Last Saturday was free from thunderstorms and I was feeling well enough to do a little wing-on-a-string training with Elvis. He catches on pretty fast. I attached a couple of duck wings to a small bumper with cable ties, and tied the bumper to a ball of twine.
I want to make sure that Elvis learns to use his nose from the start, so the training took place in the pasture, where the weeds are as tall as Elvis and he can’t see the bumper until he’s on top of it. I took a small bag of peanut butter flavored Pup Corn as a reward.
He did well in finding the bumper, but in those cases where he couldn’t, I pulled the bumper towards me through the weeds. The movement attracted his attention and he pounced on the bumper.
It took about a dozen of these blind retrieves until he lost interest. I wanted to see how long he would go before losing interest, in order to gauge future training sessions.
Tags: bird dog training, training puppies, wing on a string training
