Hunting/Retrieving
Beautiful day, beautiful site very near PCA. We worked mainly with bumpers but had a few ducks and pigeons from the freezer. Grace Blair has a huge trailer, that she and Jac Harbour traveled across the country in, with a pop-out dog and pony show. We-maybe 15 of us-sat in a semicircle in front of her marquee while Jac and Grace lectured us on all manner of subjects-health, safety, role of soundness, training techniques and goals,swimming, equipment, and above all how how training poodles to hunt is different from train labs.
Time goes fast when you are having fun it was almost noon before we worked our dogs. Graces and Jac's dogs started with a beautiful demo of working blinds, singles and doubles on land. Then they gave the pups and newbie poos some bird encouragement-showed them how much fun chasing and retrieving a pigeon can be. Next was a pair of singles at about 50 yards for the started dogs. The star was Joyce's Tally who made two nice retrieves to hand. Wicket made one and dropped one but the high point of the whole day was Jac's quiet advice how to come to the line and get your dog to mark-wonderful stuff from a trainer with great intuition of other dogs. Then came demos of "working a pile or a line" using lots of bumpers in a field in various distributions to essentially get your dog to take directions from you. Very much like the utility exercises but demanding much deeper understanding as well as attention from the dog. Watson also marked well and came in with the duck but dropped it a bit short-Jac worked with Carolyn on this and with the other dogs on the problems each had. Lunch-a chance to ask Grace and Jac a million questions-and then to the water. Again Grace and Jac showed us how it needs to be done and also why straight fronts are to be eschewed in hunting dogs-they don't have the reach to swim powerfully and are working very hard to keep their heads up-not much fun for them to tote a bigs duck across a lake (I had never even understood what a straight front looks like but now I have a feel for it). I can now see that Wicket's front is a little straighter than Watson's (but not too bad) and that he is working a little harder when he swims (I had always thought Watson was just lazy). The very large pond/lake had a peninsula and we had a bumper thrower out there to throw along the peninsula. The dogs had to swim across-about 50 yards-climb out, get the bumper, and swim back. This was hard as it would seem reasonable to a poodle to run back along the bank, but it was blocked by a river and a long way around. So Wicket ran the bank and Jac whispered to me to take off away from the pond and keep going, which I did. Wicket then jumped in and swam back and I was waiting near the shore to take the bumper from him. What a great training technique-pressure until he does the right thing and then immediate reward and finally a party on the bank when he hands me the bumper. Watson had a similar experience. Finally, a bumper had drifted WAY (well, maybe 75 yards) out into the pond and Wicket was marking it and whining-Grace asked if I wanted to send him and, of course I did-(who would pass up a chance to say that their retriever pulled the bacon out of the fire for the Cosmic and Tuderose dogs? ;}. Wicket barreled out there and brought it right in!
My conclusions:
- 1. H/R is the hardest training challenge I have encountered
and also the most interesting.
2. Grace and Jac are really talented trainers and field handlers, and I would encourage more of you to come and see next time-even if you don't do H/R you would learn a lot about training, (esp. if you are doing Utility).
3. Down the road-if I am sure I can't get by with operant conditioning and pressure in other forms-I might consider an E-collar but if and only if it is done with an expert trainer.
4. Many dog activites originate in hunting-lots and lots of things about how we handle, train, and relate to our dogs become clearer when you participate with them in hunting, even mock hunting. There is (almost) nothing W&W would rather be doing. However, it is going to take a while to get ready for a hunt test!
5. This was a wonderful way to spend a day with your dog.
Tom Reese