Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:59 am Post subject: Am i going to make him sticky ?
Hi All,
Alfie Moon is coming on a treat with his training and so far i am hoping we will be up to scratch for getting him picking up next year.
As a few of you may have read previously,, We went down the whole dummy launcher path, so being a boy with a new toy, I got a little over enthusiastic with that for a while and let him have far too many basic retrieves where he learnt didly squat other than to be stupidly expectant that he was going to get every single retrieve.
So over Christmas and last few weeks, I have been firing a lot of blanks without the dummies and then sending Alf back for blinds,,, Also firing out the dummy as a distraction and still sending back for a blind and me picking the launched one, and he is coming on lovely.
went out sat am,, sent him out into the stubble field,, and he spooked the biggest Hare i have seen in my life,, literally 3 feet away from him, and not far off his size, lol..... He gave it one glance and then carried on hunting for his dummy, So was really pleased with that.
I have noticed a few thing that i need to improve on though and thats still his control at distance, He close control is lovely now,, Back, left right, sit, down,,, 3 card trick all in whatever order you fancy are spot on, but as soon as he gets to say 50 yards plus, he gets a little deaf.
i know his drive is Grade AAA+ and always will be as far as retrieving, so i'm not worried about that,, So what i hav been doing, and i hope this isn't going to cause to many problems, is starting to make him work a big harder once he is out in the field...
and by harder i mean listening to me more.
So i'll send him out after either a mark or a blind,,, I am down the path towards where he is going, and Kaz is sending him.....and she is basically blowing him a stop when he is roughly level with me.
at the minute iwe are stopping him after 30-40 yards, if is is slow at stopping,, I peg it out and make sure he cant get to the dummy or ignore her.
and even after just doing this 2 or 3 times,, his stopping has got much better at medium range. once he has stopped and checked back with Kaz,, she has sometimes been recalling him,, other times sendintg him back,, other times fully recalling and re sending and what i was planning on doing was increasing this 30-40 yard distance until he is will out there 100-120 yards i guess away,,but still having him dropping to a stop,, recalling if thats what i want without the dummy.
I know i mentioned this briefly before a long time ago, and i'm pretty sure it was said then, that i dont really want to be stopping him when sending him out as it may ruin his drive. To be honest this little fella has sooo much drive i dont think i could ruin it, and i really need to sharpen his control up at distance as he does go into "i have it all under control Dad,, i'll fine it" type mode and should we get good enough to work him next year.. then i need him to listen to control no matter what.
So pulling him away from say a dead bird, and re dirrecting to a runner etc.
so thats pretty much my morning ramble, just wanted someone to confirm that my doing this, i'm not going to be making anything else sticky in anyway.
I might as well answer so everyone can disagree with me .
Its certainly not the way I would do it with my dogs. If he is not listening to the stop whistle at 50 yards and all your basic stop whistle work is in place I am afraid you have to leg it out after him and reinforce your command, otherwise to my mind you are just papering over the cracks!
Me going down the track a bit and legging it out for him if he ignores Kaz ?
as surely i am gonna get the dummy quicker if i am down the track than in the original place where he was first sent from
It is very difficult with the way you are doing things Andy. Who is going to work and pick up with him? Whoever is handling is the one that needs to do the correction as it is that person that is being ignored.
The person who blows the stop whistle that he ignores is the person that needs to go out to him and reinforce the stop whistle. By all means you stand on the dummy to stop him picking it but you cannot do the correction.
It is really hard to comment without seeing the dog but I would think that your stop whistle is not good enough yet for the exercises you are doing, and yes you run the risk of making him sticky.
I look at it this way, the whistle is a signal to your dog that if he stops and looks at you, you can then help him to get his goal. A hard hunting dog will be thinking 'sod off, I know better than you, I know if I keep going and sniff hard enough I will get it, anyway I know where it is' etc,etc. What I do, once the dog is stopping at a resonable distance is to walk alongside a hedge ( a straight line) turn round and start to walk back, drop a dummy without it being noticed, keep walking and drop another dummy some distance away that he sees, get dog to walk on ahead and quickly pick that dummy up, or get a helper to do it. Carry on to a distance that you know your dog will stop at easy. Turn and face where you have walked. Now your dog has seen one dummy down, that is not there. There is another dummy which he hasn't seen. So you cast him off, he goes to where he saw a dummy drop, before he starts to cast about for it, stop him on the whistle - if need be yell sit and/or oye and start to walk toewards him. If you start towards him and he suddenly sits - stop. Now his reward is to collect the dummy, give him his hand signal to go back and he will find his dummy. So, to stop him getting sticky you do 2 straight backs to one stop halfway. I find that doing it this way, you are getting it in his head that you are a team and the whistle is there to help. not for you to stop his fun and I am built for comfort not for speed so running out and grabbing dog in not on the cards for me (dogs know they are faster than me anyway). When I first start the stop whistle, I get the dog to stop as he/she is just roaming about and once they have sat, I go to them and give them a titbit before telling them they can go and when they are steady I throw a dummy over the head or right or left after I have blown the whistle and they have stopped, then send them for . Everyone has their methods and I supose it is whatever suits!
