[Note: Since Mike Lardy’s TRT program divides pile work into three steps, I originally planned to do the same with PRT . But it turns out that TRT’s second step, called ”Sit to pile,” is actually two steps: ”Sit to pile” and  ”Sit from pile.” Accordingly, I’ve named those objectives as Steps 2 and 3 of the PRT pile work drill, and renamed the present post, ”Come-in from pile,” as step 4. Because I made this decision several days after writing the original posts and cannot rearrange blog posts, the post on Step 3, ”Sit from pile,” is out of order and several posts after this one.]

The last step of pile work in the PRT program, as in Mike Lardy’s TRT program, is training come-in from pile. Here the dog will be cued to sit on the way out to the pile, and then learn to respond correctly to a come-in whistle and pick up a bumper on the way back to the start line without having gotten all the way to the pile.

Eventually, the dog will occasionally need to respond correctly to a come-in whistle while running a blind. By that time, the dog won’t necessarily be finding a bumper as he/she comes in, but the dog will have that reinforcement history from experience in this drill.

As Mike demonstrates on the video, after teaching the come-in from pile initially with a thrown white bumper, we’ll proceed to using an orange bumper that the dog didn’t see the handler place. At that point, the bumper will act only as reinforcement for a correct response, and no longer as a lure that must be present for the dog to respond correctly to the come-in cue.

Once again Mike demonstrates this step of training on the video without the use of physical aversives, so we’ll use the same material for this step of the PRT program as well.

The narrator on the video says that pile work will probably take 10-15 sessions. Since pile work seems simpler to train in the PRT program than in traditional training — simpler because the force steps are omitted — a dog learning pile work in the PRT program in theory might need fewer sessions than the range mentioned by the narrator. In Lightning’s case, however, I wanted to build really high quality, fluent responses, so we took even more sessions, at a rate generally of about six retrieves per session, one or two sessions per day.

Once we’ve completed Lightning’s pile work training, we’ll be going onto new work in both yard and field progressions. We’ll address next steps in coming posts.

Once I was happy with Lightning’s work on Back to pile from heel position on both sides, the next step in the TRT program was having him learn to sit on whistle or verbal cue while coming back from the pile, and then learn to sit while going out to the pile. Those skills are called ”sit to pile.”

I originally planned to call both of those behaviors Step 2 of PRT pile work, but found that they were quite distinct training objectives. So PRT pile work Step 2 is ”Sit to pile,” while Step 3 is ”Sit from pile.” The present post is for Step 2. Step 3 was written later and is therefore out of order in this journal, several posts after the post on Step 4.

As for Step 2, Mike Lardy provides a complete lesson on sit to pile in the TRT video, and since he uses no force in that segment, it can serve as the PRT lesson for sit to pile as well.

In the previous post but one, Strengthening simple casting and Walking Fetch, I described my plan to review previous lessons on simple casting and Walking Fetch with Lightning as the PRT version of TRT’s sections on indirect pressure and collar fetch. Lightning has always had great enthusiasm for the casting and Fetch cues, and when we reviewed, I saw that his Walking Fetch was still as good as ever. But following the guidance in TRT’s earlier material, we had not completed simple casting to fluency, so Lightning still needed some work on that, though not with the TRT objective of learning about indirect pressure. A few more simple casting sessions brought Lightning’s work up to the same standard as the dogs learning indirect pressure in the TRT video.

Next we began the multi-step sequence of drills for pile work, starting with the first step, in which Lightning learned to take a Back cue from heel position on either side, while continuing also to be able to turn either direction on Back from a remote Sit.

High daytime temperatures prevented us from our usual training times the last few days, so we’ve been getting up before dawn to train in the early light and relative coolness.

In this morning’s session, I worked with Lightning much the same way as Mike Lardy demonstrates in the TRT video segments on identifying the pile, force to pile, stick force, and collar force. The primary difference for the PRT program is that of course I didn’t use a stick, ecollar, or any other kind of force or pressure with Lightning. I did, however, use food, in the form of bits of roast beef, to reinforce high quality pickups, returns, and deliveries.

Just as Lumi and Laddie had shown years ago when I did pile work with them, also without pressure, Lightning displayed high enthusiasm and after-burner speed on every send cued by Back, from both remote sit and heel positions.

