was on the right, a white bumper thrown by Nate RTL at 180y. Second mark was on the left, thrown by a Bumper Boy RTL at 80y. The third mark was on a line slightly to the left of the line to the second mark, thrown by a BB RTL at 30y. After the three marks were thrown but before any retrieves, I ran Laddie on a 170y blind on a line midway between the first and second marks. When Laddie returned with the blind, I sent him to the three marks in reverse order thrown. Nate retired behind a tree while Laddie was running the short mark on the left

The terrain on this field is hilly with uneven footing. in addition, each of the four retrieves had individual challenges:

The blind was run after Laddie had seen three marks, and included an extremely tight keyhole near the end. Running a blind when marks are waiting to be picked can erode control, but Laddie did great.
The short mark was thrown into high cover halfway up a steep slope, but its real challenge was to act as a diversion for the blind, to challenge Laddie's steadiness, and to act as a wiper-bird for the second mark. Laddie nailed it.
The line to the second mark was up a steep hill, over a crest, and into a field of thick cover. The line was slightly to the right of the line to the first mark picked up. The BB was visible from the start line, but the fall was in high cover. Perhaps the most difficult part was that as Laddie was running up the slope, he could see only the crest of the hill above him. Laddie took a great line and absolutely nailed it.
The long mark was fairly long, it was retired, and it was across a valley. Perhaps most difficult, it was a "bridge": Nate stood on one side of the wide ditch to throw to the other side, and Laddie needed to cross that ditch thru thick, high cover despite the picture of Nate in his memory being on the near side of the ditch. The configuration did not fool Laddie. He ran a beeline to the fall.

SERIES B. Land blind with bulldog

For the second series, I decided to try something Laddie and I have never practiced before, as far as I can remember: a "bulldog" thrown while Laddie was running a blind. A bulldog, as I understand it, is an article thrown while the dog is running another retrieve. In the past, we've practiced bulldogs thrown while Laddie was returning from a mark. A blind combined with a bulldog was new to us, but Alice mentioned it as a Master test possibility in recent correspondence, so I thought we'd give Laddie, and me, a chance to get a little experience with it. In Series B, I just wanted to show Laddie the concept. Then in Series C, we'd do it with a more difficult blind.

With Laddie in the crate and unable to see the set-up, I positioned Nate behind an old shed on the left and 30y from the start line. I then ran Laddie on an easy 40y blind toward the right and halfway up an embankment. As soon as Laddie had taken a few steps, Nate blew the duck-call fired a shot, and threw a white bumper LTR toward Laddie, so that it fell about 20y from Laddie. Laddie turned to look, took a couple of steps toward the bumper, them froze. I blew a sit-whistle, which I should have done sooner, then cast him up the hill to the blind, a cast he took without hesitation and with his usual exuberance. When he returned with the blind, I sent him to pick up the bulldog Nate had thrown.

TODAY'S LESSON. I don't know whether Laddie really needed this practice, but I'm glad I didn't wait for a test to try it out. After seeing what happened, I realized that if we ever get one of these, I need to get myself ready to blow the whistle as soon as required, and not wait till Rocket Dog darts toward the diversion to think about getting my whistle ready.

SERIES C. Water blind with bulldog

Now we were ready to try a more realistic series. Again with Laddie in the crate and unable to watch, I set Nate up behind a holding blind at the top of the embankment on the right of the pond. I then ran Laddie on a water blind with a land segment, an angle entry, and the wind blowing straight into our faces. Laddie made a great entry, and after he had swum a short distance, Nate blew the duck-call, fired the pistol, and threw a white bumper down the embankment toward Laddie. It was supposed to splash but landed on the grass at water's edge. Laddie barely took notice of it.

A short time later, near the end of the blind and 80y from the start line, Laddie had to take handling thru a 3' wide keyhole, consisting of an aluminum pumping unit on the left, and a patch of reeds on the right, with the shoreline just the other side of the reeds. Laddie zigzagged a couple of times, trying to avoid swimming so close to the aluminum pump-housing, but he stayed in control and soon took a "back" cast thru the keyhole, to shore, and up the embankment to the blind. He also did a nice job of getting back in the water and swimming back, detouring around the pump on the water side.

As frosting on the cake, he then took a thin slice of water with a very sharp angle entry, rather than running the bank, when I sent him to pick up the bulldog

Laddie did a nice job today, IMO.

Walk-up diversions, de-popping

2011-04-10T20:10:00.003-04:00

[Transcribed from @LindsayRidgeway tweets]

Rolling Ridge

Nate came out to throw for us (yay!). Overcast, 53°, wind calm.

First, a couple of walk-up diversions, then, for balance, a couple of de-popping marks. Details:

A) Using my van as a holding blind, began walking toward right of field. Nate, from behind holding blind on the right at 30y, blows duck-call excitedly, fires pistol twice and throws white bumper LTR into open area in clear sight of dog. Instead of sending dog to that mark, I run Laddie on difficult 110y water blind to the left, featuring sharp angle entry after steep descent down embankment, shoreline suction, and several geese on water who are giving ground only reluctantly. After blind, Laddie is sent to diversion.

Judging by Laddie's vocalizations, this was a frustrating set-up for Laddie, but he showed excellent control on the blind.

LESSON: In this series, I learned that the key to keeping Laddie from breaking to the diversion bird when I'm trying to swing him to my other side to run the blind first, is the same as preventing a dog from breaking after a no-bird is called, namely, an emphatic "sit" as many times as needed for dog's body language to show he/she is in control.

B) Again using the van as a holding blind for the walk-up, this time the diversion mark was thrown on the left side of the field, LTR at 60y. Then I ran Laddie on a difficult land blind on the right side of the field, on a line 45° to the right of the line to the diversion bird. The line to the blind featured two angle entries into high cover, rough footing, and wet, swampy terrain at the second area of high cover, with the blind planted on the far side of a shallow creek. I sent Laddie to pick up the diversion bird (white bumper) after running the blind.

C) 350y mark thrown first, then a short throw to the side. Long gunner retires while dog picks up the short mark. Line to long mark hilly, includes run along side slope, and ends in large field of high cover. Design intended to maximize uncertainty, requiring dog not to pop despite that uncertainty. Laddie did nice job, needed longish hunt in high cover without leaving area of the fall, and most importantly for this exercise, never looked toward start line, that is, never popped.

D) Similar set-up to (C) but mirror image, 320y. This time, the line to the mark crossed a creek and thick underbrush. Laddie ran this with great confidence, seemingly completely unconcerned, possibly unaware, that gunner was retired. Nice ending to an excellent session.

Angle entries, shoreline blinds, de-popping

2011-04-09T20:00:00.061-04:00

[Transcribed from @LindsayRidgeway tweets]

Rolling Ridge

Overcast, 50°.

Six retrieves total, in pairs, each pair made up of mirror images:

Pair 1: Poorman water marks with pistol shot, very sharp angle entry after land segment, easy and obvious cheat. This was the goal of our skimming drills last year, and Laddie did fine, as he had in last weekend's Master test on a similar entry.
Pair 2: Shoreline water blinds.
Pair 3: De-popping drill, one retrieve at 400y, the other at 270y. Set up as follows: I planted stickman, with white bumper 10y to the side. I then walked with Laddie to our start line and brought him to heel on the same side as the bumper was to the stickman. I stepped away, fired pistol, holstered it and stepped back next to Laddie. I lined him up, got him locked into the stickman, and sent him on his name. For each retrieve, the line took him across a steep valley and thru high cover and ditches with run-depth water, and more importantly, thru long segments where the stickman was not visible on other side of a crest. The intent was for Laddie to face uncertainty as he ran -- he hadn't seen a throw, and now he couldn't even see the "thrower" -- without turning to me for guidance.

Laddie did an outstanding job all day, including Pair 3, where he not only did not pop, but also never got "behind" the gun. That is, he kept to the same side of the imaginary line running from me to the stickman, from the time he left the start line till he had picked up the bumper.

Laddie's second Master test

2011-04-02T20:00:00.009-04:00

Cullen, Virginia

The Tidewater event in which Laddie JAM'ed yesterday also included a Master test today. I entered Laddie in the Master test as well, making it his second Master test after his first one last fall.

Here's a description I sent responding to an email inquiry:

In the Master test, Laddie went out on the first series, on something I've never seen before, and of course never practiced: a walk-up diversion bird (at 50y or so). The judge even called Laddie's number to make it more like a mark. When I tried to signal Laddie to swing around for a water blind, he broke to the diversion bird, and wouldn't stop when I called "Here" repeatedly. Eventually he did come back without the bird. I had turned away and didn't see, but knowing Laddie, he probably wanted to satisfy his curiosity that he knew where it was before he came back.

Aside from that, Laddie did an excellent job on the complex but rather easy series. It started with a land-water double with a flyer. He nailed the flyer go-bird, then nailed the water memory-bird, which included 60 yards of land with a terrain change, a sharp angle water entry with an easy and obvious cheat to the left, onto a peninsula, and then off the peninsula back into the water to a fall that was not visible from the start line. To me, Laddie's performance on that water mark was one of the highlights of his competitive career, even though he did go out on the diversion bird.

For completeness, I'll describe the rest of the series. After the land water double, you received the bird in the holding blind. Then you came out for the walk-up diversion and then ran a water blind that was almost the same line as the previous water mark, except this time you pushed all the way across the second cove and picked up the bird on the far shoreline. When you got back with that bird, you had a choice of order on the last two retrieves: picking up the diversion bird (which everyone did first), and a small land blind 15 degrees to the left of the diversion bird. Finally, you honored the land-water double for the next dog.

After Laddie broke on the diversion bird, the judge was kind enough to let me run him on the rest of the series, before honoring on lead. Laddie did everything well.

Laddie's First Field Trial

2011-04-01T20:48:00.040-04:00

Cullen, Virginia

Today Laddie ran in the Tidewater Owner/Handler Qualifying Stake, the first Field Trial event Laddie or I has ever participated in. During the day, I tweeted descriptions of each series and summarized the performance of the field in general and Laddie in particular on my Twitter feed @LindsayRidgeway. This post is an edited version of those tweets, with additional detail added.

Weather today: Temps were high 30s to low 50s, with the wind making it feel even colder. That's rather cold for running a dog in water, and the field's performance in Series C and D reflected it. The sky was overcast in the morning, and it felt like we might have snow, though we didn't. By afternoon, it was mostly cloudy with a little sun.

The trial was run at an excellent property called the Virginia Retriever Benefit Grounds. It was difficult for me because the ground there is uneven and I'm dealing with a sprained ankle, but I enjoyed the opportunity to run Laddie there.

For this event, mallards were used for all marks and blinds. Laddie hasn't trained with a duck since last fall, so I anticipated we might have some problems, but except for him spitting his flyer out 10 yards in front of the start line in the first series, and having to be cued to pick it back up to deliver, the birds didn't seem to present much problem.

For those who have followed Laddie's development, you'll know that returns have been a major challenge. We seem perhaps to be over that phase.

I might mention that Laddie was not the only dog in today's Q to do that. In his case, the way he was working his mouth seemed to indicate that he was having trouble with loose feathers, but he responded well when I called him to me. During the rest of the event, I cued "Hold" as he returned on most of the other retrieves — no one else was doing that with their dogs, but I felt it prudent for Laddie — and he didn't drop any other birds.

SERIES A. Land triple

All throws were left-to-right. The first mark was on the right at 150y, and was a retired gun. The second mark was in the center at 140y. The third mark, the go-bird, was a flyer at 70y.

The shooters for the flyer were excellent. Not only didn't they lose a single bird, they also dropped almost all of them in a small patch of high cover as the judges had requested. Despite the fall in cover, this was a pretty easy mark for most of the dogs including Laddie, but at least one dog had a controlled break — 70y is on the short side for a Field Trial mark — and the owner withdrew rather than let the dog be reinforced for breaking by getting to retrieve the flyer. That was good discipline by the handler, I thought. It's not easy to walk away if the judges haven't disqualified you.

Once the dogs had picked up the go-bird, the series presented the handler with a quandary — whether to run the marks in the exact reverse order thrown, or in the sequence outer-outer-center, often used when the two memory birds are about the same distance. The field of handlers split about evenly on this. I've thought about what to do in such situations if I ever ran Laddie in a Field Trial, and decided that my rule is: If the dog really wants a particular mark as the second retrieve, let the dog choose. If not, run the easier mark first. If they seem equally difficult, run them in the reverse order thrown. Since this was our first Field Trial, it was my first chance to try those rules out. Laddie didn't care which mark to run second, and they looked equally difficult to me, in different ways. So the last rule applied in this case.

