Behaviors the dog learns in the training room will require extensive proofing before they can be used in competition. A typical series of proofing locations might be:

• Other rooms of the house
• The yard immediately outside the house
• An enclosed area away from the house, such as a tennis court
• An open field
• A field in the vicinity of a training day, but away from the other dogs and people
• A training day with other dogs and people, simulating competition as much as possible
• Competition

Here is a way to work on proofing both Sit and Here for such a progression of locations:

• Cue Sit (see earlier post on how to train this cue). The dog may need to be retrained this cue in new locations, so patience is essential.
• Back away one step, then quickly return to the dog.
• If the dog moved toward you, speak gently to give assurance that it’s OK, but don’t reinforce with a treat. Then try again. You can maneuver the dog with hand gestures back to the original position but it’s not necessary. Instead, you can just start again from the dog’s new position.
• When the dog stays in the sit as you step backwards, quickly step forward again and reinforce with treat and encouragement.
• Continue in this way until you can step backwards several steps.
• Also, without stepping backwards, turn around in place, so that for an instant your back is to the dog.
• As the next step in your training, after you have backed away, instead of coming back to the dog, cue Here. I like to do this with enthusiasm, so that the cue itself shows your pleasure in the dog’s good Sit and acts as an immediate reinforcer. Then, of course, when the dog arrives in front of you, reinforce with a treat and perhaps more words of encouragement.
• As you extend the distance for this game, you can also introduce a bit of hide-and-seek by gradually creating the situation where you move out of the dog’s sight, and the dog hears you call Here from out of sight. I’ve found dogs seem to love this version of the game.
• Splashing thru puddles, and swimming across channels once the dog has learned to swim (to be discussed in a later post), are further important location-proofing facets.

So this provides a game you can play in a series of increasingly challenging locations to proof both the Sit and the Here cues.

Besides location proofing, another kind of proofing is also essential: distraction proofing. So as you proceed with location proofing, you also need to introduce distractions of increasing difficulty, such as food bowls, rolling or flying tennis balls or bumpers, duck crates, and other people and well-behaved dogs, both still and moving.

The skills of Sit and Here are so difficult in the context of a competition retrieve that it’s possible no amount of proofing will complete the training needed for that work, and you even occasionally see well-trained and experienced field retrievers fail either of those cues in competition or a training day. But a thorough proofing with this game will lay a foundation for both cues that you can build on as they are merged into retrieve training.

[Note: This post is not specifically about Lightning and will eventually be moved, perhaps with edits, to the PRT website still under construction. But I might mention that this is one bit of dog training that seems to work fine if I let Laddie train alongside Lightning. It’s way too easy for Laddie, it uses twice as many treats, and it’s conceivable I’ll find that Lightning is not learning the skills as well as if he were training alone. But it tugs at my heart to lock Laddie away, especially while he can hear me training Lightning, so at least in the early training I’ve let him join us in the game.]