We resumed training Thursday evening and while Sophie progressed nicely, Dakota regressed to the point that I finally called off her training.
Sophie:
I started Sophie with a couple of easy doubles and then spent a bit of time sending her out on difficult double retrieves. There was not much more I could do with her, so we moved on to blind retrieves.
For her first “blind” retrieve, I tossed the bumpers into the tall grass and then took her to the far end of the pasture. She had difficulty finding the first set of bumpers but quickly caught on. Although this was not a true blind retrieve, the time spent walking to the end of the pasture and the distance she had to go for the bumpers made it a semi-blind retrieve.
After that, I would toss one bumper and while she was running out to retrieve it, toss the other bumper in a different direction, making it a blind retrieve. When she retrieved the first bumper, I sent her out on a blind retrieve for the second bumper and repeated the process so that each retrieve was a blind retrieve.
Dakota:
I started Dakota on an easy double retrieve and we never progressed from there. Perhaps it was my fault in starting her on a double, but from the beginning, she refused to even pick up the larger bumper and would retrieve only the smaller, older one.
We made no progress on doubles so I tossed only the larger bumper. Again she would ignore the bumper and search the field for the smaller one – her favorite. Either that or she would run back to me and pick up the small bumper lying on the ground.
I then took the larger bumper and place it in her mouth as a “force retrieve” but she would not hold it and simply let it roll out of her mouth. This was getting frustrating, so I changed tactics and took the duck wings off the bumpers and tossed them for her to retrieve.
Same story. She refused to retrieve the wings or even pick them up, while remaining obsessed with the smaller bumper. I came to the realization that we were not going to make any progress and my level of frustration was growing, so I called off our training session. This was one problem to which I would have to find an alternate technique.
Tags: bird dog training, casting drills, double retrieve, hunting dog training, retriever training problems