The second mark thrown, and thus for Laddie also the second mark retrieved, was thrown downhill and on an angle back into high cover. The line to the fall was along the side of a slope, and at least half the dogs veered left to the top of that slope and ran along the crest, toward the gun rather than the fall. In most cases, they then turned right to run down the hill and pick up the bird, though a few got further left behind the gun and at least one ended up returning to the fall of the first mark and had to be called in without completing the retrieve. Laddie ran this mark, which I guess most handlers thought was the most difficult of the three, exceptionally well, carrying the slope without veering offline, entering the high cover without hesitation, and "stepping on the bird," as they say.

The last mark for Laddie to retrieve, the retired gun on the right, was challenging for all the dogs because the picture was of a repeating pattern of evenly spaced trees, with lots of open space behind and to the right of the fall. With few exceptions, dogs ran too far to the right, and of those, the more successful ones winded the bird as they came even with it and hunted it up. Laddie was one of the dogs who ran it that way, coming even with the fall about 10y to the right, winding it and hunting it up. I saw one dog nail that mark, maybe one or two others did when I wasn't watching.

Before ending my description of Series A, I might mention that the configuration of the two marks on the left was a "hip-pocket double". This means that both marks are thrown in the same direction, and the closer mark, thrown from a wider position, looks as though it's being thrown into the hip pocket of the thrower for the longer mark if viewed in two dimensions. Of course actually the thrower for the longer mark is much further back than the shorter fall. This can be a confusing picture for a dog, but Laddie has been practicing it periodically since he was a puppy so it didn't seem to be a problem for him. I'm not sure that in this series, with this field, it was a problem for any of the dogs.

Summary of the field's and Laddie's performance for Series A: Thirty-two dogs were entered in this stake, 28 ran Series A, and 22 were "called back", that is, still in contention and carried to the next series. Laddie was one of those 22. He had been called back in his first Field Trial series. Yay!

SERIES B. Land blind

Series B was a 160y land blind. I gather it was fairly typical for a Q land blind, crossing a steep valley and running beside underbrush and other suction to the left. One feature Laddie and I have never seen before, in an event nor in group or club training, was an obstacle making it impossible for the dog to hold a line straight to the blind, in this case a fallen shrub about 15y in front of the start line. Another feature, much more common but nonetheless challenging, was a keyhole, in this case formed by a narrow gap in a stand of saplings, an unusually close keyhole at 30y. The combination of the closely spaced obstacle and keyhole was a bit tricky and a couple of dogs did skirt the keyhole and were eliminated. I'd say Laddie was about middle of the pack in his performance on this blind.

Summary of the field's and Laddie's performance for Series B: Twenty of the 22 dogs that ran Series B were called back for Series C, including Laddie.

SERIES C. Water blind

Series C was a 120y shoreline water blind, with 50 yards of land and a sharply angled water entry thru high reeds at water's edge, plus an on-and-off point mid-way that the judges had said was non-optional. I think those features alone made it a fairly challenging blind, though not highly unusual for an advanced stake. However, today's weather conditions — the icy cold water of early spring, and a strong wind blowing off the water onto the shoreline — raised the difficulty level significantly. In fact, so many dogs went out-of-control behind a stand of reeds on the back of the point without a single dog qualifying that at one point, as I understand it, the judges considered scrapping the test.

However, eventually several dogs did run this blind satisfactorily, perhaps none better than Laddie. We had the advantage of running late in the rotation in this series (the running order is rotated in a Field Trial), so by the time I ran Laddie, I had watched the problems other dogs had and had made up my mind that no "back" cast would pass my lips. Living solely by "over", Laddie didn't have much trouble with it.

Summary of the field's and Laddie's performance for Series C: Ten of the 20 dogs that ran Series C were called back for Series D, including Laddie.

SERIES D. Water double

Series D was another hip-pocket double, a tight double with both marks thrown right to left. The first mark was on the left, 130y with a short, easy land entry and a long, arduous swim in that icy cold water. The second mark, the go-bird, was on the right, thrown by a winger into the open water of a cove at 40y.

The go-bird presented little challenge except to steadiness for a few dogs, but the line to that mark perhaps established an undesirable precedent for swimming toward the reed-bordered point of land that formed the back shore of that front cove.

The memory-bird was more challenging. First, the thrower was barely visible on the back shore, appearing just left of the stand of reeds at the end of the point of land midway across. Second, as mentioned previously, the water was intensely cold, and a strong wind was blowing across the water, so that both wind and waves pushed the dog hard toward that point. With such a long swim for water that cold, most dogs ran that mark by starting on a line toward the fall, then veering with the wind and waves to the point, and finally running the bank around a second cove not visible from the start line to finally run past the thrower on the far shore and pick up the bird. At that point, most handlers attempted to whistle the dog into the water for the return with the bird, but I don't know if a single dog took that cast, most or all of them running the bank again in the opposite direction to get around that back cove.

The owner of the ultimate winner of this stake told me that the dog has a habitual "banana" running pattern which sometimes causes problems, but in this case was beneficial, as the dog safely rounded the point to the left and homed in on the fall without ever going near the thrower. I didn't see all the dogs run, but I take it that at least two others also swam past that point, though they ended up too far inside and required a little more hunt than the ultimate winner had.

Though it wasn't the best performance of the day on that last mark overall, Laddie's performance on that mark showed courage. He took a line into the water that gave him a reasonable chance of getting past the point, and then shouldered the wind and waves valiantly, visibly fighting to push left with every stroke. I heard one of the judges quietly urging him on. I don't think Laddie ever did give into the cold, but the current was just too strong on this day, and it finally pushed him onto the point. But listen to this: Once on land, he didn't run the bank around to the right as the others had once on land, but rather got back into the water to swim across the back cove. Unfortunately, he was too far to the right, which brought him to shore behind the thrower, but from that landing he ran immediately to the bird and picked it up, ready to complete the retrieve. I felt it was a brave performance, though not quite good enough for a placement in the final standings.

I'll just mention one last point. I was perhaps the only handler on Series C or D who did not attempt to whistle my dog into the water on the return. As far as I know, it in no way hurts your score if the dog runs the bank on the return. That's not always possible, and I guess many trainers believe that it hurts the dog's understanding of how to perform around water, but for me, it was a way of reinforcing Laddie for a job well done on getting to the bird thru the water in the first place. "You needed to stay in the water on the way out, Sweetie, but take the faster, warmer, drier route back." Considering that most dogs insisted on doing that in contradiction to the cues they were receiving anyway, I thought just cueing Laddie to do it from the outset made sense. I think it could pay off in future performance, removing a disincentive to complete the outrun, then quickly pick up the bird and start back. Perhaps this is more useful for a 2Q dog than it would be for a traditionally trained dog.

Summary of the field's and Laddie's performance for Series D: All ten of the dogs that ran Series D completed both retrieves, but with enough separation in quality of performance that the judges were able to award placements with little doubt of the outcome once all the dogs had run. The result was placements of First thru Fourth Place, plus a Reserve JAM, plus five JAMs.

The winner of today's Q was a 10-year-old Lab who years ago had become Qualified All-Age, but who had only won a Q that once and so was still eligible to run. Ten years old! Very cool.

Laddie was one of the dogs who received a JAM.

A Final Note on Laddie's Performance Today

If you're a retriever, getting past the first series, to say nothing of winning a JAM in your first Q, while not earth-shattering, is pretty cool. In addition, Labradors are historically more successful in Field Trials than other breeds — I've heard that 98% of FC/AFCs are Labs — and Laddie, not yet four years old, was the only Golden receiving a ribbon in this event.

Beyond that, Laddie is not only a retriever but also a 2Q-trained retriever. That is, he has never been trained with physical aversives such as an ecollar, even for recall. From that perspective, I believe he was in unchartered territory as soon as he got his first call-back in today's Q. That was followed by two more call-backs, and finally a JAM. In other words, Laddie completed every retrieve of his first Field Trial stake without a disqualifying error. At that point, Laddie was even more steps down a road heretofore unvisited by positive field retrievers.

I believe the general consensus among experienced field trainers would be that a 2Q retriever couldn't do such a thing, so here's to Laddie for showing he could.

Competition tune-up

2011-03-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

Since Laddie's going to be running in a Qualifying stake (his first) and Master test in a couple of weeks, I've been looking for ways to get him tuned-up for those. The best way would be to train with groups of experienced trainers preparing for similar events, but since none of those are available to us, I've tried to come up with reasonable substitutions:

Train with any field group available, and where possible, modify the set-ups to practice more advanced skills
Travel to properties where other trainers might be training, and ask whether they'd like to train together
Hire my friend Dave Altman to shoot flyers and use his knowledge as an AKC Hunt Test judge to help me get Laddie tuned-up
Daily private practice

Here are some recent tweets (edited) from those kinds of sessions:

3-16-2011: Cheltenham. Training with Jean, who trains her Golden for FTs. For the triples, we used Bumper Boys and stickmen, with a human thrower for the long retired marks. Overcast, high 40s. A) Big land/water triple, long gun on left retired. B) Tough Master water blind. C) 200y land blind, keyhole between tree and mound. D) Big water triple. Performance notes on today's work: I couldn't keep Laddie off the points in Series B, but good work, I thought, on everything else. I think we need more work on tough water blinds before our next Master.
3-17-2011: Rolling Ridge. Triple land blind 200-230-260y. Later same day: Newcut Road. Humongous cleared construction site, many earthwork hills and embankments, even some small "ponds". Laddie ran several big poorman marks with me using a remote send from my throwing position. Also, two shoreline water blinds and one poorman double. Laddie did a great job on everything.
3-18-2011: Cheltenham. Nice early spring morning. Trainer Peter reconvening his group after winter layoff, one other trainer today. Laddie more advanced than other dogs, so I modified the series for him. Here's what he ran: A) Interrupted triple: After all birds thrown, pick up go-bird, run long blind in center, pick up both birds of hip-pocket double. B) Same as (A) with different start line & retrieve lines. C) Retired delayed land triple plus water blind: Watch long mark on right and mid-distance mark on left thrown, pick up mark on left while right gunner retires, watch short mark on right thrown in line with longer mark previously thrown on right, pick up short mark on right, pick up long retired mark on right, run big water blind requiring entry to pond at 250+y with inviting cheat around the pond available. Performance notes on today's work: Except for trying to run 2nd mark instead of blind and needing to be called back to run the blind first in Series A, Laddie had an excellent day, nailing every mark and handling well on every blind. Lumi also ran, running two singles or a double in each series with her usual dead-aim marking plus excellent pick-ups on every bird, both ducks & pheasants.
3-20-3011: Near Warrenton, VA. Sunny, 55 degs. Asked Dave Altman to help tune up Laddie for Master & Qual. A) Walk-up, flyer with gunner at 30y not visible till we reached corner of woods. I blew duck-call, Dave just becoming visible around the corner blew duck-call, Laddie sat without being told to, Dave threw chukar flyer and shot. Laddie steady till sent. Good boy. B) With Laddie on my right and Dave a few yards farther to my right, I blew duck-call, then Dave blew duck-call, threw chukar flyer and shot. Laddie again steady till sent. Good boy again. C) I put Laddie in sit, cued "just watch", moved five yards to Laddie's right, held Lumi by check cord. I blew duck-call, Dave at 50y blew duck-call, threw & shot chukar flyer to left (in front of Laddie), threw and "shot" dead bird 30y in front of Lumi. With Laddie steady in remote honor, I lined Lumi toward the dead bird but she crossed in front to the flyer. I watched a few secs to make sure Laddie wouldn't break for closer bird, then walked to him, heeled him a few yards, and slipped on his lead. This was Laddie's first remote honor of a flyer. Great job! D) Set-up includes 300+y blind with narrow keyhole at 200+y. Dave fired shotgun and threw bird at 150y, I hand-threw another bird to the side, then ran Laddie on the blind. Not good enough control on blind, would not have passed, but nailed both marks. E) 100y hillside blind, excellent control. Note on the quick casts I use with Laddie: Dave commented on the fact that I don't give Laddie much time to settle down after sitting on a whistle sit, but cast him immediately. He said this is a common mistake and can lead to auto-casting, where the dog learns to anticipate the cast and releases without the handler's cue. Letting the dog settle in the sit before casting produces better results for most dogs. I express thought that without ecollar for negative reinforcement, Laddie's only reinforcement for sitting is the cast, and if I were to generally use a slow cast, as a result of that delayed reinforcement, Laddie might tend to develop a slower and/or weaker response to the whistle sit. Dave reconsiders in that light, agrees.

