# Hunt and Field Training Plans for the week of April 29 to May 5



## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

What's on the plate for this week?
I'm trying to put together a training session here on Wednesday with as many people as possible. 
Thursday we go to Dan's.
Everyone else?


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## gdgli (Aug 24, 2011)

hotel4dogs said:


> What's on the plate for this week?
> I'm trying to put together a training session here on Wednesday with as many people as possible.


Good luck.


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## gdgli (Aug 24, 2011)

I have found four fields in the city. I set up in one yesterday and did some drills. I was working on handling in T. How nice of the city to have freshly mowed the field for me!

Of course, this is stealth training. I set up, spend a few minutes, and get out.
I don't need to get the ticket. Also, with the price of gas, I can't run to my usual training area---it costs me $25-$30 each time I make that trip.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

Good to see you GDGLI, you haven't been around much. Hope Buffy is doing well.


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## ashleylp (Jul 23, 2011)

We have slowly worked our way back up to FTP... on a 3 bumper pile right now. This time around his enthusiasm is so much stronger and he's doing great. I bumped up the praise x 10 and started allowing little mistakes now and again along the way. Usually I am one to strive for perfection but I think prior to this, when his enthusiasm was too low, I was putting him in that state with my energy... not collar pressure, but mental pressure. Now he's a much bigger fan of the bumper and is doing MUCH better.

I was wondering when/how you all start casting. Someone mentioned to me that they start when the dog begins FTP? I haven't tried with Remy. I know he won't understand the hand signals AT ALL... how do you teach this?


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## GoldenSail (Dec 30, 2008)

Been in a funk last week, but time to jump back on the band wagon this week. Plan to go out today and do some blinds and long marks. Friend and I are going to the Pros on Wednesday where Scout will be starting force to water. I expect she'll take it really well and will pickup fast on that one. Hope to be on swim-by here very shortly. Pete (and I am paraphrasing here) thinks Scout will be a PITA with swim-by, but that she is a dog that must have it.


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## gdgli (Aug 24, 2011)

hotel4dogs said:


> Good to see you GDGLI, you haven't been around much. Hope Buffy is doing well.


Thank you. I have been spending a lot of time training her locally. Also, I attended the Judges Seminar and am now looking to apprentice.


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## GoldenSail (Dec 30, 2008)

Had fun training today. With all this rain had some nice mushy ground for the dog to run on. I set-up one mark and two blinds. She pinned the mark, and the first blind she nailed in one go. Second blind was a little trickier and involved running across a short ditch of water which set her off track. Of course, she shortly saw the bumper and slipped a whistle sit. 

That's when I noticed she was not responding as well to the collar. I had to up the juice today and it shocked me--normally a 2 med-2-high is the limit but I wasn't getting much with whistle sits going up to a 3 and I know the collar was working. Odd.


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

GoldenSail said:


> Had fun training today. With all this rain had some nice mushy ground for the dog to run on. I set-up one mark and two blinds. She pinned the mark, and the first blind she nailed in one go. Second blind was a little trickier and involved running across a short ditch of water which set her off track. Of course, she shortly saw the bumper and slipped a whistle sit.
> 
> That's when I noticed she was not responding as well to the collar. I had to up the juice today and it shocked me--normally a 2 med-2-high is the limit but I wasn't getting much with whistle sits going up to a 3 and I know the collar was working. Odd.


Hi! 
So a while ago on RTF someone asked a question about their dog during FTP, that they were having no luck increasing momentum but if they went up on the juice the dog would freak. He could get no higher than a medium 2. 
A well known pro trainer who I really respect, answered him and said of the literally hundreds of retrievers she has trained for upper level hunt tests, 90% of them work on a 3. 5% work on a 2 and 5% on a 4. She stated that when owners come to her and say "I'm only on a 2 but am not getting the results I want but if I go up the dog melts" -- THE DOG IS FAKING IT. 
You will find that now that you are into "real" setups with marks and blinds and the dog is getting more confident, it is going to take a bigger correction to change her mind. Add that to the fact that most dogs run on a 3, and I think it's time to bump Scout up to running on a 3.

OK so we had two training sessions today. Met with 4 other people at Lazy J and did a land setup with a triple and double blind. The triple was pretty cool, no mark longer than 60 yards but the dog had to go through a lot of "junk" to get there. One blind was very short (maybe 30 yards) the other longer (100 yards) but past the area of the old fall. The more advanced dogs threw the triple then picked up the short blind first before getting any marks. I did the triple with Slater then picked up the blinds. He did a lovely job on the marks, the longer blind he handled well at the beginning but I ended up giving two sit-nick-sit corrections for cast refusals, the first one a medium 3 the second (a digback after the 1st) a high 3. He then took the perfect cast right to the pile. Up until recently I have only used attrition for cast refusals but I need to start drawing the strings in a bit. Slater's reaction was to whine while I lined him up to repeat the blind, which he look off after like a bat out of hell and lined. LOL collar pressure = try harder
I was quite pleased as the setup looked easy but several of the dogs had problems particularly with the go bird and the long blind that was deep of it.

