[From a post in PositiveGunDogs]
On May 11, 2013, at 4:25 PM, a list member wrote:
> My next question is about the actual retrieving process. I am very confused because my dogs have some retriever "training" so I am not really starting at step one. I thought I could just go back to step one and "retrain" using the clicker, but its not quite working that way. All three readily take a bumper, dumbell, toy from me and hold. All three readily pick up an object from the ground and bring it to me. So, for now, I am using the clicker to reinforce these behaviors.
Hi. I assume you mean you're using click-and-treat for reinforcement. For any readers not aware of it, clicker practice (based on science) means that you always follow up the click (which is a secondary reinforcer, or bridge) with a primary reinforcer.
> Is this the correct way to deal with this? Or should I introduce some really funky item and start the retriever process with that ( like a metal key fob or something?)
For working in the living room, yeah, it's cool to have the dog retrieve boots, hammers, ladles, keys, etc. You could also work on really difficult stuff like retrieving hot dogs.
However, if you're goal is to have a competition dog, here's what the dog will be retrieving in Junior competition and training groups preparing for Junior competition: a thrown bird. Sometimes it's a bird that was recently frozen and is now mostly thawed, sometimes ti's a bird that was alive in the last few hours but is now dead (those are quite difficult words for me to write, by the way), sometimes it's a bird that was alive 30 seconds ago but has just been shot, and sometimes a bird that is wounded and can't get away from your dog but is still alive (those are called "cripples", unfortunately). For all those cases, sometimes the bird is dry, and sometimes the bird is wet. Those are the "objects" that your dog needs to be proofed for, all of them.
And by the way, of all of them, I believe that the most thrilling experience for a retriever is retrieving a bird that she just watched being shot. I think that experience actually rewires the dog. After that, all retrieves are re-living and re-savoring that experience. The more often she has the experience, the more motivated a retriever you will have.
Meanwhile, please don't use birds that have been retrieved a lot and are now soggy, torn, smelly, etc. and would be unpleasant for the dog to pick up. That won't happen in competition, and I think reverses the kind of association you want the dog to have for retrieving.
Oh, when I say "bird", I mostly mean ducks. For some land series, your dog will also need to retrieve pheasants (again, all the variations of deadness). For water, I believe it will always be ducks. You may also need to train with other species such as pigeons if the group doesn't have anything else available.
For all of the above, the bird should be thrown by a human being, who first blows a duck call, and then fires a gun either just before the throw or when the bird is on the rise from the throw. In a hunt test the gunner will be hidden, but in practice the dog often sees the thrower, which promotes learning to mark well. In any case, a thrown bird is the retrieve your dog needs to learn to make, and as it happens, is the most fun a retriever can have.
Part of the proofing is for objects, and part of it is for location. You want to begin a series of venue types that Alice Woodyard calls the Seven Cities (I think it's a sci-fi reference). Let me see if I can get them right (Alice, please correct if this is incorrect):
City 1. Living room (or elsewhere indoors)
City 2. Outdoors around the house
City 3. A fenced area away from home, such as a school yard, minus the kids of course
City 4. A meadow or similar open field
City 5. A retriever training property, with the sounds and ambience of training in progress, but with you and your dog away from the group (other trainers are typically happy to throw for you when they're not running their own dogs)
CIty 6. Training with the group, attempting to simulate competition as closely as possible (waiting in a series of holding blinds while earlier dogs are running, holding blinds for the gunners, duck calls, popper shotguns rather than blank pistols when possible, the judge calling out "guns up!" and "do you have any questions" and "dog to the line" and then calling for the birds with a duck call then calling the dog's "number" to let you know you can send the dog, a gallery, etc.)
City 7. Competition
The dog also needs to retrieve thru obstacles: across water with the object in the water, across water with the object on land on the far side, thru high cover, into high cover, with the bird in a depression (such birds are often difficult for dogs to find), over a ridge so that the dog can't see you during part of her return, with the bird at the midpoint of a rise, or at the top of a rise, or at the bottom of a rise, etc.
For training with obstacles, it is essential that the dog not have a noticeable detour around the obstacle. That's because the dog is likely to take that detour, rather that the straight line that looks so obvious to humans. You eventually may want to train the dog to go thru/across the obstacle when a detour around is available, but that requires a handling dog, and IMO it's premature for you to be working on handling. If you train a non-handling dog on retrieves where she can "cheat" around obstacles, and she does so and is reinforced for that behavior by a successful retrieve, it will be far more difficult to train her not to do that later.
Those kinds of retrieves are not typically set up by Junior judges, so you don't need to train your dog to deal with them at this time. However, training groups with more advanced dogs often do set up such retrieves. It's important that you not let your dog run those retrieves, even though the other dogs are. If you can move your start line so that the dog no longer sees the detour as an option, you might be OK. But I've found dogs to be pretty resourceful at avoiding water, cover, mounds, etc. I think it's fun for the dog to evade you and your training partners as you try to block her and force her not to cheat. Definitely not what you want to reinforce.
