# Too much shopping



## Alaska7133 (May 26, 2011)

So many bumpers too little time! 
How do you stop them from shopping?
I'd almost rather a smaller pile, it takes less time for her to decide. Is this a female thing? I ask because my boy Reilly has no problem making a quick decision and going with the first one. Lucy generally picks up the oldest nastiest looking one! So much for being a prissy girl!


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## FTGoldens (Dec 20, 2012)

Alaska7133 said:


> So many bumpers too little time!
> How do you stop them from shopping?
> I'd almost rather a smaller pile, it takes less time for her to decide. Is this a female thing? I ask because my boy Reilly has no problem making a quick decision and going with the first one. Lucy generally picks up the oldest nastiest looking one! So much for being a prissy girl!


Just use only old nasty bumpers, then any one of them will do! [Just kidding, of course.]

It's not a female thing. Has she been FF'd?

FTGoldens


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## Ripley16 (Jan 26, 2012)

Haha that sounds exactly like Ripley! She probably has about 25 toys lying around the house, yet she always picks the smelly, dirty, old toys to bring to me and present them as gifts. I feel like she loves the stinky and dirty ones so much because she has just wore it in!


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

NOT shopping is a trained behavior -- not luck
And no it is not a girl thing 
Shopping is eliminated in the ear pinch to pile procedure and later reinforced with the collar.
Sounds like you need a refresher course. 
I like to use a long line, send them to the pile. If they do not immediately pick up a bumper, I yank them away from the pile, they typically come back because they think they are being recalled. Oh contrare. Dog is then ear pinched all the way to the pile. If they immediately pick up a bumper but then drop it to select another, same thing, yank away from pile then ear pinch to it. This gets the message to them pretty darn quickly. Later on this is all streamlined by continuous pressure to the pile until a bumper is in their mouth and then reinforced with a HERE-nick if they shop.
Having said all that -- Fisher is the world's worst shopper -- or should I say -- he has a very particular hierarchy of bumper preference, so it takes looking at all of theme to select the correct ones  He did pile work long after learning articles and while still actively showing in obedience so I decided that is one battle I am willing to lose in the war. Slater was taught not to shop very early on in training (in fact -- it was that step that earned my ankle a 3rd degree rope burn that took 5 months to heal and still a big scar 4 years later.....)


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## EvanG (Apr 26, 2008)

Alaska7133 said:


> So many bumpers too little time!
> How do you stop them from shopping?
> I'd almost rather a smaller pile, it takes less time for her to decide. Is this a female thing? I ask because my boy Reilly has no problem making a quick decision and going with the first one. Lucy generally picks up the oldest nastiest looking one! So much for being a prissy girl!


More sequential training. First, you have too many bumpers for a dog just starting force to pile. I start with only 3 (what I call a "mini-pile") and those bumpers are separated by at least 2 feet. Second, there is no rope on the dog in your picture for control. A rope eliminates a yelling match when he's shopping.










This pile work is done at a very close distance for the sake of maximum control with a minimum of corrective pressure. Once the dog is proficient at promptly going to the pile, fetching the very first bumper he comes to, and efficiently returning to heel to deliver it on command, we move to a 9-bumper pile, and sequentially extend distance while maintaining those same standards.










Note how the bumpers are set in a 9- bumper pile. It's for those standards, and for the trainer's ease of training and maintaining those standards. The word "pile" is a misnomer. The bumpers should not touch each other. There is much more to this, of course. But that's why people who are successful tend to follow a proven program of training in developing efficient retrievers.

"There is little reason to expect a dog to be more precise than you are." ~ Rex Carr

EvanG


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## Alaska7133 (May 26, 2011)

Here was the set up. I didn't say in my first post. This was my first "class" I took with our retriever club. It was a totally different group of people than I had ever worked with. We were indoors in an arena, which was weird being indoors. We were working on 3 handed casting. At the time I had done 3 handed casting maybe 3 or 4 times with Lucy, so we were pretty inexperienced. The club had laid out huge piles of bumpers which I normally didn't do with Lucy and had stuck to only one bumper at a time in the few times I had done 3 handed casting. So here we were in a class with tons of people watching, and she shops! I wanted to melt down since she was taking so long. I did do a here nick here, it did bring her back with a bumper. It also did make me work harder with her on casting later in the week. At least my dog wasn't trying to pick up 4 bumpers in her mouth like some of the dogs! So I guess that's a different problem. "Class" set ups are always a bit awkward, especially when you are totally inexperienced and not quite sure how to correct your dog in front of a group of people. What some people find ok others do not. For example whether to use a collar in this situation or not. Thank you for your thoughts.


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## EvanG (Apr 26, 2008)

Thanks for the details. I don't begin 3-handed casting until I've gotten the dog completely through FF, including force to pile. That, of course, includes the nice clean "no shopping" habits for reasons that should now be obvious.

Also, when doing 3-handed casting I use only one bumper at each cast location. No piles. And it is also done on a rope.










Clean, well controlled, very little distance. Most trainers get nearly all of that wrong, and the dogs pay for it.

EvanG


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## Alaska7133 (May 26, 2011)

Thanks Evan,
Sometimes when you go to a class 1/2 the people are beyond what they are teaching and the other 1/2 haven't reached that point. I think this is where I was, not advanced enough to do this exercise. But it's hard to know until you give it a try. Since you teach a lot of seminars I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new.


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## FTGoldens (Dec 20, 2012)

K9-Design said:


> I like to use a long line, send them to the pile. If they do not immediately pick up a bumper, I yank them away from the pile, they typically come back because they think they are being recalled. Oh contrare. Dog is then ear pinched all the way to the pile. If they immediately pick up a bumper but then drop it to select another, same thing, yank away from pile then ear pinch to it. This gets the message to them pretty darn quickly.


Yep, well said. If FF'd, this is the remedy for shopping. They figure out the proper behavior pretty quickly.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

I do think that dogs who were trained on utility articles prior to doing field tend to shop the pile. Tito is VERY good at coming back with the last bumper that was put out, every time. It has the strongest scent.


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## EvanG (Apr 26, 2008)

FTGoldens said:


> Yep, well said. If FF'd, this is the remedy for shopping. They figure out the proper behavior pretty quickly.


Yep, that's exactly what happens in mini pile before we involve too many bumpers or too much distance.

EvanG


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