However, Lightning did exhibit some shopping on some of his retrieves from the pile. Therefore, in our next session, I’ll use a long line to gently reel him in as soon as he reaches the pile, requiring him to better learn to grab a bumper as soon as he arrives and return immediately without shopping or other dawdling. Once Lightning can consistently demonstrate that skill even without wearing a line, we’ll go onto the next step of pile work, sit to pile.

Previous posts during PRT Stage 1 provided extensive discussion of training steadiness. Essentially, we’ll never have a break because we’ll use Lightning’s tab to prevent one and we’ll never use a correction for a break if one were to occur anyway.

In the future, we’ll set up conditions that really develop a powerful steadiness skill, such as when a live clip-wing pigeon is thrown in front of Lightning, or when he is asked to honor another dog receiving such a mark from a nearby position. But I think it is too soon for such demanding requirements yet.

However, it would be nice to see occasionally, and at this time in particular since it’s mentioned in Disc 2 of the TRT video, how the dog’s steadiness is developing. That’s hard to do in everyday practice since you’re always preventing a break with the tab.

So to find out, use a session to try a series of increasingly difficult steadiness tests and see how they go. For example, the range might be:

• Easiest: An assistant quietly throws a 2” bumper at 120y, dog wearing tab but you not holding it. 
• Hardest: Two assistants throw a double using blank pistols and thawed ducks at 70y, the dog not wearing a tab. Note that for steadiness, longer  marks are generally easier for the dog not to break on, and would therefore come earlier in the sequence of tests.

Of course you could try something harder still, such as using shotguns rather than pistols, moving closer, or even trying flyers or clip-wings. But the goal here is not actually to focus on training steadiness at this time, just to get a sense of where the dog is.

Remember not to practice breaking. The exhilaration of the burst from the line makes every break self-reinforcing and therefore a setback in your training, even if the gunner picks up the article. Once you satisfy your curiosity and find the dog’s steadiness skill level, I’d suggest you go back to using the tab to prevent breaks in training until you’re confident the dog is completely steady.

Update: Hi, everyone. Lightning here. I thought I’d tell you how my steadiness test went this afternoon.

Daddy took Laddie and me, along with one of our friends, Liza, to a field where we sometimes train. First he took Laddie out. I couldn’t see them, but it sounded from the whistles and no gunshot like he ran Laddie on about half a dozen land blinds. Laddie was thirsty when he got back. It was a pretty day, but a bit hotter than it’s been lately.

Next it was my turn. Daddy put on my collar with the tab and also attached my leash to my collar. I guess he was afraid I might run into the busy street behind the van.

Daddy, Liza, and I walked into the field with Daddy carrying our mat, and Daddy pointed to a place near the woods for Liza to walk out to carrying a 3” white bumper. When she stopped, she was 120y away. Daddy took my leash off my collar and we walked to the mat together, and I sat down facing Liza.

You’d think Daddy would have taken my tab in his hand, but he didn’t. He just raised his hand for Liza to throw. Liza said hey-hey-hey and threw the bumper to her side. It wasn’t that big a deal. I waited till Daddy called my name, then raced out and brought the bumper back.

A few seconds later, Daddy ran me on another mark, with a few changes: We were about 40y closer to Liza, she threw the bumper in the opposite direction, and this time, Daddy took my collar off entirely. When Liza called hey-hey-hey and threw the bumper again, I still waited till Daddy sent me.

The third mark didn’t go so well. We were back to 120y distance from Liza, but this time Liza fired a pistol instead of saying hey-hey-hey. The gunfire was too exciting so I broke, not waiting for Daddy to release me with my name. So Daddy had Liza try it again, but the next time I couldn’t go when I tried to break. I happened to be wearing my collar and tab again, so that might have had something to do with it. Anyway, Daddy called to Liza, ”Pick it up,” and she walked over to the bumper, picked it up, and walked back to her throwing position.

Daddy called for another throw. Again Liza fired a shot and threw the bumper and again I tried to break but couldn’t. When Daddy again called out, “Pick it up,” I realized that these are words you never want to hear. They mean you’ve lost the chance to run that mark forever! Now that had happened to me twice. 

Needless to say I didn’t let it happen again. When Liza fired and threw again, I just sat and waited till Daddy called my name, and that’s when I ran out to retrieve. Nothing stopped me that time. Daddy then ran me on two more marks with Liza firing a pistol. The second was the hardest, since we’d moved closed to Liza again, and even with the pistol, I wasn’t wearing a collar. I could have broken but I didn’t.

