Sequence Sequence Sequence

One of my mentors, Alice Woodyard, believes that one of the most important aspects of retriever field training is not onlyhow each behavior is trained, but the order in which behaviors are trained. Her acronym for this concept is "SSS", for sequence-sequence-sequence. In Alice's experience, getting the sequence wrong can have negative consequences for a field retriever's career.

Unfortunately, no exact SSS for training a retriever exists. The reason is that a second factor, the "it depends" factor, is also in play. Different dogs need information presented to them in different ways, and only an experienced trainer can make the call for a particular dog.

Nonetheless, here is an outline of what I think might be an appropriate SSS for 2Q retriever field training [this is a draft; each item will eventually be shown as a link to a detailed discussion of the drill]:

• Show Me game (fetch without retrieve to hand). Note: Retrieve to hand (the cues Hold, Out, and Fetch trained in that order) should eventually be trained, but the training of retrieve to hand should be delayed until puppy has strong motivation for pick-up and return from Show Me game. Show Me can be played often, but with only 1-3 reps per session, always ending with the dog wanting more
• Wearing the dog
• Walking recall
• Here and Sit on voice and whistle cues
• Sit to say please
• Loose-lead walking (LLW): Here's a nice Gail Fisher video on how to train this
• Walking at heel and coming to heel
• Trained retrieve: hold, out, and fetch
• Hold-and-out game (dog is sent out for an tug-toy to retrieve; as dog approaches handler with toy, handler calls "hold", then grabs toy for game of tug; then handler cues "out" and immediately throws toy again; this adds high reinforcement history for "hold" and "out")
• Fetch game (dog is placed in short-distance remote sit with nearby bird; handler calls "fetch", waits till dog picks up bird, then leads dog on merry chase; this takes the high-reinforcement prey-chase value normally associated with the send-out, and adds it to the return as well)
• Walking fetch
• Line manners (fine tuned body behaviors such as return to heel, back into heel, one-step heel, pivots L & R, sit vs. down, etc.)
• Pile work
• Wagon wheels
• Bird-foot drill
• Baseball drill
• Double-T drill
• Diversion drill
• Combo picture drill
• Combo mark-blind drill
• Triple blinds
• Entering cover
• Skimming drill with high cover
• Running hillsides
• Hip-pocket and reverse hip-pocket doubles
• Shore-handling toolkit (Note: shore-handling toolkit and swim-by can be moved anywhere after double-T, depending on availability of swim-by pond, but both are of course prerequisite to cheaters)
• Swim-by (see previous Note)
• Cheaters
• On and off a point (be sure swimming past a point is well-established first)
• Skimming drill with curved shoreline
• Up-the-shore and two-up-the-shore
• De-flaring drill

Note that in parallel with the above sequence, the dog would also have on-going experiences with field retrieves, both in private training and also, whenever possible, with groups. Because those experiences would in some cases place the dog in a situation that requires a behavior not yet trained, care must be taken that the dog not have the opportunity to self-reinforce on incorrect behaviors such as not returning with a bird. In some cases, that can be prevented with management devices such as a long line. In others, the situations can be avoided entirely, for example by not running the young dog on a retrieve where the dog is likely to cheat around water even if others in the group are doing so.

But the obvious solution of simply never running the dog in situations the dog isn't trained for is unfortunately not feasible. The reason is that getting the dog completely trained for field retrieves takes months, and for an event retriever, the most important source of motivation is not the extrinsic reinforcers that trainers use while teaching the foundation behaviors, but the intrinsic pleasure of the chase and recovery of real prey in a field setting. As trainers who have attempted a strategy of keeping the dog out of the field until the retrieve is fully trained have learned, that approach risks losing the crucial process of building motivation for the overall game of field work.