Today Lightning and I used the double T baseline we established yesterday to confirm that he’d still sit on whistle while returning from the pile with a bumper, as he’s been taught when we were doing pile work.

I saw two problems. First, he wasn’t sitting quickly enough. I think we’ll do at least one more session and use gunshot as clicker to strengthen the response.

The other was that I had inadvertently laid out a baseline yesterday that had a knoll a few yards to the right of the pile. It hadn’t been a problem yesterday because I gradually taught Lightning the line at distances where the knoll was at a fairly wide angle. But today, when I backed up to our 100y start line in just three retrieves, Lightning began flaring toward the knoll on sends at that distance. He’d curve back toward the lining pole en route, but I couldn’t get a straight send without shortening the baseline.

So tomorrow, I’ll gradually teach the line again as well as working on sit from pile. If that looks to be more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll just set a new baseline for the rest of our double T work.

Either way, after tomorrow’s session, we should be ready for a session of sit to pile.