More about Gundog Training.

Okay, Robin Sallie, you've totally inspired me to write about what I know of Gundog training, so here it is!

First of all, if you want to know more, here's two great books on the subject:
Positive Gun Dogs
Clicker Gundog

Secondly, 'normal' people think you're weird for doing gundog training with a Shepherd, but if you both enjoy it, why the hell not?! ;-)

I spend most of the time doing retrieves, and there's three types of retrieves:
a mark/memory is when the dog has seen the exact location of where a dummy lands after it is being thrown. Officially, the dog should find this dummy on memory and sight alone, and she should not start searching - using her nose - to find the dummy once she's in the general location. Memory comes into play when the dog is not allowed to retrieve immediately after the dummy lands, but has to remember where it is in order to retrieve it later.

a blind is when the handler and the dog have a vague idea of where the dummy has landed, and the aim is for the dog to go to the suspected dropzone, and then use her nose to find the dummy.

a directed retrieve, or casting, is when the handler knows where the dummy has landed and the dog does not. The handler then uses hand signals to direct the dog to the dropzone, and the dog then finds the dummy through nosework.

For the dog, there's basically only two kinds of retrieves; a mark/memory, or a blind. Choices are either to find it with your eyes, or to find it with your nose.

An example of a good memory is the first retrieve Luna did on Jan. 29; I tossed the dummy, she watched it land (this is the 'mark'), then I took her 186 yards away -I decide on the distance by looking at Luna and keeping in mind dog and human traffic, as long as I can tell that she knows there's a dummy back there, I can keep walking. If she looks even mildly like she's forgotten about the whole thing, I do not send her or I walk back to where I see her remembering the dummy -. Then, I turned to face the direction of the dummy, and I asked her to retrieve. Sometimes I have her Sit, sometimes not. Luna took off, and came running back immediately upon hitting the dummy. I could see where the dummy was, and she very clearly ran right to it, picked it up and came back. In other words, she did not have to search for the dummy, she knew exactly where it was. This is what a good mark/memory should look like.

A word on the color of dummies; there's green, brown, orange, white, and black-and-white dummies available. Dogs can't see green, brown or orange very well, in fact, on our last Gundog training week, my orange dummies eluded several dogs; they ran right past them, went 'huh?!' and then found it by nose. I use the orange dummies specifically so that I can see them, so that I can find them when Luna can't. If you want to make sure your dog can see the dummy well, use white or black-and-white dummies, or simply put a white sock over the dummy.

I've also numbered my dummies. I've done this so that I can find out which pattern Luna has used to find several dummies. Does she go deep, does she go wide, does she have a tendency to go right and not go left, etc. Something Luna finds hard it to go into the wind; her initial reaction is to go with the wind. But if the dummies are into the wind, then how is she going to find them?

Another tip when starting out is to use lines in the landscape to help the dog. I do most of our retrieves at this point on roads, dirt tracks, between tree lines etc. Doing retrieves on a piece of land with no lines is quite hard for new dogs. Also, try to use lots of different terrain to teach the dog not to be bothered by boundaries; from grass to dirt, from grass to tarmac to grass, across water, over fences, etc. You'd be amazed how many dogs think that going from grass to dirt couldn't possibly mean that the dummy is in the dirt, and not on the grass! Luna showed another example of this on Jan 29, when I had tossed two dummies between trees. For a while she kept going back and forth in front of the trees before she decided that no, they really had to be behind the trees!

So, this is a little bit of what I know about Gundog training, specifically the retrieves. If anyone has more questions or wants clarification, don't hesitate to ask!

Training Log for Jan 29

But first, today's weight update: 65 pounds! YES, we're finally below 70 pounds!

Now, about yesterday's retrieve session:
Weather: sunny, dry, 2.5C
Distractions: other dogs, people, one horse

Locations of all retrieves. Blue dots are dummy's, green dots are where I've released her to retrieve.

We did eleven retrieves total. A bit much, in hindsight, but she worked really well the whole time; fast, sure, stubborn. She KNEW where the dummy's were and she was gonna GET them, damnit! Way to go, Luna!

The longest retrieve was nr. 11, in the lower left corner. 241 yards/221 meters, to be exact.

The start of our walk. I'd just gotten off my bike, and this shows Luna's mood perfectly; I'm ready, I'm ready, toss one already! Let's play!

Coming in with dummy nr. 1, 186 yards.

I tossed dummy nr. 2 behind her, in the lower area.

Coming in with dummy nr. 2, 182 yards. The one horse showed up here; when I sent Luna to get this dummy, the horse was at the top of the sandy track, to the left of the tarmac.

Walking away from dummy nr. 3. She voluntarily heels all the way to the release point. Her ears are back because I'm taking a picture, without the lens in her face she looks happier.