I saw Daddy walk back to the van. Were we done for the day? No. He was just getting a thawed duck out of the van. He handed it to Liza and sent her in a new direction, and he also moved our mat off to the side some distance.

At last he walked me at heel to the mat and cued Sit. I wasn’t wearing a collar, and Liza wasn’t as far as before, more like 70y this time. She fired the pistol and threw the duck. Not a bumper, a duck! But I didn’t flinch, I just waited. And a few seconds later, Daddy called my name and I raced out into the field to pick up the duck.

Admittedly I was a little hot and winded but it wasn’t a problem. Daddy walked me back to the van and put a big bowl of water in my crate with me when I jumped in.

So that’s how my steadiness test went. Did I pass? I hope so.

Lightning has made great progress on his recall. I can consistently call him from distance, and this morning at the vet, I had a chance to let him play with another dog, and then call him back to me while in the middle of playing. I’ll use the Walking Recall well into the future to continue to strengthen his recall, always looking for good challenges, but meanwhile I feel we’re ready to go on with PRT Stage 2 yard work, corresponding to TRT Basics yard work.

To see where we are, we’ve viewed the first few segments of Disc 2 of the TRT video. What we saw were the following steps for a traditionally trained retriever at this point:

1. Simple casting with indirect pressure
2. Collar fetch
3. Pile work

It’s always a privilege to have the chance to watch Mike Lardy training, but for the PRT program, we have no use for indirect pressure or the other force-based concepts associated with the first two of those steps. At the same time, we do want our positive-trained dog to be as proficient at performing the behaviors as one being trained with that approach. Therefore, now we’ll spend a few yards work sessions returning to simple casting, and then returning even further to the Walking Fetch, to use the same PRT methods we used previously to further polish those skills. The TRT video gives us a performance standard to aim for at this point in our progression.

In parallel, in our field work we’ll continue primarily with singles off multiple guns, with occasional retired guns and with occasional doubles. The weather is also allowing us to run non-cheating singles when we’re able to get to a training property. These we mostly LWL retrieves with lengthening land and water segments, with only occasional open water retrieves. I also like to run Lightning on re-entry singles, that is, LWLWL retrieves, again staying clear of cheating situations. I want Lightning to always run straight lines, on land and water.

As for yard work, once Lightning is performing simple casting and the Walking Fetch at the same level of fluency and enthusiasm as the dogs in the current section of the TRT video, we’ll be ready to start pile work.

Hi, everyone. Exciting news! Today, Daddy ran Laddie in his first field trial since I’ve been in the world, and I got to go along. Not only that, but I even got to run a mark.

Here’s how the day went. First, we got up early for a three hour drive. Daddy stopped halfway to air Laddie and me and give us water, and when we got to the trial, he aired us again, gave us some scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon he’d picked up somewhere, and left us in our crates with the tailgate open and with bowls of water if we got thirsty.

It was a nice day for retrievers, temps in the high 50s and light rain. Daddy left us alone for about an hour, and then he came back to the van and went through his usual ritual of putting on his white jacket, whistle, and black gloves. He let Laddie out of his crate, put on his slip lead, and off they went.

I saw Daddy walking with Laddie out in the field for a while, airing him yet one more time. Daddy always wants to come to the line with an empty dog. I started to bark and whine a little when Daddy walked near the van with Laddie, but Daddy told me, quietly but firmly, to be quiet. He’s been teaching me that in the house and at training days for months, so I knew what he wanted, and was quiet in my crate the rest of the day. Sometimes I was lying down, sometimes I was sitting up or standing up and looking all around, but I just decided not to make any more noise.

Daddy and Laddie disappeared and I couldn’t see them anymore for a while even though I heard gunshots and some come-in whistles that sounded like Daddy’s. A few minutes later, Laddie was jumping back into his crate and Daddy was saying, ”You did a great job, Little Boy!” Laddie told me he had run a land triple, whatever that is. He said he had a go-bird flyer and honored the next dog, too. I didn’t really understand him but I was happy for him. 

Then he told me about his work. He said he took a good line just a few yards outside the flyer and then curled right into it. After that he nailed the two memory birds. That sounded thrilling. That’s how I want to run marks.

