Last weekend’s snow still covers all the grounds in our area. Oherwise I might have tried introducing Lightning to doubles outdoors, as I did with Lumi and Laddie. However, we have a foyer in front of our stairway to upstairs, which meant I could sit on the stairs to rest and avoid bending while introducing Lightning to the concept of multiple, that is, multiple marks being thrown while he watched all the throws, before he was released to retrieve the first one.

Given the fact that he hasn’t been trained Fetch nor steadiness, I found that I needed two bits of equipment for this work.

First, I needed to use articles that he was strongly motivated to retrieve. I tried slippers, balled up socks, and soft canvas bumpers, but they weren’t sufficiently motivating without a trained Fetch, which I plan to train in the second stage of our program, after teething is complete. Luckily, however, he was highly motivated by 2″ bumpers like those we’ve used in the field, and also 3″ bumpers with streamers, though those were a bit much for a small indoor space. By motivated, I mean that if he saw either size of bumper a few feet away, he would spontaneously run to it to retrieve it.

The other bit of equipment was to put on Lightning’s flat collar so I could hold him while I made the two throws. He doesn’t usually wear a collar indoors, and I don’t usually use any physical restraint for indoor training. But I didn’t want to confuse him by introducing a steadiness requirement, so I held him by his collar for a second or two, quickly threw one bumper to one side and one to the other, and immediately released him.

We only did a few trials, so he only developed an imperfect understanding of the concept of a double mark in this season. That is, he would run to the go-bird, then start to carry it to the memory bird until I called Here.  Then he’d bring me the go-bird and tend to forget about the memory bird until I used a sweeping gesture to direct him to it.

It would have been nice to run enough doubles for Lightning to grasp the concept without my extra cues. But keeping to an approach of using short sessions in order to work at peak motivation, we didn’t run enough trials for him to become fluent on running these little doubles. That will come, I think, in the next session or two.

Meanwhile, even now, Lightning has been introduced to multiples, nearly completing the TRT, and PRT, pre-teething checklist.

Mike Lardy’s TRT seems to contain a bit of a paradox. One of the final introductory tasks is introducing the dog to multiples, but Force Fetch comes later, under Basics. The dog in theory hasn’t learned Out (or one of the equivalent cues, such as Give) during the introductory stage. So how do you get the go-bird article away from the dog on a multiple such as a double so that he or she can launch for the next article after retrieving the previous one?

A related issue, which may or may not be part of Mike’s thinking, is that I don’t want the dog to be required give up am article after retrieving it, because I don’t want the dog to be reluctant to return to the handler carrying his or her prize. I believe that has been a valuable factor in Lightning learning to return to his handler in practicing single marks early in the process, with Lightning’s check cord to assist when needed. He eventually drops the article, and we often reinforce that by the gunner immediately firing a pistol and throwing another mark. That speeds up Lightning dropping the retrieved article, but it still takes several seconds, too slow for the rhythm of running another mark that was already thrown as part of a double or triple.

Yet another concern for a dog completing his or her introductory training is that, if you started the training with a puppy, the puppy may still be teething at the stage where you want to train the final introductory skills. Lightning at four months is still teething; I sometimes see blood on his buddy Ryley’s white coat after a wrestling match. I don’t want Lightning to associate the pain of teething with retrieving in general or the Force Fetch behavior chain in particular. Therefore, for the indoor work, I’m using soft objects such as balled up socks as the retrieval articles. Outdoor training will be out of the question because of the snow and slippery conditions, which could lead to an injury, for some time anyway. If he’s still teething when outdoor conditions are better, I’ll watch carefully to see if avoidance behaviors suggest that carrying birds or bumpers seems to be causing any pain and call off the session if so.

Meanwhile, I’d still like to train Lightning to run a double or triple, for now with soft articles indoors. So even though I’m going to train a Formal Fetch (the PRT equivalent of Force Fetch)  in the next stage of training, and even though I won’t take the last article of a multiple away but will let Lightning keep it as long as he wants, I do need him to give up the earlier article or articles when he brings them back to the handler so he can be sent to the next mark already lying out there.

With those remarks as preface, here was my approach to training Out, the new behavior I’ll need for running multiples.

For reinforcement, I used a small bowl of cream cheese, which I would dip into with my finger. Although this training would have been a good prospect for clicker training, I didn’t use a clicker as my secondary reinforcer, or bridge, but instead used a cheerful Good! or some similar exclamation at the moment Lightning performed the desired behavior, following up quickly with a taste of cream cheese as the primary reinforcer.

