On May 5, 2013, at 10:30 AM, a new list member wrote wrote:
> I am hoping to get the youngest good enough to be able to pass a JH test. I . . . will mostly be training by myself as it seems that most trainers here think force fetching is the only way to go. My golden was force fetched.. I will not do that again.
>
> How do I get started? I have been told that I should start with blinds first?( as opposed to focusing on marks).None of the girls have any whistle training- so I start with that?
Hi.
With respect to Force Fetch (FF): Lumi, my 9yo Golden, and Laddie, my 6yo Golden, both have their WCX and SH (after having gotten their JH first). Laddie also has six JAMs (including two Reserve JAMs) in Field Trial Qualifying stakes. Neither has ever been trained with physical aversives, including the ear or toe pinch used in FF. So trainers who believe that FF is necessary are wrong.
On the other hand, FF is standardized. Achieving the same results without FF is likely to be more time-consuming and no particular method is well established for competition-quality results. However Lumi and Laddie show that it can be done.
With respect to blinds: Junior tests have no blinds and require no handling. Junior judges generally do not expect the dogs they're judging to have been trained to handle, and I'd say that most Junior dogs have not been trained to handle.
An aside: Every once in a while Junior judges set up a water test on which dogs that have not been shore-trained, which requires handling, will run the bank ("cheat"), and the judges may count that against those dogs. In my experience, such tests are rare in Junior, though common in Senior and Master. We did once take a Junior test where the judges apologized for having set up such a test despite the fact that the Junior dogs were not expected to have been trained yet for that situation. In that test, the judges didn't penalize the dogs who ran the bank, but they recognized that they were digging a training hole for those dogs ("Hey, look, I can run the bank in the context of a competition and I get to complete the retrieve! Yay!"), and that's what they were apologizing for.
With respect to getting your 5yo, or any retriever, ready for Junior: That, of course, is a big subject, and varies widely per team. I'll mention what my priorities would be, and then I'll look forward to any future posts describing how you and your dog are doing, so that list members (including me) can make additional suggestions based on your reports.
For my dogs, the most important and yet most difficult training challenge was a field recall: The dog needs to come when called (most field trainers use the cue "Here", with the synonym being two or more whistle tweets). She needs to come with or without a retrieval article, she needs to come across land or water, she needs to come when she can't see you some of the time (for example, thru high cover or from the far side of a rise), she needs to come when she's distracted by the opportunity to play/cool off/swim in water, by humans, by crates of live birds, by dead birds on the ground or in sacks, and occasionally, by live birds such as swimming ducks or a flock of birds in a nearby field. As you can see, a high-quality pet recall is nowhere near enough for field work.
The easiest way to train a field recall is with an ecollar, since I believe that returning to the handler is a fairly natural response to a dog being "nicked" or "burned", even without any collar conditioning. But of course as a positive trainer you won't be using that tool. That means that instead of training a high quality recall in an afternoon or so using an ecollar, it may take you many months without an ecollar. That, at least, was my experience with both my dogs. I wrote an article describing a method that I eventually hit upon, which I call the Walking Recall, that made a big difference. Perhaps if I'd known about it sooner, the process wouldn't have taken nearly so long. Here's a link to the article: http://2q-retriever.blogspot.com/2010/05/walking-recall.html
For your 5yo, another key training requirement would be a Trained Retrieved (TR), which is Alice Woodyard's term for the skills that are taught via the FF regardless of training method, and for a positive trainer of course those skills are trained without aversives. The TR is basically three skills: Hold, Out (or Give), and Fetch. You'll need to train all three skills thoroughly in close quarters indoors, and then outdoors for land in increasingly challenging environments, and then all over again for water. You'll need to train with bumpers, and then with dead birds, and then with live birds and just-shot birds (flyers). Your dog's TR will eventually be stretched out to combine with the dog's recall for the return, so that all the recall situations I described above -- returning across water and thru high cover, for example -- finish with delivery to hand, and that will be your competition retrieve. Just training a TR in your living room could take weeks. Of course weeks more will be needed for all the scenarios.
Many descriptions of how to train a TR using positive methods exist, though as I mentioned, no positive method has become as standardized for training the TR as the FF is for traditional trainers. As one example of training the TR with positive methods, I like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBA
The reason I said "For your 5yo" with respect to training the TR is that for other readers, who might be working with much younger dogs, I don't think a dog should be trained to retrieve to hand until after teething, because I believe that retrieve to hand is intrinsically aversive to many dogs. By waiting until after teething, the dog has had months of learning to love retrieving without having to worry about giving up the article, and also you're past the stage where the dog might experience teething pain that might become an unpleasant association with the TR.
The last point I thought I'd make in this post may prove the most difficult, but I believe it's crucial, and it's the step that has most hampered Laddie's progress as a field trial dog: You need a training group that you and your dog can regularly train with at the level appropriate for your dog. That means training with traditional trainers, who will have the same training objectives as you, but will be using different methods to achieve them. Training with a group is valuable in many ways, and I won't even try to list them. I'll just say that it's not merely highly valuable, it's indispensable.
If you can achieve a field-quality recall, work thru a complete set of contexts for a thoroughly proofed TR, and gain some experience with event-like scenarios by training with a group, I believe your dog will have a good chance of earning a Junior Hunter title. She'll also have a solid foundation for more advanced training if you decide to do so.
I'll look forward to future reports about you and your dogs. Best of luck!