And as long as we're talking about proofing, here's another skill that must be trained, that is, that is not natural for a dog: picking up a bumper from an area scented with birds, or from a location where a bag of birds is nearby. Sometimes for one reason or another you might ask the throwers in a group to throw bumpers for your dog while the other dogs are getting birds, and I think it's likely that you dog will have some difficulty retrieving that bumper if you don't train for it.
I've listed a lot of things above. I didn't mean that you should pick and choose among them. Your dog needs to be competent with all of them. I think they're more important for her development as an event dog than retrieving keys.
> My other question is - my goal is not a dog that is used for hunting- my goal is a dog that can get a JH, nothing more- so does the concept of not training marked retrieves until after training blinds, apply?
I'm sorry, if I understood what you wrote, I think you have it backwards. To pass a Junior test (four passes gets you a JH), your dog will not run any blinds, and will not be expected (except perhaps by the occasional rogue judge) to be capable of responding to handling cues, or to have the skills that would require handling to train (such as not cheating around water).
Rather, for Junior, what you need is a dog that will pick up all the kinds of birds described above, in all the kinds of situations described above, and bring the bird back to you so that you can take it from her mouth. That is, she needs to be able to retrieve to hand.
The delivery doesn't have to be fancy, with the dog coming to heel, sitting, and then holding until you verbally cue "out". That's a nice skill, but it doesn't have to be that involved. You can just take the bird as the dog comes running up to you. FYI, that's what I do with Laddie in competition for most retrieves, because I think it reinforces the return, which used to be Laddie's greatest weakness. Occasionally I do have Laddie heel, sit, and hold before I take the bird, just to show that he can do it, in case anyone cares.
Let me mention that a likely scenario in an event is that the dog gets the bird near you and then drops it. You'll be disqualified if you pick it up off the ground. You've got to get her to immediately pick it back up so that you can grab it before she drops it again. The judges won't give you forever to get her to "fetch it up", so she needs to pick the bird up quickly, and she needs that skill before you compete. Picking up a bird that the dog has dropped nearby is much less natural, and much harder for the dog to learn, then picking up a bird that was thrown.
I'll leave you with a link to one of my favorite drills for strengthening "fetch", a drill I call the Fetch Game: http://2q-retriever.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-fetch-game.html As a positive trainer, I have found the Fetch Game to be one of the most valuable games I've invented (along with the Walking Recall) (also the Walk Out, which you don't need right now).
And by the way, you're not a "pest"! :0) Your questions are a great opportunity to talk about dog training, my favorite subject!
> My next question is about the actual retrieving process. I am very confused because my dogs have some retriever "training" so I am not really starting at step one. I thought I could just go back to step one and "retrain" using the clicker, but its not quite working that way. All three readily take a bumper, dumbell, toy from me and hold. All three readily pick up an object from the ground and bring it to me. So, for now, I am using the clicker to reinforce these behaviors.
Hi. I assume you mean you're using click-and-treat for reinforcement. For any readers not aware of it, clicker practice (based on science) means that you always follow up the click (which is a secondary reinforcer, or bridge) with a primary reinforcer.
> Is this the correct way to deal with this? Or should I introduce some really funky item and start the retriever process with that ( like a metal key fob or something?)
For working in the living room, yeah, it's cool to have the dog retrieve boots, hammers, ladles, keys, etc. You could also work on really difficult stuff like retrieving hot dogs.
However, if you're goal is to have a competition dog, here's what the dog will be retrieving in Junior competition and training groups preparing for Junior competition: a thrown bird. Sometimes it's a bird that was recently frozen and is now mostly thawed, sometimes ti's a bird that was alive in the last few hours but is now dead (those are quite difficult words for me to write, by the way), sometimes it's a bird that was alive 30 seconds ago but has just been shot, and sometimes a bird that is wounded and can't get away from your dog but is still alive (those are called "cripples", unfortunately). For all those cases, sometimes the bird is dry, and sometimes the bird is wet. Those are the "objects" that your dog needs to be proofed for, all of them.
And by the way, of all of them, I believe that the most thrilling experience for a retriever is retrieving a bird that she just watched being shot. I think that experience actually rewires the dog. After that, all retrieves are re-living and re-savoring that experience. The more often she has the experience, the more motivated a retriever you will have.
Meanwhile, please don't use birds that have been retrieved a lot and are now soggy, torn, smelly, etc. and would be unpleasant for the dog to pick up. That won't happen in competition, and I think reverses the kind of association you want the dog to have for retrieving.
Oh, when I say "bird", I mostly mean ducks. For some land series, your dog will also need to retrieve pheasants (again, all the variations of deadness). For water, I believe it will always be ducks. You may also need to train with other species such as pigeons if the group doesn't have anything else available.
For all of the above, the bird should be thrown by a human being, who first blows a duck call, and then fires a gun either just before the throw or when the bird is on the rise from the throw. In a hunt test the gunner will be hidden, but in practice the dog often sees the thrower, which promotes learning to mark well. In any case, a thrown bird is the retrieve your dog needs to learn to make, and as it happens, is the most fun a retriever can have.