Daddy took off his equipment and went away again for a while. Then he came back and put it back on, but this time he opened my crate, snapped on my harness and leash plus my collar and tab, and called me out of the van. He took me out in the field to air, too, just as he had with Laddie. Then we started walking toward a popup tent and a line of holding blinds. I saw people in white coats with dogs, and I saw a couple of people carrying clipboards. It was so exciting!

Daddy kept me in one of the holding blinds while some gunshots went off, and then he told me to sit and brought me out of the holding blind and to the start line just like when we’re at training day. The only difference was that he had me on my leash so in case I decided to run around, I wouldn’t bother the dog that was there to honor me. But I walked with Daddy to the line and sat down, and he said cheerfully to the nice judges, ”This is the bye puppy.” He reached down and unclipped my leash from my harness. Following Daddy’s movement out of the corner of my eye, I looked and saw the guys in white jackets out in the field. They had guns and birds, and one of the gun stations had live birds.

Now Daddy showed me by his movement which way to look and one gunner after another fired a shotgun and threw a bird. For the last mark, a couple of guys shot the flyer out of the air. I think Daddy was holding my tab, but I tried not to launch until Daddy called my name so I’m not sure. Then I was off like a shot, leaping over a ditch and racing out to the flyer, living up to my name — Lightning!

I picked up the bird and spun around, but things sort of fell apart after that. None of the gunners were retired, all of those white jackets were confusing, and I couldn’t figure out which one was Daddy, even though I could hear his whistle and hear him calling me. I ran all the way over to the guy in the white jacket at the other side of the field, but when I saw that wasn’t Daddy, I spun around again, jumped back over the ditch, and brought the bird to Daddy. I came to heel, sat down, and waited till Daddy said Drop, just as we practice at training days.

Daddy got me looking at the gunner I had just come back from and called my name again, and I did blast off in that direction. But the ditch and all the excitement and confusion overwhelmed me, and I soon veered off in another direction. After a few seconds, Daddy called me back, snapped on my leash, and we walked happily back to the van. I jumped into my crate, drank some water, and started telling Laddie about my adventure.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful from my point of view. On the land blind, Laddie went out of control in the red zone and got too far wide, so he wasn’t called back to the third series. As Daddy drove us home, he got us some burger and cheese patties to tide us over until we got home for our regular raw food.

I think it would have been a good day anyway, driving around and playing outside with Daddy and Laddie. But getting to be the bye dog in a field trial was icing on the cake.

 

Hi, everyone, Lightning here. Yesterday Daddy took Laddie, Ryley, and me out together. I guess he couldn’t arrange for an assistant.

I can see why Daddy likes the field he’s been taking us to lately. It’s very versatile. Too bad it’s going to be acres and acres of corn soon, but for now Mr. Farmer said we could train on it. He was very nice.

Ryley is now physically the biggest dog in our pack, but by any other measure Laddie is our big dog, and out of respect, Daddy usually runs Laddie first. So when we got to the field, Daddy opened the van’s tailgate so Ryley and I could get fresh air and watch Laddie run, and then he ran Laddie on a blind.

I guess it was about 140y and had the challenge of running next to, and then past, a stand of woods. You know how that goes. If that had been me, I’d have veered into the woods because of all the scent they carry, thinking that’s where the bird must be, and if Daddy ever got me back on the line outside them, I’d have wrapped around them as I ran past them and gone out of sight behind them. Laddie didn’t do any of that, and he also had a cross-wind to shoulder. Daddy said that was a pretty typical Q land blind set up, so I guess it was good practice for competition. Laddie doesn’t really care about that, he just loves to run. Like me!

Ryley us a couple of months older than me though he’s almost twice as big, and if Daddy had been training Ryley since he was a puppy as he did with me, I guess he would have run Ryley on something next. But Ryley is Mommy’s dog and this is the only week Daddy has taken Ryley out with us, since Mommy is visiting her grandson on the Left Coast. When Mommy is here, she keeps Ryley with her. Ryley doesn’t have much recall or interest in retrieving, but he loves running around with me in the field, so Daddy snapped a 30′ check cord onto Ryley’s jingly collar and off the two of us went, racing and exploring in every direction. Sometimes Daddy would call Here and I’d spin around to race back to him. Then Ryley would chase me, so that’s how Daddy was able to bring Ryley back when we went too far. He also could have come close to us and caught Ryley with the check cord if necessary, so Ryley had no way to play keep-away.