Shoe leather and despair

2011-03-13T18:07:00.005-04:00

First, if you're interested in Laddie's training sessions and haven't tried following @LindsayRidgeway on Twitter, you can still see all our tweets here:

http://twitter.com/LindsayRidgeway

For example, here's a compilation of our tweets (edited) this month:

3-1-2011: Last few days, have run big, tight blinds and poorman multiples, plus a new configuration we've never used before, poorman remote singles: leaving Laddie in a sit, I walk out in white jacket, fire pistol, throw, and call "Laddie" from my throwing position. Laddie runs mark, then delivers to me at the throwing position. Then I leave him there and go out to a new throwing position. This is a fast way to run a battery of big, difficult non-retired singles, though one risk is that dog learns to deliver to thrower. Today: Zion Park, 46 deg, sunny, snow all melted. Six big remote poorman singles. Excellent marking by Laddie.
3-2-2011: Cheltenham. Sunny, 64 deg. First chance to train with a group in weeks, first water retrieves since fall. A) Land triple, xmas tree config, using Bumper Boy for big mark in center. Laddie nailed first two retrieves, needed handling on long one, which I doubt he saw. B) Triple with one poison-bird blind and one water blind. The long mark also required a short swim. C) Long retired water single, with short throw to side while long gunner retired. Included wide channel crossing plus short ditch crossing. D) Similar to C, but only one water crossing. Laddie's performance today: Some excellent marking, handled well, needed help on BB mark in A (which he didn't see), mark in high grass in B (all the dogs did), and retired mark in D. Most important, never stalled on any return, including returns across ice-cold channels. Yippee!
3-5-2011: Remington, VA. Club training day, flyers for the short mark in first series, both series on land. Lumi ran three singles in each series, did fine both directions on all, even on her 200+y final retrieve. Laddie ran a triple plus a land blind in each series, and honored a triple with a flyer on first series. Laddie had good performance all day, including outstanding marking on second series.
3-7-2011: Rolling Ridge west. Sunny, 49 deg. An in-line-triple (ILT), all throws in cover, two big blinds, three big poorman remote singles, and one more blind (tight keyhole thru brush). Laddie did great on every retrieve today.
3-8-2011: Riggs Road Farm. No obstacles, just distance. Double land blind: A) 310y, intentionally wrong-lined a few degrees to the left to assure opportunity to handle at distance, then whistle sit & hard right cast at 310y. B) 390y.
3-9-2011: Riggs Road. Overcast, 42 deg. Black bumpers, pistol. A) Big poorman xmas-tree triple B) Big poorman indent triple
3-10-2011: Oaks Area 3. Torrential rain produced areas of standing water. We used them for a dozen skimming retrieves, that is, dog needs to take straight line thru water rather than run the bank. These were poorman marks with pistols, black bumpers.
3-12-2011: Mt. Ararat Farm. Laddie & me training with Gaby & Gus, her Senior-level Chessie. We ran the dogs in similar series, modified as appropriate for each dog. Laddie's series: A) Long water blind past points on both sides, with blind in center of a clump of cattails B) Long flower-pot water double, hidden thrower (in retrospect, not appropriate for long marks, since Field Trials never use hidden throwers) C) Long double land blind, featuring one very tight keyhole requiring leap over fallen tree trunk on down-slope after getting thru keyhole D) Long single land blind, very tight diagonal keyhole combined with diagonal road crossing at 100y.
3-13-2011: Rolling Ridge. Sunny, 59 deg. A) Water triple, all retrieves requiring 100+y swims. B) Uphill indent land triple. C) Big xmas-tree land triple over rough, hilly terrain, thorny in places. Training alone so all poorman marks. Pistol, black bumpers.

I might add that those tweets are a somewhat incomplete record. In reality, Laddie and I rarely miss a day of training, even in bad weather. But since I don't know whether anyone actually has any interest in the tweets, sometimes I don't bother to post them. Other times, I think that given Laddie's level of performance, especially for a 2Q dog, a record of his training might someday be of interest to someone.

Meanwhile, for any reader interested in what the biggest challenges of field training might be, I'll add a personal note. My single most difficult challenge turns out to be finding anyone who is willing to train with me. Granted, I've met a small number of people that I don't want to train with, but those can be counted on one hand (two individuals, I think). By contrast, at this time, other than club training days, no one seems willing to train with me except on rare occasions. I have no idea how to fix the problem. I hope you have never been shunned in this way. It's crushing.

I watch Laddie's enthusiasm for the sport — his all-out sprints on every retrieve, year after year — and I feel despair that he'll be at such a disadvantage in Field Trial competition. Our first entry is less than three weeks away, and at this time I know of not a single individual, much less group, willing to train with Laddie and me. I wish that I could give him the kind of experiences he needs to reach his potential, with courses designed by experienced trainers, human throwers, birds, the occasional flyer, and the simulated ambience of an event. Yet no matter how hard I am willing to work, no matter how much I reach out, I cannot give him those things except on those rare occasions. Poor Laddie, he picked the wrong owner.

Twitter and Dog Training

2011-02-06T11:32:00.002-05:00

[This was a post to DogTrek and PositiveGunDogs lists on January 23, 2011]

When Twitter first came out, with eventually millions of people answering the question "What's happening?", I didn't see the point. I tried it for a few days, and couldn't imagine why anyone, even those closest to me, would want to see a running account and/or commentary of my life. As with FaceBook, I used it for a while, then lost interest. I haven't looked at FB in months.

But recently I've come to see Twitter as a valuable resource. I happen to be a news junkie, and I suddenly became aware a few weeks ago that Twitter is a great way to stay on top of news and also on top of news comment. The 140-character limitation is irrelevant, because often the tweet serves as a headline, with a link to the in-depth story. Click the link when you want to read more. Every day I get links to articles in blogs and online newspapers that I'd never have known about if I hadn't seen tweets about them from one of the people I follow. These generally aren't people I know personally. In some cases they're aggregators, in other cases journalists whose stories and posts, which might come out several times a day, I often enjoy reading. Of course often I'll glance at the tweet, decide I'm not that interested, and will ignore the link. If I find I'm not interested in the lion's share of tweets from a particular user, or find particular tweets too annoying, I "unfollow" that user.

Today I was thinking how useful it might be if skillful field trainers used Twitter. Some might write articles in a blog, others might limit themselves entirely to tweets. Some readers might get their tweets on their phones as text messages -- that's how I get most of the tweets I read -- while others might use the twitter.com website, or even some Twitter utility or app.

Let's say that a particular field trainer I was following tweeted: "Too cold for H2O, so today we worked on reverse hip-pockets. Doubles for the young dogs, added a short mark as go-bird for the older ones." Then the next day he tweeted that he worked on something else, but in a week, it was more reverse hip-pockets. How long would it be before I got a sense of the guy's training rhythm, priorities, and methods? "Ah," I might find out, "when you want to turn a reverse hip-pocket double into a triple, a reasonable way to do that is to throw the extra bird last, and have the dog run the RHP as the last two marks." (I'm not saying that's the case. I actually don't know the best way to add a third mark to a reverse hip-pocket double.)

And what if I were following a dozen trainers, and each of them were sending out that same kind of information day after day, week after week, year after year? Then I'd see the areas of consensus, and the individual variances. Wow, what a resource!

Tweets could be used for other material as well. Maybe one guy is a humorist and sometimes just tweets a funny way of saying something. Another tweets when he wants to forward a link (probably first shrinking it with tinyurl.com or bit.ly). Another intersperses his "training journal" tweets with thoughts that he thinks might be interesting to his followers (that's Twitter's name for people who read the tweets being broadcast by a particular user).

Twitter has a few refinements I won't get into here -- for example, re-tweets (RT), mentions, and hashtags. Those sorts of things might turn out to be valuable, too. So far, I haven't figured out how to leverage them effectively.

In any case, I'd going to follow thru here in two ways:

First, if you're someone who's sending out tweets on field training or related topics, I hope you'll send us your Twitter username so I (and possibly others) can try following you. And second, I've added my Twitter username to the bottom of my signature block, for anyone who wants tweets on what I'm up to with my dogs. Since I'm also a blogger, I think I'll tweet brief captions and links to blog entries on my two blogs when I post there as well. That's the way I've seen Twitter used in the area of news and news commentary.

Given my lack of experience, I don't think I have that much to offer by myself, though my dogs have come pretty far by 2Q standards. On the other hand, a broad Twittersphere of field training might be quite useful. Maybe it will become clear to me after awhile that my tweets are a waste, and I'll give it up. For now, I think it's worth a try.

Lindsay, with Lumi & Laddie (Goldens)
Laytonsville, Maryland

Field training blog: http://lumi-laddie-test-series.blogspot.com (see "Archive of Video Blog Entries" in right margin)

Reference blog "The 2Q Retriever" (work in progress): http://2q-retriever.blogspot.com

YouTube playlists:
-- Lumi: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=BC338082E0B890DB
-- Laddie: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9A44913FB240932A

To further explore the frontiers of dog training, join our DogTrek list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DogTrek

Twitter: @LindsayRidgeway

Short-in-front-of-long

2011-01-23T18:11:00.006-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

While Lumi's with my daughter this weekend, Laddie and I trained alone yesterday, and with Gaby and two of her dogs this morning. The series I set up for Laddie yesterday was similar to the two series Gaby and I worked on today.

Temps were in the low 20s, but it was sunny with pretty light wind where we were training, so with long johns and plenty of layers, it wasn't too bad. The ground was a patchwork of snow and bent-over medium cover, making the bumpers almost invisible as they lay on the ground and requiring the dogs to rely primarily on scent to hunt them up.

All marks were WBs. All blinds were OBs. For both series, the thrower wearing a white jacket would fire a pistol and throw each mark, walk to each of the next throwing positions and throw again, and finally walk back to the SL while the dog was running the blind, so all marks were in effect "retired guns".

SERIES A. Interrupted triple

For Series A, the first mark was on the right, thrown right to left at 130 yards. The dog had to run between fence posts and across a dirt road to reach the fall. The second mark was in the center, thrown left to right at 80 yards so that the line to the second mark was only a few degrees to the left of the line to the first mark, essentially in front of the longer mark. The third mark was 90° to the left, thrown right to left at 90 yards.

For Laddie and Gaby's Buster, the dog watched the three marks thrown, then ran a 190-yard blind 90° to the right of the rightmost mark. After the dog returned with the blind, the dog was sent to the marks in reverse order thrown.

Gaby ran her young Chessie, Gus, on a modified version of Series A that fit in well with his training level.

The intended challenges of Series A were as follows:

The primary challenge of the blind was keeping the dog in control while marks were lying out there waiting to be picked up. I've found with Lumi and Laddie that even if the dog seems to understand that she's not supposed to be picking up one of the marks yet, her responsiveness to handling cues can be significantly reduced because of the distraction of having the marks thrown first.
The blind included a rather narrow keyhole between two fence posts at 100 yards, with wider-spaced fence posts on either side. Gaby and I agreed that the "judge's blind" would include getting the dog thru that keyhole.
The go-bird wasn't really a go-bird since the blind was run first, and the fall was on the other side of a crest from the SL, so the dog needed a good line to avoid a hunt.
A long delay separated watching the short, middle mark thrown from running it, giving the dog plenty of time and distraction to make remembering it difficult. In addition, it was in the middle of the field with no distinguishing land feature within 100 yards, on the patchy terrain that made the bumper invisible from any significant distance. The thrower was no longer present for the dog to judge direction or distance. And perhaps most difficult, the exciting long mark, which had been thrown first and was therefore perhaps more prominent in memory, was on nearly the same line only further back. All of these factors were intended to make the short center mark the most difficult challenge of the series.
The long mark wasn't a complete gimme, since the dog had to run thru a fence line (the fence itself is down, only the posts still stand) and across a dirt road, then find a bumper nearly invisible until the dog was almost on it.

Notes on Laddie's Performance in Series A

Laddie has run many interrupted series in his life. I give him extra information that he's running a blind before we get to the marks by having him watch the throws from one side of me, then bringing him to my other side to run the blind. Like many trainers, I also say "dead bird" as I'm setting him up on a blind, and send him with "Back" rather than his name when he's running a blind. So he has plenty of information that he's not to veer over to the marks, and these days he maintains excellent responsiveness as well as his patented after-burner exuberance.

