Obedience: the foundation of retriever training

Imagine that you are building your dream home.  You have the best materials to work with.  You have your ideal design plan, and you can picture, in your mind, what your home will look like, when your dream home is finished.  Now imagine that it's time to pour the cement for the foundation. When the mixer truck arrives, the driver examines the mix and informs you that it's off; that there is too much sand in the mix.  The driver tells you that he can take the truck back and get a fresh, correctly-mixed batch, but it is too late for another delivery today.  It's Friday, which means that, now, you will have to wait until Monday. You are chomping at the bit to get the foundation down so you can start framing.  The driver seeing your anxiousness says the load of cement he has now, will "probably" be okay.  All you can think of is living in your new home, so you say, "okay, let's pour it."

Monday comes, the cement looks fine, so, very excitedly, you start framing the house.  A couple of weeks later, after you have finished the house's lower level, and are preparing to start the second story, you discover a large crack in the foundation.  Also, as a result of the crack, that portion of he foundation has sunk lower than the rest.  You can't take the framing apart and start over, so you jack up the framing and shim it up to make it level.  As you work on completing your home, you have several more issues related to the weak foundation.  You keep patching and shimming because that's all you can do.  Even after your dream home is complete, you find yourself all too frequently fixing problems directly related to your not waiting two days to pour the correct batch of cement.  This may seem like a long story to make a point, but the point is, if you don't lay the proper foundation for your dog's training, when he is young and most mentally trainable, you will spend the rest of the dog's life, either constantly trying to fix inadequate behavior, or living with it.  

The most universal mistake made by dog owners/trainers/handlers is to rush through the obedience part of the dog's training regimen.  The fact is: OBEDIENCE TRAINING IS BORING,REPETITIOUS, AND TEDIOUS.  It's too enticing to rush past obedience to the part where your dog can sit on a whistle at 300 yards (on land or in water) and take hand casts to a blind, or to have your dog do triple and quad retrieves over and through any type of terrain or ground cover.  That's the fun part.  But, the fact is, you'll never get to the fun part, if you don't do the boring part first.  So, if you are not good with delayed gratification, either have a professional do all of the basic training with your retriever, or forget even owning one, even if it is just for a pet, because you'll be continually trying to patch up your dog's performance, down the line, and that's anything but fun.

The 3 primary obedience responses you want from your dog are: sit, here, and heel.  Sit is important  because it is the position from which most other skills begin and end.  At the sit position, facing you, you command the dog's attention, which is necessary when you are preparing to deliver a hand signal, when casting to a blind.  Sit, facing forward, away from you, is necessary so the dog can focus on shot birds or thrown marks.  It's the starting position from which you direct the dog on blind retrieves.  Sit is the position your dog should be, whether he is waiting in your duck blind or honoring the working dog in a hunt test or field trial.  If your dog cannot sit on command and remain sitting until you release him, you will be faced with such serious issues as creeping and breaking, which, if ingrained, are very difficult to correct.

The "here" command is another basic, but critical command.  It is not only essential, if you expect to get your dog to bring the bird or training bumper back to you, it can also be essential to the safety of the dog.  Being able to call your dog back to you under any circumstance can mean preventing him from running out in a busy street or road to get hit by a car. It can mean stopping your dog from running up to a stray and getting into a potentially injurious dogfight, or stop him from sparring with a skunk.  It means that you can get your dog to come to you, whatever the need or circumstance.

The third foundation command is "heel."  Heel means that the dog will be at the desired position by your side, whether sitting or walking.  This position can vary, depending upon the preference of the handler.  Some prefer the dog be slightly ahead of the handler's near leg.  Some prefer the dog's head to be in line with the leg.  The standard, and most common position, is the dog's shoulder in line with the handler's leg.  Whatever the position, the dog should be able to have a clear forward 180-degree field of vision.  Heel is the position from which you will send your dog on marks and blinds about 90% of the time.  The other 10% being "remote releases," which are becoming more common in hunt tests and field trials, and also, in hunting situations, where the dog is positioned to wait, some distance from the duck or goose blind.  Heel is also an important command, when repositioning a dog which has crept or broken from the handler's side.  Heel can eventually encompass all three commands (here, heel and sit) into one, when the dog is away from the handler.  For the advanced dog, "heel" can be used to help "steer" the dog's head and body, when lining up on a blind or a gunner.

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 This week's training set-up was done at the northwest corner of our usual training area, at the Kansas Coliseum.  The concept is a long-short double, with the short mark as the memory bird.  The long, left-hand mark, will pull the dog away from the memory mark, while the wind will push the dog away from the memory mark.  The set-up looks simple, but you may find that your dog will have trouble with the short memory mark, especially if you retire the thrower.

 In the early to intermediate stages of training dogs on single marks, the distance to the mark is stretched further and further.   This is a continuation of lengthening of lines taught in pattern blinds.  Therefore, the dogs become habituated to finding birds and bumpers at lengthy distances.  An error in training that often occurs, is going from lengthy single retrieves directly to lengthy multiple retrieves.  Thus, when the dog is faced with a multiple retrieve which includes one or more long marks and a short mark, especially a short memory mark, the dog is likely to surge past the short mark and hunt too deep, resulting in either a long, fruitless hunt, a switch to the long mark, or the necessity for the dog to be handled to the short mark.  

To properly train for long-short marking set-ups, simplify things for the dog by running the short mark first, as a single, then go to the double.  You can also reverse the order of the marks, with the short mark being the go bird.  The important thing is to keep mixing up the long and short marks in your multiple mark set-ups, so that the dog doesn't get into a habit of always hunting long or short.  Ideally, if a dog does run past the short mark, he should start circling back until he finds the mark.

We also ran a blind on the outside of the marks.  The concept of the blind is the pull of the marks; the push of the wind; the temptation to pull over to run the road, parallel to the line to the blind, and the barriers presented by having to cross two paved roads.  It is a dog's natural tendency to take the path of least resistance.  Roads, or any paths where there is little or no cover, present a strong temptation.  If you run hunt tests or field trials, you will often see set-ups where the dog will be presented with the temptation to deviate off line to run down a road or mowed area. Note: you will also want to run this set-up when the wend is coming from the left. This creates a push from the wind, toward the marks, as well as the pull of both marks, away from the blind. It creates a situations where the dog can have a strong urge to switch off the blind and go back to the area of the mark falls.

In the next article, we'll look at a set-up we did a few weeks ago, which utilized the concept of the road barrier.  None of the dogs that ran it successfully overcame the barrier of the road, until the set-up was simplified.  

Upcoming Events in the Wichita, Ks Area:

Fun Meet
Saturday, 8/29/09, the Sunflower Retriever Club will be having a fun meet near Cheney Lake.  We will be setting up tests similar to those you might see in a hunt test or field trial.  Anyone interested in training your dog, whether it be for hunting or competing, puppy or adult, is welcome to participate or observe.  For directions and time, e-mail the author at kmandmoose@yahoo.com.

Field Trial
The Sunflower Retriever Club will hold its annual field trial, October 9,10,11 (tentatively at Hazelton, Ks. Watch this article for further information)

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