Lightning turns ten months old in four days. Since we finished one training project, pile work, this morning and will start another, the double T, tomorrow, this seems like a good moment to take stock of his progresss.

Because the PRT program we’re developing parallels Mike Lardy’s TRT program, we can track Lightning’s progress in PRT Stage 2 by checking the Basics section of Mike’s TRT Flow Chart.

Within the yard progression, Lightning is between pile work and the double T, with one last item after that, swim-by, to complete PRT Stage 2.

Within the field progression, Lightning has practiced nearly all the items in Basics to some extent, including delayed triples, which Mike’s TRT and TRM videos include in Basics though  they’re not listed on the flow chart. The exceptions are that of course we haven’t used ecollar corrections, and so far we haven’t tried conventional de-cheating, where you send the dog on a cheating mark and use a long line to prevent the cheat.

In those field objectives that we have worked on: Lightning regularly runs land and water doubles and retired land singles in addition to a primary diet of singles off multiple guns; he always delivers to hand, usually at heel; and he’s generally steady on marks.

Lightning is still small compared to the dogs in Mike’s videos; he weighed in at 44.2 lbs this morning. But he’s in excellent health, has endless enthusiasm for the retriever games of catch and fetch, always exhibits great drive in his training retrieves, and is in every way a delightful companion.