In fact, Laddie ran all the retrieves well, except for what has turned out to be an on-going challenge for him: When I sent him for the middle mark after he'd picked up the blind and then the go-bird on the left, he took an excellent line but kept on running, apparently intending to pick up the longest mark. He's made this same mistake the last 3-4 times I've set up a series with short-in-front-of-long. Each time, I've blown WS and a come-in whistle, and each time he's responded well and quickly come in, picked up the mark, and brought it home. He's then run the long mark without difficulty, either nailing it or requiring only a small hunt.

I think it's important that he pick up the short mark first when the lines to two marks are tight. Several reasons might apply, but here's one: the dog might put down the article he's carrying back from the long mark, pick up the new article he's just come upon, and bring that one back first. That's a type of switch, and it's an immediate DQ in both Hunt Tests and Field Trials. Laddie did that once in at a training day, and I haven't forgotten.

Though Laddie has a good angle-in cast if needed, the question for me is how to train Laddie to pick up the short mark first without handling. For now, I'm just going to continue handling him if he overruns and doesn't quickly turn back by himself. Like most retrievers I guess, he'd rather complete the retrieve without handling, so hopefully he'll realize that the best way to obtain that outcome is to pick up the short mark first.

[Gaby's dogs had their own strengths and weaknesses in today's work. I don't feel it's appropriate to discuss other dogs' work in too much detail in this blog, so I only make occasional references.]

SERIES B. Interrupted double

Series B was basically a mirror image of Series A, with these differences:

The blind was longer, and featured a keyhole between two trees closer to the blind than the fence posts of Series A.
Because Laddie had run past the short mark on the short-in-front-of-long set-up in Series A, I didn't want to add more delay by having him run a go-bird off to the side in addition to the blind in Series B, so Series B was an interrupted double rather than an interrupted triple. Gaby's dogs had not had trouble with the short bird in Series A, but she was fine running a double-plus-blind on this series as well.
The long mark for Series B was thrown in the midst of a triangular configuration of trees. Similarly spaced trees grew in a couple of groupings some distance behind the trees where the mark was thrown. Advanced dogs might reasonably expect to run past some of the trees to get to the area of the fall, but in this case, the fall was near the first tree the dog would reach. That turned out to fool Laddie and Gus, who both overran the long mark some distance and then apparently expected to find the mark near one of the further trees.

Notes on Laddie's Performance in Series B

Laddie again ran an excellent blind. When I then sent him on the line to the short mark, he seemed to have a clear picture of where it was, and did not attempt to veer slightly left onto the line for the long mark. Better still, though he overran the short mark by a few yards, he put on the brakes without any help from me (remember Gaby wasn't out there to help either), spun back, and quickly homed in on the mark. That was the highlight of the day for me.

Unfortunately, his performance was weaker on the long mark. He took a great line, nearly stepping on the bumper as he ran past it, but overran to a similar looking configuration of trees 50 yards further back. That might not have been too bad, since I recognize that Laddie isn't going to nail every mark, but he then "popped" (turned toward me and sat down as if I'd blown a WS). I didn't move a muscle, my normal response to a pop, and he quickly got moving again. But apparently he was soon confused again, and popped a second time. Once he came out of that, he started quartering toward home and quickly found the bumper.

Popping and Reinforcement

I don't seem to have yet developed a successful strategy for ending Laddie's occasional popping. I can only hope that it repairs itself as we work on other things, or that it doesn't cost us too much in competition. I'm trying my best not to reinforce it by interacting with him in any way when he does it, but unfortunately, it may borrow its reinforcement from running blinds, where a WS is rewarded with a cast that brings the dog closer to the bird. It may take some time, or forever, before Laddie realizes that such reinforcement is flat not available when running a mark, that is, when no whistle sounds. We'll see how his learning in this area progresses over time, I guess.

OOO Indent Triple, ILT

2011-01-21T19:10:00.002-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

Training with Gaby. She ran two of her field dogs, I ran Lumi and Laddie.

Temps in low 30s. Windy at first site, wind mostly calm at second site, making it more comfortable. Ground was covered in a thin layer of fresh, soft snow.

Each series run with one trainer running her/his dogs, while other trainer walked to each throwing position, fired pistol, and threw. All throws were black bumpers.

SERIES A. Out-of-order indent triple

First mark was on the right, thrown LTR at 130 yards. Second mark was in middle, them RTL at 70 yards. Third mark was on the left, thrown RTL at 100 yards. The first two falls were not visible from SL.

SERIES B. In-line triple

First mark was on the right, thrown LTR at 210 yards, with thrower standing in sunlight but fall in shadow near the corner of two lines of trees. Second mark was in the middle, thrown LTR at 140 yards in direction of first throwing position. Third mark was on the left in line with previous two throwing positions, thrown LTR at 80 yards in direction of earlier throwing positions. The center throwing position was midway between the other two.

Lumi nailed all six marks today. Laddie nailed or nearly nailed all but his last retrieve, the long mark on the right in Series B, which required a brief hunt. However, with Gaby as thrower wearing dark clothes, and throwing a black bumper on a relatively low arc with a background of trees and into shadow, Laddie might not have seen the throw, in which case I'd say it was a nice bit of deductive marking, with Laddie making an educated guess where the fall was likely to be, taking a good line, and confidently hunting it down.

Quintuples

2011-01-20T17:42:00.002-05:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

For the fourth session in a row, Laddie and I again worked alone, and again worked on poorman land quintuples. That is, with Laddie waiting at the SL, I go out and throw five marks from different locations, then return to the SL and run Laddie on all five of them.

Today I again wore a white jacket, and fired a starter pistol when throwing. I used black bumpers for all throws, and the distances ranged from 80 to 320 yards. Temps were in the low 40s, so the ground was damp and a bit slick from melting snow.

Though I think Laddie would clearly benefit more from training with a group, simulating event conditions as much as possible, I do feel that given the fact that I don't have anyone else to train with right now, running poorman quintuples isn't a bad way to practice:

The drill is a challenge to his memory, with every mark featuring a "retired gunner". By comparison, remembering all the marks of a triple, more typical in competition, will hopefully seem pretty easy, especially if some or all of the marks feature visible throwers while Laddie is running them.
At distances like today's, a session of ten marks help keep up his conditioning over the winter, especially at the all-out sprint speeds he brings to every retrieve.
Laddie generally takes a good line when sent, but occasionally on these drills he veers off line once out in the field, apparently not remembering where the fall is and switching to hunt mode. This gives me an opportunity to blow WS, and switch him into handling mode. I'd rather he run every mark without handling in an event, but if handling does become necessary — for example, to avoid a switch or picking up a hot blind — it's important that he be able to make the transition out of hunt mode and begin to respond to handling instead.
It's fun for both of us.

Quintuples

2011-01-19T20:00:00.001-05:00

Rolling Ridge

Today's series were similar to our previous session, except I again increased distances. Today's 10 marks (two series of five marks each) were 120-220 yards.

Another difference was that our previous session was run on the relatively flat field at Oaks Area 2, whereas today's session was run at Rolling Ridge, with its steep hills and underbrush-filled ditch. Today, the ditch carried a shallow stream from the melting snow.

POORMAN BULLDOGS

After the two quintuples, today's work also featured about a dozen poorman bulldogs as we walked from the second SL back to the van. What I mean by a "poorman bulldog" is that I throw a happy bumper for Laddie, and as he's on his way back with it, I throw another. His job is to complete the return while noting where the new one fell, then race out to get the new one after delivering the first one. On his way back with the new one, I throw yet another one.

A true "bulldog", as I understand it, sometimes occurs in a Master Hunt Test. As the dog is returning with one retrieve, a thrower out in the field throws a mark that the dog is to be sent on after completing the earlier delivery.

Hopefully, the poorman bulldogs provide some learning that Laddie could benefit from if he ever runs a test that includes a true bulldog. But even if we never see a bulldog in an event, the game seems to be great fun for him and great exercise. I also think it benefits his general marking to practice this more difficult version, where he's on the move and carrying out an earlier task rather than sitting still and able to put his full attention on the throw. And I also think it may strengthen his returns, since it adds a pleasant association of excitement to the delivery process.

Quintuples

2011-01-17T20:00:00.002-05:00

Oaks Area 2

More quintuples. Today's session was similar to yesterday's, with these differences:

No pistol, because I felt like I was getting frostbite reloading the pistol yesterday. I called "hey-hey-hey" when throwing today.
I increased the distances. Today's marks were 70-180 yards each.
I wore a white jacket.
I only had Laddie run two series of five marks each.

One reason I reduced the number of series from four to two was because of the increased distances, not wanting to risk injuring Laddie by pushing him too hard.

A second reason was the frigid cold, which didn't appear to be a problem for Laddie but was making me uncomfortable.

A third reason was acute pain in my left knee. I'm not sure what's causing it, possibly my gout. I'm treating it with ibuprofen, and that seems to be helping, but I don't think a lot of walking on uneven ground is good for it, above and beyond the discomfort.

Quintuples

2011-01-16T16:50:00.003-05:00

Oaks Area 3

With my friend Gaby on a trip, Laddie and I have no one to train with, and lately we've been sticking with blinds.

For a change today, I ran Laddie on four series of five marks each, run from each of four positions at Oaks Area 3. That field is relatively small --about 100x100 yards, but dotted and crisscrossed with trees, hedgerows with gaps, depressions, and ridges.

Each of the four series was run as follows:

* Place Laddie in a sit/stay next to an LP being used for that SL

* Walk out to the longest planned mark, fire a pistol or call "bang", throw a black bumper to left or right, sometimes so that the arc was behind a tree, always so that the bumper landed in a depression or in cover making it invisible from the SL

* Walk to another position for the next throw and throw again

* Continue zigzagging across the field until every throw was completed. Some of the marks were intended as "wipers", where a shorter, later mark is intended to make an earlier, longer mark on the same line more difficult to remember

* Return to the SL and run Laddie on each of the five marks, handling only if he swerved off line to a different mark than the one I had lined him up on. I generally ran him from shortest to longest, not necessarily in the exact reverse order of the throws, except that the last, shortest mark was always run first and the first, longest mark was always run last.

I was pleased to see that Laddie seemed to have a good memory of every mark. He only needed handling for swerving on three of the 20 retrieves.

Land blinds

2011-01-16T11:12:00.005-05:00

Rolling Ridge

Triple land blind with OBs, all approx 200 yards down a hillside, across wide dry ditch filled with underbrush, up slope on other side, and past trees and other obstacles. None of the blinds were in line with trees, so Laddie had to take lines toward open areas.

Laddie lined the first blind, then handled well on both of the others.

The photos below show the last 80 yards or so of the line to each blind. The bumpers, in the center of each photo, are too small to be seen beyond the trees.

Land blinds

2011-01-13T22:54:00.013-05:00

[Beginning with this post, I'm experimenting with sending posts to this blog from my cell phone. The initial post has rough content, which I'll refine as time permits using the website. The photos are unedited. They would benefit from cropping and addition of lines to show retrieves, but time may not be available for such editing.]

Sundown Road Park

Freezing temps, but sunny.

Triple land blind, all three blinds (OB) at approximately 200 yards. All three bumpers were visible from the SL.

The line to the first blind on the right (photo at far right) crossed two baseball fields, ran a few yards to the left of a white sports pole, went down a depression between a stand of trees on the left and an area of underbrush on the right that the dog crossed thru while out of sight, and back up to the blind, which lay in an open area to the right of a picnic pavilion.

The line to the second blind in the center (photo at left) crossed two baseball fields and a baseball diamond, ran between a baseball fence on the left and a tree on the right, to the blind which was positioned at the base of a small tree in front of the woods.

The line to the third blind on the left (photo at near right) crossed two baseball fields, ran thru a narrow keyhole formed by a tree on the left and a baseball fence on the left, continued past two other trees on the left, to the blind that was planted at the base of a shrub a little inside the woods.

Reverse Hip-pocket Doubles

2011-01-09T20:00:00.000-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

With light snow on the ground, in freezing temps and cold winds, Gaby and I began working on how to train Laddie not to flare around the short gun when the line to the long gun runs right behind the short gun, a configuration that occurs in a reverse hip-pocket double, especially if the short gun is a real person rather than just a stickman.

We may have made some progress in learning how to train this, I'm not sure yet. We'll continue work on this in future sessions.

Gaby plans to work with her dogs on this, too, but she felt the ground today might be too hard on the joints of her dogs, who are heavier than Laddie, so she didn't run them today.

