Land multiples, land blind with video

Clarksburg Village


Weather conditions: partly sunny, low 80s, NW winds around 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph.  With little rain in our region over the last few weeks, the field was hard and dusty.

Since I've been running Laddie almost exclusively on water series for the last couple of weeks, and temps were fairly mild today, I thought I'd take him out with two assistants — William and his friend, whose name also happens to be Laddie — for some land work.

First we ran a double.  Then we ran a second double, except that I also threw a little mark from the start line so it was sort of a triple.  I don't know whether field trainers generally call that a double or a triple.  Anyway, it gave one of the guns a chance to retire.

When the two multiples were over, Laddie didn't seem tired, and we still had some time before we had to get home, so I ran him on a big land blind featuring a keyhole at the end.  William took a video of Laddie running the blind.  Then I had Laddie run the last few yards of the blind again so that William could video that as well, showing the keyhole a little better.

A little more detail is provided in the following descriptions, and the video is also included.

SERIES A. Land double

The first mark was on the left, thrown right to left into the wind and into a depression at 270 yards.  The line to that mark included hills and ridges plus two diagonal dirt road crossings.  A dirt road ran to the right of the gunner.  The wind and road were intended as factors to push Laddie behind the gunner.

The second mark was on the right, thrown right to left into the wind at 180 yards.  The intent was that it, too, should fall into a depression, but it was short and landed in plain sight on the ridge above.  Again a dirt road ran to the right of the gunner, with the wind and road again intended to attract Laddie behind the gunner.

Laddie nailed the short mark, of course, since it was visible the whole way.  Running the long mark, Laddie was on a line to run a little behind the gunner, but 50 yards short of the gunner, he suddenly cut left and ran over the road, over the ridge, and straight to the bumper.

SERIES B. Land triple with retired gun


The first mark was on the left, thrown right to left at 320 yards into a depression.  The line to the mark was down a steep hill, across a large field made up of hard dirt, sparse, medium-height cover, and criss-crossing dirt roads, and up a series of terraced rises.

The second mark was nearly 180 degrees to the right, thrown left to right at 80 yards.  The gunner was only partially visible, but gave an excellent throw so that Laddie could see the trajectory.  The bumper then fell out of sight behind the same stand of cover that hid most of the gunner.  The line to the fall was diagonally across a slope covered with sparse, high grass, down to an arcing dirt road, and then back up onto a rough embankment again covered with high grass.

The third "mark" was just me throwing a black bumper even further to the right, no gunshot.  As Laddie was retrieving that bumper as the go-bird, the long gun was retiring behind an umbrella.

Laddie nailed the unusual second mark, doing a nice job of holding the slope rather than squaring it to run to either the top or the bottom.  I couldn't see him pick up the bumper, but the gunner told me Laddie ran straight to it.

For the big, final mark, Laddie took a line too far to the right, I guess somewhat fooled by the similarity of that line to the one that would have taken him straight to the bumper.  However, he veered more to the left as he ran, which took him up behind the gunner within 20 yards.  I considered asking the gunner to help, but Laddie spotted the guy once he was behind him and the umbrella no longer concealed him, and Laddie then immediately changed direction and ran straight to the mark, even though it was in a depression and he couldn't see it until he got close.

I would have preferred if Laddie had stayed further left the entire time, but as I understand it, judges typically don't score a dog as behind (on the wrong side of) a gun if the gun is retired, and at that distance, with the tricky repeating pattern of the terrain, I thought it was a pretty good mark.

Also, the fact that he ran all day, including that big retired mark, without any hint of popping was excellent news.

SERIES C. Land blind

Series C consisted of a 350 yard blind.  The line to the blind was down a steep incline, across meadowland combining hard dirt and sparse, dry cover, over a gravel mound, across additional meadowland, thru a tight keyhole at 330 yards, and to a 2" orange bumper planted in front of an orange lining pole.  The keyhole actually consisted of three wooden construction stakes within a few feet of one another in a triangle.  On the ground within that triangle lay another stake and a large rock, both of which would tend to act as obstacles against entering the triangle.

I usually use lining poles only as diversions these days, but in this case, the challenge was that Laddie might spot the pole  from the near side of the keyhole, and go out of control, making it impossible to handle him thru the keyhole to get to the far side and the blind.  In this situation, I wanted him to spot the lining pole once he got fairly close.

However, from the distance the stakes making up the keyhole, and the lining pole, did not present a particularly salient target, because several other stakes and poles stood elsewhere on the field at various distances in the same general direction, and I don't think the orange lining pole was particularly visible to a dog at distance.

As mentioned earlier, William videotaped Laddie's blind.  I then had Laddie run the last few yards of the blind again so that William could videotape it at closer range, showing the keyhole and obstructions that Laddie had to navigate thru.  Both videos follow.

My thoughts on how Laddie did running the blind:

• I was pleased all his handling, including his nice launch, his reasonably tight whistle sits (I don't require Laddie to actually sit as long as he stops and turns to face me), his accurate casts, and his good carries (rather than taking a cast and then scalloping back in the old direction).
• I didn't want him running over the high sections of gravel and sand for fear of an injury, and was pleased with his comfort level in running thru that area when cast into it.
• I thought he carried well when he was out of sight, so that when he reappeared he had not veered off line.
• Seeing the video with improved detail because of the zooming, I see now that Laddie actually went thru the triangle on an angle back the first time I sent him back at the end.  When it was happening and without the benefit of a zoom lens, I couldn't see what had happened and thought that Laddie might have bypassed the triangle, so I stopped him, brought him back to the near side on the right, and then used small, silent "over" casts to send him first left a bit too far, then right, and finally on a straight back again.  That last time, he seemed to be lined up well but managed to dart around the left of the triangle before I could react.  I have no idea how a judge would score the overall blind, but to me, Laddie showed good control.  I'm glad he accepted a come-in whistle to get him back in front of the triangle, but actually, in competition, I'm not sure that would be a good idea.  The judge might think I was picking him up if I blew a come-in whistle.  I need more understanding of how to correctly handle in that situation.

Here's the video:

Water triple at last

Today, on a sunny day with temps in the 80s, three assistants came with Laddie and me to train at Cheltenham. Here's how it went:

Series A: Water blind

Since Laddie had slipped whistles in Friday's trial on the water blind, I wanted to run him on a blind this morning that had pretty good distance and that he would be likely to need some handling on.

The blind I set up was water all the way, except for the start line on shore and the blind (2"orange bumper) planted on the far shore. The distance was 160y, and it was a channel swim the entire length. However, the shoreline was not straight on either side, so at various locations, the line to the blind approached either shore fairly close. Most challenging was a point at 70y on the left. The line to the blind passed within two yards of that point. To increase the challenge, while the birdgirls were planting the blind as I watched from the start line, I had William, our lone birdboy, place a lining pole with a ribbon attached on that point at 70y, with a 3" white bumper in front of it, lying on the face of the embankment so that it was visible from the start line.  The white bumper was a diversion.  Laddie would not be retrieving it.

My intent was to let Laddie roll as much as possible, with minimum handling, till he got near the point. Then, if he want already on the left, I would handle him over the line toward the point. Then, before he got to the point, I would handle back into open water to the right off the point and send back the rest of the way to the blind. The idea was to make sure we "challenged the line", including crossing it.

As it happened, Laddie veered too far right early on, so when I handled him back toward the left, he crossed the line at that time, taking care of that objective. I then let him swim toward the white bumper without further handling until he was a few yards short of it. I blew the whistle and cast him on a right over, which he readily took.  I felt we had fully at that point met the "challenge the line" requirement.

It was not entirely clear sailing the rest if the way.  First, Laddie acted a bit reluctant to enter the big water I was casting him back and into, and ping ponged laterally a couple of times before finally taking a cast back toward the blind.  Secondly, near the end, I thought he had spotted the bumper since he was swimming straight at it, so I took my eyes off him to chat with the assistants, and when I looked back, he had veered and needed to be handled back on line and to the bumper.

In summary, I felt it was an nice blind for a Qual dog. Laddie never slipped a whistle, never popped, vocalized only a little early on, and mostly took and carried his casts well. Most important, I guess, from a judge's viewpoint, was his successful maneuver near the point.

Series B. Water triple

For Laddie's first big water triple in more than a year:

The first mark was on the left, 210y thrown RTL. The line was down a mound, across variable terrain on land most of the way, then a 10y swim across a channel to the bumper, which was not visible till the dog was almost to the water.  This was not intended as a difficult mark, but rather for building confidence as the final mark of the day.