OK training session #2 was tonight, I actually just went with my friend to help his dog on a pattern blind. This dog has a master pass but we have taken all the way back to pile work because of many lingering, nagging problems that have turned into enormous hangups on blinds. We've successfully tackled loopy sits, slow sits, no-going and slow/daudling back casts (and yes -- as you can imagine -- the dog was allowed too many very bad habits for way too long). Anyways we graduated off T field last week and started building a pattern blind on Friday, and went out again today. So here's what happened. The dog actually did the work on the pattern blind just fine, and on the way back I asked the owner if he wanted me to throw a diversion bumper for the dog to fetch like a fun bumper. No problem, so I did, and he sent him for the bumper. The dog got about halfway to it and veered right and to me, appeared to be hunting around for it. All of a sudden the dog starts voraciously eating something off the ground and the owner takes off after him yelling. The dog has a piece of pizza and is frantically gulping it down like his life depended on it! The owner is at this point wrestling with the dog who is simultaneously trying to gulp the pizza and clench his jaws, it was amazing. Owner finally wrenches the pizza out of the dog's mouth, at that point I took action, grabbed the dog by the ear and pinched him HARD all the way to the bumper which was laying about 10 feet away. The dog squawked all the way to the bumper (honestly I was afraid he would bite me) and then refused to pick it up as he stood over it, I had to shove it in his mouth. IT WAS INSANE. I had the owner toss the bumper and earpinch the dog to it, and the dog didn't even make a peep. I then found the leftover piece of pizza, threw the bumper in front of it and had the owner send the dog. He picked up the bumper but eyeballed the pizza. Next I threw the bumper past the pizza, sent dog and he gobbled up the f#$%@$ing pizza! I told the owner to throw the bumper and earpinch him to it, and squeeze hard. The dog made a squeek and the owner let go of his ear and petted him! OH BROTHER. 
Anyways it was probably a stupid fight to pick with the dog (how often are you going to run across a rogue piece of pizza) but I was absolutely flabbergasted on how frantic he was over it and how he completely blew off the bumper to eat it! 
We ended up sending the dog to the back pile one more time after this, just to sorta push the reset button, and he did fine (thank god).
I DO NOT GET PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS.


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## GoldenSail (Dec 30, 2008)

Thanks Anney, I had that thought today that she might need to be bumped up because of her confidence might be increasing. Well, either way she needs to be bumped up. I was just surprised because when we first started running blinds a 2-med or 2 high was a little hot for her and it showed. Now...not so much anymore. Time to make some changes.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

Anney, your pizza story cracked me up. 
Lisa, I had to bump Tito up, too. I even told Dan the collar wasn't working, so we got the little lightbulb tester device out that came with it, and it's working fine. He's just not impressed by the collar unless it's turned up pretty high.


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## hollyk (Feb 21, 2009)

The farther away from you the more likely I will blow off your correction thing, I don't get either. A 2 corrects at 100 feet but she will blow though a 3 at 125??


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## Radarsdad (Apr 18, 2011)

Distance erodes control. Some do get used to correction at the lower levels. Gunner is on 3 and about to go up again if he shows me the reward of disobedience is worth more than the correction.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

very well put.



Radarsdad said:


> the reward of disobedience is worth more than the correction.


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## sterregold (Dec 9, 2009)

Uh huh! Many dogs have a level at which they work routinely, but then have to have a sterner correction in situations where their desire overrides their obedience. Wnter is normally a 4 (although he played me for some time and I was running him on a 2 until Sandie said he was playing me!), Butch is a real 2 (he's a softy), Bonnie and Breeze are both regular 3's, but Breeze has been up to a 4, and Miss Bon-bon went all the way up to a 6 one day when she really wanted to do something her way and was determined to win.

PS Anney--I waish the pizza event had been caught on film....


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## Jige (Mar 17, 2011)

I had an awesome night at training last night. Thye had set up four runs not sure on the distance since they never pace them off. Depending on where your dog was at in training you could run singles, doubles, or a triple. 2 had bumpers and 2 had dead ducks. They also had 2 blinds set up. We had LOTS of dogs last night I think there were around 20 or so. 

