Cool-off Drill

When a dog is hot, the dog's desire for comfort, and perhaps even her instinct for self-preservation, can draw her to a pool or pond where she can lie in the water and cool off. For some dogs, this can occur in during a land retrieve that happens to be in the vicinity of water, interrupting the return and possibly getting the dog disqualified from the event.

The purpose of the Cool-off Drill is to condition the dog to have a preference for completing the retrieve, rather than interrupting the retrieve to go for a swim, even when she's hot and the nearby water looks highly tempting.

The Cool-off Drill can be done as part of a regular private or group training session, as long as land work comes first.

Here's what the first session of the Cool-off drill looks like:

1. Train on land enough to get the dog reasonably hot. Allow the dog all the water she wants to drink, but don't let her go swimming.
2. Place an LP and WB a few yards from the corner of a pond.
3. Place the SL so that the line to the LP skirts the pond within a few yards. For the first session, make the distance from the SL to LP short enough that the dog will recall without fail on the retrieve.
4. Using normal line mechanics, send the dog to pick up the bumper, then call her back.
5. As soon as she returns, take the bumper as quickly as possible and throw it as far into the pond as possible, sending her the instant it touches water, or even while it's still in the air. This step is the dog's reinforcement for completing the retrieve, and you want to make it more desirable than a detour to cool off on the way back would have been, so make this step as exciting and valuable to the dog as possible.
6. Since the dog is now cooled off, repeating the drill during this session may not be particularly productive, so continue the training session with whatever other training objectives you and the group have planned.

In future sessions, gradually increase the distance from the SL to the LP, and vary how much of the time the dog is near the water, since the dog could face either situation in an event: a retrieve where she's near water most of the run, or a retrieve where she's only near water for a short part of the run.

As with any raising in criteria, it's neither necessary nor desirable for each trial to be harder than the last. Preferably, some trials will be easier than the last, some will be harder, but the trend will be toward more and more difficult trials, which in this case means longer and longer distances from the SL to the LP.

The goal would be to build to a high degree of difficulty, for example: In warm weather, the dog runs a triple, quad, or quintuple retrieve near water but without getting wet, the last retrieve featuring a line of 200 yards or more that comes within a few feet of a pond or runs beside a pond the entire way.

In an event, you probably won't actually be able to swim the dog immediately after completing a Cool-off type retrieve, but hopefully you will have an opportunity to swim the dog, perhaps in the water series, soon afterwards.

Building Motivation for "Back" into Water

Few sights are more chilling to a field trainer than a "no-go", when you send the dog and she just stands there, maybe glancing up at you, maybe just staring forlornly out into the field or pond.

One way for this to start happening is to raise criteria on a particular drill too fast, resulting in a high percentage of unreinforced or corrected attempts. The dog can lose confidence, perhaps begin to pop even when performing correctly, and maybe even refuse to take a chance on going out when sent. That's not the only way to get a no-go, but it's one of them.

For that particular problem, one antidote is a rousing session of highly reinforced "Back" send-outs. Here's the water version:

1. Carrying a bumper, take the dog to water's edge at a favorite pond and cue "Sit".
2. Position your hand over the dog's forehead as when sending out on a blind.
3. Cue "Back".
4. After the dog has launched and begun her swim straight out, throw the bumper high and far beyond her, so that she will reach it if she simply keeps swimming straight.
5. Repeat several times, but end immediately if you see any sign that her interest begins to flag, or preferably, as your experience with your dog makes it easier to predict her endurance, stop before that happens.

To keep the focus on building high reinforcement history for "Back", avoid working on difficult entries, complex line mechanics, or any other skill that would result in send-outs where you have to correct the dog's line or call her back. An exception would be a dog (like Lumi) who has been taught directions ("left" and "right") as reinforced cues, since using those would add to the goal of building reinforcement history for the original send-out.

By contrast, a WS, no matter how reinforced in training, would be avoided in this game, because it's effect is to delay the dog's forward momentum. Though the ability to respond to a WS is of course necessary for a handling dog, and ultimately supports the dog's desire to complete the retrieve, IMO the break in momentum is not fun for the dog and does not build reinforcement history for the send-out.

Puppy Training Checklist

[Details to be added]

These are skills above and beyond SSS, important for all dogs and not specific to working dogs:

Wearing the dog

Charge clicker

Hand target

Time-in for barking

Comfortable at vets office

Socializing

No-glance game for obsessions (including other dogs)

Relax on cue

House training

Eliminate on cue

Take treats gently

Leave it

Out (give, drop) with no Keep Away

Comfortable having feet, ears, etc. handled

Brushing teeth

Comfortable grooming

Nail trimming

The Trained Retrieve (TR)

[This article is from a post on the PositiveGunDogs list by one of my mentors, Jody Baker, reproduced here with her permission. I've added some notes in italics.]

On May 31, 2010, at 4:55 PM, Jody Baker wrote:

The trained retrieve usually goes as follows

Have the dog hold your finger (use the other fingers and thumb to surround

his muzzle) without mouthing or trying to spit your finger out. Click when

he stops mouthing etc. I use canned cat food on a spoon for the treat for

this.

[I would also work on shaping "hold" before switching to an article. When "hold" is cued, the dog should noticeably tighten her grip. This part of the training may take several days or weeks.]

Then place an object in his mouth - follow above.

With both the first 2 steps build in duration.

Always say "out" when he's to move his head away from your finger or the

object to get it out of his mouth. This is true with all the steps.

You should not take the finger/object from his mouth - ever. He should

always move his head back away from your hand(s), finger or object. Be sure

to be holding the object when you tell him out.

Next by touching his lips with the object see if he will open his mouth for

the object (don't worry about duration at this point). If not, repeat the

previous step. If he does open for the object, do this for a couple or more

sessions, gradually building up duration.

[I would be inclined to clicker-train the "take" of your finger, and later an object, as a default behavior first, so that no force is required to work on mouthing and hold.]

Then start working for distance, 1", 3" 6" etc.

Then start working on reaching up high or down low.

Then for taking a step to get to the object.

Work on gradually putting the object on the floor, one end, then flat while

holding on to the end, then 1 finger, etc.

The dog should always have on a line while doing this.

Now he needs to learn how to get up from a sit and take a step or two.

When he's doing this, I use the line to turn the dog back to me, so he comes

back to a chair/table/bench where I've place the open can of cat food and

the spoon (I keep it there from the beginning so he will learn the way to

get the stinky wonderful cat food is to do something about the retrieve)

[Even before learning to get UP from a sit, the dog needs to learn to get INTO a sit while holding the article. My dogs found that difficult, and it took several sessions before they were comfortable with it.]

Then on to very short tosses with the dog going out picking up the object,

you can call "here" to work on your recall, coming back to you.

If he spits out the object at any time before you've told him "out", then he

doesn't get the cat food.

This is just a rough outline of the steps required. There are many more

complete ones that you should be able to look up on line.

[I think Jody has covered the essential steps, and made clear the idea that this is a back-chaining procedure. I'd like to think about re-arranging some of the early steps.]