You can’t train Out immediately, because first the dog needs to be holding an article. That means that first you need to train Take it. The dog may have no practical use for Take it during a training day or competition, but it provides an efficient starting point for training Out.

If the dog will instantly grab the article in his or her teeth the moment you present it, you may not even need a cue. But that wasn’t the case with Lightning. So the first step was to shape Take it. First I would reinforce Lightning if he merely glanced at the article, then if he made even a slight move with his head toward it, then if he touched it with his nose. Finally I wouldn’t reinforce that and, as usual when shaping a behavior, Lightning exhibited an extinction burst, offering a more vigorous version of the previously reinforced behavior (the nose touch) before giving up. The more vigorous version was to grab the article with his teeth. Of course I immediately said Good! and reinforced with a dab of cream cheese.

After that, I would no longer reinforce a nose touch, and would only reinforce taking the article in his mouth. And once I could sense the moment he was about to do so, I began to say Take it just as he was about to. Soon, he began responding to Take it as a cue without me needing to wait for him to spontaneously offer the behavior. As usual in training a new cue, by saving saying the cue until the behavior was already reliable, I avoided having him associate the cue with incorrect responses.

In order for Lightning to lick the cream cheese off my finger, he needed to drop the article, so we were soon in a quick rhythm of repeated Take it practice, allowing us to maintain a high Rate of Reinforcement (ROR), the key to a quality training session.

In addition, I was soon able to sense the moment Lightning was about to drop the article, so I could put my hand on it and say Out at that moment. It was important not to pull it away. The dog needs to respond to Out by fully committing to giving up the article, eventually learning to pull away while you hold the article in place, rather than the dog just opening his or her mouth.

To keep the training fresh, I switched articles every few trials. Although other articles probably would have worked, I switched between two balled up socks. Since Laddie was in the room with us, I also gave him opportunity to show off his skill with Take it and Out, and earn his own tastes of cream cheese, every other turn. I don’t know whether that accelerated Lightning’s learning — I don’t think so — but hopefully it didn’t hurt, and I think it might have made it more fun for Lightning as well as Laddie, though I can’t be sure. It’s interesting that Laddie instantly remembered the Take it cue. He hasn’t heard it in many years.

I found with Lightning that having to respond to a chain of two cues, Take it and then Out, before receiving his treat resulted in too low an ROR, so I interspersed frequent trials where I only cued Take it and then immediately offered reinforcement when he responded. As he became more fluent, my adding the Out cue no longer seemed to discourage him, since the behavior chain was the same anyway. Soon he was responding to Out as an independent cue.

The work I’ve described was completed in two short sessions, after which I put the articles away and ended our training for awhile. Next time we’ll practice it a bit more, and then see if we can use it to help train an indoor double. With the snow in our yard higher than the dogs’ shoulders, I guess we won’t be training outdoors again for some time.

With 30+ inches of snow on the ground from yesterday’s blizzard, known locally as Snowzilla, i can’t train the dogs outdoors, so this is a good opportunity for Lightning and me to do some indoor training. I haven’t started anything new, but we’ve continued to practice several skills.

I mentioned in an earlier post that once you’ve trained a hand touch, the dog soon becomes able to respond to sweeping hand gestures without actually touching your hand. For example, I can gesture for Lightning to enter our den from the adjoining room, or gesture for him to jump up into his crate in the back of our van, with a sweeping gesture. Those behaviors are almost always reinforced because they put Lightning some place he wants to be since he knows from experience good things happen there. For example, I always give Lightning, and Laddie, too, a treat as soon as they jump into their crates in the van.

I’ve used the same approach to train Lightning to come to heel on the Heel cue. I began some time ago guiding him with my hand from in front of me at some distance, to one side or the other depending on which hand I’m using, and then in a half loop so that he’s facing the same direction as me, and then cueing a verbal Sit and giving a treat. As I believe I mentioned before, I don’t want my dogs going behind me when they come to heel since they could get distracted and I wouldn’t see it happen. I didn’t begin to use the verbal cue Heel until Lightning was reliably executing the desired behavior. Then I would cue Heel and put down one hand or the other, and Lightning could complete the maneuver without my guiding him the whole way, also sitting at heel automatically. We’ll use this maneuver as part of Lightning’s delivery in the future.