The second mark was in the middle, thrown LTR on an angle back into the water behind a strip of land at 110y. The line to the mark was the most difficult of the day: down a mound, past a tree, across a small inlet with a easy cheat around the left, over the strip of land, and into the water to pick up the bumper. From the start line, the gunner was visible on one side of the tree, whereas the mark was thrown to the other side if the tree, which I've found to be a confusing concept for Laddie. Adding to the difficulty, it was not a good throw, and disappeared below the embankment while still visible on the gunner's side of the tree.  The dog would have to assume the gunner was strong enough to have thrown the bumper further than was visible.

The third mark, the go-bird, was on the right, thrown RTL up-the-shore at 120y.  This was also a difficult line: down the mound, a long land entry, an angle water entry, and a swim past the gunner to the fall just up on land, with an easy cheat around to the right as well as the risk that dog would enter the water but bail out early and come to shore behind the gunner.

For that go-bird, Laddie took a great line almost to the water, then started to veer right.  I did not feel it would be productive to watch and see if he darted further right, because he's so fast that by the time I would then blow the whistle, he would be clear of the water and I'd have to cast him on a left "over" rather than to the fall. That wasn't the point of this mark.  Also, the gunner would not be able to help, because Laddie might still run the bank: after all, he knew where the fall was. So rather than wait, I immediately blew the whistle and cast Laddie into water. That allowed him to take exactly the right line, with no inclination to bail out early.  OF course, because of the handle it would have scored badly in a trial.

Next Laddie ran the indent middle mark. He ran past the tree on the wrong side, so I knew he would need to be handled, unless he veered right into the inlet rather than taking the cheat.  When I saw that he was unlikely to do that, I again blew the whistle and cast him into the water, again allowing him to run the correct line though of course again requiring a handle.

Laddie then nailed the final mark easily as expected.  I was relieved to see that he did not pop despite having to clear a ridge without being able to see the bumper, a situation that sometimes produces a pop.

Though I rarely run Laddie on the same retrieve even months later, with modifications this seemed like a good setup to run Laddie on again immediately, to cement the lessons. So I moved the stay line off the mound and forward forty yards and brought in Liza, who had thrown the long mark. That left us with the two shorter, more difficult marks as a double. It also took the tree out of the picture in what had been the center mark.  It also changed the angles into the water a little, making the cheats a little less tempting. Also improving things, we had good throws for both marks.

Laddie nailed both of these marks, showing no inclination to run the bank or bail out early on either one.

I thought it was a great finish for the session. We packed up and headed out for the hour drive home.

LL&L

Another JAM for Laddie

Not great, but it beats being dropped. Sixteen dogs were entered, fourteen ran, seven finished., one of the seven had one handle on a mark. Laddie finished, thus, in Sixth Place, which of course is a JAM, not a placement.

Positives:

* Laddie nailed the #2 bird on the land series.

* Laddie nailed the #1 bird on the land series, long, difficult,  and effectively retired until the dog got out there.

* Laddie's superb initial line on the land blind took him across a slope and thru a keyhole, one of the only dogs to get that keyhole and the only one to do it without handling.

* Laddie readily accepted casting into two water entries on the water blind, and swam the long shoreline to the end without bailing.

* Laddie honored on the final water double without breaking.

* I never lapsed in maintaining control of Laddie when he was off-lead near other dogs in each series.

Major negatives:

* Laddie slipped at least three whistles on the water blind.

* Laddie cheated around water twice on the long, difficult, "bridge" water mark of the final double.  Only the test dog (best Derby dog in the country) and the eventual First Place took the second of those entries, however, and of the others, Laddie was the only one not fooled by the bridge, running the bank to the correct side rather than the thrower side.

Finishing two trials in a row is nice, but we still haven't run a big water triple in a year.  Hopefully we can fix that before our next trial.

LL&L

Tune up for trial

To summarize our week since our trial last Saturday:

* On Sunday, I took one assistant (William) with me to Cheltenham, and we worked on only one thing: up-the-shore marks, on which Laddie had gotten out of the water early on twice the previous day. Working on both left and right banks, I would have William stand at water's edge along one bank, Laddie and I would stand at the end of the pond, I'd have Laddie at heel on the opposite side of me as the bank, I'd call for the throw, and William would fire a pistol and throw a puppy bumper (2" white) further up along the bank. The bumper would fall on land just a few feet from water's edge, often with reeds between the shoreline and the fall. The challenge was for Laddie to run straight at the fall, taking a sharp angle entry into the water, rather than "cheating" by running the bank. We did around 15 of these. I didn't use handling at all. If Laddie started to run the bank, I called, "No, here". If Laddie took a nice entry, I applauded. He made steady improvement, and a couple of times entered the water wide, exaggerating the lesson. I guess some judges would not like that, but it could work in Laddie's favor if a strong wind were blowing toward shore. In our first Field Trial ever, the winner was a dog who took just such a wide arc, keeping the dog clear of a point that many of the other dogs, including Laddie, were blown onto. Laddie made good progress, but the key question is, what would he do on an up-the-shore at the beginning of a session, with no corrections preceding it that day? We need to get to the stage where Laddie would consistently be successful on the first such mark of the day. We also need to build more distance for both the land entry and the swim, but it was a good start, I thought. And today, we did get one answer to that question (see below).

* We didn't train on Monday. I wanted to, but I couldn't put together a good team of assistants for what I would have liked to be our hardest day of training for the week, so Monday was our rest day.

* On Tuesday, which I would have preferred as a rest day instead of Monday, I had three assistants available, so we ran two big triples at the future site of Clarksburg Village, my favorite nearby, recently discovered training area. Each triple featured a retired gun, and every mark was planned to present significant challenges. Laddie had three good retrieves, needed help on two, and got way behind the gun on one. That might sound bad, but these were long, difficult marks, and at this stage in Laddie's development, I welcome opportunities for Laddie to use Plan B. Plan B is, if you didn't see the throw, or have forgotten the line to it, or have gotten lost on the way out, then guess where the bird is by spotting the gunner; the bird is nearby. I've trained the assistants to help without me saying anything if Laddie gets behind them (except if retired) -- "behind" meaning on the wrong side -- but on the last and one of the more difficult marks on Tuesday, I got on the radio and said, "Don't help, I want to see what he does." I was pleased to see that Laddie seems to have learned Plan B from earlier training over the last few weeks where we've been working on it by calling for early help from the thrower rather than having Laddie hunt. On that last mark, Laddie spotted the girl, and I guess remembered which side the throw had been on, because once he saw her, he immediately ran past her to the bumper. This was a long, difficult mark with half a dozen factors stacked to push him behind the gunner, so it was not surprising to see the factors do their job. But it was great to see Laddie get himself out of trouble without needing to be helped or handled. And after all, he had nailed the other two marks on that series, including a tough retired gun that I was sure would fool him but didn't.

* On Wednesday (yesterday), we had what I'd call a confidence session, meaning I hoped that Laddie would have 100% success rather than the 80% we'd normally aim for. The session, which again took place at the huge cluster of fields that will someday be Clarksburg Village, consisted of two setups. The first was a triple with a retired gun, and with factors pushing Laddie to the wrong side of every gun, but shorter distances than the previous day. The factors did their job and prevented Laddie from running straight to the bumpers on two of the marks, but he cut back early and didn't get behind ("hook") either of those guns, and he flat nailed the tough retired mark, which for an extra challenge was thrown into a depression. After that, I set up a combination single and blind. For the mark, I had both of the teenage girls stand at their station and throw one bumper into a depression to their right, then sit down facing the fall. At 120 yards, that was a gimme for Laddie and he nailed it, as expected. Next came the blind. The line to the blind, at 140y, was a few degrees to the left of the girls (that is, it passed a few yards behind them), and also involved two diagonal road crossings and getting thru some medium-high cover without cheating around it. Laddie took a great line over both road crossings and into the cover, then veered left, away from the girls. Since I was mindful of the rule I learned a couple of weeks ago -- challenging the line = crossing the line -- I stopped him and cast him on an angle back to the right. While that took him back toward the line and then over it, which was good, it also meant that I was sending him right at the girls. This is a Golden, you understand, and he's crazy about those girls. Anyway, I stopped him and cast him back toward the blind again, and he took the cast. We needed one last safety whistle to prevent him from running too far back, since he had not spotted the bumper at first as he was racing out. I was pleased with all five of the day's retrieves, and felt it was a good way to complete our week's preparation for the trial tomorrow (Friday).