Coming in with dummy nr. 3, 229 yards. You can see a person with a GSD in the background, she was about where Luna is in this picture when I sent her to get the dummy. She very carefully went past the person and her dog, and then took off to where she remembered the dummy to be. The drop point is behind the line of trees.

I wanted to take a picture without Luna in it, but I guess this speaks volumes; hey you, stop messin' with that camera and toss another dummy!

Again, hoping I'll tell her to 'Get It!' I tossed dummy nr. 6 behind the thorny bushes, behind Luna in this shot.

Yihaaa! Coming in with dummy nr. 6, 105 yards. This is clearly one of the dummy's that got mauled by a Labrador on our Gundog training camp two weeks ago.

And coming in with the last one, dummy nr. 11, 241 yards!

Dummy's nr. 4 & 5 were tossed between the trees, she got nr. 5 first and then, after a long search, came back with nr. 5.

Dummy's nr. 7 to 10 were again tossed between the trees. She got nr. 8 first, then nr. 9, then nr. 10. Then she searched and searched for nr. 7, but she kept going the other direction right before hitting nr. 7, so finally she came back and said, 'I don't know!' So I walked her a little closer to nr. 7 and reset her. This time she found it!

We had a great time, and I LOVE seeing how much Luna enjoys this game when it is just the two of us. She has great memory, and quite good stamina for finding several dummy's in a row. I love seeing her take off at top speed and come back at top speed!

All in all, we spent two hours in the park, including the walk and cycling to the park. Fantastic weather, but my bike is messed up now. My gears have stopped working, so it's almost as if the chain has come off. Have to remember to fix that, today, cause I need my bike tomorrow!

Training Log for Jan 26

Luna hoping to see her favorite kittycat, while playing ball in the street. Look how fat she was!

A quick note of all the retrieves we’ve done in the park today.
Weather conditions: 5C, muddy, windy.
Distractions: My mom, and our older dog Cedric

R1: Dropped it next to the gravel path leading past the park’s oldest restaurant, Luna saw this. Then I took her with me all the way to the end of the path before I lined her up and sent her to get the dummy. On her way back to me she had to pass a dog - female Rottie with a muzzle on, who ran after her a couple of meters - which she handled beautifully. She just kept right on going, only made an arc around the other dog and was all proud delivering the dummy to me. Great speed both out and back.

R2: Tossed it in the bush when she wasn’t looking. Initially she ran back to the location of the first dummy - which, for shepherd standards was FAR away - and I had to point in the dummy’s general direction and encourage her to search in the right area before she found it. She was working well, just couldn’t see the dummy even when she was right next to it - it’s orange - which I know about. So... a bit messy, but she didn’t give up and, being a shepherd, I LOVE that she ran back to where the first dummy was!

R3: Where was this.... hmmm.... oh, I remember; on the outside of a tall wire fence, between trees but a pretty open area. Again a hard place to see the dummy because the ground was brown, too. Luna saw me drop this dummy. Then, I took her away again, just continued on our walk, and my mom decided to turn left into a gravel path with heavy brush on both sides. I took Luna in here about 30 feet, from where she had no visual of the dummy or it’s general location. Then, I sent her. She went blasting off again, which I love to see because it means that she KNOWS there’s a dummy up ahead somewhere. She was away for a little while, then came back through the brush behind me, no dummy. I could tell she was still working though, just checkin’ if we hadn’t taken off without her, so I reminded her; ‘where’s the dummy?!’ Oh, right, I know! She took off again and came back almost instantly with the dummy in her mouth and along the route we’d taken. Yay! This was great; she had to work out of my sight, a good hundred meters away from me, and she did great! Whoohoo!

R4: I placed the dummy on top of a stone bench, Luna saw this and then I walked away with her. We walked about 200 meters away, and when I was ready to send her, other dogs were running around near the bench. Hmmm... interesting. I sent Luna, figured I could help her if she found the presence of other dogs daunting, but not at all! She ran right to the bench, jumped ON the bench - yay, she had remembered it was NOT on the ground! - and came blasting back to me with the dummy and a grumbling dog - lotta noise that meant nothing - running after her, whom she paid absolutely no attention. Wow, brave girl! I KNOW you can do it! Haha!

After R4 there were no retrieves for a while due to heavy dog traffic. I’m not tossin’ dummy’s with the risk of loosing them! Instead I let her climb up on some log piles, which she loved to do. Nice balance, careful steps and jumps. Good girl!

R5: Placed the dummy on top of a stone electricity box of some kind, it’s as tall as Luna standing on her hind legs. I placed the dummy 1/4 off the edge so she could grab it. Took her away again, about 80 meters because if I took her further I couldn’t see cyclists coming, sent her out, she ran, stood up against the building and took the dummy right off. Then she came running full speed back to me again. Awesome!

