# AKC Directed Retrieve



## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

So, I am ready to start placing glove #2 into the training mix for Faelan's directed retrieve. I was watching ‘Obedience Mary’s Way – From Novice to Crufts’ and was struck with her simplicity for training scent cloths – she doubles up her cloths and places a coaster or smallish plaque in between the layers on the wrong cloths. This discourages her dogs from picking up the incorrect one. I thought I might try something similar for our directed retrieve work as we move into this phase and beyond.

Now Faelan has proven he is completely capable of tearing scent articles off a board and being very proud of his determination to get that article back to me so I somehow doubt he would have any issues bring back a glove with a small amount of weight inside, … but … I do really like the idea of self-correcting wrong retrieves – I could ‘no’ him or ‘Un Uh’ or even put a leash on him but I honestly, I don’t want to LOL 

So, I was thinking of putting grommets into the gloves and staking down the incorrect gloves with ‘C’ hooks.


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## Titan1 (Jan 19, 2010)

Titan was taught on a flexi leash. That way I could control the turn and control the retrieve before he got there and then the pickup and delivery..No shaking the glove.rofl. If he locked on the wrong glove it would be a small Uh-oh... lets' do that again and I took a little more time lining him up.. but I do practice EVERY time all three gloves and make sure to do it different each time..


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## DNL2448 (Feb 13, 2009)

Sunrise said:


> she doubles up her cloths and places a coaster or smallish plaque in between the layers on the wrong cloths.


I am having trouble visualizing this, maybe because I am not familiar with the UK scent cloths. Could you expound on this a bit?

Edit to add: I wasn't done typing and stupidly hit post. Anyway, I wanted to say Faelan should exceed in whatever you do, he is such a good boy and you are a great trainer!


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

LOL - thanks! He is a great dog; his trainer though - always a work in progress 

The DVD shows a very different method than what we do  She used small squares (looked like maybe 6 x 6 inches?) of white cloth for her articles. In the lower levels, the dog is sent to get an article (cloth) that the handler has scented and the DVD showed patterns like straight lines, a big T etc with multiple cloths spaced out. They probably use 6 in trials though (possibly 5). Eventually, the dog has to retrieve an article/cloth that the judge has handled. Very different!

So, what she does is start with say 4 articles, 3 of which have been tacked to another cloth exactly the same size with a trivet/coaster/tile type thing inside the sleeve formed by them being tacked together. The correct scented cloth is not weighed down. So when the dog attempts to retrieve an incorrect cloth the weight self corrects the dog. I also found it interesting that she puts a 'tidbit' on each cloth to teach the dog to check each article out.

ETA : I found a few clips on YouTube 








 


DNL2448 said:


> I am having trouble visualizing this, maybe because I am not familiar with the UK scent cloths. Could you expound on this a bit?
> 
> Edit to add: I wasn't done typing and stupidly hit post. Anyway, I wanted to say Faelan should exceed in whatever you do, he is such a good boy and you are a great trainer!


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## Loisiana (Jul 29, 2009)

My concern with using this on gloves is if the dog goes all the way out to the glove, he doesn't know at what point he has made a mistake. Will the dog make the association of this with either marking wrong in the first place, or going off path at some point? I'd worry the dog wouldn't understand why this was the "wrong" glove and be hesitant about gloves in the future due to confusion. The difference with scent and gloves is the wrong decision with scent is made right there when they grab the wrong article, whereas with gloves, the wrong decision is made when the dog decides to head for the wrong glove which would be much sooner than before he actually can pick the article up.

That's just my dog trainer brain thinking things through, not telling you not to try it.


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

Thanks  my thinking is that Faelan is most apt to retrieve the correct glove and _possibly_ spot a second glove and try to head over (that dog can be fast like over 6 yards per second in agility) - staking the incorrect gloves down would prevent him from self rewarding since he could easily reach a second glove in less than a second.

So now he has the correct glove and is flying towards the incorrect glove - a correction might cause him to believe holding a glove in his mouth was a bad choice. 





Loisiana said:


> My concern with using this on gloves is if the dog goes all the way out to the glove, he doesn't know at what point he has made a mistake. Will the dog make the association of this with either marking wrong in the first place, or going off path at some point? I'd worry the dog wouldn't understand why this was the "wrong" glove and be hesitant about gloves in the future due to confusion. The difference with scent and gloves is the wrong decision with scent is made right there when they grab the wrong article, whereas with gloves, the wrong decision is made when the dog decides to head for the wrong glove which would be much sooner than before he actually can pick the article up.
> 
> That's just my dog trainer brain thinking things through, not telling you not to try it.


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## Titan1 (Jan 19, 2010)

Sharon if you have a flexi on you can give a gentle good boy and tiny pressure to have him turn and head straight back.The reason we do all the gloves every time we practice is... he knows he will get them all until we are done with them..So he is just waiting for direction instead of guessing which one will it be.. Does that make any sense..


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

Perfect  I will need to teach him to drive with flexi resistance but meatballs or a favorite toy should take care of that...


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

Do you practice all 3 together or split them with other exercises?


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## Titan1 (Jan 19, 2010)

Sunrise said:


> Perfect  I will need to teach him to drive with flexi resistance but meatballs or a favorite toy should take care of that...