I finally made to the front of the line Jige was chillin not hyped which is good he pays better attention. I sent him on a longest mark first which was a dead duck and he was spot on he did stop to look at the decoys in his line we have not worked much with decoys. He came back dropped the duck about 3ft in front of me. Now these were not fresh kill in fact I thought freeze dried when I saw them.
I ran on the shortest run next alot of the dogs were over shooting this mark but Jige again is really good with his marks and was on top it. He did his parade with the bumper tho..grrr. The last mark I did was the hardest for all the dogs. It was set up on a sm. hill but before you got to the dogs went down in a sm. valley. ALL the dogs over shot this mark some of them went way out of the AOF. I was worried BaWaaJige would have trouble so I was ready to have Megan help him but NO he marked it and ran right to it he didnt even search. I was SO proud of him.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

Good job Jige!
A little advice you didn't ask for....I would put a stop to his dropping the bird in front of you like yesterday or sooner....that is a really, really bad habit to let him get into. A lot of things are easier to prevent than they are to fix later. JMO of course.


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## Jige (Mar 17, 2011)

Thanks! We are working on hold today and the rest of the week. Yes I know this is something I cannot let slide. He doesnt get many dead birds so I happy I went last night. He does just fine with bumpers and bumpers with feathers and fresh killed birds it is when they get a little on the yucky side he balks.


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## gdgli (Aug 24, 2011)

Radarsdad said:


> Distance erodes control. Some do get used to correction at the lower levels. Gunner is on 3 and about to go up again if he shows me the reward of disobedience is worth more than the correction.


I think that a behaviorist might say that going through small increments is not as good as one big correction right away. I think that may be why some people go for a higher level right from the start. The smaller increments result in short term suppression and the behavior tends to return and the dog adapts to punishment. Using an intense punishment which suppresses the behavior and then using less intense punishment if the behavior reoccurs might be the better way to go. (My son who is fresh out of college and knows everything told me so.)


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## Radarsdad (Apr 18, 2011)

A full 3 when I need it gets his full attention right now. It changes his behavior.



> The smaller increments result in short term suppression and the behavior tends to return and the dog adapts to punishment.


That is what I call nagging.

(My son who is fresh out of college and knows everything told me so.)

I know you are happy that you have evidence all that money for college wasn't wasted


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## K9-Design (Jan 18, 2009)

Trained yesterday at Whisper Creek. First we did an angle entry drill which I felt was really successful. Need to do that about 50 more times.
Then we set up a small triple in the water, rather straight forward. It suddenly dawned on me that Slater has never done a triple in the water. Hmmm. Anyways I did the middle bird as a single and he did the triple just fine.
Highlight of the trip is, we found a really good sub shop on the way home for lunch. New tradition! LOL


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## GoldenSail (Dec 30, 2008)

Well Scout officially started water force/swim-by today. Moving up in the world. She caught on really quick, but that didn't stop her from throwing a small tantrum of shorts (protest barking, didn't want to sit, etc) but overall a big step forward. She was doing well driving into the water by the end of it...even going before I sent which he said is ok right now it just shows us that she gets it.


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## hotel4dogs (Sep 29, 2008)

We had a good training session yesterday here at my way cool dog training area, lol. We had 6 handlers with their "main" dogs, plus a couple of senior dogs that just did a quick run because it makes their day to be able to get out and fetch up a bird. The dogs all did really well, and I felt like we accomplished a lot.
Out to Dan's today, it was very hot out and Tito was really panting hard. His singles have been really great, he's marking really well, but still some issues with the double. It's getting better, but I wouldn't say it's "fixed" yet.


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## hollyk (Feb 21, 2009)

Trained early in the week with the Pro. Winter was a self employed minx on blinds. At one point Andy even said "Boy, you haven't had it this tough in a while". I believe she had a no go, scalloped, would not drive back on a back, pertended to take casts and then would just put her nose down and hunt, you name it. I swear she was having her own little test to see if I knew what to do. So in a way it was good, we had a lot of discussion about reading the dog, attrition vs correction, timing, which also led to being quized on what if scenarios. I had a bunch of information floating in my head for the drive home.
Training tomorrow with friends. Sunday HRC training day.


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## sterregold (Dec 9, 2009)

It has been a muggy and thunderstormy week her so training sessions have been short. On Wednesday did handling drills with Bonnie and then two blinds with Breeze before we got rained out. On THursday did handling drills with Bon-bon again, and then set up two marks and two blinds, and ran Breeze on a double-mark, double-blind, and did thedouble amrk with Bonnie.

Breeze is just getting her head back--she went into pseudopregnancy state with her daughter's babies in the house--she was in season 2 weeks after Desi, and once those babies were born she was just convinced she should be looking after them and got quite depressed when she realized she wasn't getting babies. Finally tried a homeopathic remedy a vet tech friend recommended and she seems to be returning to her old self.


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