* However, I got a text from William this morning asking whether we were training today, and decided to go out for one last tune-up. We'd keep it short, and like yesterday aim primarily to build confidence. First, we went to the oval pond at nearby Rolling Ridge. I had William throw an up-the-shore mark while Laddie and I watched from a longer land entry than we'd been using last Sunday. The water entry was very sharp, but the shape of the shoreline and placement of the throw was such that Laddie didn't have as tight a shoreline swim to the far shore, once he was in the water, as he had in Sunday's work. I was prepared to call him back and resend him if he tried to run the bank, and to handle him if he did it a second time, but I was pleased to see a great angle water entry right at the fall, which landed on the backside of the far embankment and not visible after the bumper was down. Tremendously happy with that water entry, I clapped for Laddie for some time as he swam the rest of the way across. He then ran up the embankment and out of sight to the far side, and appeared a moment later with the bumper. Laddie has been taught that he is allowed to run the bank on his returns, and he raced to me without re-entering the water so that we could celebrate his fabulous mark. Next, we drove to the nearby group of three fields I call Oaks where we've been training for years, but I set up a blind Laddie's never run before. It was only 130y, but I stacked up several factors (by "stack", I mean that the factors all pushed the dog the same direction, in this case, to the right): (1) We had a stiff left-to-right wind. A dog can always fade with the wind, but especially a wet dog. (2) At 150y, on a line a few degrees to the right of the blind, was a white pole that's always there, and looks like a lining pole. (3) At 90y, a wide trench/depression swept across the field on a diagonal and then arced back toward the pole, later continuing to sweep around in a U-turn. A naive dog entering that near leg of the trench would tend to follow it around toward the right. (4) Inside the arc of the trench was a hillside, with a hedgerow at the top. The line to the blind was diagonally over that slope, and gravity would tend to pull a dog down and to the right. As an added risk but on the left, you could also lose the dog behind that hedgerow. Since a dog sometimes squares a slope by going uphill, that was not such a remote risk, but it was in the opposite direction of the other factors. (5) Once the dog has crossed the slope, he would be back down in the trench. If he were to square the far embankment, he'd be aimed at the white pole again. Or he could follow the trench further left and behind the hill. All in all, I thought it was a pretty good tune-up blind. Well, Laddie took a great initial line thru some rough terrain, including a diagonal ridge crossing early on. As he approached the trench, he began to veer toward the pole. One strategy would have been to let him continue in that direction, then stop him when he was even with the blind and cast him "over" to the left. However, that would have meant not crossing the line, which as I mentioned I've been cautioned about. So I stopped Laddie as soon as he veered right and cast him on an angle back to the left, sending him over the line and up the hill in front of the hedgerow. Next I had to stop him and cast him back toward the line, which I did, but that meant sending him straight toward the white pole. It was not problem, however. After he crossed the line again, I stopped him and cast him back toward the blind. He took a new line away from the pole but not quite at the blind, sat on one last whistle, and took an over to the blind. I don't know whether an all-age judge would have had a problem with the work -- such concerns are far in our future -- but to me it looked like a nice, workman-like Qual blind.

Look, I'm well aware that no one needs to read such detailed descriptions of Laddie's work. I mean, a competition retriever runs zillions of retrieves like the two Laddie ran today, and there are several good ways to run many of them. But given where we happen to be in Laddie's development, I thought it would be worth recording his performance on these particular retrieves as an indication of his current level of progress.

We still haven't trained on a big water triple in more than a year, but aside from that, I think this was a good week of preparation. Tomorrow morning, we'll leave the house at 4:30am, drive three hours to the Swamp Dog Qual, and see how Laddie (running as #3 of 16 entries) does.

LL&L

Laddie earns Reserve JAM at Ft. Pitt Qual

[Posted to the DogTrek and PositiveGunDogs lists this evening]

Laddie has been running in AKC Retriever Field Trials this spring.  Yesterday, he ran in the Qualifying stake at the Ft. Pitt 2012 Spring Trial and came home with Reserve JAM.

This was not Laddie's best performance.  His water marking has deteriorated sharply as a result of our inability to find a field trial group to train with for the last 12+ months.  Just think, despite our active training schedule, Laddie hasn't run a big water triple in a YEAR, while many dogs competing in these events have run several dozen in that time.   But Laddie survived the cuts from the first three series and brought back all the birds in the last series, so the judges were kind enough to give him the green ribbon.

This was Laddie's second field trial ribbon, after earning a JAM in the Tidewater 2011 Spring O/H Qual, Laddie's first trial ever.  As far as I know, no other dog trained without physical force has ever taken a ribbon in a retriever field trial.  Very gradually, I guess we are learning.

Leaving the house at 4am yesterday, Laddie rode in the van for twelve hours of driving round trip, besides running the trial.  But he was on fire as usual for some water drills this morning, probably not noticing the new ribbon on his bulletin board.

Lindsay, with Lumi & Laddie (Goldens)

Gaithersburg, Maryland

Second Addendum to "Trajectory"

Well, although my first addendum to the recent "Trajectory" post was probably OK insofar as it clarified (I hope) that successful all-age dogs are not allowed to run in Quals, I have since learned of another flaw in my thinking on the trajectory topic.

That flaw is the idea that a dog who is at the level of being able to compete successfully in all-age stakes, but is not yet ineligible to run in Quals, would dominate the less skilled dogs in a Qual, and could reasonably be expected to win.

From what I have since learned, I now think it would be more accurate to say that such a dog would be more likely to win than the less skilled dogs, but that the improved probability falls far short of likelihood, much less assurance.  There's even a good chance that that dog would not make it to the last series, for any number of reasons.

I still don't plan on consciously wishing for other dogs to do badly so Laddie can win, and I still think that Laddie is on a generally rising trajectory. But I see that I need to adjust my thinking to understand that whether Laddie places or not in a field trial is only weakly correlated to his general level of competence, and that many other factors will also affect the outcome.

LL&L

Addendum to "Trajectory"

A friend pointed out a serious problem with yesterday's post entitled "Trajectory".

As she read the post, she thought I was saying that according to my understanding, successful all-age dogs can and typically do run in Qualifying stakes as well.

As my friend pointed out, that's not the case. But actually, it's not what I was trying to say.  Unfortunately, I didn't communicate effectively.

What I was trying to say is that right now Laddie is not skilful enough to compete successfully in all-age stakes, but hopefully someday he will be. That is the goal of our training, as opposed to somehow managing to earn some Qual ribbons.

In referring to an all-age dog who managed to sneak into a Qual, I wasn't trying to suggest that that has ever happened. I guess it could happen if someone wanted to cheat with look-alike dogs, but it could not happen within the rules if the dog had had success at the all-age level, or even had won two Quals  Such dogs are not eligible to run in a Qual.

But here's what is true: If a day comes when Laddie is ready to compete with all-age dogs, as is our goal, but at that time he has not met any of the conditions that would make it illegal for him to run in a Qual, then if I entered him in a Qual at that time, I would expect him to win it. The same of course goes for any dog ready to compete successfully in all-age stakes but still permitted under the rules to run in Quals, unless the Qual happens to have more than one such dog that day.

Accordingly, I was trying to say that I don't want my attitude to be, when a judge for example looks at Laddie's big, looping sit and calls it a slipped whistle, "Bad break, too bad I didn't get a judge who accepts Laddie's big, looping sit."  Instead, I want my attitude to be, "Ah, there's one more thing to work on before Laddie is ready to compete successfully in all-age stakes." Yeah, fixing it might also result in Laddie winning a Qual along the way, but that's almost beside the point.  The purpose of Laddie running Quals is for me to gauge his progress.  When the gauge tells me that he's ready to run in all-age stakes, he will also happen to win the Qual, not squeaking by but because he's clearly ready to compete at the next level.  If he doesn't win the Qual, it's not a failure, it's just a helpful indication of where we are on our journey, our trajectory.

As to the moral quandary I was dealing with: If I wish for Laddie to win a Qual, it's not that I'm wishing for anyone else to lose, it's that I'm wishing to find that we have met our objective of preparing Laddie for the next level of competition. 

This does not mean that my emotions accept our unsuccessful performances comfortably.  Not getting called back to the next series, or running them all but not getting a placement, is not fun.  But that's my emotions talking, not the analytical part of my mind.

LL&L

Silent water blind

Following up on today's trial, the water blind was 50y land, 40y stick pond, and 100y of clumpy, uneven meadow to the blind.

I didn't need to blow the whistle until Laddie had come out of the water, and it'a possible I didn't need to blow it then. But I thought it best not to let him veer at all, since I've noticed that a wet dog can get out of control unexpectedly in a strong crosswind, which we had. If the wind had pushed Laddie behind a mound that was lurking on the right, he'd have gone out of sight and been dropped as out of control.

Of course, blowing the whistle ended up being our undoing, but I still think it was the right thing to do. Laddie just needs to learn to stop better.

