Since marking is a major topic, I expect to return to it in future posts to Lightning’s journal. Accordingly, I’m calling this post “Marking I” so it will be consistent when I include Roman numerals II, III, etc. on the titles for subsequent posts on the topic.

Some readers might wonder whether marking is a training topic at all. After all, breeding clearly plays a role in a dog’s marking ability, all things being equal. But all things aren’t equal. A dog with less competition breeding but better training for marking will often mark better.

For this first post on the topic, here are some ways I’m using to develop Lightning’s marking ability, and to continue to develop Laddie’s as well. In no particular order:

• Practice. Lightning runs marks every day when I can arrange it. Laddie would like to, but since he’s nearly 9yo, I usually limit him to alternate days.
• Create a picture album. The more pictures a dog has seen in practice, the more likely he/she will be comfortable, and will remember how to run, a similar setup  when encountering it in competition.
• Use appropriate distances. The right distance depends on the dog. If the dog is not marking well, shorter distances along with the other guidelines I’m describing can build confidence and strengthen marking skill. On the other hand, if the dog is having an easy time with short marks, longer marks might provide a greater challenge. But the longer a mark is, the more difficult it is to nail it. A steady diet of long marks, where it’s practically impossible to nail them, may weaken the dog’s confidence for nailing a mark that the dog otherwise would be able to. The same concern applies to practicing anything that the dog can’t yet do well or that by its nature discourages confidence.
• Use visible gunners and articles. To strengthen marking, leave the gunner, wearing a white shirt or jacket, visible while the dog is running, and be sure the bird or bumper is clearly visible in flight. Streamers can add to visibility. All my 3″ bumpers have streamers. The gunner should sit down after throwing, with his or her knees tilted to the same side as the throw. If the dog comes near the gunner, he/she should not make eye contact, move around, or interact in any way. Be sure the dog cannot pick up a spare bird or bumper near the gunner, a very undesirable thing to learn.
• Mix distances.This morning for example, I set up two doubles for Laddie. Each included a retired memory bird 300y+ and thrown on an angle-back a few yards into the woods, and a short go-bird, less than 80y. Laddie also ran a 300y+ blind in each series. After Laddie ran each series, Lightning ran the same setup, except as singles and without retiring the memory bird’s gunner, and of course without running the blind. Field-bred retrievers often tend to love long marks, but they will see both long and short marks in competition, often in the same series, so they need to practice both.
• Run singles with multiple guns out. Letting the dog see multiple gunners, but then run each mark as a single, strengthens focus and reduces likelihood of head-swinging, and as a result promotes good marking. Running multiples is also valuable training for competition, so I’m not saying run only singles. I think Laddie, who is a superb marker, often gets more benefit from running multiples. But at Lightning’s present stage, I think lots of singles are preferable for developing his marking skills.
• Hard to get to, easy to find. If you’re working on strengthening marking, you don’t want the dog to learn to run to the general area of the fall and then hunt, you want the dog to learn to run straight to the bird. That means building a strong reinforcement history for running straight to the bird and finding it there. Dogs do need to learn to find birds thrown into difficult to find places such as into cover, but if that’s all you practice, the dog’s marking may decline.
• Use invisible falls. At this stage in Lightning’s development, to say nothing of Laddie’s, it’s a waste of time to run a mark to an article that’s visible the whole way from the start line. That’s a way to get a dog in the habit of nailing marks, but the dog won’t be able to rely on having a bird that’s visible on the ground from distance in competition. Instead, the dog needs to learn to navigate, for example by means of background shapes, without being able to see the bird or bumper till he/she gets close. The gunner can throw behind a small ridge, over the crest of a rise, or into a depression, for example. You can also use black bumpers with streamers if they’re visible against the background in flight. But if the dog is not able to nail marks invisible from the distance, make them visible again for awhile, or make other changes such as shorter marks, to strengthen that habit.
• Include unavoidable factors. “Factors” are influences against the dog running straight to the fall. Later in the dog’s career, he/she will learn to take a straight line thru avoidable factors, such as the edge of a pond, a keyhole, or the end of a strip of cover, but you can’t train for those kinds of factors till you can handle, a skill the dog will be learning in Stage 2. Meanwhile, you can use unavoidable factors to make the mark more challenging: long strips of cover, embankments, channels, ditches, cross-winds, stick ponds, crossing dirt roads on a diagonal, standing water, and so forth. It goes without saying, however, not to have the dog run somewhere he/she could get hurt, such as a surface that could cut his/her feet.
• Avoid natural guides. Dogs have a natural inclination to run certain lines, such as in mow lines, thru gaps in cover, toward prominent features such as a white tree, and around water. Don’t strengthen those inclinations. Instead, design marks that go diagonally across mow lines, thru strips of cover well away from gaps,  to the side of obvious features, and well away from edges of water the dog is likely to run around.
• Limit hunting only to the area of the fall. Most of the time, you want to create setups where the dog can have success running the marks on a straight line. But sometimes, either by your intent or by accident, the marks will be beyond the dog’s ability to nail them and the dog will need to hunt. It may be useful for a dog to occasionally put on a sustained hunt, and many experiences trainers believe the dog needs to practice long hunts occasionally. But my feeling is that it won’t help the dog’s marking ability. So when that’s my focus, I call for help from the gunner if the dog leaves the area of the fall. That helps the dog learn to use a visible gunner to help navigate. On the other hand, the dog should not practice running at the gunner. If that starts to happen, use shorter marks and call for the longest possible throws so that the dog develops a habit of running to the fall, not the gunner.
• Use new lines. Repeating marks the dog remembers does not promote marking skill, and risks the dog learning to return to an old fall in hopes of finding another bird in the same place, something that will get the dog eliminated from a competition. Instead, when your focus is on developing marking ability, constantly create setups the dog has never run before. There are plenty of exceptions to this, however. One exception might be rerunning a mark the dog had trouble on before if he/she can do better the second time. Another might be a common approach to training the concept of multiples, by running the setup first as singles, then again as a multiple.
• Practice mirrors. You can strengthen learning concepts by running the dog on mirror images of the same setup with a different start line and orientation on two series in a row.
• Don’t practice failure.  Again, if the dog has difficulty running good marks in a particular type of setup — whether because of too much distance, or a particular configuration, or any other reason — if your focus is on developing good marking, don’t keep practicing marks the dog can’t run well.

Good marking is essential to success in competition. Other skills are also needed, but they won’t be enough unless the dog is also a skillful marker. Practicing running good marks is often the primary or only objective of a day’s training.