We will both be training and working with him and even though this may makes things more difficult, it seems its working ok so far, Yes we have to do things is a certain format when he is learning new stuff, but as he is both of our dog, i'm not willing to take over everything with training and working and take all of that away from Kaz. If that means we aren't able to get as far as if i took everything over then so be it.
If Kaz sends him for a retrieve and he ignores the stop,,, especially as i am talking about control at distance, rather than close in work, she would never be able to get to the dummy before him, and therefore if she tears off after him,,, by which time he has picked the dummy,,,,
He's now sat there with dummy in mouth,, Does he know what he is being corrected on ????
I would say probably not,
I am by no means having any involvement when she is handling other than to stop him getting the dummy,,, Not speaking to him, not correcting him,,,, thats all down to whoever is sending him.
Our stop whistle is very good close in,,, and therefore this is exactly why i am lengthening things and testing him there as this is where the issues start arrising.
So lets say moving forward we find our issues are all beyond 100 yards and he gets really deaf then,,, How would the handler get to that dummy before the dog does without the use of an assitant in that area to act as soon as that whitle is ignored and stop the retrieve from being able to happen.
Andy I appreciate that this is not what you are wanting to here but in my view your stop whistle is not good enough close to you and you should not move on until it is. As I say it is fine for you to stand on the dummy to stop him getting it but then Kaz must run out and make him sit.
If he is stopping at 40 yards but not at 50 yards he has worked out that that is the distance he can get away with it, so you will have to do it gradually increasing the distance ie 40 yards then 41 yards then 42 yards and not increasing the distance until he is 100% stopping at that distance and not letting him get away with things at all. At the end of the day at say 41 yards you do not have control of your dog he is sticking his fingers up at you and doing his own thing.
At 100 yards because you do not have full control of your dog he will clear off and do exactly what he likes and you will not be able to do a thing about it.
I will leave this post for others to answer now so you can get some different points of view on this.
not about what i want to or dont want to hear mate,, its more me trying to understand why he does certain things and what that means,, so as always i completely appreciate your points.
The only reason i say about his close in stop, is that i know i can stop him 100% of the time close in,,,,as this is where we have put in most of the time. so you are right in saying that he sticks up the v's when we say send him for a dummy 70 yards away.
But it was not until i see him needing to be stopped and directed that i realise he can hear me, and he does understand but is choosing not to to at distance.
hence bringing things back to 50 yards.
the plan was simply for him to be tested at each 10 yard jump, admittedly wasn't thinking he would need 1 yard jumps, but if thats whats required, then we can of course do that.
so my plan was simply,, 3 of 4 retrieves,, 60 yards,,, if we get 100% sucess,, i move 10 yards away to 70 yards,, as does the dummy,, and therefore he will b stopped a further 10 yards away from Kaz,, and basically for me to keep moving down the path until we got to a distance than should be addequate for all situations he is likely to be in.
I wasn't by any means thinking of jumping to 100 yards,, was just trying to understand that if this distance was where i found the problem,, how do i go about stoping him getting the dummy and correcting him, when he knows what he's done wrong.
Andy just as an aside and because it sometimes sounds as if you are still trying to understand the workings of a dogs brain .
At the beginning of the picking up season Rocky and Gem will both stop on the stop whistle at 100 yards, but ask me that question at the end of the season and you will see a huge grin come across my face as I have to admit will they ek as like!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a matter of constant tweeking and retraining.
They soon learn especially out on a shoot that they can get away with all sorts of things and that's just the way it is, so come 1st February its back to the drawing board .
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
.
.... I am having a similar problem with Jake with stopping at a distance.
