As mentioned in my previous post, we’ve added another puppy to our pack. We’re all very excited, in part because this is Laddie pup! Here’s a picture:

The new puppy’s registered name is Turbo Lancelot Bold and True, and his call name is Lancer. Born 10-16-2019, he’s now 18 lbs and just over nine weeks old. I’ve had him since the day he turned seven weeks old.

Over the past four years, this journal has had two purposes: to tell Lightning’s story, and to explain the Positive Retriever Training (PRT) program I’ve been developing with two dogs before Lightning, namely Lumi and Laddie, as well of course as with Lightning himself. Of all of them, Lightning is the only Labrador Retriever. Lumi and Laddie were both Golden Retrievers, as is Lancer.

For now, at least, I don’t plan to change the focus of this journal as being about Lightning and his training. Hopefully he still has many years of exciting development ahead of him, and I expect that to form the core framework for describing PRT.But where I feel my new experiences with Lancer might be a useful adjunct to the previously provided information, I’ll try to include that information in separate posts like this one.
In addition, I’ll go back and update relevant older posts from Lightning’s earlier days with forward references to Lancer posts like this one so that readers can, if they wish, consolidate the information about the two different dogs in their minds as they work thru the program.

Here then, in no particular order, is a breakdown of the work I’ve been doing with Lancer in his first two and a half weeks in his new home;