In any case, here are two nice positives, besides of course Laddie's great initial line (I think every other dog needed to be handled in the water): Laddie did not pop (I believe that means he has only popped in competition once in his career, a trial earlier this year), and he did not vocalize at any time running today, including the water.  I'm not suggesting he's cured of vocalizing on water blinds -- Laddie did not have to deal with a point today, and I had the luxury of just letting him roll -- but it was good to see, nonetheless.

LL&L

Trajectory

First, the news. Laddie was called back from the land triple and the land blind, which were bundled together, in today's trial. He waa them not called back from the water blind. So of course we did not get to run the water marks.

With a 360 mile drive home in front of me, I decided not to hang around for the rest of the trial, but rather get on the road.

The judges were kind enough to brief me on why they didn't call Laddie back from the water blind. They said he refused three whistles. They added that he had also refused a whistle on the land blind earlier, and they just didn't feel he was doing the level of work required.

That was helpful information to me, because: (a) I only saw Laddie slip one whistle on the water blind, though he did have big, looping sits two other times; and (b) I considered the whistle on land that the judges called a refusal to be a safety whistle, since Laddie immediately took a couple of strides to the bird after that whistle.

The judges were kind enough to pay Laddie a compliment, saying he had a fabulous initial line, giving us something to build on.

Before closing, I want to say that on my long drive up here last night, I gave a lot of thought to what I was finding to be a moral issue: I wanted to wish for Laddie to win today, but I was blocked because that meant wishing that other people would lose. This dilemma occupied my mind for many hours.

I finally came to a resolution. Laddie, and all the other dogs, are on a trajectory. They are more skillful now than when they first started field work, and in some cases they are continuing to improve. Laddie, for example, had trouble in his first Junior Hunt Test years ago, but months later, that level of work was easy for him, and he passed four tests in nine days. Similarly later on, he wasn't quite skillful enough to pass his first few Senior tests, but continued to improve, until a time came when he passed two Senior tests in one weekend.

As painful as each failure was -- as painful as today's daily was -- it is a mistake, I think, to see these as isolated events.  They were neither good nor bad. We were neither lucky nor unlucky.  Instead, these were all points on a trajectory, a trend line.  At this time, that trend line has not yet carried Laddie high enough that he is ready to run with, much less prevail over, all-age dogs.  If he were, the breaks of a particular Qual wouldn't matter. He would be dominating pretty much any Qual, just as, I assume, any field champion who happened to sneak into today's Qual would have dominated.

So nothing is wrong with wishing that Laddie were at that level.  If he had been, and the other dogs had not, he would have won going away. The fact that he didn't dominate simply says that he is not skillful enough yet to compete with all-age dogs, while dominating Qual dogs. The details are significant only in that they point the way toward some things to work on.

One question that remains is, are we throwing money away to continue to compete? In other words, how likely is it that a dog that can't get to the last series one weekend will dominate the following weekend?  Of course, that is not to be expected.

But unfortunately, I see no way to make the jump any other way than incrementally, either.  I remember how Lumi first couldn't pass the land series as a Senior dog, and then started getting to water but couldn't pass that, and then would finish the test but the judges would "have to talk about it", and then not call her number during the ribbon ceremony.  Finally a time came when she began passing Senior tests, and soon thereafter she had her four passes and her title. She had simply incrementally improved along that trajectory.

And so, perhaps, it will be for Laddie.  Of course every team has a maximum level of achievement, and it's always possible that Laddie and I have already reached ours. Frankly, I'm not sure how to recognize that level. But Lumi had a quite a few fails in her Senior career before she finally started passing. She was getting better with every test, and eventually she was good enough to pass.

So maybe I'm just throwing money away.  But I think it's also possible that Laddie has it in him to be a competitive all-age dog. If I'm correct, then we are on that trajectory, and when Laddie ascends high enough, he will begin dominating Quals just like any other good all-age dog would. Until then, we'll keep going home empty handed and, philosophical analysis notwithstanding, with heavy heart.

LL&L

Challenging the line = crossing the line

Yesterday, I managed to get Laddie dropped from a trial on a handler error once again.

One of the judges, realizing that I was inexperienced in field trials, and first checking on whether I was interested in hearing his thoughts, was kind enough to explain a concept to me while Laddie was returning with the water blind, even drawing a diagram in the sand with a stick.

The judge told me that although Laddie had taken every cast and had stayed within a reasonable corridor, I had not "challenged the line."  Specifically, I had not handled Laddie onto the left side of the line, where all the trouble was, until the last few yards of the blind.

That was true.  Quite intentionally, I had run Laddie along the right side of the line the entire blind, which I'd estimate at 210y.  I intended to keep him on the right even at the end.  I just misjudged the distance on a cast that was supposed to put him onto the little landing area.

But since Laddie remained in a tight corridor the whole way, I thought he'd run a good blind.  I'd heard the term "challenging the line" before, but I never understood what it meant.  As the judge explained to me, I think that in this case it means, simply, crossing the line.

Later I watched a couple of pros running the last few dogs.  They ran almost the identical blind that Laddie ran, except that at around 70y, they cast the dog toward the point on the left, crossed the imaginary line from the handler to the blind, and then, before the dog reached land, cast the dog back over onto the right side again.  Even dogs who had more trouble at the end than Laddie had, repeatedly refusing casts, were called back.

Actually, Laddie might have been called back, too, if fewer dogs had come into the series.  But with 14 dogs running the blind, the judges narrowed the field to nine, and Laddie was dropped.

Could I have challenged (crossed) the line with Laddie and then gotten him back over on the right to finish?  I think so.  In any case, I wish I'd realized I needed to try.

LL&L

No vocalizing

Today I discovered that Laddie does not vocalize running a water version of a simple T-drill. I wonder if I could build on that to get him out of vocalizing on water blinds.

Lighter schedule

On advice from Alice and Jody, I've backed off on Laddie's training schedule. For example, instead of training every day as we always have, this week we trained on Tuesday, Thursday, and today (Saturday), and next week I plan to train only on Tuesday and Thursday before our trial next Saturday.

The weather is now warm enough that we could be training on water, and ideally we'd be running both land and water retrieves. However, circumstances are pushing us to focus on land at this time.  If Laddie gets thru the land and gets dropped for poor water work in our trial, I'll change our focus for subsequent training.  We are doing some water even so, but mostly land.

Today was an example. I only had two bird-girls today, so to run triples, the last throw was just me throwing a bumper to the side as the go-bird. It was no challenge itself, but it gave the gunners a chance to retire when I had asked them to.

In that way, we ran two land triples. The first had the bird girls throwing a double at 260-110y, with the long gun retired. The second had them throwing a double at 310-130y, with the short gun retired.

For both setups, I used the hilly terrain, cover changes, obstructions to push the dog off line, repetitive visual patterns to challenge the dog's memory on retired guns, and what little wind we had, to try to maximize difficulty.

Results: Laddie nailed both of the short marks.  He "stepped on" the first long mark but didn't see it and continued running, then saw Annette behind the umbrella she was using to retire and then ran straight to the bumper, which I thought was a pretty good way to run what I thought was a pretty difficult mark.

For the last long mark, construction materials pushed Laddie to the left, and the terrain continued to push him that direction. He veered back enough to the right to run toward the gunner, ran just past her on the wrong side, but before she could stand up (per my instructions when Laddie gets behind her), he hooked straight to the bumper. Not the perfect mark, but pretty good I thought.

Finally, I ran Laddie on a 320y land blind off to the left of all the marks he'd run. The first challenge was that the initial line was diagonally across a slope and was cluttered with clumps of high cover and a few bits of construction debris. Next came a 100y stretch of dirt road in an S-shape, leading the dog offline alternately to left and right.  Next was a large slope that the line to the blind just cleared on the left. I believe that a dog can be tempted to wrap around such an obstacle, and in this case, that's also where the road led to, adding more suction to taking the dog out of sight behind the slope.

Next the line went over a small crest, such that the dog would be out of sight for 50y. I assume such a setup would never happen in a real trial, but the earlier part of the blind seemed interesting, and I wanted the extra distance, so I went with it. Assuming the dog carried straight back 50y after the crest, the dog would then become visible and then needed to carry another 50y in a depression, and finally up a steep embankment and onto a plateau, where the blind was planted in an area of sparse but high cover.

Laddie ran this blind nicely.  He took a great initial line, not attempting to square the slope in either direction, and continued straight to the road.  From there he drifted left, and took good sit-whistles and casts to the edge of the crest where he was about to go out of sight.  He stayed a bit to the left of the line during the middle section of the blind, and never came close to heading behind the slope.  I stopped him at the crest, cast him straight back, and that took him the last 110y to the blind.

All of this was on a 72-degree sunny afternoon, so I think it was a bit tiring as well as having some challenging pictures.  To me it seemed like a useful training session.

