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.