Land blinds, retired mark

2011-01-07T20:00:00.002-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

SERIES A. Four land blinds

Series A consisted of four blinds, at 60-90-130-370 yards.

I had Laddie run all four. Next Gaby ran Gus, one of her Chessies (her Lab is having some soreness so Gaby's resting him for a few days, and the other Chessies is recovering from surgery). Finally, I had Lumi run all but the 370-yard blind. I didn't run Lumi on the long blind not only because of the distance, but also because it traversed two corn fields, which I thought might be hard on her sensitive feet and joints.

For Laddie and Gus, our primary interest in Series A was quick responses to whistle sits. Gaby and I were prepared to use Walk Outs if either of our dogs did not sit promptly, but it wasn't necessary. In Laddie's case, that even included a nice whistle sit at the edge of an embankment at 360 yards. Laddie was on a good line, but I wanted to sit him so that I could send him straight back with a final cast down the embankment and out of sight, where he would need to cross a dirt road and run partly up a second embankment to the blind.

As I've mentioned in the past, Lumi is now retired from competition. I run her only to keep up her conditioning, and hopefully to give her some pleasure. She is exempt from any pressure to sit on a whistle, remain steady on marks, or otherwise perform according to event requirements.

SERIES B. Land double with retired mark

For Series B, the first mark was on the right, thrown left to right at 350 yards. The second mark was thrown by the handler to the left side. While the dog was picking up the short mark, the long gunner retired behind a tree.

Before running the dogs, Gaby and I tried throwing both a white and black bumper for the long mark. Even with streamers, the black bumper was invisible in flight from the SL. The white bumper was slightly more visible so we used that.

Challenges of the long mark were as follows:

The gunner's position was in front of a tree in a diagonal row of trees, so that without being able to see the gunner after the gunner had retired, the dog had to remember which tree the gunner had been throwing from.
At that distance, the gunshot was relatively faint, giving the dog limited help in finding the correct direction to look in order to mark the throw.
The ground was covered in patches of white from a light snowfall that morning. In addition, the backdrop for the throw was the speckled pattern of winter tree foliage against grey sky. As a result, the thrower was difficult to spot at that distance, the arc of the throw was barely visible, and the thrown bumper was also barely visible lying on the ground. In addition, the freezing temps reduced the strength of the bumper's scent.

Despite these difficulties, Laddie ran an excellent line, not at the gunner's position but slightly to the right, toward the fall. He passed a few yards inside the fall and overran the distance slightly, suddenly swung around to the fall, scooped up the bumper on the run, and raced home with it.

Retired marks

2011-01-03T16:01:00.002-05:00

Rolling Ridge

With limited time but son Eric available to throw for us, I thought this would be a good day for Laddie to get in some more practice with retired marks.

For each of three series, Eric fired and pistol and threw a WB, then I threw a WB to the side. I sent Laddie to pick up the short mark on the side, and while Laddie was coming back, Eric would hide ("retire"). Then I'd send Laddie to pick up the long mark.

Series A: The long mark was 290 yards and thrown into a depression, the arc of the throw crossing in front of a large tree. The line to the fall required Laddie to detour around a pile of debris.

Series B: The long mark was 310 yards and thrown across a large ditch, currently dry but filled with underbrush. The line to the fall crossed the ditch on a sharp diagonal.

Series C: The long mark was 170 yards, thrown into open meadow. The line to the fall again crossed the ditch on a diagonal, though at a different point of crossing.

Land blinds

2010-12-31T17:50:00.003-05:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Triple land blind (Laddie only):

210 yards, including 20 yards thru underbrush at edge of woods that dog could easily veer around
380 yards to open slope
400 yards thru valley, past tree stands on both sides, to open slope in shadow

Xmas-tree triples with middle gun retired, land blinds

2010-12-30T20:00:00.002-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

Series A was a xmas-tree triple (that is, the longest mark in the center) with the long mark retired. Distances were 190-170-80 yards. Laddie has made excellent progress on retired guns and seemed to have no difficulty remembering the existence of the first mark after nailing the other two, and took a line that arced only slightly toward the original position of the retired gun, and then back on line, when he ran the final mark.

Series B was another xmas-tree triple with the long mark in the middle retired, in a different field. Distances were 280-230-130 yards. Laddie nailed the first mark, needed handling on the second mark since he veered offline toward the center and apparently intended to pick up the middle mark on his second send-out, and nailed the long mark with a remarkable, laser-straight outrun despite the thrower hiding and despite having to traverse a diagonal upslope that crested 60 yards from the fall.

Series C was a triple blind, in a third field. Distances were 130-140-80 yards, with the shortest blind run last. For a straight line to the first blind on the left, the dog had to run a narrow keyhole between two trees thru a small area containing trunks and branches from one or more fallen trees, which the dog could not traverse without leaping over some of the debris, and also had to ignore the middle blind, whose bumpers were visible 20 yards to the right of the blind the dog was being sent to. Laddie was the only dog today to take the path thru the keyhole.

Decoy blinds

2010-12-29T20:00:00.004-05:00

Sundown Road Park

A continuation of the advanced "decoy blinds" drill I've been running Laddie on periodically the last few days.

Today's series was four blinds run from the same SL, all in the range of 170-220 yards, and all featuring keyholes with lines between narrowly spaced trees. The first and last were to blinds at the foot of LPs. The middle two were what I call "decoy blinds": The blinds themselves are unmarked, but the dog is required to ignore LPs nearly the same distance as the blinds and within a short distance of the blinds (in this case, within 20 yards), sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right.

The reason for also running the dog on one or more blinds marked with an LP in the same series is to prevent the dog from becoming overbalanced and coming to believe that the blind is never marked with an LP. The goal is for him to rely on instructions from the handler, rather than trying to guess whether the blind is, or is not, at a particular landmark.

Decoy blinds, ILT, big land blind

2010-12-28T20:00:00.002-05:00

[Today and at times in the future, I'll submit a very brief post, in hopes of maintaining a record of Laddie's training even in situations where my time is too limited for a complete description or commentary.]

TUE at Mt A with Gaby:

Quadruple blind. LPs as decoys on 1st three, then last one to an LP at 170 yards. Laddie did well on all the blinds, was only one of four dogs to line the last blind. Lumi didn't run these.

ILT with middle gun retired. Lumi couldn't remember the middle gun so I brought the thrower out for her to see him. Laddie (and all of Gaby's dogs) were able to run the middle gun correctly without apparent difficulty.

420-yard land blind. Though I like running Laddie on big blinds, this wasn't a great set-up on my part, because with the wind, the whistles were apparently nearly inaudible to the dogs. Nonetheless, Laddie took an excellent line much of the distance, including across a cornfield. He overshot and went out of sight for several seconds, but when he came back and became visible, he took a nice WSC to the blind.

Retired Guns, Land Blind

2010-12-24T18:23:00.004-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

Today was another training day at Gaby's dairy farm fairly typical of our winter sessions. Gaby provided gunners for us in the form of her sons and their friends, enabling us to have throwers for land triples in two series. We also ran the dogs on one blind.

The temps were just over freezing with a 10 mph NW wind, but the day was bright and sunny and not too uncomfortable for those of us (the adults) who dressed warmly.

Gaby ran Buster, her yellow Lab, and her two Chessies, Wes and Gus. I ran Laddie on all three series, and Lumi on a pared down version of the session.

Per plans we had made the last time together, today we ran fairly short xmas-tree (pyramid) triples with the middle gun retired.

SERIES A. Land triple with retired gun

For Series A, the first mark (WB) was in the center, thrown left to right at 170 yards. The second mark (WB) was on the left, thrown left to right at 130 yards. A tape was positioned as a target so that the fall for the second mark was within 10 yards of the line to the first, longer mark, creating a hip-pocket double configuration for those two marks. The third mark (black bumper) was on the right, thrown left to right at 90 yards. As the dog was returning from that last mark (the go-bird), the thrower for the first mark retired, so that the dog could no longer see a white coat at that station while running the second mark and finally the long mark.

Intended challenges:

The first and second marks were not only tight and thrown in the same direction, but they were both thrown in the shadow of woods with the thrower next to the treeline, which angled toward the SL. The idea was for the two throws to be as similar as possible, making the longer one with the retired gun that much more difficult for the dog to remember.
The long mark was also thrown into the middle of a corn field, creating a terrain barrier that might push the dog off course.

Lumi ran as the second dog, running only the two shorter marks as a double, since I didn't think that a run thru a cornfield would be a good mark for Lumi to run. Lumi's leaping-in-the-air enthusiasm as she came to the line, and her turbo-charged outruns, were a joy to behold. However, as she has been doing recently, she stalled on the way back during all of her returns today, requiring me to come out to meet her and walk her back to the SL for the next retrieve, or to the van after the last retrieve of each series.

Laddie ran as the fourth dog and nailed all three marks. In contrast to his work a few weeks ago, where he had some difficulty with xmas-tree triples featuring a retired center gun, Laddie's performance in this session and the previous one, and perhaps other recent sessions, has greatly improved. It appears that he is now able to memorize the position of even long falls without having to rely on the gunner staying visible.

SERIES B. Land blind

Series B was a 170-yard land blind (OB). Though not particularly long or arduous, it was extremely tight, requiring the dog to cover 120 yards of low cover, then navigate diagonally thru an equestrian ring and a small skateboard park before avoiding an opening in the hedgerow to the left of the line, which seemed to act as suction for most of the dogs, and instead picking up the bumper in deep shadow in front of the hedgerow itself.

When I set Series B up, I was afraid the unusual obstacle course might be too difficult at those distances, and I decided not to even try Lumi on it. Laddie, however, did a great job, responding to whistles on reasonably tight sits keeping him within a narrow corridor, and taking high quality casts that he carried well.

SERIES C. Land triple with retired gun

As I often do in setting up courses for our sessions, I tried to emphasize a particular lesson for the dogs by setting up our second set of marks as a mirror image of the first one, though on a different part of the field. For Series C, the first mark (black bumper) was in the center, thrown right to left at 140 yards. The second mark (WB) was on the right, thrown right to left at 120 yards. The third mark (WB) was on the left, thrown right to left at 90 yards. As the dog was returning from the third mark (the go-bird), the thrower for the long mark in the center retired behind a large tree. Series C had no significant terrain changes, and was run entirely on low, frozen cover.

Though some of the dogs arced a bit offline running the second mark, the primary challenge of Series C was the retired long gun in the center. Besides the difficulty of the thrower retiring, the original throw was a bit difficult to see because it was a black bumper thrown against the background of tree branches, and the bumper was also a bit difficult to spot as it lay on the ground after the throw. As in Series A, the configuration of Series C featured a hip-pocket double for the first and second marks, which the dog did not begin until after picking up the shorter and wider go-bird. And as in Series A, the landscape features for both of the first two marks were strikingly similar, in this case because the thrower threw from a position a little to the left and in front of a prominent tree in both cases.

Lumi again ran second, and I decided to run her on the full series. However, after Lumi easily picked up the two shorter, outside marks, it appeared to me that she had no idea where the long mark in the center was. I got on the radio and asked the thrower to return to his throwing position, and unbidden he also faked a throw. Lumi then easily nailed the last mark. In Series C as in Series A, her outruns were as enthusiastic as they were accurate, while her returns were painfully slow.

Laddie again ran fourth, and again nailed all three marks, making even the center mark with the retired gun look easy.

Retired Guns

2010-12-19T18:04:00.002-05:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

I'll begin with some notes about our current approach to training, and then describe today's session.

LADDIE'S TRAINING

After using BBs extensively for private training with Laddie, I learned from Alice that for some skills, such as running long marks, I might actually be doing more harm to Laddie's marking than good. Since then, I've limited use of BBs and stickmen to the go-bird on multiples, when no thrower was available. I may also use BBs as hidden guns on short series if we practice Hunt Test set-ups, but I don't plan on using BBs, even with stickmen, to simulate stations other than a short go-bird for Field Trial set-ups.

As a result, our practice sessions now fall into two categories: private training, where we work only on blinds; or training with at least one other trainer, where we work on a variety of set-ups. In most cases recently, the other trainer is my good friend Gaby, who also trains her yellow Lab and her two Chessies in various combinations in different sessions. Today, for example, we trained at Gaby's dairy farm, and Gaby worked with the Lab and one of the Chessies.