LL&L

Training day, May 2012

Remington, Virginia

Note: Cloudy weather, temps warmer than ideal.  The water series was cancelled before the last few dogs ran because thunder and lightning began to appear in the distance.

Yesterday was Rappahannock River Retriever Club's monthly training day, and I was happy to once again be chosen to "run" the advanced group.  At this club, that generally means designing the land and the water series, but when I get the assignment, I also act as "marshall" and "judge" when the dogs are running, except of course when I run my own dog or dogs.  In yesterday's case, I let Lumi stay with my daughter Cookie at home, so I only had Laddie with me.  I ran Laddie next to last on land series because I wanted to run him in front of someone who would be running the full triple with a flyer, and the guy whom I arranged to go in front of wanted to run last so that his dog would be less likely to shop on the long blind.  I was planning to run Laddie last on water so that I could finish "judging" the series for the other dogs first and try to keep things moving quickly, but as mentioned above, that resulted in Laddie not getting to run at all on water because of the risk of lightning.  With the four hour drive, that meant a ten-hour training day ended with Laddie running a total of five retrieves.

Anyway, here are descriptions of the two series I set up, and also a report on how Laddie did on the land series.

SERIES A. Land triple with available flyer, plus three available land blinds

For Series A, the first mark was on the right, thrown right to left from a holding blind into cover at 90 yards.  The early throws (some with winger, some hand thrown) were either too long or too short, resulting in comparatively easy lines to the fall, but finally the throws were the intended distance and the line was thru some high cover if the dog didn't skirt around it.  (Laddie was the only dog who actually ended up taking that line, unless the last dog, whom I didn't watch because Laddie was honoring, might have.)

The second mark was in the center, thrown right to left with a winger from a holding blind into cover at 35 yards.

The third mark was on the right, originally thrown left to right at 70 yards.  That was the flyer station, and the intended throw was from the side of a road into an open field, with care given to safety.  However, despite our trying to plan for the light crosswind, the duck doubled back on the gunner the first two times we tried that setup, so we reversed the gun station and the direction of the throw, so that as actually used, the third mark, like the other two marks, was right to left.  We didn't have any more no-birds, but most of the flyers ended up being "cripples" (wounded rather than being killed in the air), so I guess something about the conditions -- maybe the equipment? -- was producing poor shooting conditions, despite having an experienced gunner and assistant at that station.

As with any triple on training day, lots of opportunities for modifications were available, and several variations were used by the handlers for particular dogs.  Some ran the series as singles, in one order or another, or as a double plus a single (various choices for which guns were used for the double).  People training for Hunt Tests used a handler's gun, an empty shotgun available on a gun stand at the start line.  A couple of people wanted to practice Walk Ups, so for those teams, I walked them forward from the holding blind and after some distance called for the middle mark rather than the right mark first, with no duck call.  For Laddie, I requested no duck calls and that the gunner shoot before throwing rather than while the bird was in the air.  It didn't quite happen that way, but at least I made the request.

If a handler wanted to honor, the honoring position was to the right of the start line, so that the working dog would not cross in front of the honoring dog when sent to the flyer go-bird.  That made the honor less difficult than if it had been on the left, but it seemed a more prudent position.  I've seen tests and trials where the judge chose a position analogous to either of those choices.

In addition to the triple, I set up three blinds, and people could choose any combination:

* We had a "Senior" blind on a line well to the right of the rightmost gun station, a "pile" of bumpers pre-planted ad marked with a vertical lining pole at 60 yards.  The second half of the line was thru medium cover, with a diagonal crossing of a change in the terrain, a strip where cover had been flattened by previous vehicle traffic.  A diagonal crosswind added to the challenge, and no dog who attempted that blind was able to line it.

* We had a "Master" blind at 100 yards on a line under the arc of the flyer station, with the dog being rewarded for getting thru the scent of the flyers by picking up a duck on that blind.  The dog was upwind of the duck so hopefully the scent of the blind itself was no advantage.  Of course that blind had to be planted for each dog, whereas the other two blinds were "hot" (a "pile" of bumpers pre-planted before we started).  The marker for the "Master" blind was an unusually long pole with artificial flowers attached at the top, a design which for some reason threw off several people's depth perception, with their dogs ending up behind the blind and having to be brought back in.  On the other hand, two dogs lined that blind.

* We had a "Qualifying" blind at 180 yards on a line midway between the second and third marks, with the terrain and wind pushing all the dogs who ran it to the left.  I couldn't find a longer line to use for that setup, but one challenge was that the blind was planted 20 yards in front of an arc of thistle cover, so that similarly to when a blind is planted on the face of an embankment, this blind did not lend itself to having the dog overrun it and then come back in to pick up the bumper.  The marker was an orange lining pole inserted on a 45 degree angle, to facilitate the handlers seeing it against the vertical background and at the same time not salient to dogs.

SERIES B.  Water triple plus two available water blinds

For Series B as I had planned Laddie to run it, the first mark was on the left, thrown left to right at 90 yards.  From the planned start line, the line to the mark featured a 40 yard land entry with an extremely sharp angle, tempting the dog to run the bank on an easy cheat around the water and behind the gun station.  Easier starting lines, chosen by several of the trainers, made the cheat less likely, though we still had a couple of dogs not get wet running that mark.

The second mark was in the center, thrown left to right at 100 yards.  The entry was fairly square, but if the throw was as I had designed the mark, the line to the fall was off one point on the left and then off another point on the right.  Unfortunately, the first few dogs got throws on that mark that were too short, so that the line was over the island on the left, a different picture entirely, though I suppose one still worth practicing.

The third mark was on the right, thrown right to left along the length of a narrow peninsula at 50 yards from the planned start line.  The water and land entries were steep and protected by high cover, but this mark's primary purpose was to occupy a corner of the dog's memory when running the water blind afterwards.  The long blind would take the dog past the point of that peninsula, while the short blind would take the dog on a line not too far to the right ("behind") that gun station.

All the marks were hand thrown from holding blinds.

Two water blinds were available, but dogs either ran no blind, or they ran the long blind.  No one ran the short blind, but I'll still describe it.

The long blind was on the far shore at 100 yards, on a line midway between the second and third marks.  The picture was strikingly similar to the middle mark, which was a few degrees to the left.  For the blind, after a 30 yard land entry, the line was past the point of a peninsula on the right as mentioned above, then over the endpoint of an island on the left, then point the point of another peninsula on the right.  Handlers were asked to have their dogs take a straight enough line that they would cross over the point on the left but stay off the points on the right.  A little open water existed off the point on the left into which the handler could cast the dog with an "over" to the right, avoiding a "back" cast that risked losing the dog behind the island, but once the dog was in the water, the dog had to be turned back toward the blind quickly or would end up on the next point on the right.

The short blind was on the far shore of an inlet at 50 yards, 15 yards behind the rightmost gun station.  If a dog had run it, the dog would have had a 30 yard land entry, a 45 degree water entry, and a short diagonal crossing of the inlet, with a tempting cheat around the water on the right.

As mentioned, Laddie did not get to run the water series, but I'll describe his rather uneventful work on the land series.

Laddie was steady from the line watching the birds thrown.  As with most of the flyers in this series, he got a "cripple" (I dislike that terminology, but that's what field trainers say), and I was pleased to see that, after nailing the mark and spending a little while finding a good grip, Laddie ran the bird back to me without killing it.  Of course it didn't save the bird, whom as is normal at these things I turned over to another handler to finish off, but I'd prefer Laddie not kill the birds himself, since I don't think judges like to see that, and in training, we can sometimes re-throw a bird if the dog hasn't killed it, reducing the number of birds we need to kill that day though I guess making it worse for the birds we do use.  :0(

Laddie overran the short middle bird by five yards, then spun around and grabbed it in a clump of cover.

Laddie then nailed the longest mark on the right, running a laser line that took him thru, rather than around, an easily avoidable patch of high cover, and requiring no hunt to home in directly on the bird.

By the way, Laddie's pickups and returns of all three birds birds were top notch, as opposed to his not uncommon mediocre work once he's gotten to the fall, with dawdling pickups and/or meandering returns.  Except for the flyer which he was more careful with picking up, but not unreasonably so, he grabbed each bird on the fly and raced back with it.  I usually take the bird as Laddie approaches, then bring him to heel, as opposed to the way virtually all other handlers run their dogs, bringing the dog to heel first and then taking the bird.  But no judge has ever complained, and as far as I know it doesn't hurt our score, so I find my approach removes some of the risk of a dropped bird and also removes the disincentive to a high quality return that I believe would come from Laddie having to execute the heel and sit maneuver while holding the bird.  Of course, some dogs would prefer to go on holding the bird forever, so I guess coming to heel without giving it up would actually be preferred by those dogs, but in Laddie's case, he wants to give up the bird as quickly as possible, so I think the delivery is most pleasant for him if I take the bird as Laddie approaches.