Lindsay, with Lumi & Laddie (Goldens)
Gaithersburg, Maryland
> I am hoping to get the youngest good enough to be able to pass a JH test. I . . . will mostly be training by myself as it seems that most trainers here think force fetching is the only way to go. My golden was force fetched.. I will not do that again.
>
> How do I get started? I have been told that I should start with blinds first?( as opposed to focusing on marks).None of the girls have any whistle training- so I start with that?
Hi.
With respect to Force Fetch (FF): Lumi, my 9yo Golden, and Laddie, my 6yo Golden, both have their WCX and SH (after having gotten their JH first). Laddie also has six JAMs (including two Reserve JAMs) in Field Trial Qualifying stakes. Neither has ever been trained with physical aversives, including the ear or toe pinch used in FF. So trainers who believe that FF is necessary are wrong.
On the other hand, FF is standardized. Achieving the same results without FF is likely to be more time-consuming and no particular method is well established for competition-quality results. However Lumi and Laddie show that it can be done.
With respect to blinds: Junior tests have no blinds and require no handling. Junior judges generally do not expect the dogs they're judging to have been trained to handle, and I'd say that most Junior dogs have not been trained to handle.
An aside: Every once in a while Junior judges set up a water test on which dogs that have not been shore-trained, which requires handling, will run the bank ("cheat"), and the judges may count that against those dogs. In my experience, such tests are rare in Junior, though common in Senior and Master. We did once take a Junior test where the judges apologized for having set up such a test despite the fact that the Junior dogs were not expected to have been trained yet for that situation. In that test, the judges didn't penalize the dogs who ran the bank, but they recognized that they were digging a training hole for those dogs ("Hey, look, I can run the bank in the context of a competition and I get to complete the retrieve! Yay!"), and that's what they were apologizing for.
With respect to getting your 5yo, or any retriever, ready for Junior: That, of course, is a big subject, and varies widely per team. I'll mention what my priorities would be, and then I'll look forward to any future posts describing how you and your dog are doing, so that list members (including me) can make additional suggestions based on your reports.
For my dogs, the most important and yet most difficult training challenge was a field recall: The dog needs to come when called (most field trainers use the cue "Here", with the synonym being two or more whistle tweets). She needs to come with or without a retrieval article, she needs to come across land or water, she needs to come when she can't see you some of the time (for example, thru high cover or from the far side of a rise), she needs to come when she's distracted by the opportunity to play/cool off/swim in water, by humans, by crates of live birds, by dead birds on the ground or in sacks, and occasionally, by live birds such as swimming ducks or a flock of birds in a nearby field. As you can see, a high-quality pet recall is nowhere near enough for field work.
The easiest way to train a field recall is with an ecollar, since I believe that returning to the handler is a fairly natural response to a dog being "nicked" or "burned", even without any collar conditioning. But of course as a positive trainer you won't be using that tool. That means that instead of training a high quality recall in an afternoon or so using an ecollar, it may take you many months without an ecollar. That, at least, was my experience with both my dogs. I wrote an article describing a method that I eventually hit upon, which I call the Walking Recall, that made a big difference. Perhaps if I'd known about it sooner, the process wouldn't have taken nearly so long. Here's a link to the article: http://2q-retriever.blogspot.com/2010/05/walking-recall.html
For your 5yo, another key training requirement would be a Trained Retrieved (TR), which is Alice Woodyard's term for the skills that are taught via the FF regardless of training method, and for a positive trainer of course those skills are trained without aversives. The TR is basically three skills: Hold, Out (or Give), and Fetch. You'll need to train all three skills thoroughly in close quarters indoors, and then outdoors for land in increasingly challenging environments, and then all over again for water. You'll need to train with bumpers, and then with dead birds, and then with live birds and just-shot birds (flyers). Your dog's TR will eventually be stretched out to combine with the dog's recall for the return, so that all the recall situations I described above -- returning across water and thru high cover, for example -- finish with delivery to hand, and that will be your competition retrieve. Just training a TR in your living room could take weeks. Of course weeks more will be needed for all the scenarios.
Many descriptions of how to train a TR using positive methods exist, though as I mentioned, no positive method has become as standardized for training the TR as the FF is for traditional trainers. As one example of training the TR with positive methods, I like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oFO9Z0oHBA
The reason I said "For your 5yo" with respect to training the TR is that for other readers, who might be working with much younger dogs, I don't think a dog should be trained to retrieve to hand until after teething, because I believe that retrieve to hand is intrinsically aversive to many dogs. By waiting until after teething, the dog has had months of learning to love retrieving without having to worry about giving up the article, and also you're past the stage where the dog might experience teething pain that might become an unpleasant association with the TR.
The last point I thought I'd make in this post may prove the most difficult, but I believe it's crucial, and it's the step that has most hampered Laddie's progress as a field trial dog: You need a training group that you and your dog can regularly train with at the level appropriate for your dog. That means training with traditional trainers, who will have the same training objectives as you, but will be using different methods to achieve them. Training with a group is valuable in many ways, and I won't even try to list them. I'll just say that it's not merely highly valuable, it's indispensable.
If you can achieve a field-quality recall, work thru a complete set of contexts for a thoroughly proofed TR, and gain some experience with event-like scenarios by training with a group, I believe your dog will have a good chance of earning a Junior Hunter title. She'll also have a solid foundation for more advanced training if you decide to do so.
I'll look forward to future reports about you and your dogs. Best of luck!
Lindsay, with Lumi & Laddie (Goldens)
Gaithersburg, Maryland
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