Shore-handling Toolkit

In April 2008, I invented the shore-handling toolkit as a catalog of the practical transitions between land and water that might occur in a retriever field event.

– Tool #1. Here-WTL-W (no WS)
– Tool #2. Here-LTW-W (no WS)
– Tool #3. Back-LTW-W/O (no WS)
– Tool #4. Back-WTL-W/O
– Tool #5. Back-WTL-W
– Tool #6. Over-WTL-W/O
– Tool #7. Over-LTW-W/O (no WS)
– Tool #8. Over-LTW-W
– Tool #9. Over-WTL-W

where

– WTL=water-to-land
– LTW=land-to-water
– W=with dummy
– W/O=without dummy

These tools are each trained thru the following stages, except that for some of them, no whistle sit (WS) is used:

• – Stage 1. Without stopping the dog
  
• – Stage 2. WS, then cueing the behavior
• – Stage 3. Distance extended for startline-to-shoreline and shoreline-to-article
• – Stage 4. Cued behaviors thoroughly proofed for multiple locations and distractions

Click here to view diagrams for the shore-handling toolkit.

A Note on the Swim-by Drill. Some of the tools in the shore-handling toolkit have traditionally been trained by means of the swim-by drill, a procedure that revolutionized how retrievers could be trained for water retrieves in field events when the drill was invented years ago. A dog who has learned the shore-handling toolkit is also able to perform the swim-by — using the tool chain #3-#6-#8-#9 — as well as other practical combinations of these tools.