After a while, Daddy disappeared into the van for a moment and came out with one of his blank pistols. Ryley had never seen or heard a pistol so he didn’t notice, but I know the equation all field retrievers know: Gunfire predicts good things. A moment later, Bang! Ryley didn’t bolt, but he was visibly startled, maybe even a little scared. That didn’t last long. Daddy rushed over to him and gave him a piece of deli meat. Ryley was learning the field retriever’s gunfire equation!

Ryley and I went back to playing. I had found some deer bones in the woods and was charging to and fro with those dangling out of my little mouth, while Ryley was discovering how dirty he could get by hopping around in the swampy lowlands next to the creek. Daddy was wandering around, too, changing orientation relative to Ryley but inching ever closer to him. Every 30 secs or so but at irregular intervals, he’d fire the gun again, then rush to Ryley to give him another treat. By the time the gun was empty, Ryley was barely even looking up when the shot went off, even though by then Daddy was only a few yards away. Ryley was still happy to get his treat, though. I think Ryley’s gunfire conditioning would have saved Daddy a lot of running if we’d had an assistant, but it still seemed to work ok.

Now Daddy disappeared into the van again and came out with another loaded pistol. But this time he also brought out a tie-out stake with a steel chain attached, and a mallet. He walked some distance into the field and hammered in the stake, dropping the mallet beside it. The mallet had an orange ribbon tried around the handle. I guess that would make it easier to find if it were lost in the grass one day. Without the ribbon it would be practically invisible.

Daddy snapped the chain onto Ryley’s collar and took off the check cord. Then he called Laddie over and had him lie down about 20′ from Ryley. Leaving them there, he went back to the van and got our rubber mat, which he placed on top of some swampy terrain about 30y from Laddie and Ryley. By now Ryley was digging a shallow hole near the stake. Don’t ask me why.

Daddy called me to him and had me sit at heel on the mat so I could run a poorman mark, and then he walked all the way to the other side of Laddie and Ryley. He fired the pistol and threw a 3″ white bumper with rope and streamers. After it landed, I could just glimpse it lying in some shallow water and grass. It was so enticing! But I couldn’t leave because Daddy had told me to sit. I was quivering with anticipation, though.

Daddy walked back to me. He had veered around Laddie on the way out so as not to give me a clue about the line, since the shortest path to the bumper was between Laddie and Ryley, but on the way back he gave Ryley another treat, then tossed one to Laddie, too. He didn’t give me one when he got back to me, and I didn’t want one. I only had eyes for the mark, and ears for my release. 

Daddy stepped onto the mat beside me, put down his hand near my forehead lke a gunsight, and said, “Lightning!” I was off like a shot. I ran right between my buddies and straight to the bumper, picked it up, and raced back to Daddy with it. I sat down beside him at heel, and when he reached down for the bumper, I opened my mouth and let go. I did a nice job if I do say so myself. :0) I wish we had a video of it.

Daddy ran me on two more marks between Laddie and Ryley, moving the mat to new locations and making each mark longer and falling onto different surfaces. He still gave Ryley and Laddie treats after each gunshot. The line to the last two marks was actually around the outside of the keyhole between my buddies, but I ran between them anyway, then curved over towards the fall. It was more fun that way, and besides, I know Daddy likes me to run between keyholes when I get a chance.

After all the excitement of the distraction marks — just think, I could have stopped to play with my friends when I was running past them, but I didn’t! — Daddy packed up all our gear and let all us dogs into the van, then drove to a different part of the field. He grabbed some 2″ orange bumpers and walked out into the woods, tromping thru the swampy undergrowth, tossing the bumpers to various spots while I watched from the van. I can’t see orange very well so they were invisible once they landed.

Now Daddy ran Laddie on three tune-up blinds, each from a different spot near the woods. They’re called tune-up blinds because, even though they’re short compared to most of the blinds Daddy runs Laddie on, they’re very tight and technical. To run straight to these marks, Laddie had to jump over logs, run through branches tangled up on the swampy ground, and drive thru keyholes made by the sinister-looking trees. Daddy would whistle Sit if Laddie got the least bit off-line, and then Laddie would wait for Daddy’s next cast. Usually Daddy used his arms like he does when he’s teaching me to cast, but sometimes he’d just say Back with his arms still clapped in front of his chest. Laddie seemed to know what everything meant and made quick work of the three blinds. I think Daddy would have liked to run Laddie on more work, but you could see by the way he was walking that he was getting tired. His ankles have been hurting lately and sometimes he can barely walk, but he was doing OK today, slogging around in his soaked running shoes.

