Should I pause general retrieving work during hold conditioning.?

[SoupDragon]

Hi all,

I have a working bred fox red lab bitch 2-year-old that I had done some obedience work with, heel and stay etc dog is steady and very athletic probably small for a working lab. Anyway... Ive started to do some gundog work with her using dummies, mainly guided by YouTube. Dog has taken to it like a "lab to water" I've yet to start directional work on a blind retrieve(which will probably be more difficult I would assume) but the rest is going really well and the dog is progressing quickly. The dog does spit the dummy on retrieve (probably because she has done ball retrieves when I had no ambition to go down this route) although enthusiasm to retrieve is high. I've started over the last three days doing hold conditioning with her (tethered on a table) and that is going well, should I stop the other work until the hold conditioning is complete, which could take some time, or continue in tandem? Im concerned I'm enforcing spitting while attempting to promote the hold regards the hold conditioning, kind of thing?

I should have continued with the bitch after doing the general obedience work, which was new to me at the time, I have wasted a year but she still seems keen to learn, and I'm using her to teach myself, I hope I'm not to old to learn at 60 . Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Cass]

Cut out all other retrieving. The lesson she needs to learn right now is hold. If you keep throwing retrieves for her outside of your hold sessions then she'll most likely revert to spitting it out like she was doing. She's a lab, she won't lose her desire to retrieve. Spend the time and do it right.

[SoupDragon]

Cut out all other retrieving. The lesson she needs to learn right now is hold. If you keep throwing retrieves for her outside of your hold sessions then she'll most likely revert to spitting it out like she was doing. She's a lab, she won't lose her desire to retrieve. Spend the time and do it right.

Thanks, I had a feeling that would be the answer but was convincing myself it was not, as I wanted to continue with the progress I was making elsewhere.

[Judy]

I think Cass is right, it is much the safest way to retrain. Last 'dropper' I had I helped her understanding along by having the occasional treat in my hand calling her in and making her shove her nose right in to my hand for it. Kind of presenting the picture of me receiving the retrieve but reinforcing the fact she needed to shove her nose into my hand, if that makes sense. Did this alongside teaching the hold and it suddenly clicked with her. No treats for retrieving though as it can encourage the dropping if the timing isn't exactly right.

[CockerCanuck]

Agree stop all regular retrieving while you work through this. Next step is to have her hold for longer periods, then hold while you step away from her, then walking at heel, then hold while you sit her walk away and call her in. Then do it all over again with increasing distraction in a park in a field in a forest etc. it sounds like a lot but the lessons should be short.

When I do this I try for three ten minute lessons a day and expect to be back to regular work in ten days or so.

[SoupDragon]

Agree stop all regular retrieving while you work through this. Next step is to have her hold for longer periods, then hold while you step away from her, then walking at heel, then hold while you sit her walk away and call her in. Then do it all over again with increasing distraction in a park in a field in a forest etc. it sounds like a lot but the lessons should be short.

When I do this I try for three ten minute lessons a day and expect to be back to regular work in ten days or so.

Thanks for the reply, I don't know if I've been lucky but the dog picked it up really quickly, tonight (the fifth day) she is retrieving to hand consistently and will "hold" until told.I pretty much exactly followed the path advised in your post. Once it really clicked regarding the walking to heel while holding, the stay and call hold (which was only tonight), I couldn't resist some short retrieves, and then full-length dummy retrieves and she returned it to hand perfectly to the heel position until told to release to my hand. She had never returned anything to hand before always dropping it a few yards away

As I said in my original post I did some obedience with her as a pup heel and stay were the foundation but some nonsense stuff like spin and roll. My daughter who lives very close to me, was offered a well-bred red lab pup which was 5 months old and had been returned to the breeder she was thinking of having a pup off, and she took it, I watched a few gundog videos because I thought of doing some retrieving work (which I knew very little about) with the new pup, but as I started on the basics heel and stay, I decided to try my older 2-year-old bitch. on the retrieving drills, After just over 2 weeks she is steady and I can toss a number of dummies out in different directions and send her in the chosen direction, she will retrieve enthusiastically from water or land and hunt for the dummy well in cover and go back a long way for a dummy she has seen dropped. I haven't done blind retrieves using directional work and had only just started a few drills stopping her on the whistle. .

