We’re in the middle of a hot streak, with afternoon temperatures into the 90s. Even going out at dawn, we can’t train for long before it gets too hot. For yesterday’s session, Liza and I ran Laddie on the next step of double T, sit to pile. I also ran Laddie on a setup of the red zone drill, and Liza threw three walking singles for each dog.

For the singles, I had Liza throw some new Dokken deadfowl trainers I just purchased, rather than bumpers. I just got mallard and pheasant Dokkens, since those are the species of real birds I’ve seen in competition. I don’t think they make a huge difference for running marks compared to bumpers, but I like the fact that Lightning carries them like a big dog instead of his puppy habits carrying bumpers. Also, because the new Dokkens have no scent yet, they forced both dogs into practicing visual hunts when they couldn’t find the Dokkens by nose.

For step 3 of the double T, I ran Lightning a few times, stopping him on whistle on the way to the pile a couple of times mixed with mostly freebies to avoid developing a pop. Then I asked Liza to also run him a few times, again including one or two sit whistles. In each case, we used pistol shots intermittently to avoid shopping, and the heel and catch game intermittently to maintain high quality returns.

During the whole session, we only had one whistle refusal, when I waited till Lightning was too close to the pile to blow the whistle.  As he was running back, I walked out to him, gently took the bumper he’d picked up and tossed it back to the pile, cueing Leave it so he wouldn’t chase it, and we walked back to the startline together to resume work.

As I’ve found with Lumi and Laddie in the past, and that Walk Out with Lightning yesterday, a Walk Out for a refused whistle is a remarkably strong correction. It’s fortunate, because it allows us to train a whistle sit without the use of an ecollar, long line, or other physical equipment besides shoe leather.

It’s early morning now, and when the sun comes up, I’ll pick up Liza and we’ll run Lightning on step 4 of the double T, come-in from pile, again mixed with mostly freebies. Then we’ll get in whatever additional training we can for both dogs before the heat becomes too oppressive.