I figured we’d go home for lunch, but instead Daddy drive us to the parking lot of a shopping mall. He left Laddie and Ryley in the van, but he put on my harness and 30′ check cord and off we went . . . in search  of geese! It turns out a bunch of geese live at the pond near the mall and, since this is spring, they had fuzzy little goslings in the group.

I of course darted for them as soon as I saw them. They scattered and the big geese began honking as soon as they saw me, and I’m sorry to say that I ignored Daddy when he called Here. That is, I ignored him until he began reelng me back with my check cord. He didn’t jerk the line or hurt me, but I had no choice about where I was going. After a second or two, I gave into the inevitable and trotted back to him. Darned if he didn’t give me a nice piece of deli meat when I got back and sat down at heel.

So we did that several more times as we wandered around the area near the geese. I would usually be at the end of my check cord, and sometimes I would get distracted by something on the ground or some nearby movement from birds. But just as I was getting interested, Daddy would call Here and reel me in if I didn’t come immediately. He always gave me a nice treat when I arrived at heel, so it didn’t take me long to start listening for Here even when I was distracted so that I could run over to him before he had a chance to reel me in.

This was a drill Daddy calls walking recall. I guess it works because it‘s really not cool to have to be reeled in, and you know that Lightning is cool!

That was pretty much it for today’s training, except after lunch Daddy’s assistant Annette came over and we all went to a store for baths: fluffy Ryley first, then feathery Laddie, and finally me. It felt good to be clean and dry after playing in the swampy field this morning.

Mommy finally got home from her trip just before bedtime, so we were all excited, especially Ryley. But when Daddy took Laddie and me to bed, we slept like logs. I dreamed about adventures of my own imagination all thru the night.

In terms of behaviors, the ecollar conditioning section in TRT’s Basics yard work sequence strengthens two cues: Sit and Here: In the PRT program, we’re addressing the same two cues using positive methods. An earlier post addressed reinforcing the Sit cue. In this post I’ll address reinforcing the Here cue, that is, recall, particularly in the context of a retriever in a field training environment. 

As I’ve mentioned before, the field recall is among the most important retriever skills. Yet for a positive trainer, it is also among the most difficult skills to train. For a traditional trainer, the ecollar makes the job much easier, and if you were going to use the ecollar for only one purpose in your training, that would most likely be what you’d use it for. But I never trained Lumi or Laddie with an ecollar and they nonetheless eventually developed reasonable field recalls. That’s the same path I’m on with Lightning.

Many methods have been published for training recall without aversives, and I cannot say with certainty that no dog could be trained a rock solid field recall using a particular method in a few days. As a litmus test, the dog who has received said recall training and having learned to swim, would one day encounter a family of geese, with two or more adults and several goslings, swimming nearby. Perhaps the dog would have never seen goslings before. The dog, unrestrained, would leap in the water and give chase. The trainer would call Here. The dog, if the training had been successful, would turn around and returns to the trainer. Other difficult tests would be calling the dog away from someone the dog has just spotted a short distance away and has rushed off to greet, or calling the dog out of a play fight with another dog. Now do any of those but calling the dog from 200y away.

So maybe a program where the dog can pass those levels of challenges after a few days of non-aversive training does not exist, and maybe you cannot achieve the same quality of recall in a few sessions that a traditional trainer using an ecollar can. I don’t expect to. But recall is so important that I have budgeted about ten yard work sessions at this time to reinforcing Lightning’s recall. After that, we’ll go onto the next step in the TRT/PRT yard work sequence, pile work. At the same time, we’ll continue to take every opportunity to work on Lightning’s recall whenever the chance presents itself, with the expectation that it will be as good as a traditionally trained dog by the time we start competition.