LUMI'S TRAINING

Although I don't plan to compete Lumi again in the future, I often bring her with Laddie and me to training sessions and run her on some of the marks. My primary goal for this is to keep up her conditioning. Because blinds, difficult terrain, really long marks, and challenging elements such as retired guns don't seem enjoyable to Lumi, I don't run her on those. She enjoys multiples, so I modify the set-up to run her on those when possible. Other times, I limit her turn to running singles, and don't have her run those that I don't think would be enjoyable to her, for example a single that required running across a corn field.

Does Lumi enjoy our training sessions? Well, Lumi usually doesn't share Laddie's enthusiasm about getting in the van to leave home when I say "Want to TRAIN?", and she's sometimes excruciatingly slow coming back from a retrieve. But she's always excited coming to the SL and seems highly motivated on her outruns. I think she enjoys them when we're out there though she may not always look forward to them in advance, and I also think that keeping up her conditioning will improve her quality of life long-term as well as in the present.

GABY'S DOGS

As a matter of policy, I avoid using this blog as a training journal for other people's dogs, but of course Gaby has her own training objectives for her dogs, and modifies the set-ups as appropriate. For example, the Chessie she was running today has developed a head-swinging problem, so Gaby ran the series as singles with the dog running the long marks first. Gaby's Lab, Buster, is a little more advanced than Laddie thanks to months of almost daily training with a pro last summer, and they usually run the same series in our practices. But sometimes Gaby modifies the series for Buster. Today, for example, she had Buster run the long mark in Series B as a single before having him run the entire series as a triple.

TODAY'S SESSION

Today, we were fortunate to have Gaby's two sons, and two of their friends, available as throwers, allowing us to man gun stations for two triples. Since Laddie and Gaby's dogs run plenty of blinds when each of us trains alone, and since blinds are typically not combined with marks in Qualifying Stakes, we decided that to save time today, we'd just have Laddie and Buster (Gaby's Lab) just run the triples.

Lumi and Gus (one of Gaby's Chessies) ran some of the same marks, but modified according to their levels. For example, Lumi ran all the marks of Series A as singles, and the two shorter marks of Series B as a double.

The weather has been subfreezing for several of our recent sessions with Gaby, including today's. But it was mostly sunny with a north wind at 6 mph, so conditions weren't too bad.

SERIES A. Land triple with retired gun

For Series A, the first mark (WB) was in the center, thrown left to right at 180 yards, with the gunner retiring to the woods behind the gun station while the dog was running the go-bird. The second mark (black bumper) was on the left, thrown left to right at 70 yards. The third mark (WB) was on the right, thrown left to right at 260 yards. The dogs were sent to the marks in the reverse order of the throws.

The intended challenges of this series were as follows:

Such a long go-bird is unusual, especially combined with such a short memory-bird thrown immediately beforehand. Aside from that, the go-bird was on the long side but with the thrower remaining visible, none of the dogs had any difficulty with it.
FT dogs sometimes have difficulty with short marks, and in Series A, the second mark was not only short but was a black bumper thrown onto the downslope behind a small crest in the terrain, making it invisible from the SL and on most of the outrun. I thought that Buster or Laddie, running the series as a triple, might overrun the short mark, but both seemed to have a clear memory of it, taking laser lines and pouncing directly on it once they cleared the crest.
The final memory bird, the retired gun in the center, had a number of challenges: First, from the SL, the thrower appeared to be standing to the left of two horse-jump standards, with the throw arcing over the standards. But actually, the standards were only half the distance of the thrower and fall from the SL, so the dog would have to push past the standards. Second, if the dog flared the right standard, that would put the dog line offline to the right. Third, the first mark combined with the short second one made up hip-pocket double. That is to say, they were tight and thrown in the same direction, with the short throw seeming from the SL to land just behind the long thrower, though actually the long thrower was actually another 110 yards further back. With the long gun retired, and after running two other marks first, that can make it difficult for the dog to remember that the long mark even exists, and some dogs will flare too wide to avoid running too close to the line of a previous mark.

Laddie did an excellent job on all three marks. He nailed the first two retrieves on a laser. For the retired gun, he took an initial line too far to the left, toward the still-visible short gun, but at 50 yards out he corrected his line, raced just to the right of the right jump standard, and from there straight to the fall.

SERIES B. Land triple with retired gun

For Series B, the first mark (WB) was in the center, thrown right to left at 350 yards, with the gunner retiring to a mound behind the gun station while the dog was running the go-bird. The second mark (black bumper) was on the left, thrown right to left at 170 yards. The third mark (WB) was on the right, thrown left to right at 90 yards.

The intended challenges of Series B were as follows:

The go-bird presented no challenges for dogs at the level of our dogs.
The memory-bird on the left was a black bumper, so the dog had to remember the fall without being able to see the bumper. A snow field was behind the thrower, and the sun, fairly low in the sky, was also behind the thrower, both of which made visibility of the thrower, even in his white jacket, somewhat difficult.
The long memory-bird in the center was difficult for several reasons: First, the thrower and the throw were both difficult to see against the background, and at that distance, the gunshot was faint. Second, the thrower stood in front of one of several visible mounds in that direction, increasing the difficulty of remembering the throw after the gunner retired. Third, the long mark was fairly tight to the second mark, and both were thrown in the same direction, with the potential making the longer retired mark even more difficult to remember. Fourth, the line to the long mark was across a corn field. Fifth, the area of the fall had several possible diversions, including the snow field on the left (a basin for a future pond), woods behind the fall on the left, the mounds behind the fall, and a barn to the right of the fall. And sixth, just the considerable distance. My estimate of 350 yards is conservative; it may have been more than 400 yards.

For Series B, Laddie was unable to spot the long gunner until I called for motion and a hey-hey. He seemed to get a good look at the throw, however, despite the difficulty of seeing both the thrower and the bumper. Once the other marks were down, he again nailed the first two retrieves. When I sent him on the long mark, he again veered toward the tight gun on the left at first, but again corrected his line and raced past the gunner. However, he popped twice, once just before entering the corn field, and again just after coming out of it, both times well over 200 yards from the SL, where he sometimes loses confidence that he's supposed to be that far out and is most likely to pop. As always, I just continued looking at him when he popped without moving a muscle, and he quickly spun back around and resumed his exuberant outrun. Once he reached the correct distance, he hunted for several seconds, but never left the area of the fall. I thought it was an excellent mark and excellent series, considering the challenges.

I don't always have time to describe our training sessions, but today's was fairly typical of our recent sessions with Gaby and her dogs these days.

Skimming Drill, Inline Triples

2010-11-26T20:00:00.000-05:00

Today Laddie and I went out twice for training. In the morning we went to one location on worked on skimming high cover. In the afternoon, we went back out and worked on inline triples.

Fairhill

For our morning drill, I used an LP with tape waving at the top to mark where I planted an OB, then ran Laddie from the other side of a curved section of high cover. Laddie could easily see the LP from our SL, and could reach it by veering slightly off line to avoid the high cover. I ran him repeatedly from a variety of distances, always calling him back if he tried to veer around the cover, or if he dove too deeply into the cover.

For that first part of the session, Laddie was always entering the cover on his right. After he seemed to have mastered retrieves in that direction, I moved the LP to the other side of the cover and also switched our SL, running a similar series of retrieves while giving Laddie an opportunity to practice entering the cover on his left.

Muncaster Mill Farm

For our afternoon session, we drove to the huge hayfields off Muncaster Mill Road, which I was told by a hunter were once private cornfields but are now owned by Maryland state.

I set up the stations for an inline triple (ILT) with three stickmen spaced 40 yards apart, two with BBs and one with an RL. I had Laddie ran three ILTs from various locations 80 yards from the shortest mark and with all the throws angling back, to either left or right depending on where the SL was.

For the first two ILTs, I left all the stickmen up. For the third ILT, I brought Laddie to the SL while all three stickmen were up, then went to the middle station and removed that stickman, then returned to the SL to run Laddie.

Laddie nailed every mark on every series.

At the end, I also ran Laddie on a long blind.

Diagonal Ditch Crossings, Land Blinds

2010-11-25T20:00:00.002-05:00

[I wrote this from memory several days after the session. Laddie has been making gradual progress with several concepts, and I wanted to record some of the intermediate steps we've been using.]

Rolling Ridge

After yesterday's preparation with LPs, today Laddie again ran diagonal ditch crossings, but this time with a black bumper placed at each of four locations without any marker. He nailed the first two retrieves, but tried to change directions in the ditch for the second two. In each case, I called him back and ran him again, rather than letting him succeed at completing the retrieve when he veered while in the ditch.

Today I also had Laddie run two long blinds.

Diagonal Ditch Crossings

2010-11-24T20:00:00.001-05:00

[I wrote this from memory several days after the session. Laddie has been making gradual progress with several concepts, and I wanted to record some of the intermediate steps we've been using.]

Rolling Ridge

Since Laddie and I were training alone today, and since Laddie had squared a ditch running a retired mark yesterday, I thought that today we'd practice staying on line for diagonal ditch crossings. I set up four LPs, each with four bumpers (some white, some black), at various positions on one side of the ditch, and ran Laddie from various positions on the other side of the ditch, so that Laddie had to cross the ditch on one diagonal or another for every retrieve.

Despite the fact that Laddie had squared the ditch on one crossing yesterday, he surprised me by running every retrieve today without squaring a single time.

Lumi came with us today and seemed to want to do some retrieving, so I saved one bumper at each pole for Lumi to pick up. But to Lumi protect Lumi's hips, back, and wrists, we moved up so that she didn't have to traverse the steep elevation changes of the ditch, which also saved her sensitive, arthritic feet from having to run thru the rough, prickly terrain on the floor of the ditch.

Retired Gun, Land Blind

2010-11-23T20:00:00.002-05:00

[I wrote this from memory several days after the session. Laddie has been making gradual progress with several concepts, and I wanted to record some of the intermediate steps we've been using.]

Rolling Ridge

Today Eric was again training with us, so I used the opportunity for Laddie to try a big xmas-tree triple with the middle gun retired.

All of the marks required Laddie to cross a large ditch on a diagonal. The go-bird also required him to run around a broken tree branch in the ditch, and the second mark required him to run thru high cover in the ditch. Despite those difficulties, Laddie nailed the go-bird and nearly nailed the second mark. But for the first mark thrown, which Laddie ran last and which became retired as he was returning from the go-bird, Laddie squared the ditch, stayed on that line with the result that he passed the mark too wide, looped back behind the gun, and finally circled back to the mark.

Laddie also ran a long blind.

Inline Triples

2010-11-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

[I wrote this from memory several days after the session. Laddie has been making gradual progress with several concepts, and I wanted to record some of the intermediate steps we've been using.]

Oaks Area 2

With my son Eric training with us today, I set up stations for inline triples (ILTs): Eric's chair with an umbrella and WBs in the middle, stickmen and BBs 30 yards in either direction.

Laddie ran four ILTs. As we continued from one series to the next, I moved our SL to various locations, sometimes at a 90° angle from the shortest station, sometimes at a 60° angle, increasing the distance to the second and third marks. Distances to the shortest station varied from 90 to 120 yards.

For the first two ILTs, Eric stayed visible throughout the series. For the second two, Eric retired by opening the umbrella in front of him while Laddie was returning with the go-bird.

Retired Guns, Land Blinds

2010-11-14T14:32:00.004-05:00

Newcut Road

Last time we trained on the hilly fields off Newcut Road, about 20 minutes from here, they were farmland. Today, dozens of construction vehicles were parked in one section of the field, and most of the fields had been cleared, leaving only packed dirt and an occasional survey flag on a wooden pole. A few large areas of meadow, fringed by strips of high grass, remained, so I ran some of today's series on the packed dirt and others on the meadow. But the meadow ground was stubbly and though Laddie continued to sprint on his outruns as he always has, he slowed to a trot on his returns thru those meadows. Since he normally gallops on his returns, I suspect the ground stubble was causing some discomfort. Since I don't want to create a negative association with retrieving, we probably won't work on those stubbly surfaces in future sessions here.

Conditions: a sunny day with blue skies, temps in the low 60s, and a light wind from the south.

NOTE ON POORMAN "RETIRED GUNS"

In today's description, I again use the term "retired" to describe what is really a hidden gun. This is the best I've been able to come up with for working on retired guns when we're training alone. Although the gun station is not visible at the moment the mark is thrown as with a true retired gun, I do allow Laddie to see the field with all the stickmen visible when I'm first lining him up, and I also allow him to watch me walk to the stickman, lay it down, and walk back. This sequence enables Laddie to get a good picture of the field with all the guns visible, then run the marks with one of the "gunners" hidden, somewhat resembling a retired gun concept.