Besides practicing Heel in a variety of locations and distances, I’ve also practiced it with Lightning coming to one side and Laddie coming to the other. I then leave them in a sit, step away and spin around, and again call each of them to heel, this time reversing the side each of them is coming to.

Another cue we’ve practiced indoors is Leave it. I’m not sure I’ve described how it’s trained, so I apologize if this is a repetition.

You hold a desirable treat, preferably one with a strong scent, in your closed fist and don’t open your hand as long as the dog is trying to get it out. When the dog finally pull his or her mouth away, you instantly open your hand and let the dog have the treat. This is sometimes called doggie zen: to get the treat, give up the treat. After a few times, you can predict the instant when the dog will pull his or her mouth away, and just as the dog is about to do so, say Leave it, then open your hand to reinforce the dog’s response. Soon the dog responds to the verbal cue as soon as you say it.

Leave it is a valuable and important cue for any dog, in case the dog is about to pick up something that could be harmful or otherwise undesirable. In addition, some field trainers extend it’s meaning for specific field behaviors. One example is as the last cue in the delivery behavior chain, rather than Out or Give. Another is as the cue when the dog is honoring, rather than No bird or Just watch.

Hopefully we’ll be able to train outdoors again soon. Meanwhile, Lightning and I can continue to practice some useful skills indoors.

When Lightning first began retrieving ducks, he began to develop a high quality return, as he had been showing earlier in our training when he was retrieving bumpers.

But yesterday, his returns deteriorated again, and he started carrying the duck off to the side. His check cord made it possible for Peter, who was acting as handler, to catch him, preventing the behavior from becoming self-reinforcing, but the trend was still in the wrong direction.

Reflecting on his performance over night, I decided we should try two changes to reverse the trend and get back to good returns.

First, we had begun to slip in our original plan of waiting for Lightning to drop the article, in this case the duck, of his own accord. To save time, we had begun grasping the duck when he returned, then holding on as he tried to pull it away until he finally let go, possibly by accident while trying to improve his grip. We had to stop doing that, not only because it would be disastrous for that behavior to become a feature of his delivery when he gets older, but more immediately, because it created an aversive on his return sequence, making him less likely to want to come to the handler with the bird.

Secondly, because we were training with only one thawed duck, we had lost a key reinforcement feature of our previous training with bumpers, the ability of the handler to instantly call for another throw at the moment Lightning dropped the previous article he had retrieved. Since he is not yet willing to retrieve a bumper when a duck is present, the only solution I could come up with was to bring out more ducks when we train. Two ducks would enable us to call for the next throw instantly every other retrieve. Three ducks, two thirds of the time. Four ducks, three fourths of the time. So the more ducks I brought out, the more reinforcement Lightning would receive for returning to the handler and dropping the bird. But I only have a few more ducks in my freezer to last us till I can get more, which I’m not even sure how I’m going to do. I decided to thaw three ducks for today’s session.

Those two changes resulted in a gradual improvement in today’s returns. The amount of time Lightning took to drop the bird, when we made no effort to take it, gradually lessened, as he learned that dropping the bird often (⅔ of the time) instantly produced another gunshot and thrown duck. And no longer having a disincentive to return to the handler, because he would just be welcomed warmly and no one was going to try to take his duck away, he gradually stopped attempting detours and began running straight back to the handler with his bird.

By the way, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that a couple of sessions ago, I asked Peter to begin wearing a field trial whistle and tweet three times to call Lightning in with the bird, before then using claps and enthusiastic calls of Here as we have been doing in our handling. My instructions were that over time, when Peter saw that Lightning responded to the whistle, he could begin fading out other cues for come-in. Lightning has begun responding to the whistle, but we are not yet ready to drop clapping and calling from our practicing. That time will come, but I think those sounds add to the excitement for Lightning, and are valuable in this stage of his training.

We’re still starting each session with a single bumper retrieve, but Lightning won’t retrieve it if a bird is too close, so that’s an ongoing challenge. And I’m continuing to rely primarily on my assistants to act as both gunner and handler, while I watch from the vehicle to minimize wear and tear on my back. In this session, for example, I reloaded the pistols for the gunner as she used up each load (I had asked her to fire twice for each throw to build excitement, so the pistol only lasted three throws), and I finally came out and handled Lightning myself on his last retrieve, after about five rounds of three retrieves each, with breaks for the gunner to collect the ducks and get a reloaded pistol.