Here are the three methods I’m using with Lightning:

1. Distraction proofing. I described this method, in two versions, in an earlier post, Distraction proofing. For Lightning during this training step, I used this method with my assistant Annette holding Ryley, my wife’s young fluffy Golden and Lightning’s best dog friend, while I called Lightning to me repeatedly, then tossed a high-value treat over his head and as he ran to it, stepped closer to Annette and Ryley. I followed the no-glance rule described in the post a few times. We started about 30y away from Annette and Ryley. By the end of the session, I repeatedly called Lightning to me so that he would have to run between them or brush past them to get to me, without any attempt to interact with either of them as he rushed back to me on each Here cue.
2. Walking recall. On one of my other websites, called The 2Q Retriever, I’ve described a number of positive field training methods I’ve developed over the years. I’ll be using one of those, Walking Recall, for several of my recall reinforcing sessions with Lightning at this time, and then on a continuing basis for months to come even as we proceed further in the yard work sequence, always seeking the most challenging recall contexts to practice on. I may or may not use treats in each session, depending on what I feel is having the most benefit for reinforcing Lightning’s recall at that time.
3. Distraction marks. During this time, I’ll also use several sessions to run Lightning on marks where he has to run past or thru a distraction to and from the retrieve without getting distracted. I’ll use Laddie, who can sit or lie down and not get up while Lightning is racing by. I’ll also use Ryley, either being held by an assistant (adding another distraction) or using a tie-down stake. And I’ll use anything else I can come up with, such as a crate of live birds. As with the other methods I’ve described, I’ll also continue to use the method with other challenges when I get the chance in the future, even after we’ve continued in our yard work sequence to later steps.

After about ten sessions of focusing on Lightning’s recall at this time, I expect to make good progress. Then it will be time to start our next step in the yard work sequence, pile work, which I’ll describe in a later post. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to strengthen Lightning’s recall at every opportunity over the coming months so that we’ll be ready for field trial competition when the time comepost

Note: For examples of distraction marks and walking recall, see Lightning’s article in next post. 

At this stage, I believe Lightning has all the skills needed to earn an AKC Junior Hunter (JH) title and a breed club Working Certificate (WC). The JH would require four passes of Junior Hunt Tests. The WC needs a single pass at a WC/WCX event.

Competition can be frustrating. If nothing else, it’s a great opportunity to hear people say, “My dog never did that before.” I’ve been thru JH and WC with Lumi  and Laddie, and I don’t feel the need to go thru them again with Lightning, at least at this time. I’d rather continue training till he’s ready for his first Qualifying stake, sometime in the future.

However, all sorts of good reasons exist to run a dog in competition when you and the dog are ready, and you’ll learn a ton every time out. If you pass, great. If not, you’ll know where you misjudged how ready you were and what area or areas to shore up. If you decide to try it, I hope it’s a great experience for you.

In the post Onward to Stage 2 I discussed disc 1 of Mike Lardy’s TRT video, including the last section on ecollar conditioning. In the PRT program, we’ll use the same several sessions at this point in the yard work progression to work on the same performance goals that Mike describes and illustrates in that section, but using positive rather than negative reinforcement.

The first drill is to strengthen the dog’s reinforcement history for Sit, in two variations:

1. Cue Here from heel position on either side, take a few steps, verbal or whistle Sit. Reinforce with a high value treat if dog sits instantly, no treat if dog takes a few steps. Practice both sides, and both verbal and whistle cues.
2. Facing dog, cue Sit, walk some distance away from dog, cue Here. As dog comes toward you, cue verbal or whistle Sit. Vary the distance before you cue Sit, so that sometimes the dog comes all the way to front position, sometimes the dog sits some distance away. If dog sits on cue, cheer, go to dog instantly, and reinforce. If dog takes a few a few steps after you cue Sit before sitting, or if dog sits when not cued, move around and start another trial without reinforcing.

Because of all the work Lightning has previously had with these behaviors, this was an easy drill for him. No teaching was involved. All we were doing was building a high level of reinforcement history for the verbal and whistle Sit cues.

I was prepared to do this drill for several sessions, but Lightning was so fluent, I think we’ll go onto reinforcing Here in our next session (see next post). We can always come back to this drill again in the future to re-strengthen Sit if needed.

As a reminder, obedience reinforcing drills are on the yard work side of PRT Stage 2. On the field work side, we continue as described in previous post. Fit example, today Lightning ran singles off multiple guns. I had two assistants, so I set them up as for a double and then had each of them throw a single. We used birds and ran three setups in various orientations and configurations. I used Lightning’s tab to require steadiness and cued delivery to hand in sit at heel on all six retrieves. During this period, other than steadiness, we’re not focused on training new skills but practicing, practicing, practicing Lightning’s marking and returns.