R6: Tossed the dummy in the undergrowth, visible to me. Luna saw where it was. Again, walking, walking, walking away. This one was nice, because Luna kinda went on with her own business instead of heeling - with eyecontact! - all the time until I would release her to find the dummy. We walked about 300 meters away, with twists and turns in the road, a crosstrack, and the dummy and it’s location out of sight from where I sent her. No problemo, she blasted off, my mom called our older dog - he’s as deaf as they come, but habits die hard I guess ;-) - which I hoped wouldn’t make Luna turn back before finding the dummy. It didn’t, because when she came back she had it! Great memory stuff. And, most importantly, we had a fantastic time.

Next time I’m gonna try having her stay, and then I’ll walk a good space away and toss some dummy’s. See if she can do those as well. In any case, it’s FUN!

Oh, and now that I've seen the picture at the top of this post; I'll weigh her again sometime today or tomorrow, she's finally slimmed down, so I'm curious to see what the scale says!

A break, a Gundog training camp, a flu, and now this.

Our room on the island.

That sums up what the past weeks have looked like.

From January 9-16 I was away, spending 8 days on one of the beautiful Dutch islands. We went for wonderful walks on the beach and in the forest, we spent 5 days playing around with retrieves, and when we got home I immediately got the flu. Yay!

Today I decided this quiet had lasted long enough, so here's an update!

Our Whistle Sit is not yet ready for use, I think. She still needs the second cue of seeing my hand signal after the whistle. Somewhere these next few days I'll get back to the drawing board for that one, and get my whistle out of the dummy bag in the shed out front.

Luna on the beach on the one nice day we had.

Next, our Gundog training week. This was extremely interesting, as I had a completely different dog this time, even though I've been there five times already and last time was also the Gundog workshop. Hmmm.... Luna was very impressed by the people and by growliness from the other dogs, to the point where she hid behind me, shivering. What the...?!

If I wanted to send her out to do a retrieve, I nearly had to talk her through every step, even though she was immensely proud and happy every time she found one and brought it back to me. So pretty soon my plan for the week was not so much to let Luna figure out how to find the dummy, but my plan became; find the dummy, no matter how much I need to help you. Because I saw that finding and bringing back a dummy made her feel great, and I knew that if she came back with nothing every time, she'd quickly loose interest. That worked, somewhat. She found all the dummy's, brought back all the dummy's, but all from a distance of no more than, say, 100 feet, depending on the shape of the terrain and whether she could see the dummy or not. When she was sent out with other dogs at the same time, she promptly came back and said, 'mommy, HELP! They're gonna eat me!'

So, yeah... that was interesting. The trainer said that Luna was using her 'Bambi act' to not need to do the work, but I couldn't agree with that. Luna has never in her life said, 'I don't WANT to do that'. Now, to me, she was clearly saying, 'I'm not sure I'm supposed to be doing this, is this OK?' And as the week progressed, she needed less and less cues from me in order to get the dummy.

Luna and I watch the friend we traveled with, and her black Lab.

Now I'm thinking... go to the Gundog workshop again with the specific goal of explaining to her that other people and other dogs and what they are doing are not her concern, or just leave it at this and not go there again. I mean, in our normal, everyday life, we do not encounter these issues, and then I wonder what the purpose is in trying to solve them just for this one week a year. I'll be thinking about this for a while to come...

Other than that, the weather was very wet and windy most days, so I didn't get to make a lot of pictures and film.

Whoo-hoo! We have a Whistle Sit!

Today on our morning walk, I asked for a lot of whistle Sits. They would go like this; Whistle Sit cue, Luna'd turn and start towards me (intending to Sit in Front), I'd immediately follow with the Hand Signal Sit, and she'd stop and Sit where she was. I consistently repeated this when she was a good way out in front of me.

At about 3/4 of our walk, I saw that she was beginning to anticipate the Hand Signal after the Whistle. So, I took a chance; 'Can you Sit where you are on the Whistle alone?' YES, she could! Whoo-hoo! Big party!

I repeated that two more times, for a total of 3 Sits in place on the Whistle cue alone, and each one got better and faster! C/T for me remembering to stop after the 3rd successful trial. ;-)

Obviously we'll be practicing this a lot more, and when she's nice and solid on the Whistle Sit, I'll start mixing it up with the Whistle Recall, so that she learns to really listen and discriminate between the two sounds. I'm confident she'll nail it, and then we're all set for the Gundog training week in January!

I use the same whistle, an Acme 211,5 for both cues; Sit is 'Piew!' and Come is 'Fuuut-Fuuut!'

Luna, you rock!

Training Log for Dec 18

 

Been a while! But we’re back now. I realized yesterday that it is only three weeks before our trip to Ameland, and there were some things I wanted to practice with Luna before that time. Today, we got started.