By the time I ran Lightning, he was running straight back on his returns. The feeling of cooperation between dog and handler had once again strengthened. All of us could sense it in the air. It was exhilarating, a great way to wrap up the session.

I haven’t asked Lightning to learn anything new the last few days. Instead we’re continuing to practice and strengthen skills we’ve already been working on:

• The highlight of most days is practice with gunner-thrown marks using thawed ducks and gunfire. Each session begins with a bumper retrieve, while  a duck lies elsewhere on the field upwind. Each day, the duck is closer to the gunner than before. Once Lightning retrieves the bumper, the gunner runs to pick up the duck to throw as reinforcement for the bumper retrieve, and from then on, all marks that session are with the duck. Eventually, Lightning will be able to retrieve a thrown bumper even with a duck at the gunner’s feet and with duck scent in the vicinity of where we’re working. That’s what we’re working toward.
• The first few days Lightning retrieved a duck, he tended to drag it by a wing. Yesterday, the duck wasn’t quite thawed, though the outside feathers were soft. Training with the wings still frozen to the body turned out to be an advantage, because Lightning carried the bird by holding its whole body in his mouth as I would like him to. I thought it might be more of a problem to solve, but Lightning seens to have worked it out himself with the help of partially frozen birds.
• Yesterday’s training had more distraction than I would have preferred, two girls practicing soccer on an adjacent field despite the sub-freezing temps. Lightning frequently looked at them, both when waiting for a throw at the line and when he arrived at the bird after running out to it, but he stuck to his work, so we didn’t have to move to a different location.
• Lightning’s retrieves themselves were good. He ran straight to each mark, even when I had the bird thrown into a shallow depression so that he couldn’t see it till he got close.
• Perhaps the most significant element of Lightning’s performance for me is that for some time now, Lightning has been running directly back to the handler on his returns, with no attempts at keep-away. I attribute this to the check cord, which makes any attempt at keep-away futile, to the fact that the handler doesn’t force Lightning to give up the bird but let’s him drop it whenever he’s ready to, and perhaps to natural breed or individual tendencies that have nothing to do with our training. Whatever the reasons, that facet of the retrieve was a major challenge with Lumi and Laddie literally for years, so having found an approach that lets us avoid those pitfalls, at least so far, is for me a major revelation.
• I don’t know how many retrieves other puppies at Lightning’s stage run per session, but I’ve been keeping our sessions short. Yesterday, for example, Lightning retrieved the bumper at 40y once and the duck, working out to 80y, about eight times. I then called the session off while his performance was at a peak. We’ve had good results with short sessions.
• On a personal note, I was having some back and leg pain yesterday. Fearng a relapse of my spinal injury, I brought along two assistants and guided them via radio while I watched from the vehicle. It makes me a bit sad to have other people running Lightning, but I think they do a good job when we take this approach, and as I’ve mentioned before, I think it may help Lightning to develop a clearer concept of the retrieve pattern than if he always had the same handler.
• In other facets of Lightning’s development, I rarely use a lead any more, though he continues wearing a check cord for retrieving. In the house and in the yard, he and Laddie both stay close to me without the need for leashes, a benefit I think of having kept them close to me on tether in their early weeks, so that staying close became natural for them.
• Although I still watch Laddie closely, he and Lightning are now able to rough house together. Lightning also gets play sessions in the kitchen with Ryley most days. Ryley is two months older and about twice as big as Lightning now, but they both engage excitedly in the sessions.
• Lightning seems to have a fairly clear understanding of what I mean when I guide him in relatively subtle ways, such as with a sweep of my hand thru a gate or a soft call of “c’mon” as I head upstairs. Thus our communication had gradually strengthened with nearly continuous training throughout the day.
• I’m also using sweeping hand gestures to practice Lightning coming to heel on both sides each day. He’s learned to turn in place and not go around behind me, since I would not want him going behind me at the line. So far we’ve only practiced coming to heel in the house. He’s developed an automatic sit as he comes into position and to respond to a verbal Heel cue with a hand gesture to indicate which side, so he’s made good progress. I don’t feel much urgency for him learning the Heel cue at this stage. Eventually his Heel will be combined with other skills to become Lightning’s delivery, but I think that’s a couple of months away, when he’s done teething and ready to learn Out, Hold, and Fetxh. By then, he’ll have been practicing Heel for months.
• On other matters, I no longer need to cut up his raw food into bite-sized pieces. He eats chicken drumsticks straight from the freezer, but I thaw chunks of ground meat for him at room temperature for an hour or two. In theory he gets three meals a day, but it often works out to more like six meals, since he often stops eating after he’s eaten about half his food. I then open his crate, where he eats his meals, and he comes out and then goes back in to finish the meal sometime later. He’s extremely lean and I worry when he won’t eat, but I guess that’s natural for him. Laddie was the same way in his early years. Other retrievers we’ve had were much more food motivated and always eager for food.
• In all the time I’ve had Lightning, he’s never pooped in the house, and he rarely pees inside, either, though it still sometimes happens when he gets excited.
• Since I know that people are sometimes concerned about puppy biting, I thought I’d mention that I followed my friend Jody’s advice not to worry about it, and in fact to offer my hands and fingers to Lightning for biting in those early days, along with countless dog toys. Yes, the biting was a bit painful, but he quit doing it on his own within a few weeks. No training to deal with it was needed. He still chews on toys, shoes, etc. and play bites when wrestling with other dogs, but he stopped chewing on people early on.
• Finally, I thought I’d mention that I do not take Lightning for walks in our neighborhood, and never let Laddie or him cross our property boundaries when they are outside. So even though we do not have a fenced yard, Lightning has never attempted to wander off. That would be unlikely anyway since he tends to stay close to Laddie and me, but I want him to have a sense of the property boundaries as an additional precaution. He gets plenty of time off the property since we go out to train most days along with other adventures, but we always go in a vehicle.

I’ve been wanting to cover some of those topics to make this journal more complete, but now they’re out of the way. I probably won’t mention some of them again.

Lightning turned 4mo four days ago. I thought it might be worth while to take stock of where we are in his training program.

As I’ve mentioned, I call the program I’m developing Positive Retriever Training (PRT), modeled on Total Retriever Training (TRT), the program created by renowned trainer Mike Lardy using traditional methods he’s helped to refine. While PRT follows the same steps to accomplish the same training goals in the same sequence, PRT does so without the use of physical aversives such as the ecollar and Force Fetch.

I began my efforts to develop PRT with Lumi and Laddie, and am now continuing with Lightning.

One of my goals in maintaining this journal is to tell others who might be training retrievers about my experience with this experimental approach. Even those using TRT or some other traditional program might find some of the information interesting. But especially if you are planning to train without using physical aversives, you may find this journal to be a unique resource to help you with your goal.

In terms of where we are in the program, Lightning has been training for about four weeks. I actually picked him up from the breeder about ten weeks ago, but because of a back injury that became badly aggravated that day, I was unable even to sit up, much less stand or do any training, for the first six weeks. So in comparison to a puppy with similar breeding in a daily training program, Lightning is presumably about six weeks behind in his training.

That does not mean that another trainer using PRT, or a traditional program for that matter, would be at the same place in his training after four weeks. The dog might have started training at six weeks younger and a different maturity level as I had planned for Lightning, or at an older age, and in that case would have had life experiences that might or might not be helpful to your training goals. In addition, the dog might have different breed or individual characteristics. And of course, the trainer might have different skills, be using different methods, have different grounds or weather conditions for his or her training, and so forth. The important point for me  is that skills be taught in a sequence that maximizes the dog’s future performance, however long those steps take.

As an aside, retriever trainers don’t universally agree on performance goals, training sequence, or both. For example, a dog being trained for hunting might have more of a focus on steadiness training in the early stages and less of a focus on the retrieve pattern and building motivation for the retrieve.

However, I’ve made no effort to postulate an alternate training sequence. Rather, I trust that Mike’s performance goals for his dogs are about the same as my goals for my dogs, and I trust his vast knowledge, born of generations of field trial retrievers and their trainers, and unprecedented success in his own career as a trainer and competitor, of what sequence to train skills in to reach toward those goals.

In terms of the TRT and therefore also the PRT programs, Lightning and I are now in the first stage, which Mike calls “Socialization and Introduction to Field,” shown in the box at the top of Mike’s TRT Flow Chart and not covered in his TRT video.

As I’ve been describing in this journal, of the 18 objectives outlined in that box, Lightning’s training has met to varying extents all but three so far:

• He’s had no introduction to water retrieves, because the weather, though unseasonably warm in our region this year, has still been too cold for introducing a puppy to water, at least in my opinion.
• He’s had no introduction to upland hunting because I’m not a hunter.
• And he’s had no multiple marks.