Part of the proofing is for objects, and part of it is for location. You want to begin a series of venue types that Alice Woodyard calls the Seven Cities (I think it's a sci-fi reference). Let me see if I can get them right (Alice, please correct if this is incorrect):
City 1. Living room (or elsewhere indoors)
City 2. Outdoors around the house
City 3. A fenced area away from home, such as a school yard, minus the kids of course
City 4. A meadow or similar open field
City 5. A retriever training property, with the sounds and ambience of training in progress, but with you and your dog away from the group (other trainers are typically happy to throw for you when they're not running their own dogs)
CIty 6. Training with the group, attempting to simulate competition as closely as possible (waiting in a series of holding blinds while earlier dogs are running, holding blinds for the gunners, duck calls, popper shotguns rather than blank pistols when possible, the judge calling out "guns up!" and "do you have any questions" and "dog to the line" and then calling for the birds with a duck call then calling the dog's "number" to let you know you can send the dog, a gallery, etc.)
City 7. Competition
The dog also needs to retrieve thru obstacles: across water with the object in the water, across water with the object on land on the far side, thru high cover, into high cover, with the bird in a depression (such birds are often difficult for dogs to find), over a ridge so that the dog can't see you during part of her return, with the bird at the midpoint of a rise, or at the top of a rise, or at the bottom of a rise, etc.
For training with obstacles, it is essential that the dog not have a noticeable detour around the obstacle. That's because the dog is likely to take that detour, rather that the straight line that looks so obvious to humans. You eventually may want to train the dog to go thru/across the obstacle when a detour around is available, but that requires a handling dog, and IMO it's premature for you to be working on handling. If you train a non-handling dog on retrieves where she can "cheat" around obstacles, and she does so and is reinforced for that behavior by a successful retrieve, it will be far more difficult to train her not to do that later.
Those kinds of retrieves are not typically set up by Junior judges, so you don't need to train your dog to deal with them at this time. However, training groups with more advanced dogs often do set up such retrieves. It's important that you not let your dog run those retrieves, even though the other dogs are. If you can move your start line so that the dog no longer sees the detour as an option, you might be OK. But I've found dogs to be pretty resourceful at avoiding water, cover, mounds, etc. I think it's fun for the dog to evade you and your training partners as you try to block her and force her not to cheat. Definitely not what you want to reinforce.
And as long as we're talking about proofing, here's another skill that must be trained, that is, that is not natural for a dog: picking up a bumper from an area scented with birds, or from a location where a bag of birds is nearby. Sometimes for one reason or another you might ask the throwers in a group to throw bumpers for your dog while the other dogs are getting birds, and I think it's likely that you dog will have some difficulty retrieving that bumper if you don't train for it.
I've listed a lot of things above. I didn't mean that you should pick and choose among them. Your dog needs to be competent with all of them. I think they're more important for her development as an event dog than retrieving keys.
> My other question is - my goal is not a dog that is used for hunting- my goal is a dog that can get a JH, nothing more- so does the concept of not training marked retrieves until after training blinds, apply?
I'm sorry, if I understood what you wrote, I think you have it backwards. To pass a Junior test (four passes gets you a JH), your dog will not run any blinds, and will not be expected (except perhaps by the occasional rogue judge) to be capable of responding to handling cues, or to have the skills that would require handling to train (such as not cheating around water).
Rather, for Junior, what you need is a dog that will pick up all the kinds of birds described above, in all the kinds of situations described above, and bring the bird back to you so that you can take it from her mouth. That is, she needs to be able to retrieve to hand.
The delivery doesn't have to be fancy, with the dog coming to heel, sitting, and then holding until you verbally cue "out". That's a nice skill, but it doesn't have to be that involved. You can just take the bird as the dog comes running up to you. FYI, that's what I do with Laddie in competition for most retrieves, because I think it reinforces the return, which used to be Laddie's greatest weakness. Occasionally I do have Laddie heel, sit, and hold before I take the bird, just to show that he can do it, in case anyone cares.
Let me mention that a likely scenario in an event is that the dog gets the bird near you and then drops it. You'll be disqualified if you pick it up off the ground. You've got to get her to immediately pick it back up so that you can grab it before she drops it again. The judges won't give you forever to get her to "fetch it up", so she needs to pick the bird up quickly, and she needs that skill before you compete. Picking up a bird that the dog has dropped nearby is much less natural, and much harder for the dog to learn, then picking up a bird that was thrown.
I'll leave you with a link to one of my favorite drills for strengthening "fetch", a drill I call the Fetch Game: http://2q-retriever.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-fetch-game.html As a positive trainer, I have found the Fetch Game to be one of the most valuable games I've invented (along with the Walking Recall) (also the Walk Out, which you don't need right now).
And by the way, you're not a "pest"! :0) Your questions are a great opportunity to talk about dog training, my favorite subject!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment