[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.