Of those three objectives, I expect to introduce Lightning to multiple marks soon, but introduction to water will have to wait for warmer weather, and its possible he’ll never have an opportunity to go hunting, upland or otherwise.

Yet even if we had begun running some multiples, and even if Lightning had done some water retrieves and some upland hunting, it would not be time in my opinion to go on to the next stage of the TRT and PRT programs, which Mike calls “Basics”. The reason is that I’m under the impression that Basics is suitable for a dog who has finished teething, which I estimate will be in about two months for Lightning.

For an older dog who has accomplished all the introductory goals and is past teething, it’s possible the dog would benefit from proceeding to Basics after only four weeks of training. But even after ten weeks, which Lightning would have had if I had not been injured, something else might still be missing, something not expressly shown on the flow chart. By that, I mean a greater depth of experience with those introductory objectives. In the next two months, Lightning will have an opportunity to get even better with his recall, Sit and remote Sit, heeling, and the retrieve pattern, not only achieving better understanding, but also discovering ever more deeply his love for the activities that make up the career of a competition retriever.

As in any other learning process, such as playing a musical instrument, it’s not always best to push on to the next stage of learning (for example, a more difficult piece of music) once an earlier stage has been covered. Instead, it’s often best to continue to practice the skills already learned, as they become ever more accomplished, ever easier, ever more enjoyable, and ever closer to second nature. The result is to strengthen the foundation that what follows will be built upon. That’s the approach I plan for Lightning over the next two months.

When my assistant Peter and I took Lightning out the last three afternoons to work on running marks with a thawed duck rather than bumpers, Lightning went thru one of several possible sequences for developing this skill.

In the first session, although some retrievers won’t pick up a duck at first, Lightning was at the opposite extreme. He was crazy about the duck, and his emotions put any thought of performing a retrieve out of the question. Instead, he needed time to figure out how to pick the bird up, and he also needed to discover that he would not be permitted to eat the bird. The 15′ check cord Lightning always wears at this stage when we train in the field was critical equipment for being able to prevent him from going into a game of keep-away, but aside from that, in that first session, he was just getting to know what a duck is.

In the second session, we began to shape a retrieve, using the check cord to gently draw him back to the start line once he’d picked the bird up. At first he remained overwhelmed by his excitement, but by the end, he performed an actual mark, picking up a thrown bird and bringing it back to the handler.

In the third session, after several marks continuing to work with the gunner calling hey-hey-hey, we introduced gunshots. We also found that for some reason, Lightning had better returns on longer marks, up to 80y, than at shorter distances.

By the way, in the course of the sessions, Peter and I alternated our roles, one of us handling and the other throwing for a few marks, then switching positions. Although my physical condition dictated that to some extent, I believe working with a variety of handlers and gunners also helps the dog to generalize the retrieve pattern as distinct from particular elements of context such as who the handler is.

That generalizing was in addition to other proofing we were performing, for a variety of training locations and placements of the start line, changes in orientation such as N-S for one session and E-W for another, randomly alternating between RTL and LTR throws, and distances of the marks. However, all the marks were thrown in the open, making hunting unnecessary and encouraging a habit of running directly to the fall.

One last point. From the first day we brought out a thawed duck, Lightning was unwilling to pick up a bumper, much less retrieve it, or even play tug with it. So this morning, I took him outside and threw a 2″ white bumper for him without a duck or duck scent present. He repeatedly retrieved the bumper with his usual enthusiasm. Over the next few days, we’ll gradually introduce duck scent, first at a long distance and gradually closer and closer to the gunner, until Lightning can retrieve a thrown bumper even when a duck is lying at the gunner’s feet, and even when the bumper is lying where ducks had previously been thrown.

I’ve seen at training days that some dogs have never been trained to pick up a bumper (typically for blinds) if ducks are being used (typically for marks) in the same session. I don’t want Lightning to be one of those dogs.