First I explained to her the ‘Sit’ whistle, or rather a ‘Place’ whistle because I’ll accept a Down too. So long as at least her butt’s on the ground, that’s good. And I know, if she’s really into it, she’ll Down. So, fine! Installing the whistle up close was a breeze, now we’re just working on getting her to respond immediately at a distance without coming toward me or needing a hand signal as a back-up. Besides that though, she did a good job!

Next, we moved on to retrieves. I decided to try some double retrieves, with two dummies relatively close to each other so that she would have to go back to the same spot to get the 2nd dummy. This was hard. She needed me to walk with her toward the general location, and I had to toss the 2nd dummy again twice. I don’t think her motivation was the issue though, which is a good sign, but rather the fact that the dummies got swallowed by 7 inches of snow. And sniffing them out seems to be quite a task. So, although we LOVE the snow, I do hope it’ll melt before our due date, or we won’t be able to practice retrieves! Oh well... At least by then we will have a Come- and a Sit whistle! Yay!

Other than that, we had a blast running through the snow, playing with a ball - see above image - and enjoying the outdoors.

On the food front; she’s been on the pre-ground raw mix now for two weeks and she’s doing great on it! Also, I bought a little less than 2 pounds of cheese as treats, and the thing isn’t even half used yet, so that means it actually lasts way longer than I thought it would. Nice!

I haven’t weighed her since, but I will do that in the next few days.

What else? Um.... well, we’ve been playing ball on the days I don’t have to walk our old Westie as well, and she’s very happy about that. I no longer have her Stay until the ball lays still, but I will not throw the ball until she stops and looks at me to see where it will go. This way, she doesn’t make weird moves trying to catch the ball in mid-flight, she slows down nicely before picking it up off the ground. Good girl!

I’ve also been letting her carry the ball when we encounter other dogs, as this has, in the past, helped very well in keeping her calm rather than throwing a fit at the other dog. When holding the ball, she’ll just high-step trot right past the dog and stop on the other side; ‘Will you kick my ball mom?’ I’ve noticed that I do have to insist she hold on to it, because if she lays down and releases the ball, the next step is that she’ll run up to the other dog, screams in its face and then runs back to get her ball and move on. It’s funny, in a way, but not good.

And I’ve decided to do some Bar Open - Bar Closed with other dogs as well; continuous feeding when we see another approaching dog, and then the feeding stops when the other dog is far enough away. That’s gonna cost me more cheese, but all the better if that means eventually she can Sit and be calm as a default, when other dogs show up. I’d like to get her to the point where she doesn’t need a ball in her mouth - which is really just management - but just go; ‘oh, a dog, look ma, I’m Sitting and looking at you!’ That would be nice.

Anyone has other ideas?

Training Log for Dec 3

Last night, on our last walk of the day, we had a fun training session. We worked on Heeling, Fronts, Finishes, and Down, Sit and Stand in motion, in that order. Her heeling - short stretches, 20-30 paces, some right about turns - was beautiful; tail wagging, looking up at me, her shoulder nicely lined up with my leg, and smiling happily. What a wonderful little lady.

Her Finishes often included a jump into position and a ‘Look at me go!’ face.

We did a Down in motion twice, then a Sit in motion twice - the first with an extra hand signal to remind her that Sit goes up, not down, she Downed anyway, I stopped and waited. ‘Oh, Sit!’ C/T! - and then I decided to see what she would do if I asked for a Stand in motion. Heeling, heeling, ‘Stand!’ and she Downed. I stopped a couple of paces away from her, intending to let her figure it out. Down didn’t get her the click. Sit didn’t get her the click. Down with her chin on the ground did not get her the click. Down on her side did not get her the click. Then, she said, ‘I don’t know!’ and she came to me and Sat. OK, let me help you! Heeling, heeling, heeling, ‘Stand!’ and my index finger lightly under her belly. She stood and remained standing as I walked on, Click & chase the ball! Repeated that another time, and then without reminding her of her back end. Heeling, heeling, ‘Stand!’ and I kept walking. She took 5 more steps & there was the Stand. YAY! Good girly! Get your ball!

Again. Heeling, heeling, heeling, ‘Stand!’ and I kept walking. She took 3 more steps and Stood. Whoohoo!

Again. Heeling, heeling, ‘Stand!’ and I kept walking. She took 1, maybe 2 more steps before standing. Eeh haw! Luna is the best dog in the world!

Wow. I was amazed. And SO proud. She was smiling and happy the whole time, even when I let her figure out the Stand on her own that first time. Such a difference from the sulking, hunched, insecure dog she was four years ago, in our traditional obedience classes. We ended the session with a little more ball play, and then I let her keep the ball as we continued on home.

I am super duper happy right now. What a fantastically smart dog!

Oh, by the way, the picture shows Luna at 4 years old, with the same happy face she had going all through last night’s session. I call it her ‘Wheehee!’ face. ;-)