With some breaks for Laddie’s competition and because of the record-breaking heat, I’ve continued working with Lightning on the Stage 3 drills that Mike Lardy, in the TRT program Transition stage, calls blind drills, taught blinds, and diversion drills.

Several goals are involved in this work for Lightning, both those that Mike sets and others more appropriate to Lightning as an individual. Here are the challenges we’ve been tackling:

Locking in on the blind when a gun is in the field

In our early blind drill sessions, Lightning would focus on Liza, my assistant, as long as she was in the field, and I couldn’t get him to lock in on the blind.

To address that, we used this sequence:

1. Lightning runs blind with empty field.
2. Liza comes out, throws, sits down, and Lightning runs mark. As Lightning returns with article, Liza packs up chair and walks off field. Meanwhile, Lightning runs blind. 
3. Normal: Liza throws and Lightning runs mark. Then Lightning runs blind.

Soon Lightning understood the concept of running a blind while a gun was in the field and the problem was resolved.

Not flaring when running a blind behind the gun

Once Lightning was doing a good job with marks being thrown toward the line to the blind, we continued with the diversion drill and marks being thrown away from the line to the blind, so that Lightning was running behind the gun to run the blind. Like other dogs. Lightning tended at first to flare off the gun as he went past, running a curved line.

We readily solved the problem of Lightning flaring left by training with the following sequence:

1. Run the blind from a position level with the gunner.
2. Run the blind from a few yards further from the blind, so that Lightning would take a few steps before getting past the gunner.
3. Run additional blinds from further and further back, adding a few more steps each time before Lightning would run past the blind.

Getting Lightning to stop flaring around the gun when it was on the left of the line to the blind proved more difficult, perhaps because Lightning has a slight predisposition to flare right even without running past a gun. To resolve the problem, I placed a chair on the field 20y from the gunner in the direction of the blind, on the opposite side of the line from where the gunner sat. Both chairs had their backs to the line to the blind. The second chair blocked Lightning’s curving path and he ran a straight line. We continued to use the second chair for several sessions and then found it was no longer needed.

Returns with complex articles

In order to better prepare Lightning for participation in training days, I decided it was time to stop using only 2″ bumpers with no ropes. Instead, we switched to orange 2″ bumpers with ropes for the blinds, and dokkens for the marks. We used a random mixture of mallard and pheasant dokkens.

Unfortunately, Lightning’s recall fell apart, especially with the dokkens. I tried a number things without success: bringing him out to the field on a lead instead of letting him run around, as I normally do; increasing my persistence in calling him both verbally and with a whistle, including walking to him; and conversely, calling him only once and then just waiting. None of those seemed to have any training benefit.

I also tried bringing high value treats to reinforce his returns. That seemed to help for a few sessions but then wore off. He still wanted the treats, but not enough to stop playing with the articles and just come straight back.

Finally I put on his harness and attached a 60′ line. I had Liza throw the marks so that they landed within 60′ of our start line, allowing me to draw Lightning in once he reached the dokken. I then left the line attached while sending him on the blind, though it was much further away and I couldn’t continue to hold the other ended of the line. Luckily, just wearing the line was enough to influence him to return promptly.

So now we’ll continue with those strategies for a time, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to run Lightning without the line and still get nice returns of dokkens, and bumpers with ropes and streamers. For now I think it’s the right strategy. It’ll just take some time.