Today Lightning ran three series of approximately six retrieves each, separated by breaks between the series. All marks were 50y, with Peter handling and Liza throwing, but aside from that, we went thru a progression as follows:

• Each of the three series was run from a different start line, with Liza pacing off 50y from there.
• Instead of Liza moving from one side to the other to change the direction of the throws, she stayed in the same place and alternated throws to her left and right. Having Lightning handle that was not my primary concern for today’s work, and we would have switched to repeatedly throwing to the same spot as in previous sessions if necessary. But it was good to see Lightning handle this new picture. Despite the dispersed throws, he ran straight to the fall on every mark, picked the bumper up immediately, spun around, and ran straight back to Peter.
• Our primary goal for today’s session was for Lightning to run marks thrown with the gunner firing a blank pistol before throwing. To introduce gunfire, we proceeded as follows: Liza threw the first four marks with hey-hey-hey, as in Lightning’s last mark from yesterday’s session. After that, I asked Liza to fire the pistol, then check to see if Lightning looked at her to see the throw. If yes, Liza was to go ahead and throw. If not, she would call hey-hey-hey to attract his attention, then throw. Lightning needed the hey-hey-hey the last two marks of the first series because he was confused by the echo from the gunshot and looked in the direction of the echo in nearby trees, and the same thing happened for the first couple of marks of the second series. But by the third mark of the second series, he had figured out that gunfire predicts a throw, and he immediately locked in on Liza as soon as she fired, so she would then throw immediately.
• Despite a 15 minute break between the second and third series, Lightning picked right up where he had left off as he began the third series. Watching from the van, I decided to have Peter and Liza stop after four marks in the three series. Lightning was doing good work and showing good motivation, but I didn’t want to risk pushing him into a drop in motivation or performance.

Lightning has not yet turned 4 months old, so I’m not sure how much more distance is prudent, though I’m certain he has the motivation for longer marks. But rather than adding much more distance, I think the next step is to see if he’s ready to pick up a duck, which was too heavy for him a couple of weeks ago. I’ll take one out of the freezer to thaw overnight.

Today Lightning ran two sessions of seven retrieves each, with a short break in between. I acted as handler and Liza, my assistant, was the thrower, or “gunner”, though we didn’t use gunfire.

We worked on the outfield of a baseball field where we’ve never worked before. Lightning ran each mark in the same direction, with only the distance, and the side where the throws were coming from, changing.

For the first session, Liza threw to gradually increasing distances up to 40y, occasionally moving over to the other side to throw in the opposite direction. For the second session, Liza threw all the marks to the same spot at 40y, sometimes from the right, sometimes from the left. She was clearly visible the entire time.

Lightning did a good job on every retrieve. He never showed any confusion about whether to return to me or to Liza as he has in the past, and he ran directly back to me most of the time, rather than trying to run around me.

I think it’s likely that Lightning could have run longer marks, run the marks well with Liza firing a pistol, or both, but I didn’t want to risk problems after such a breakthrough performance. Those will be objectives for sessions later this week.

Putting together some of the ideas from previous posts, today I began using the sit/here game for continued outdoor proofing of Lightning’s remote Sit and Here cues. Although we have practiced Lightning’s outdoor recall for weeks, today’s work was the first step of outdoor proofing for the sit/here game, the first outdoor step being the yard near the house. Some details:

• As in the indoor game, I would cue Sit wherever Lightning happened to be standing, then immediately cue Here. I carried an open jar of PB and gave him a taste from my finger as reinforcement.
• I left Laddie inside while I worked with Lightning outside. I’ve let Laddie participate in this game indoors, but we need to proof it so that it works without him as well.
• Sometimes Lightning would run to me to sit when I cued Sit from some distance. By walking him back to his point of origin, then walking away and cueing Sit again, running to me before sitting became less likely.
• Since I couldn’t reinforce the remote Sit from distance, for the game I immediately cued Here as soon as he sat down. Thus Here is functioning not only as a cue on its own, but also as a secondary reinforcer for a different cue, in this case Sit.
• I have to be careful not to inadvertently train Sit/Here as an invariable behavior chain, since eventually Sit will often be followed by some other behavior, such as watching marks being thrown, or taking casts during handling. So sometimes after a remote Sit, I walked over to Lightning to reinforce rather than calling him to me.
• Once again, I found that Lightning seems to especially enjoy a search element for recall, with me being out of sight when I finally call Here. That has the added training advantage of proofing Sit so that he can stay sitting even when I go out of sight.

Later today, we’ll do some retrieving. As we’ve done over the last few days, and will continue to do for months into the future, Lightning will often get some kind of non-retrieve training, and some retrieve training, in separate sessions on the same day. Filled with mental stimulation as well as physical activity, I guess it’s an exciting life for a dog.