Another point I'll mention is that a black Lab was in the holding blind behind us while Laddie was running his series, and I saw on every return that Laddie seemed to alert to that direction -- perhaps he was scenting the dog? -- as I took the bird.  Seeing that and concerned about the possibilities, I was quick to demand Laddie's attention and bring him to heel for the next retrieve, and finally for the honor, rather than losing my concentration and risking that he rush behind the holding blind to visit, or possibly even attack, the dog waiting there.  Laddie was attacked by a black Lab while he and I were in a holding blind at a trial last spring, and it seems to have affected his behavior in certain situations ever since.  I'm not yet clear what exact pattern triggers it, but I think black dogs are part of the pattern.

Laddie ran both the "Master" and the "Qualifying" blinds nicely.  Going to school on the difficulties the other trainers had had on the long blind, I didn't let Laddie continue to drift further and further left as I had seen happen with other dogs, but rather stopped him as soon as he veered, I think a total of three times.  I believe he was the only dog who ended up finally arriving at that blind from the right, so that the last cast was actually with the wind.  That may have had the disadvantage that Laddie was upwind and couldn't scent the bumpers as he got close, but that hadn't seemed to be as much of an advantage for the earlier dogs as the disadvantage of having to take their last cast(s) into a headwind, perhaps because of a confusing scent dispersion on that particular blind.

I had arranged to have Laddie honor one of the few other dogs who would be running the series the same way he had, hoping for maximum excitement as opposed, for example, to honoring a dog that would start off by running a single or a double, or for whom the handler had not chosen to purchase a flyer.  When the time came to honor, I felt I had two reasonable choices.  First, I could honor him off lead, the same as if we were in competition, and also the same as my friend Dave has asked me to do when we train on honoring flyers with Dave on weekends occasionally.  Alternatively, I could place a lead lightly around Laddie's chest, a setup that hopefully would mean little to Laddie but would allow me to stop him if he broke.  The disadvantage of this latter approach is that it doesn't really give me the assurance that Laddie would not have broken without sensing the lead.  But the advantage is that Laddie cannot gain the reinforcement of an adrenaline or endorphin burst by breaking, possibly strengthened further if he manages to get to the flyer.  Foregoing the extra information in favor of a better training setup if Laddie did happen to break, I took my honoring position facing away from the field off Laddie's right flank with his lead resting lightly around his chest but gripped tightly in my hand, and Laddie was on high alert but rock steady for the honor.  I hope that was the right decision in terms of maximum training benefit, I'm not certain.

I'll end this post with an apology.  I try to make these posts as interesting as I can, though my primary purpose is to provide a useful record of our training journey.  In this case, I'm afraid the latter objective completely overwhelmed the former, with details that won't be of interest to anyone but a future me studying my steps and missteps over the years.  Hopefully the boredom factor was not too extreme.

LL&L

Reducing workload

As Alice and Jody have pointed out to me, now that Laddie has turned five, and most of his work consists of physically and mentally demanding simulations of Field Trial setups, experience with generations of competition retriever suggests that Laddie no longer benefits from intense daily training.
Accordingly, despite my own preference for being out training at every opportunity, I am trying to significantly scale back our work. For example, after our competition last Saturday, I rested Laddie on Sunday and Monday. We then ran a couple of big singles and a couple of blinds on Tuesday, one big double and a blind on Wednesday, and two big triples plus one blind on Thursday. Today, Friday, will be another rest day.

All of these were land retrieves because of the cold weather, and also because Laddie has not been successful on land in competition yet this year, so I'm comfortable with focusing on land retrieves while we await arrival of warmer weather.

To give a sense of the work, here's a description of our last setup yesterday.

We were working at the huge new construction area someday to be known as Clarksburg Village, an area 20 minutes from home that a few weeks ago I discovered to now be suitable for training.  I had already positioned Jenny and Annette at their gun stations, but I wanted to run Lumi on a short triple before I ran Laddie.

Lumi, who is eight and who no longer competes because of physical issues, usually lives with daughter Brooke these days, but this week she's staying with me.  I don't run her at distance, but she is still an extraordinary marker.

I had run her on an earlier short triple before Laddie's first triple, and Laddie had doubled back during his retrieve of the retired mark to search the area where one of Lumi's marks had been thrown.  So hopefully learning my lesson, I threw the three marks for Lumi on this second setup so that they would be well off the lines Laddie would be running. I has Liza, one of our three new assistants, run Lumi, then take her position in the field for Laddie's triple.

I should mention that for all Laddie's work this week, I've had him rest in his crate in the van while the girls took their positions and while Lumi ran her series. For Laddie, this meant not only more rest than when he was running around, but it also meant that he had only a few second to grasp each setup, as happens in a real event, and it meant that he had to deal with the excitement of gunfire and another dog working while he awaited his turn, again simulating event conditions.

Here's the setup I used for Laddie's second triple:

The first mark was in the center, thrown left to right into cover behind a small ridge at 260y.  Annette, the thrower, would retire into a ditch behind the gun station when Laddie was later sent to the go-bird.

The second mark was on the left, thrown left to right by Genny into a depression at 190y.

The third mark was on the right, thrown right to left by Liza to a fall behind a ridge at 40y.

The line to the the first, retired mark ran close to the last fall.  This meant Laddie would have to pick up the short go-bird, run the second, longish retrieve several degrees to the left, and then run the big, retired memory-bird in the same direction as the first mark, running thru the area of an old fall to get to the last mark more than 200y beyond.  My experience is that dogs sometimes have difficulty remembering two marks that are both in the same direction, or at least resist running the second one because of the sense that the dog is "returning to an old fall", something they are taught all their competitive lives will not succeed, despite their instincts as young dogs that if one bird is at a particular location, perhaps more birds are there as well.

The lines to all three marks included diagonal slopes, diagonal crossings of changes in terrain, and for the two longer marks, obstacles forcing the dog temporarily off line.  We ran from level ground rather than a mound, making it somewhat more difficult for Laddie to see the gunners than it might have been.

In summary, I made this triple as difficult a setup as I could come up with for the particular start line I'd chosen. Perhaps it would have been marginally more difficult if I had also retired the second gun, but I've never seen a Qual with two retired guns, and my goal, after all, is preparing Laddie for Quals.

Historically, I've followed a practice of carefully pointing out all the guns to the dog, in reverse order of the throws, before calling for the first throw, and I still frequently take that approach. But lately, I've been starting our line mechanics by just standing by and letting Laddie pick out gunners himself. If he finds them all, then I just line him up on the first gunner, cue "sit, mark", and begin calling for the throws.

That's how it went on this series. Laddie immediately picked out the long gun, then looked around on either side and found the other two. When it was clear that he knew where all three stations were, I lined up on the first one and raised my arm to signal the thrower.

When all three throws had been made, I sent Laddie to the short mark. Not surprisingly since it was so short, he nailed it, even though he couldn't see it until he had gotten over the small ridge.

I then sent him to the second mark on the left side. He nailed that one, too.

When I sent Laddie to the final mark, the gunner now retired, he veered offline a little to the right, in effect running "under the arc" of the first mark rather than thru the old fall. Once he was past the old fall, he arced back onto the correct line. From the distance, I thought Laddie had a small hunt when he got to the area if the fall in that last mark, but Annette, who could see Laddie from her hiding place once he was in the area, said that he ran straight to the bumper and picked it up immediately, then ran around for a little while carrying the bumper, for reasons known only to Laddie, before turning around and heading back for home.

In summary, on the hardest triple I knew how to set up in that location, Laddie nailed all three marks. 
Laddie doesn't perform that well in every setup we practice, but if he performs that way at one of our trials, I think he'll get a good score.

LL&L

Finding assistants and grounds

A few days ago, I distributed flyers in my neighborhood advertising for dog training assistants, and within a few hours, got a phone call from a young woman named Genny, a high school student planning on animal studies when she goes to college.

A few days later, another young woman named Annette called, with a friend, Liza, also interested in participating.

Just like that, Laddie and I no longer needed to train alone every day.  All three girls are juniors in high school and live within half a block of me. I don't know how I'd have found them without the flyers.

Some days only one or two are available, sometimes we have all three and can actually run Field Trial-scale triples with real human throwers. I believe this will be an improvement in our training arrangements.