I forgot.. I send him once for all the gloves until they are all gone.
He retrieves one. we finish spin around and set up again. The glove in my back pocket or on the ground next to one of the jumps..but I do not put it back out...In his mind it is 3 gloves each a separate game...

PS... remember the red puppy streaking away from you.....YEAH! Can I just say what a pistol.. I don't think he has slowed down yet..


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

LOL - but he should be faster now!! His legs are getting longer ROFL Feet hit ground, he heads for other places to explore Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee

Thanks


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## Stretchdrive (Mar 12, 2011)

Titan1 said:


> Titan was taught on a flexi leash. That way I could control the turn and control the retrieve before he got there and then the pickup and delivery..No shaking the glove.rofl. If he locked on the wrong glove it would be a small Uh-oh... lets' do that again and I took a little more time lining him up.. but I do practice EVERY time all three gloves and make sure to do it different each time..


Thank you so much for the reminder about the flexi. I do the gloves with Filly until they are all gone as well, but forgot all about using the flexi to be able to prevent potential problems!


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

Loisiana said:


> My concern with using this on gloves is if the dog goes all the way out to the glove, he doesn't know at what point he has made a mistake. Will the dog make the association of this with either marking wrong in the first place, or going off path at some point? I'd worry the dog wouldn't understand why this was the "wrong" glove and be hesitant about gloves in the future due to confusion. The difference with scent and gloves is the wrong decision with scent is made right there when they grab the wrong article, whereas with gloves, the wrong decision is made when the dog decides to head for the wrong glove which would be much sooner than before he actually can pick the article up.
> 
> That's just my dog trainer brain thinking things through, not telling you not to try it.


Jodie that is EXACTLY what I believe as well. 
Also -- if my dog came upon a glove, article, dumbbell, what have you, that he was commanded to retrieve, and decided not to retrieve it because it was "too heavy" -- um, hello -- refusal to retrieve = correction.


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## Loisiana (Jul 29, 2009)

Stretchdrive said:


> Thank you so much for the reminder about the flexi. I do the gloves with Filly until they are all gone as well, but forgot all about using the flexi to be able to prevent potential problems!


 
Ha, Flip spent his first year of training gloves on a flexi. I didn't trust him not to be a glove shaker, so I didn't give him a chance to find out it was a possiblity! I engrained grab, spin, return to me into that little brain!


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

You have kind of missed the point.. the weighting was to prevent the dog from picking up a wrong article, not to proof a retrieve refusal for a correction opportunity; the dog was not commanded to retrieve but rather to find it.





K9-Design said:


> Jodie that is EXACTLY what I believe as well.
> Also -- if my dog came upon a glove, article, dumbbell, what have you, that he was commanded to retrieve, and decided not to retrieve it because it was "too heavy" -- um, hello -- refusal to retrieve = correction.


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

Faelan had his first session with a flexi tonight - I used a knotted sock to teach him he could drive on out with some light resistance - no problem  Now I have to get my co ordination together to handle the flexi properly LOL



Loisiana said:


> Ha, Flip spent his first year of training gloves on a flexi. I didn't trust him not to be a glove shaker, so I didn't give him a chance to find out it was a possiblity! I engrained grab, spin, return to me into that little brain!


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## Loisiana (Jul 29, 2009)

Sunrise said:


> Faelan had his first session with a flexi tonight - I used a knotted sock to teach him he could drive on out with some light resistance - no problem  Now I have to get my co ordination together to handle the flexi properly LOL


 
That's one thing I did with Flip as a puppy...trained everything on a flexi originally so he would be used to it. I didn't do that with the previous dogs and then when it came to a point where it could be a useful tool they were all stressed out about the resistance. I forgot about that, I guess I need to add that to my "things to do with a puppy" list LOL


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

Sunrise said:


> You have kind of missed the point.. the weighting was to prevent the dog from picking up a wrong article, not to proof a retrieve refusal for a correction opportunity; the dog was not commanded to retrieve but rather to find it.


I know, but unless the coaster or whatever it is weighs 10 lbs and the dog literally cannot pick it up, it's the dog *deciding not to retrieve* if he doesn't pick it up, especially if you are using the same weights in teaching the *AKC glove* exercise. In training gloves you are not asking the dog to find it you are telling him to retrieve it. There's no choice or decision on the dog's part. It may work fine in the UK scent discrimination (much like our tie-down method) but applying it to the directed retrieve with gloves, it's a whole nuther ball of wax, a completely different concept to the dog.

That's why I think letting him get all the way to the glove before finding out he's gone to the wrong one is really poor timing and unfair to the dog. He never gets how to do it right, right when he makes the mistake.


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

In Faelan's case, the very first time wasn't an issue  No stress at all. But I will do it a few more sessions with fun things just to be sure.

This is a different approach for me, but I'll try it. My current dogs are used to figuring out what is the right, rewardable action, not really prevented from making a mistake but I think he'll do fine in this case. 

I took video (of course) and I had more issues with it LOL Where to put it, when to move it etc 



Loisiana said:


> That's one thing I did with Flip as a puppy...trained everything on a flexi originally so he would be used to it. I didn't do that with the previous dogs and then when it came to a point where it could be a useful tool they were all stressed out about the resistance. I forgot about that, I guess I need to add that to my "things to do with a puppy" list LOL


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