SERIES A. Land blind

Series A was a 160-yard blind thru the meadow. The "judge's line" required the dog to maintain a narrow corridor and go thru a small section of high cover the dog could easily cheat around.

SERIES B and C. Inline triples, one gun retired

For Series B and C, I set up stickmen with two BBs and an RL in a line spaced 40 yards apart, all throwing in the same direction, in line with the stickmen. The middle mark fell into a depression and out of sight from the SL, while the longest mark fell on the facing side of a hill. The running surface of the hilly field was packed dirt. The SL was 120 yards from the closest stickman, at a 105° angle to the line of the gun stations.

For Series B, I brought Laddie to the SL, showed him the gun stations, then cued "sit". As he waited, I walked to the closest gun and lay the stickman down on the ground behind the RL. Then I returned to the SL, fired the three launchers longest first, middle second, shortest third, and sent Laddie to them in reverse order of the throws.

For Series C, I again left Laddie in a "sit" at the SL as I walked out into the field. I stood the stickman back up at the shortest station, re-planted a WB for that mark, and reloaded the weighted streamer into the launcher. Then I walked to the middle station, lay that stickman on the ground behind the BB, and walked back to the SL. There I fired the three launchers and ran Laddie in the same sequences as before.

Performance on Series B and C

For Series B, Laddie nailed the shortest mark, then ran a good line toward the second mark in a depression but overran it and headed up the hill to where the longest mark was. I blew WS and gave him a come-in cast. He ran straight to the middle dummy and brought it back. On the longest mark, Laddie needed a big hunt which took him both long and behind the gun, but he stayed within a reasonable hunting area and eventually found the bumper.

For Series C, Laddie nailed every mark. I was especially pleased with his performance on the middle memory-bird, because he took a perfect line despite the fact that both the stickman and the bumper were hidden from view at the SL.

SERIES D. Land triple with long gun retired

Series D was an xmas-tree configuration. The first mark was in the middle, thrown by a BB right to left at 220 yards into a depression. The second mark was on the left, thrown by a BB right to left at 190 yards. The third mark was on the right, thrown by an RL left to right at 70 yards.

In order to "retire" the middle gun, I brought Laddie to the SL, showed him the stickmen at each of the three gun stations, cued "sit", walked out to the long gun station, lay that stickman down behind the BB, walked back, fired the three launchers, and sent Laddie to pick up the three marks in reverse order of the throws.

Laddie nailed all three marks. I was especially pleased by his performance on the last retrieve, since both the stickman and the bumper were hidden from view at the SL. I also hoped that mark on the left would add to the challenge, since it was almost as far as the mark in the middle, requiring the dog to remember that another mark still lay in that same general direction at that same general distance though both the "bird" and the "thrower" were no longer visible.

SERIES E. Land blind

Series E was a 260-yard blind across hilly meadowland. A narrow corridor for Series E required the dog to run thru a small patch of high cover at 130 yards when it would be easy for the dog to skirt the cover on either side.

In-line Triples

2010-11-10T22:06:00.004-05:00

Leesburg Pike School

Yesterday Laddie and I participated in a training session with Patty's group running big reverse hip-pocket doubles and blinds at the set-aside field, and a some private water work at Mt. Ararat Farm. Today, Laddie and I trained at lunch time at the field I found near my office and resumed work on ILTs.

Today, instead of walking out to the three stickmen and throwing the marks, I used two BBs and an RL with a WB at the stickmen for both of the ILTs. We used the same three gun stations twice, with two different placements of the SL:

Series A: The SL was 40 yards from the closest stickman and at a 90° angle.
Series B: The SL was 60 yards from the closest stickman and at a 60° angle.

Laddie nailed every mark of both series.

Afterwards, Laddie ran a 270-yard blind featuring two diagonal keyholes, one between two trees at 100 yards, the other thru the frame of a soccer goal at 250 yards.

Training In-line Triples

2010-11-07T14:59:00.002-05:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Today, Laddie and I continued our work on in-line triples (ILTs). At the end of the session, Laddie also ran a couple of blinds.

For the five ILT series, we used three stickmen in a line at 30-yard separations. For each series, I put Laddie in a sit at the SL, walked to the longest station and threw that mark in line with the stickmen and away from the SL, walked to the middle station and threw that mark in the same direction, walked to closest station and threw that mark in the same direction, and finally returned to the SL and ran Laddie on the three marks in the reverse order thrown. All marks were WBs, I called out hey-hey and fired a pistol for all throws, and all throws were about 10 yards. No two series were run from the same SL, and no two series in a row were run with the same throws.

The angles of the line from the SL to the closest stickman, versus the line of the stickmen, and the distances from the SL to the closest stickman, were as follows:

Series A: 90° and 70 yards
Series B: 90° and 90 yards
Series C: 90° and 110 yards
Series D: 45° and 50 yards (by 45°, I mean that the line of stickmen extended away from the SL at a 45° angle, rather than running horizontally as in the previous series)
Series E: 60° and 40 yards

Laddie nailed all the marks in Series A, B, and C. For Series D, he needed a small hunt on one of the marks, so I moved the angle closer to horizontal for Series E and reduced the distance.

Once again, Laddie nailed all the marks for Series E. He consistently took an initial line at the stickman, then veered in front of it and ran straight to the bumper. I think that's a pretty good strategy for running ILTs, at least for now.

Series F was a 500-yard+ blind (OB), with the line to the blind crossing thru two short strips of rough, high cover. In each case Laddie started to veer around those strips but accepted handling thru them.

Series G was a 280-yard blind (OB). Although the field was dotted with hay bales and I required Laddie to stay within a tight corridor, he made it look easy.

Training In-line Triples

2010-11-05T21:36:00.002-04:00

Oaks Area 2

Today I again set up three stickmen in a line with 20-yard spacing to work with Laddie on in-line triples (ILTs). Each SL was at an LP placed 90° from the line of stickmen, forming an L-shape. Every throw was a WB thrown seven yards in line with the bumpers, all thrown in the same direction, all thrown with a gunshot as Laddie waited at the SL. We ran six series at gradually increasing distances from the closest stickman: 30-40-50-60-70-80.

Laddie did a great job on every series except one, the first time we ran the 80-yard distance. In that series, Laddie veered outside the longest gun when sent on the middle mark. I blew WS, called him in, placed him in a new sit/stay at the SL, and re-threw the series. When I re-ran the same series, Laddie nailed every mark.

Lining toward the Gun

On a set-up as tight as today's last couple of series, I've found that it seems to be preferable to line Laddie toward the gun itself (in this case, the stickmen), rather than toward the falls as we have always done in the past. Running Laddie toward the guns apparently reduces confusion about his target. When I take that approach, he takes an initial line toward the stickman, then veers the small angle to get online toward the fall. I don't know if that approach is customary with more experienced trainer/handlers, but it seems to produce better results for a series like this than lining Laddie toward the fall.

Field Trial and Hunt Test Group Training

2010-11-03T22:50:00.002-04:00

Port Deposit, Maryland

Today, Laddie and I drove to Gaby's area for training. Our initial plans were to train with Patty's Field Trial group. After running two series with them, we then went over to Gaby's place and had the opportunity to run a series with a Hunt Test group that was training there. Finally, we ran several series with Gaby and her yellow Lab, Buster, who are preparing for both Master and Senior Hunt Tests this weekend.

As is customary in group training, each trainer ran the set-ups in particular ways, not necessarily the way other dogs in the group ran the same set-up. For example, in today's Series A, the most advanced dogs ran the set-up as an indent triple with the short gun thrown second rather than last, and retired while the dog was running the longer go-bird. Meanwhile, most of the younger dogs ran the same set-up as a delayed triple. I decided that my primary goal was building Laddie's confidence, so I had him run the same set-up as singles.

Similar variations occurred on all the set-ups, Laddie sometimes running the easiest version of the set-up, sometimes the hardest, and sometimes somewhere in the middle.

SERIES A. Three land singles

These singles were on hilly terrain, a combination of hay fields and cut corn fields. The throws were a mixture of two ducks and one black bumper, which was for the shortest throw. The distances were 110, 170, and 280 yards. [Note: Today's recorded distances are especially rough estimates, because I didn't have an opportunity to walk them off and also because I didn't think much about the distances till later, relying on memory rather than estimating while looking at the actual set-up.]

Laddie nailed every mark.

SERIES B. Land triple

This series was at a different location on the same field as Series A, with the same sort of terrain. Some of the dog ran this series with the long mark retired, but Laddie ran it as a "stay-out triple". The first mark (duck) was in the center, thrown right to left at 320 yards. The second mark (duck) was on the left, thrown right to left on an angle back at 110 yards. The third mark (WB) was on the right, thrown right to left at 140 yards.

Laddie again nailed every mark, but unlike his performance in Series A, he had two flaws in his performance in Series B. First, he popped briefly at 150 yards while running the long mark as his final memory-bird. As usual when he pops, I froze, and after a moment he spun around and completed the mark. Second, he stopped and put the bird on the ground 50 yards from the SL, not completing his return until I called him with "Here".

I think it's possible that the latter behavior might have been an indication of reduced energy level, perhaps caused by recently diagnosed Lyme Disease and/or the course of Doxycycline that he's taking for it. Once before Laddie put a bird down on a long return in a series of four long singles that Charlie had set up, and Charlie commented later that it might have been because Laddie was taking a breather.

SERIES C. Delayed triple

Laddie and I ran Series C with a Hunt Test group training elsewhere on Gaby's property. The terrain for this set-up was a combination of alfalfa and cut corn fields, with one very hilly section for the fall of the center mark.

The first mark (WB) of Series C was in the center, thrown left to right from a holding blind at 110 yards. The second mark (WB), the go-bird, was on the right, thrown right to left at 70 yards. While the dog was returning with the first bumper, a BB was used to throw the third mark on the left, left to right at 80 yards. Although the distances for Series C with this group were shorter than the distances for Series A and B for the Field Trial group, the marks were difficult enough that every mark required hunts for some of the dogs, especially the longest mark in the center. Laddie, however, nailed every mark.

SERIES D, etc. Hunt Test preparation

After Series C, Laddie and I trained with Gaby and Buster on a different field. To provide some light, motivational, last minute preparations for their Hunt Tests this weekend, we focused primarily on a variety of singles and blinds for Buster. But Laddie also ran an interrupted double and a long final mark. He nailed all of those marks as well.

Training In-line Triples

2010-11-02T20:00:00.003-04:00

Oaks Area 2

I've tried a number of approaching to getting Laddie comfortable with inline triples (ILTs). He's had difficulty with the second or third retrieve so often that I've considered suspending ILT training for a few months to avoid de-motivating him.

But I'm not quite ready to give up yet. Today I ran Laddie on the following (Lumi got to do a couple of the short series):

Stickmen in a line 20 yards apart. Some throws toward one end, some toward the other. In any one series, all throws in the same direction, and all throws in the direction of the longest.
All throws by hand (poorman marks). All throws were WB. With dog at SL, I walked to longest stickman, fired pistol and threw, then middle stickman, fired pistol and throw, then closest stickman, fired pistol and throw. I tried to keep throws closer to throwing stickman than next one. After the three throws, I turned 90 degrees and walked to SL, then ran the dog. I used enough lining to take the dog off the wrong mark. But I did not want to use strong lining, because I wanted to give the dog opportunity to develop a strategy such as running at the gun, or "wowing" the longest mark (running too wide and too far, then curving back toward the gun to close in on the fall).
Series A: SL 20 yards from closest stickman.
Series B: SL 30 yards from closest stickman (on opposite side of the row of stickmen).
Series C: SL 40 yards from closest stickman (at opposite end, so that throws were in opposite direction).
Series D: SL 50 yards from closest stickman (again switched ends, new angles).
Series E, F, G, H, and I: SL 60 yards from closest stickman (again, a different picture even though the stickmen hadn't moved).

Laddie pretty much nailed every mark on Series A, B, C, and D, as did Lumi on the series she ran. I think each of them may have had a short hunt on one of the early marks.

However, I brought Laddie back on Series E, F, G, and H without letting him finish one of the marks. For one of them it was the go-bird, for the others it was the middle mark. In each case, he got into a long hunt. I brought him back to the SL, cued "Sit", and went out to throw again. By the end, I was saying "Bang" instead of firing a pistol.