On top of that, about the same time, I also located new training grounds, 15-20 mins from home. Like many of the best local places I've found for training, this location is a construction site, where someday hundreds of houses will be built. Not long ago, it was private farm land and woods, not available or useful for field training.  Now it's cleared, cross-crossed with dirt roads and drainage ditches, and covered with a variety of surfaces including bare ground, grass, strips of high cover, and rocks filling some of the ditches. The grounds are naturally somewhat hilly, and the bulldozers have helped us out even further, creating mounds, ridges, and depressions with steep embankments. The place is so big that we have many potential lines for marks and blinds. No one is around when we train in late afternoon, county leash laws do not apply because we're on private property, and the gun stations I set up are far enough from nearby housing that, at least so far, our pistol fire has drawn minimal attention and no complaints.

Training with inexperienced assistants on a construction site with no water doesn't put us on an even footing with many of the teams we compete against, who routinely train with field trial groups on actual field trial properties. I say this not so much to complain, but to help any reader learning the sport understand how important it is to train with a group whenever possible. That said, I think having human throwers is still a big step up from training alone, and I'm grateful to have found new training grounds so close to home. 

Now we'll have to see whether it all starts to translate into more success in competition.

LL&L

Five tomorrow

Today, Laddie competed for the last time as a four year old, with his birthday tomorrow. This was his third trial of the year, and as with the others, he was dropped after one series.  In fact, we honored on lead.

However, I don't feel as bad as I might. Running as #8, and the fifth working dog, Laddie nailed the go-bird flyer at 220y on the right, and had a reasonable hunt on his second retrieve, the retired bird at 130y on the left.  He also took a nice initial line to the middle bird at 160y, but cheating around a wide strip of cover, he ended up behind the gun with no wind to help him. He seemed to be on a reasonable hunt for awhile, but eventually got out across a distant road, and one of the judges became worried he might get hurt in the power company's cables that had been left lying out there.  By that time he was too far out to hear my whistle or even the bird-boy's hey-hey, so the judge offered for the marshal to take me out in a four-wheeler to pick him up.  Seeing me, Laddie ended up picking the bird up and we trotted back in together. My knee and back are still hurting these days, but I wasn't feeling any pain at the time.  Being out in the field with my dog feels good.

So we honored on lead, like all the dogs who had run before us. And we got a nice compliment about the first mark from the judge, who commented that it was nice to see Laddie's work after half the earlier dogs had needed the thrower's help on that mark.

I hung around on the off chance that they'd end up scrapping the test, but after a while, the temps were up 20 degrees (perhaps enlarging scent cones), the wind picked up enough to start helping the dogs who were downwind of their birds, the falls had more scent, and the lines to the falls had more drag scent. First some of the dogs started picking up all the birds with a handle, and then with no handle. The first two times a dog ran the series with no handle, the gallery broke into applause, but after that, it became clear that the test had changed and people just watched and chatted.

I don't feel Laddie or I embarrassed ourselves, if you set aside the fact that Laddie should be winning every trial he runs.  For Laddie's part, his first mark was excellent, his mark on the retired gun was reasonable considering that that mark, too, had finished a couple of the earlier dogs, and his returns were satisfactory. For my part, I showed Laddie the birds in the order as intended, I lined him up on the correct first mark before calling for the birds (unlike one of the pros), and I had learned my lesson from the previous trial so that, when Laddie lined up on the retired gun after returning with the flyer, although I had planned to run him on the middle mark that had been thrown second, I immediately accepted his selection, realigned myself, and sent him to the earlier memory-bird, retired though it was.

Despite Laddie not seeing a land blind in competition yet this year, I don't think we're outclassed at this level, and I'm not ready to throw in the towel.

I will, however, look for opportunities to have my new bird-girls help when Laddie's marking is a little weak.  I would have liked for him to look for the gunner on that last mark when he started to get lost, and to me, that's something that we've lost by having no field trial group to train with.  On the other hand, running so many poorman marks may have given him more confidence on retired marks than some dogs at his level.

Now it's time for the trip back home, for a total of seven hours driving this morning. At least Laddie can catch some z's while we're on the road.  After a 3:30am wake-up, I wish I could.

LL&L

Follow up on "Simulating flyers"

I tried something like what I described in my previous post with Laddie and two assistants later that day. It didn't work well at all, and I'm glad it didn't. I see now that it was a bad idea.

The set up we tried was a 240y mark over variable and hilly terrain on a field we've never used before, and a second gun station off to the side at 60y. I directed the bird-girl at the side station to wave a bumper and blow a duck call while Laddie was supposed to be watching the throw of the long mark -- not easy even without the distraction because his field of vision also contained other white objects, this being a construction site. I then had the bird-girl on the side continue waving and blowing the duck call as I sent Laddie to retrieve the long mark.

It took some effort, but I was able to get Laddie to watch the long mark. However, he was unable to make a good outrun to pick it up. He repeatedly stopped to look at the other thrower, and kept veering toward her. A couple of times I called him back to the start line and resent him. The last time I just kept calling "back" each time he'd turn toward her. I must have had to say "back" ten times.

After seeing the issues and thinking them thru, I see that this was an epically awful idea, for at least two reasons:

(1) It is not unprecedented for me to forget the order of the throws at a practice day or competition, and line up the dog (Lumi or Laddie) on the wrong first gun before calling for the throws. Both my dogs have always rescued me from that mistake by turning to the correct gun when the duck call or gunshot sounded. On her WC land double some years ago, I didn't line Lumi up incorrectly, but she turned on the sound of the flyer pheasant's WINGS when the time came, giving her a great look at the mark instead of just watching the bird fall after being shot. It is now obvious to me that I would not want to lose my dogs' ability to turn instantly to sounds indicating that a bird is being thrown, since normally they would mean that a bird really is being thrown.

(2) The idea of expecting Laddie to ignore a thrower waving and blowing a duck call while Laddie was running to another mark was, if I may say so, idiotic beyond words. In general, that behavior on the part of a thrower is called "helping", because sometimes the dog is running the wrong way and the handler calls for a gunner to help by doing such things as standing, waving, calling hey-hey, and blowing a duck call. If I were crazy enough to continue down this road and succeeded in training Laddie to ignore such "distractions", it would then become impossible for me to call for help in the future.

Needless to say, I don't intend to try that "training plan" again.

Before closing, I thought I'd mention that while it's true that twice this year Laddie has run poorly on long marks in competition, I have set up longer, more difficult marks in practice repeatedly over the last couple of weeks, including today, just to work on long singles, or doubles featuring a long single. For at least a week, including today, Laddie has run extremely well on them, in most cases taking and holding a great line (rather than, for example, running at the gun), then nailing them without any need for a hunt. To me this says that his vision seems to be fine, seeing the throw itself as well as the thrower, to say nothing of Laddie's desire and marking talent.

Based on those observations, I don't yet have an explanation for his difficulty at the trials, other than two possibilities: the fact that those were Field Trial triples (which Laddie has seen very few of the last year) and general Event Discount Factor, Alice Woodyard's term for the loss of performance that results from the excitement and distractions unique to the competition experience. If those are the problems, I think I know the solution that most trainers use: regular group training with a Field Trial group, where triples are often thrown and event conditions are somewhat simulated. But that solution is not available to Laddie and me, no matter how aggressively I've pursued it, of course risking further alienating people just by repeatedly trying to arrange to train with them.

I belong to four retriever clubs, which gives me access to occasional training days, but most of those are Hunt Test setups, and I'm not sure how much they really add to Laddie's Field Trial preparation. Of the two that run FT setups, one of them has only one training day per year, and the other seems to suspend training during competition season.

The closest I've come to an alternative solution lately was to distribute flyers advertising for "dog training assistants" in my neighborhood. So far I've lined up three high school girls, though we haven't succeeded in finding a time when all three could come out at once yet. This is an expensive solution, and at the same time it's a long way from simulating the full context of an event, nor does it have all the advantages of training with experienced field trainers on a competition-quality property. In addition, I don't know how long I can go on spending hundreds of dollars a week this way. But hopefully for now it will give Laddie better preparation than what we've had in a long time.

LL&L

Simulating flyers

Flyers are a retriever's favorite thing in the world, so on behalf of the dog, it's always great to see a flyer station as part of a series.

But flyers present challenges. Both Lumi and Laddie would sometimes fail to bring a flyer back on their early days.  And both dogs also needed a lot of work in their steadiness with flyers as the working dog and especially honoring.

This post isn't about those challenges. Rather, this post is about the challenge a flyer presents for line mechanics, and an idea for a drill that can be run without actual flyers to work on those issues.

First to describe the issues. It's not unusual in my experience to see the judge place a flyer station as the go-bird well to one side of the field and fairy short, maximizing its suction away from the other marks. If the dog swings her head to the flyer station prematurely, she doesn't get a good look at the early throws, or may miss the second mark of a triple entirely.

On the other hand, if the dog holds her gaze on the first bird until the next gunshot, and then misjudges the direction of the sound and out of wishful thinking turns to look toward the flyer rather than the second gunner, again she may not see the second throw or may only glimpse it.

If the judges meanwhile decide to retire the second gun, as well as stacking other factors against the dog on that mark, you have a pretty good challenge.

But if you don't have many opportunities to train with flyers, how do you prepare a dog to exercise good line mechanics in the face of such suction?

Here's one idea: Setup the same sort of triple, complete with retired second mark if desired, and have the gunner at the "flyer" station, whether throwing a bird or a bumper, swing the article and perhaps even yell hey-hey or blow a duck call WHILE the other marks are being thrown.

If the dog can learn to perform well with that sort of distraction, she may be somewhat better prepared to handle a flyer distraction at her next event.

Possible risks I have thought of:

* The training is ineffective, because the dog doesn't generalize the lesson to flyers

* The dog gets so good at ignoring the "flyer" during the early marks that she ignores it, or loses intensity, when it's actually time to watch the flyer.

I'll give this drill a try for a few days and see what happens. Hopefully, at the minimum, no irreversible harm.

LL&L

Remote singles plus land and water blinds

Cheltenham, MD

Yesterday, in Laddie's first field trial (Qual stake) of the year, Laddie's marking, once his strong suit, was so poor on a 210y memory-bird that, even though Laddie did not need to be handled, he was one of the only dogs not to be called back to the land blind.

I see this as, once again, the curse of not having a field trial group to train with.  The fact is that, as simple and routine a triple as was featured in that first series, as much like the triples most field trial dogs see several times a week in their training, Laddie has only seen two or three such triples in the last YEAR.

I'm renewing my efforts to address that deficit.  But today did not achieve that goal. I got up early this dreary, damp, chilly Sunday morning and brought Laddie to the superb training property in Cheltenham, hoping that perhaps I'd find a training group that would let us join them. But the gate was locked on arrival, and even though we stayed two hours, no other trainer ever showed up. So as usual, we were on our own.

I began by running Laddie on three land blinds, taking advantage of the mounds, strips of cover, tree groupings, and slopes to give him some challenges we don't have available on our local fields.  He handled nicely.

Next I decided to try what I'll call a remote single.  As simple as it was, it's not something we've ever run before. But I tried Laddie on a short one and he understood immediately, so we did several more at 180-220y distances.

To run a remote single: Place a lining pole in a visible location you've selected as the start line. Walk with the dog, perhaps throwing fun bumpers or playing tug, out to the area where you want to throw the mark. Show the dog your starter pistol, bring the dog to heel facing the lining pole, use some new cue such as "remote mark" rather than "dead bird", and send the dog with "back". If necessary handle the dog to the lining pole, but this was rarely necessary with Laddie in the eight or ten remote singles we ran today.

When the dog arrives at the lining pole, blow sit whistle. When the dog sits and faces you, call out "sit, mark," just as you would if you were standing beside him about to run him on a mark.  Fire the pistol and throw the mark. Face the dog, so that your posture provides no directional information, and call the dog's name using the same inflection as a send from the line.  If things go right, the dog launches and runs the mark, picks up the bumper or bird, and brings it to you as the thrower.  In theory you can help, like any thrower, if the dog needs it, though that never happened today.

I'm not necessarily recommending remote singles to other trainers. All sorts of things could go wrong. But for Laddie, I think remote singles may be superior to using a Bumper Boy and stickman for several reasons, and they're certainly a lot faster to set up.

For today's remote singles, I didn't have any birds with me, but I used a black bumper because I wanted Laddie to deal with limited visibility on the throw and an invisible target on the outrun, a better simulation of some of the marks we get in competition than using white bumpers.  All my throwing bumpers do have streamers on them, however.

Today's results with this new kind of marking practice were promising. On the first mark, Laddie understood the game but needed more of a hunt than I wanted, perhaps the result of too much of the kind of approximate marking that's reasonable with a "retired" mark, like those he sees so often when we run poorman multiples.  But with a gunner standing there, I feel that he should generally be able to take a perfect line, needing a small hunt only if the fall is in an unusual position, such as at the bottom of a slope on an angle-in from the gunner.

And by the end if the day, Laddie's marking had bounced back and he was running those great lines I've always expected of him. The last remote single today was at 210y, and the line required the dog to climb uphill thru some rough terrain when an easy, unobstructed, and obvious path a little to the right would have brought Laddie to the wrong side of the thrower (me).  Laddie took a laser-straight line to the fall, wrapping up a nice session.

By the way, midway thru the training, despite the near-freezing temps we've been having at night recently, and the fact that our morning temp had only reached 42, Laddie decided to go swimming at one point, apparently to cool off.

Accordingly, I ran a couple of the remote singles so that they featured short swims, and I also ran Laddie on a Qual-like on-and-off-the-point water blind.  He vocalized on the blind, but if you set aside the yelping, he handled great.  I'm afraid that's who this dog is.

I'm thinking of entering Laddie in another trial in a couple of weeks. If we go, I hope he marks the way he was starting to today.

LL&L

Is barking a behavior?

After many months of trying to find a way to cast Laddie during a water blind without him vocalizing, I have finally come to the conclusion that Laddie does not comprehend barking as an operant (voluntary) behavior.

This is consistent with other vocalizing I have worked on with both Laddie and Lumi before him, in Lumi's case, barking while backing up as a freestyle move.

And perhaps more importantly, I've concluded that trying to train the dog to perform a desired behavior, while suppressing the vocalizing that has come to accompany the behavior, runs the risk of damaging performance of the desired behavior without even suppressing the barking, other than if the behavior itself becomes suppressed.

I'm not talking about vocalizing at the line. I suspect -- I'm not sure, but I suspect -- that that can be suppressed, especially if dealt with early in the dog's career, by taking the dog off the line instantly any time she barks, with 100% consistency.  At least I don't see the dog having some other, desired behavior suppressed by that approach.  I feel it would be safe to try, worst case being that the dog could never figure out why she was being taken off the line sometimes.

But I have repeatedly tried various versions of separating the correct response to a cast, with the vocalizing that accompanied it, only to see Laddie become increasing uncertain whether to move at all when cast.  If vocalizing is less than desirable, "ignoring" a cast is disastrous.  I do not believe a trainer can afford for the dog to have any doubt in his mind whatever whether to take a cast.

So is there any solution to the vocalizing? Perhaps.  Here's an approach I had some success with today.

The general idea is to train the behavior itself, adding some element that removes the dog's inclination to bark. After that version is well trained, slowly, gradually, fade the extra element.

Here's today's example of the concept. I placed a duck (highly desirable retrieval article) at the edge of the shore, letting Laddie see me do so from the start line we would be using up the shore from there. Then I walked halfway back to him and threw an orange bumper well out into the water. Returning to Laddie, I lined him up to pick up the duck.

Then I sent him, and he ran along the shoreline toward the duck. At the halfway point, I stopped him with the whistle and cast him into the water toward the bumper.  That's a cast Laddie will take without vocalizing, because her can see the bumper.  After he was a few feet into the water, I stopped him again and cast him back to the duck.  This again was a cast Laddie could take without vocalizing, since he could see the duck or at least had a clear memory that it was there.

Hooray, Laddie just performed a difficult water-handling maneuver involving two casts that would normally be accompanied by vocalizing, but without a sound.

We repeated this several times, always sending Laddie initially toward the bird, both targets always known and more or less visible. Sometimes I let Laddie  finish the original outrun and bring back the bird. Sometimes I let him complete the cast to the bumper.  And sometimes I cast him twice, first over, then back, much as you might need to do in an advanced on-and-off-the-point blind retrieve.  With the known and visible targets, all of that could be done without vocalizing.

But the bird wasn't that visible from the distance. And neither was the bumper if I threw it out far enough and the current carried it even further.  Increasingly, Laddie was taking his casts on faith that the article must be where he had seen it propelled toward. And also that it must be there because it's been in that same location throughout the season.

I ended the session with one send toward the bird's location even though no bird was planted. At the halfway point, I stopped Laddie and sent him "over" to the bumper, far out in the water and possibly not visible to Laddie from shore.  I had laid the groundwork for the double-cast maneuver with the final target not visible, and no vocalizing. That was enough for today.

But I can imagine that on another day, in the same or another location, I will eventually be able to call for the double-cast maneuver without a bumper in the water, as long (initially) as Laddie thinks a bumper is still out there, he just can't see it because it has drifted too far out to see from shore.

And then, perhaps someday, all that practicing of that maneuver, increasingly with invisible targets, will enable Laddie to execute that maneuver in a trial, where there really isn't a bumper out in the water, and he can't see the blind till he gets to it, all without vocalizing. Not because he learned to suppress the barking per se, but because he learned to perform the maneuver without barking.

LL&L