Practicing with Singles versus Multiples

[From a post in our training journal blog, "Field Training Test Series"]

In today's practice, I ran Laddie on John's set-up as three singles, as did Patty with some of her young dogs. For her more advanced dogs, Patty ran the set-up as a double and a single, or as a delayed triple.

I might mention that running a dog on singles in a multiple-gun set-up is not a strategy limited to young dogs. I know of several trainers who believe that once a dog "understands" what a multiple is, the dog should be run primarily on singles.

However, Patty does not follow that practice, and I'm under the impression that Alice does not, either.

I think the primary advantage of running singles is that it strengthens the dog's marking, which will be the primary consideration in scoring.

On the other hand, even if the dog has a good memory, there's more of a challenge to running multiples than simple memory. For example, when multiple marks are down, they can act as diversions for one another, which can be especially challenging if the go-bird is longer than one of more of the memory-birds, or if a flyer is used as a memory-bird while the g0-bird is a dead bird. As another example, the dog may see one picture when a multiple is thrown, but then if one or more guns retire, the dog sees an entirely different picture when she's lining up to run the memory-birds after she's returned with the go-bird.

I suppose that here, as in other areas of dog training, maintaining a balance is best. I guess my goal with Laddie will be plenty of singles, balanced by plenty of multiples.