That sounds great. Willow's steadiness is suffering at the moment, and it's something (else) I need to focus on. A few times, I have definitely chucked in a cue as I've seen her muscles tense to go. I'm doing a lot of picking up dummies myself at the moment.
I've worked with this lady before and several things always stand out.... She always separates things into component parts and I mean really separate She never rushes, it takes as long as it takes. You always have to do it right or she gets you to do it again. Always! Nothing slips by unnoticed
Tired out today! Been shooting We did a day of walked up shooting with very little in the way of hunting dogs in front. There were partridge, pheasant and duck available but the pheasants are still mostly young and we didn't see any so we had predominantly partridge with one drive of ducks. Riley was a little star and I really took my time after yesterday's lesson. He worked hard and hunted well, mostly had his listening ears on. We even got a bit of applause for one stint where he didn't pick but worked his little socks off and handled beautifully He wasn't keen on the runners but I think that's a hangover from steadiness, a bit more shooting and he'll get the hang of them, as we all know he's not the bravest of souls. That said there was not a flinch at the gunshot today and he was ears up looking for birds the whole time so I'm really pleased about that and we were right next to the guns in line. I had him on his lead a reasonable amount but he was very steady really. He struggled to maintain a good heel position in the cover though so for safety's sake I kept him on his lead and we'll work on our heel work in cover. The other thing on our list to work on is holding his line over jumps, we do very little of this and he gets a bit stuck sometimes. He was fine on the marks over hay bale barriers but didn't go over on the blind I had to walk right up to it to get him over. All in all a super (if slightly wet!) day
Ah, I love the thought of Riley working his little socks off - I can just imagine it, and I bet he really well deserved his applause. I bet that was a proud mum moment!
It's amazing that when the aim is to retrieve something that you can be so very pleased when they come back with nothing
Ah, bless him. I so know this is a stupid, stupid question.....but I don't suppose you had that lovely new, shiny gopro switched on did you? No.....
I did take it but it was tipping down and I figured all is get was raindrops plus once I'd got all my clobber on I couldn't face putting that on too. I looked like the Michelin man!!!
Brilliant, well done Riley!!! And Barbara, of course... How amazing that just a year ago you were agonising that he would never be able to be steady around gunshot... He really has done tremendously well with his training, you must be very proud of him.
Another days shooting under our belt and the wheels are starting to wobble...... Riley's game finding is going well and he's hunting hard when he gets wind of something. The adverse effect of this though is that the ears switch off and the straight lines disappear as he hunts too early. Yesterday he would still stop when asked which was good but between leaving my mouth and arriving at his ears any command had turned into "you just carry on whatever you were doing" So back we will go to dummies and memory retrieves to get our lines back in order........one step forward, 10 steps back On a more positive note the gunshot didn't seem to stress him at all. We did three standing drives and one longish walk up but we were in the line for all of them so the guns could shoot in front or behind (often the picking up team are right back from the guns and the birds fall between the guns and the dogs). The highlight was two pheasants that were down along a hedge line one after the other. The hedge helped Riley hold his line and he picked the first and then went straight out for the second. Got his distance and picked on his nose. A perfect training set up and I was very pleased with him. The lowlight was getting my hands scratched up by a cock pheasant. I can't blame him for trying but it does hurt!!
Riley went beating yesterday !!! I thought it might help with our heelwork and walk up if he could just walk to heel in the beating line in amongst spaniels working, flags cracking, people shouting and sticks tapping. He was very excited and he came out for two drives. The first one he was pretty good, walked roughly to heel and left the other dogs alone. The chap with two impeccably behaved spaniels clearly decided I wasn't a lost cause (see Obi's log) and was at least slightly capable of training a dog (even if it was a labrador) In between drives and on the second drive he found it really hard to contain his excitement and started ranging quite a bit so I popped him back on his lead. Thankfully the cover wasn't too bad and it saved me from turning into a fishwife shouting at my dog!! All in all I think it was really good for him(and me) and as I'm likely to go back to the same shoot I'll take him beating again and arm myself with some cracking treats. It was also good for him to realise going shooting doesn't involve him endlessly retrieving. I might take a bit of a spaniel approach and doing beating, no retrieving on some days and retrieving on others.
Ooo - interesting. Was Riley expected to stay at heel, or was he sniffing around for birds and helping with the beating? How far away if ok/too far etc? What were you expecting of him?
I asked him to stay at heel. I've got a spaniel for hunting and Riley's steadiness/heelwork isn't good enough to ask him to differentiate between the two I don't think, so I treated it as if we were in a walk up. I was ok with him going round stuff a different way to me as long as he was within 2 or 3(at a push) feet and not too far forward I was happy. As we're not going to compete I don't want him glued to my side, I'll just fall over him!!
Both my dogs are going back to basics as a little bit of shooting certainly has the wheels wobbling on Riley. I'm trying to improve his recall and using my new frisbee treats to reward a whiplash turn on the recall. I'm throwing them behind me so it does mean Riley is running past me but as the bit that's most wobbly is getting him to whip round I figure we can tidy that up to coming in to me. Also I want a good recall response when he's overshot a retrieve so I don't always want him to come all the way home anyway. So far so good, we've been working at about 25 metres when travelling away but not utterly absorbed in something.
Sounds good. I throw treats side to side - I have no trouble getting Charlie to come right back in when I don't throw the treat.
SWMBO does a game where you turn and bowl the treat behind you. She says that you're working on getting the dog to accelerate towards you, whereas if you start off asking them to stop at you, they can often be a bit lackadaisical at running towards you. Doing that, and a similar thing to you, where I reward a recall now and again with a ball bowled behind me, really improved the speed of recall. Not that you saw any evidence of that, but I promise you, it has
Yes that's exactly what I'm doing for that reason. I'm looking for his head to whip round. I thinking bowling the treat makes me more dynamic too and that's translating to Riley
Definitely. When we first played the elastic recall game, it was me turning my back that prompted the acceleration. Then they learned that a treat was going that way and accelerated for that. Then the whistle was introduced and a clicker for marking that point of acceleration (although I'm not convinced that was massively effective). So, over time, you can be less dynamic because they learn that the reward is a consequence of them running towards you like a bat out of hell