I'm a little bit lost at where I'm going with all this as I'm not into shooting and don't have the ground to shoot on and not really into guns. I have previously hunted lurchers ferreted and flown birds of prey, I've always enjoyed seeing dogs work cover and have had springers and terriers who would trash well but were far from "trained". Perhaps I should look at joining a club or something, Ive had a hell of a buzz out of the progress the dog has made in such a short time, which is probably down to the dog more than me

[SoupDragon]

Not sure if I should have started a new thread but as it relates to same dog didn't want to start multiple threads asking questions on the same dog.

On the blind retrieves (dummy work) if the dog is hunting the stop to the whistle is problematic in that I have to force blow a few times and throw a shouted sit in, she seems so keen to hunt that it's a problem to break to her immediately.

Ive started to try to overcome this by throwing two dummies sending her out on a seen retrieve and then stopping her and sending her out to the second dummy, she does this OK. Ive noticed though that when I do this a few times she shoots off and sometimes puts the skids on herself as if anticipating the "stop" after a few yards, am I confusing the dog? She stops fairly well when she is not hunting for the dummy, I have moved her onto bigger fields with high grass so the retrieves are not easily found. Any thoughts on what I am doing right or wrong would be appreciated.

[munstyman]

Your stop ( to the whistle )is not trained well, period.
Blowing the whistle harder only works in your mind not the dogs, in fact it works the opposite way as the dog ignores till it hears the panic or rage blast If the dog ignores the whistle it is because it has not been trained to do the action associated with it, despite what you think ... to mean in all circumstances ( not only those times in context to where it was trained )
The elephant in the room however is why you are wanting the dog to stop, when hunting for the retrieve ? This tells me you have not set up the exercise correctly and are therefore compounding one error with another.
If you try and correct it applying the stop on seen retrieves, ( rather than the very occasional `proof testing' ) then your going to get the dog anticipating the stop on every retrieve and not concentrating on the retrieve. You may well drain the dog of its enthusiasm and end up with a lack lustre retriever ... that still hasn't learnt the stop properly.
You need to set up blind exercises so that the dog goes in the direction you send it where it is likely to find the retrieve ( wind is important ). Long grass is one of the more difficult locations for a dog to find and requires a very advanced dog with confidence AND all the ability either natural or trained to `hold ' an area. If your having to use the stop to control line or holding area, the dog is not up to that standard yet, or you've not done enough to make it easy for the dog to achieve, which is how you should be training the dog, When the dog is allowed to fail, you have failed the dog
When a dog is having to hunt for a retrieve, you should only be playing the part of putting it in the right place to start to hunt, after that leave it to the dog. Whilst the stop is imv the most important tool in your training arsenal. Every time you HAVE to use it is an indication that something else in your training is not right. Look to correcting the real problem first, treat the disease not the symptom.

[SoupDragon]

Your stop ( to the whistle )is not trained well, period.
Blowing the whistle harder only works in your mind not the dogs, in fact it works the opposite way as the dog ignores till it hears the panic or rage blast If the dog ignores the whistle it is because it has not been trained to do the action associated with it, despite what you think ... to mean in all circumstances ( not only those times in context to where it was trained )
The elephant in the room however is why you are wanting the dog to stop, when hunting for the retrieve ? This tells me you have not set up the exercise correctly and are therefore compounding one error with another.
If you try and correct it applying the stop on seen retrieves, ( rather than the very occasional `proof testing' ) then your going to get the dog anticipating the stop on every retrieve and not concentrating on the retrieve. You may well drain the dog of its enthusiasm and end up with a lack lustre retriever ... that still hasn't learnt the stop properly.
You need to set up blind exercises so that the dog goes in the direction you send it where it is likely to find the retrieve ( wind is important ). Long grass is one of the more difficult locations for a dog to find and requires a very advanced dog with confidence AND all the ability either natural or trained to `hold ' an area. If your having to use the stop to control line or holding area, the dog is not up to that standard yet, or you've not done enough to make it easy for the dog to achieve, which is how you should be training the dog, When the dog is allowed to fail, you have failed the dog
When a dog is having to hunt for a retrieve, you should only be playing the part of putting it in the right place to start to hunt, after that leave it to the dog. Whilst the stop is imv the most important tool in your training arsenal. Every time you HAVE to use it is an indication that something else in your training is not right. Look to correcting the real problem first, treat the disease not the symptom.