For Series I, Laddie nailed the first and third marks. For the middle mark, he raced at the gun, passed it on the wrong side, banked into a well proportioned U-turn without slowing, and picked up the bumper on the way back to me without breaking stride. I would have preferred that he passed the stickman on the side of the mark, but it looked to me like sound problem-solving and I let it go.

It was interesting to see his performance fall off the cliff like that, suddenly having a problem at 60 yards after none at shorter distances. I wonder why.

I think our next ILT session will be a repeat of today's. I don't plan to raise criteria (more distance, more spread, sharper angles, etc.) until Laddie is really solid on this poorman version.

Long Singles

2010-11-01T20:00:00.002-04:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Today I thought I would run an experiment to see whether Laddie might possibly be near-sighted: I ran Laddie on a 200-yard single and three 300-yard singles yesterday morning. He nailed the 200-yarder and the last 300-yarder.

The first two 300-yarders had a rising green slope as the background behind the throw, and while Laddie ran with his usual exuberance, he seemed to have no idea where he was going, though he hunted the bumpers up without too much trouble

Since Laddie had no difficulty with the third 300-yarder, I don't think he's near-sighted. However, I'm guessing that Laddie, and maybe other dogs as well, can't see a B&W BB bumper very well against a rising green slope

The last 300-yarder had trees as the background, and that's the one Laddie nailed.

Inline Triples

2010-10-31T11:56:00.002-04:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Now that our competition is completed for the season, I don't expect Laddie to be in another event until next spring. At that time, I hope to run him in both Master Hunt Tests and Field Trial Qualifying Stakes. Since the latter are more challenging in most respects, we'll probably train predominantly on that sort of set-up. In addition, with overnight temps now in the 30s and daytime highs generally reaching only the 50s, we will probably do little if any water training between now and spring.

For this morning's session, we drove to the huge farm I discovered a few days ago off Muncaster Mill Road, behind Macgruder High School.

There, Laddie ran four inline triples. They were in four different locations in the complex of hay fields, but had a lot in common:

All were relatively long, varying from 200+ yards to 400+ yards for the longest memory-bird. The first series was the longest, the last series the shortest.
In each case, the three throwing stations were two BBs and an RL/WB, with the RL used for the short go-bird at distances of 100-120 yards.
A stickman was used at every throwing station of every mark.
The three stations were spaced fairly evenly and in a line, the spacing varying depending on the overall size of the set-up.
The throws were in line with the stations, and were all in the same direction. In some cases, they were all in the direction of the longest station toward the shortest station, while in other cases, they were all in the direction of shortest station toward the longest station.
Though an event could feature the inline triple on a vertical or horizontal line relative to the start line, none of today's triples were either vertical or horizontal. Instead, they all ran on a diagonal, extending outward either toward the left or the right.
In all cases, the marks were thrown longest first, shortest last, and in all cases I ran Laddie on them in the reverse sequence of the throws.
In most cases, I used geometric relations of the many hay bales to establish visual patterns in our set-ups. For example, for the fourth series, from the SL it appeared that the stickman for the longest gun was standing at a particular corner of two nearby hay bales, and the middle gun was standing at the same corner of two other nearby hay bales. My purpose was to challenge Laddie to remember the differences in pictures that were largely similar.
The first three set-ups also featured a blind (OB) that was longer than the longest gun and that was run after the triple. All three of the blinds were on a line that ran relatively close behind one of the guns, sometimes inside the boundary of the three marks and sometimes just outside. All three of the blinds also featured at least one narrow keyhole, either horizontal or diagonal, as well as other factors such as hills, an angle entry to high cover, or muddy terrain. Since Laddie had performed well every time I had handled him on the first three series, and had done a lot of running by the time we got to the fourth series, I didn't run him on a blind for that one.

In every series, Laddie nailed two of the marks — the short go-bird and one of the longer memory-birds — and required a hunt on one of the memory-birds. For the first two series, his hunt began to extend too far from the area of the fall and I transferred to handling him. For the third, he suddenly spotted the blind while hunting for the long mark and picked up the blind instead, then required handling when I sent him out again for the long mark. For the last series, he required a hunt on the longest mark but did not require handling.

Pros and Cons

I am not yet certain whether Laddie is benefitting from practicing inline triples. It's important that Laddie do well if he ever gets an inline triple in competition, and to me that suggests that we should practice more of them, perhaps reducing the size of the set-ups for awhile, perhaps avoiding the hay bales for awhile, until he is able to be more successful with them.

On the other hand, if Laddie doesn't begin nailing all three marks soon, especially when the three gun stations are all marked with a stickman, to say nothing of future training when one or more of the guns is retired, it's possible we should stop working on this kind of set-up to avoid damaging Laddie's confidence on this picture.

Laddie's First Master Hunt Test

2010-10-29T20:00:00.003-04:00

Manorville, NY

Brief summary of Laddie's first Master test today, given by the Long Island Golden Retriever Club:

Of 29 dogs running Series A, 17 were called back, including Laddie. He nailed the 20-yard go-bird, was one of the only dogs to line the 50-yard blind run after first mark was picked up, was one of the only dogs to pick up the 70-yard inline memory-bird flyer (behind the go-bird) without handling, and ran the final 80-yard blind nicely.
I don't have exact figures, but I think most of the dogs who made it to the unusual second series passed it. I thought it would be easy for Laddie, too, but he went out on the first retrieve, a 50-yard mark thrown into running water among a bunch of decoys. Laddie ran up onto the shore behind the decoys and duck and hunted there, after a few passes suddenly catching wind of the hot blind 30 yards further along the shoreline and picking it up without me being able to stop him with my whistle. As far as I know Laddie was the only dog to have trouble with that mark, which seemed strange at first. But then I got to thinking: Of all the water marks Laddie has seen in FT practice, HT practice, private practice, or AKC or GRCA events, how many of them have ben thrown into water the last couple of years? Only a tiny fraction. Because of Laddie's longtime difficulty with returns on LWL retrieves, I virtually always throw or place water retrieves on land. The FT groups we train with also virtually always throw marks and plant blinds on land. I don't think it occurred to Laddie that the bird might be in the water, and the decoys sealed the deal.

Despite the DQ, I am encouraged by Laddie's performance. I was told this was considered a difficult test, and it seemed well within Laddie's ability level to me, other than my training error of letting him get over-balanced on expecting a water retrieve to be beyond the water and up on land.

Singles with Multiple Gun Stations, Narrow Blinds

2010-10-26T20:02:00.003-04:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Today we returned to the huge network of hay fields north of Muncaster Mill Road for some light preparation for Laddie's first Master test on Friday.

Series A was set up as an xmas-tree land triple with two blinds, but I ran Laddie on all the marks as singles. The marks (two BBs and an RL) were 50-70-90 yards. The first blind (OB) was 120 yards, with the line to the blind featuring a diagonal keyhole formed by two closely-spaced hay bales. The blind was placed 10 yards into an area of high cover. The second blind was 410 yards. The line to the second blind was 15° to the right of the first blind and a few degrees to the left of the fall for the center mark, and required an angle entry into a corner of high cover at 280 yards.

Series B was a triple land blind, with all the retrieves at 120 yards or less. The first blind was on the right thru a pair of hay bales. The second blind was on the left, in open meadow except for a hay bale a few feet to the right. The third blind was in the center and the longest, another keyhole between two hay bales and then a few feet into the woods. The left hay bale for the first blind was the same bale as the right bale for the second blind, so those blinds were quite tight.

My focus on Series B was having Laddie run in a tight corridor, with plenty of WSs to keep the line tight and a couple of WSs even when Laddie was already on line. In the past, I've tried to balance control with motivation by holding off as long as possible on whistling, giving Laddie a chance to maintain momentum as long as he wasn't too far off line, but not for this series. I especially wanted to be sure Laddie would sit when whistled fairly close to the blind, what I call the danger zone. For some reason, Laddie sometimes veers sharply off line as he gets within 30 yards of a blind. When I whistle to stop him, he realizes that the whistle must mean he's veered the wrong direction, so he instantly turns the other way and wants to hunt up the bird. I feel that in a test, it's essential that he sit and let me cast him that last few yards. Patty, the Field Trial pro I sometimes train with, once told me that FT blinds are often failed because of cast refusals just a few yards from the bird.

Singles with Multiple Gun Stations, Short Blinds

2010-10-25T20:00:00.002-04:00

Leesburg Pike School

During my first few weeks working at my new job in Reston, VA, I've been bringing Laddie, and sometimes Lumi, with me to work. The temperatures have been mild enough that they can stay in the van with the windows rolled down, and me coming out to walk them every couple of hours.

At lunch time, I've been taking them for drives to look for possible training venues, and last Friday I found something special: an abandoned private school off Leesburg Pike. Besides a large sports field, the property includes three meadows just big enough for a wide variety of Hunt Test set-ups, a few lines of sight of over 200 yards, plenty of hills with knolls for start lines, cover in the meadows at a nice height for training, some large sections of high cover, hedgerows, and a tree-lined dirt road.

Today, I began winding down the complexity on Laddie's preparation for his Master test on Friday. I set up multiple guns (BBs and RTs), but ran every mark as a single. Since Laddie has mostly been running Field Trial blinds up to 500+ yards in the last few weeks, today I also had Laddie run several blinds (OBs) of less than 100 yards, just in case his test includes a short blind.

Training with a Small Group

2010-10-24T20:00:00.002-04:00

Mt. Ararat Farm

As I attempt to prepare Laddie for his first Master test this Friday, I planned today as our last day of complex set-ups before the test. Training at Mt. Ararat Farms with Gaby and her friend Jessi, Laddie ran five series consisting of various combinations of Hunt Test marks (hidden guns) and Field Trial blinds:

An open xmas-tree triple (two BBs and Gaby as throwers) interrupted by a 120-yard open-field blind to the side, plus a 400-yard+ blind behind the middle gun
A widely-spaced land and water quadruple mark in a corn field (two BBs, two throwers) using a thawed duck for the longest retrieve, a 130-yard LWL mark thrown into high cover from behind a stand of cattails by Jessi
An unusually tight xmas-tree water triple with a cheater on the right (WB), a channel swim on the left (duck), and an on-and-off across a peninsula in the center (WB)
A channel swim single with a duck, to give Laddie a little more practice returning with a duck on an LWL retrieve
A 200-yard blind consisting of a duck thrown into swamp grass, the duck mostly submerged, with a cheating water entry at 150 yards, a channel swim, and an on-and-off point

Even with a fairly long hunt for the 40-yard BB go-bird into high cover on the quad, I felt Laddie performed well on every set-up.

Interrupted Out-of-order Indent Triples

2010-10-23T20:08:00.005-04:00

Muncaster Mill Farm

Today, while driving on Muncaster Mill Road, I discovered the driveway to an old, burned out building, and behind that, an entry to a network of massive hay fields. The hay had been recently cut, providing a good training surface and dozens of hay bales scattered around. Other features included hills, road tracks, areas of woods, and areas of high cover. With sight lines of hundreds of yards in many directions, the fields seem to offer countless set-up opportunities.

I've been gradually increasing the difficulty level of Laddie's practice Hunt Test land triples, and today's were some of the most difficult he's ever run, if not the most difficult.

We ran three triples. All were the same configuration, though in different locations, with different orientations, and with the throws in a variety of directions: some angled in, some angled back, and most flat. The configuration they had in common is called an indent: the first throw was the longest mark (80-100 yards), the second throw was the shortest mark (40-50 yards) and was in the center, and the last throw — the go-bird — was of middle distance (60-70 yards). Because the shortest throw was not thrown last, these were out-of-order triples in addition to being indent triples.

In addition, each of the three series included two blinds:

For Series A, the first blind was run after the three marks were thrown, but before they were picked up, making Series A an interrupted triple. The second blind, 420 yards, was run after the three marks were picked up.
For Series B, the two blinds were run before the three marks were thrown and picked up.
For Series C, the first blind was again run after the three marks were thrown, but before they were picked up, making Series C another interrupted triple. The second blind, 380 yards, was run after the three marks were picked up.

All the triples were run with two BBs and a RL. Before each throw, I blew a duck call at the SL, then sounded the BB's duck call if the gun was a BB, and finally fired. The blinds were OBs. I used no stickmen or any other marker for any gun station nor any blind.

NOTES ON PERFORMANCE

Laddie nailed nearly every mark, though he did need handling on the go-bird for Series A (not like a true go-bird, however, since Series A was an interrupted triple). He also handled well on most of the blinds, though twice in the early going, I didn't feel he responded quickly enough to the WS and walked out to pick him up, then reran him.