Lightning is now a year old. He’s still 44lbs, and still  a joy. But a few weeks ago his training stalled in the early work of PRT Stage 3, corresponding to TRT Transition. We were in the middle of blind drills and diversion drills, where he was making good progress on those concepts, when his recall and returns abruptly began to fall apart. It may have been because I was using dokkens for the marks, I’m not sure. But it soon got to the point where he couldn’t come straight back even with a 2″ bumper.

I had no choice but to turn our focus to his returns. We trained nearly every day, though hampered by a typical assortment of factors: record warm temperatures, crippling pain in my ankles and knees, and limited availability of my assistants, who are now in college rather than high school. But we got a lot of work done and made gradual progress.

It’s a difficult topic to write about from an instructional view, because I don’t know whether your dog will even have this issue, and I’m pretty sure there’s no cookie-cutter solution that works on all dogs that do develop the problem, unless you want to depart PRT and begin using an ecollar. I think the one common solution is not to get frustrated and not to give up. Understand that this is probably the most difficult skill you’ll ever have to teach your dog, it’s hard, and it’s going to take time and patience.

That said, here are some of the things I’ve done that I believe proved helpful in Lightning’s return training:

• Endless games of fetch, indoors, yard, and fields, with every available article. I occasionally ask for steadiness, but usually not. Lightning can play this game for dozens of fetches. It seems almost impossible for him to get tired of it.
• Short walking singles with an assistant, with Lightning on a long line. I use lines of 15′, 30′, and 60′. Sometimes I throw, sometimes my assistant throws. We use a wide variety of articles, from 2″ bumpers with ropes, to 3″ bumpers with ropes and streamers, to duck and pheasant dokkens. If Lightning doesn’t bring the article back, the handler gently reels him in. He usually tries to grab the article to bring with him but it doesn’t matter whether he’s successful in that or not  He learns a useful lesson either way.
• For reinforcement, I’ve used the heel and catch game, gunshots, and food. Overall I felt we made best progress with food, though you don’t have to use secondary reinforcement (the food) on every retrieve because the work itself still provides the primary reinforcement. If that’s not the case with your dog by this time, you’re probably not going to get much further IMO. But Lightning still makes noticeable improvement on his returns when I reinforce with food, and I feel it would be stupid for me to be too stubborn to realize that and refuse to leverage it.
• Occasional marks without a long line mixed in during the walking singles. Finally, finally, a day comes when you can do a whole session with no long line, and just gradually build up some distance.

A few other nuances are involved, such as choice of terrain and so forth, but it’s really kind of boring to talk about. It’s just a lot of work and a lot of faith that it will eventually pay off. And indeed, finally it has done so with Lightning and we are nearly ready to resume our PRT Stage 3 training. I expect relapses, which we’ll address the same way. I may not always discuss them further in this journal.