Thank you for the reply, much appreciated.

I had the gut feeling that as you said stopping the dog while sent out to a retrieve would affect confidence and commitment if done to often, it didn't seem like the right thing to do, when I did it

My thought process was that if the dog is hunting for the blind retrieve 20 yds to the left then I should stop him and send him to the right? If the dog is in inside this I leave her do its work. Perhaps as I have thrown dummies in the area during the session previous to the blind retrieves the scent is confusing the dog? Is this a schoolboy error? I thought this would increase the effective reality of the training. The dog has never failed to retrieve a dummy although sometimes I have had to bring her back in and send her out again on the line.

Ive only been working with the dog for nearly 4 weeks and shes two (regards retrieving), she has done previous heel and some obedience work and is very steady and easy to control in general. Her enthusiasm for this work appears boundless.

I'm probably trying to progress too quickly, but the seen/memory retrieves are no problem for the dog. So I introduced the blind retrieves and then the blind retrieves in deep grass.

What can I do to work on the stop when the dog's mind is engaged enthusiastically on another task without doing it when the dog is actually enthusiastically distracted? I can stop her but its not immediate when shes is at long range, or is my problem (nearly said the dog's problem ) that I need to get the dog to respond more accurately to the direction I am sending her out in and go further before wondering off the angle sent? Or a mixture of all that?

I hope this post has not confused things even more it may come over as a bit of a ramble

[Nickheref]

My thought process was that if the dog is hunting for the blind retrieve 20 yds to the left then I should stop him and send him to the right?

As Munsty has said, the stop has not been learnt or taught properly. I would stop doing the "exciting" retrieving work and concentrate on the stop for a bit with perhaps a retrieve as a reward for a good stop occasionally, definitely not every time otherwise the dog will quickly anticipate it.

A dog could, depending on wind strength, cover type etc smell a dummy from 20 yards quite easily but even if it hasn't I would let it work it out for itself even if this takes some time, especially if it has the idea of distance to the approximate fall ie range. If you constantly help it you will reach the point where the dog expects help (although this one sounds like that might not be the case ) and then you won't find anything unless you know exactly where it fell, which in the real world isn't the case and often you don't have too much idea either other than the approximate line or dodgy directions from someone else.

I, and I suspect this is pretty general from experienced handlers, often deliberately on blind retrieves send the dog on a line to the windward side of the dummy/bird. That way you can be yards out but still correct in the dogs mind. Whereas if you send it directly at the fall and the dog goes slightly upwind of it, the dog won't find it and will ultimately lose confidence in you then decide if it has any chance of finding stuff it must rely solely on itself, so ignore the stop whistle and get on with the job. However the real thing it to train the stop whistle properly as every time you need to blow it repeatedly and shout etc you are making that the norm in the dogs world.

To see what a dog's nose can do you might, on a fairly breezy day with a constant wind put a dummy in light cover without the dog seeing then slowly from quite a distance away walk the dog towards it into the wind with the dog at heel possibly stopping and sitting it a few times whilst watching its reaction, almost certainly at some point you will see the dog raise its nose or twitch as it has got wind of it and knows exactly where it is without a word from you. You can then send the dog on a "blind retrieve" and build confidence from your dog in you. That is how I start blind retrieving in young dogs, very little difference from marked retrieves in their minds but they trust me when I tell them there is something out there and the direction as they already know it!