• Here. I generally carry around treats such as string cheese or hot dog slices. At every opportunity, indoors or out, I lower my hand so my palm is facing Lancer and call Here. As soon as he comes running, I take a treat out of my pocket and try to have it ready to put in his mouth the instant he arrives. Within less than a day, he began alerting to the cue and looking around to see where I was so he could come running.
• Field recall. No different from Here. I just wanted to emphasize that I also work with Lancer on this when we take Lightning out to train. The field has many scents and other distractions that don’t occur indoors. A rock solid field recall is far and away the single most important skill for a field retriever to have.
• Retrieving. As often as possible, at least once a day, I clear the breakfast room floor of distractions and throw a paint roller for Lancer over and over again, typically five times per session. He runs to it, and as soon as he picks it up, I cue Here and he races back with it, then drops it as I give him a treat. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, I don’t believe in delivery to hand for puppies, because I believe it effectively punishes the pup for bringing you the article, which he regards as his own prize that he just brings to show you, not for you to take it away. We’ll work on building a formal retrieve with reverse chaining, that is, starting with the delivery, when Lancer is a bit older.
• Socialization. Lancer is in the company of, and plays with, other dogs, both family dogs and others, as well as a variety of humans, every day. Socialization is of course hugely important for any dog.
• Feeding. Under guidance of our holistic vet, Lancer eats a raw diet. It’s the same diet our adult dogs eat. We began him on his new diet from the first day he came home.
• Sleeping. Of course Lancer takes naps throughout the day like any puppy. For my bedtime, he sleeps in my bed. I created some “stairs” for him out of dog beds and pillows next to the bad so he can climb up down from the floor. However, after the first three or four nights, he just stays on the bed with me all night. I bunch up my bathrobe and put it on the bed also, and he seems to like curling up next to that. He was very bitey the first few nights. I would let him bite my hand as long as I could take it, then hide it under the covers. Meanwhile he had chew toys on the bed I would try with varying success to divert his biting to. All thru the night, I repeatedly set my alarm so that I can get up in the middle of the night, put on my robe and slippers, and carry him outside to give him a chance to air, which he almost always does. Often, Lightning goes out with him so it takes several minutes for them to wander and play outside before they come to the door to come back in, even in subfreezing weather. I don’t let Lancer have any food or water during our eight hours of sleeping time. When we go back to bed, sometimes after another short session of biting, I set my alarm again and we sleep for another few hours. Typically I set the alarm for two hours when we first go to bed, then three hours at a time after that. I don’t know if that’s optimal for all pups, it just works for Lancer so that he doesn’t pee in the bedroom.
• House training. I take Lancer outside many times every day, with trips often as close as 15 minutes apart. In his first 2-1/2 weeks here, he has never pooped in the house, thank goodness. We have not been so lucky with his peeing despite all the trips outside. We do not treat him any differently after a mistake, though if I can catch him just as he’s crouching down to pee, I pick him up and whisk him outside. We immediately clean and sanitize every wet spot.
• Tug. Tug-of-war with a toy is an excellent game for retriever puppies. It’s an opportunity for energetic play and an outlet for biting, and it builds confidence and enhances the relationships of the players, whether me, another human, or another dog. If you don’t make it too easy for the puppy to grab the toy, but pull it away if he’s not fast enough, it builds drive, a desirable trait in a field retriever. I don’t think it matters whether you or the puppy “wins” each round. The benefits come from that first, drive-building grab and then playing the game. I usually do let my dogs win though. Here’s a video of Lightning training Lancer to play tug:
• Sit. My darling wife Renée gives all the dogs various kinds of treats throughout the day, and she requires each one to sit before getting the treat. I also do more formal Sit training with Lancer every day. I say Sit, and if necessary hold my open hand with the back of my hand toward his face over his head, as if holding something in my hand, to lure him into a sit, then instantly give him a treat. He seems to be learning to sit from the verbal cue, without the visual cue, already. Sit is another important cue for a field retriever. I avoid having him sit in any particular orientation with respect to me since soon I’ll want him to be able to do a remote sit and not just sit right in front of me.
• Touch. Renée and I often offer an open hand to pups, including Lancer, and when the dog touches our hands we instantly give them a treat. Renée also cues with a verbal “Touch” and makes a clicker sound, which is probably good, but I don’t bother with that these days. In any case, this open hand cue, later without the pup necessarily actually touching the hand, will be used as a primary method of communication throughout the dog’s life to draw him from one place or position to another, such as gesturing for him to jump in the car, bringing him to heel, and so forth.
• Stairs. If I think Lancer is about to pee, I carry him. But the rest of the time, he’s quickly learned to climb stairs, first climbing up, a few days later climbing down as well. He now chases Lightning up and down stairs both in the house and in the backyard on the run.
• Wearing the dog. One of the most useful tools for strengthening a pup’s relationship with you is tethering, what my friend and expert dog trainer Jody Baker calls “wearing the dog.” I’ve read that it also helps shy dogs gain confidence and helps tame more aggressive pups, though none of my dogs happen to have had either of those traits. In any case, it’s not really leash walking. Instead, you attach yourself to the dog with a short lead and go about your business, walking around the house as normal. The pup quickly learns to pay attention and stay close. You can dispense with the tether during times the pup is following you around on his own, then attach it again when he begins to get distracted. Eventually we’ll formalize this behavior as Heel.
• Nail grinding. Once a day, I set my Dremel on the lowest setting and pick up Lancer in my lap. I take each of his four paws one by one and gently press the vibrating handle against the top of his paw, which I guess feels like a gentle massage. Then I touch the spinning grinder wheel to each of his nails of that paw for a split second. I’m not holding it long enough to keep his nails as short as they should be yet, but Carol had no difficulty grinding his nails to the correct length when he had his 9-week veterinary visit thanks to the early conditioning. I’ve always given my other dogs treats after a nail grinding session, but I haven’t bothered doing that with Lancer.
• Crate training. My circumstances have not required me to do much crate training in the house, and my Nissan Leaf doesn’t have room for a crate, much less two for both Lightning and Lancer. As a result, I’ve done relatively little crate training with Lancer. He does, however, occasionally spend hours at a time alone in my puppy-proof bedroom with the door closed. Sometimes I can hear him screaming a little at first, but it doesn’t last long. He’s pretty much over that. He’ll probably need to spend some time in crates when he’s older, for example at group training or a competition, and we may need to do more crate conditioning at some point for him to be able to do that.
• Riding in a car. I take Lightning and Lancer with me on most of my excursions, often leaving them in the car alone for up to an hour or so when I go to the gym, shopping, etc. I leave the car running with a little heat on (it’s winter here) and the windows cracked but the doors locked, since my car’s smart key lets me do that and it’s an EV so zero emissions. Your approach may well be different, but in any case, he’s comfortable riding in cars, which will be essential for group training and competition.
• Hand feeding. I often feed Lancer by hand, and I also occasionally take food, bones, or toys away from him. He’s a gentle little pup and it’s no problem for him at this age. I intend to continue doing those things as he gets older. I don’t want him ever learning to resource guard.
• Gunfire. When I’m training Lightning out in the field each day, I sometimes use a blank pistol as part of the training. I am very conscious of Lancer when I make the shot. I do not fire when he’s in the middle of play because I don’t want him to accidentally learn that play predicts something scary. I keep my distance from him so it won’t seem so loud to him, and the instant I fire, I reach down with my open hand and call Here, then give him a treat as soon as he runs to my hand. My first retriever, Lumi, was gun-shy at first and it took me weeks to counter-condition. I don’t want any of my other dogs to have to suffer thru that.

It’s too cold to go swimming unfortunately, and I’ve probably forgotten a few other items, but that’s a fairly complete list of the initial training I feel is good for a young retriever.

I guess it’s still appropriate for me to call Lightning a keep-away dog. He does have occasional instances where he runs around with an article and won’t return to me with it when called. The instances are becoming far less frequent, but I feel they would still cause serious inconvenience for the other trainers if I tried to bring him to group training, much less any sort of competition.

On the other hand, in contrast to the last two or three years, his keep-away tendency is no longer acting as a barrier to training, for either marks or blinds. I just need to make adjustments in my training plan to allow for that issue.

Once Lightning became proficient at the Single T drill, I graduated him to the Double T, and we’ve now run about half a dozen Double T sessions. Here’s the way we run them:

• As soon as I park my car, when possible at the location where I’m going to set up my start line, I hop out of the car and let Lightning and Lancer out of the back seat. I immediately give Lightning his keep-away toy, currently a chewed-up dokken, and he begins running around to distances of a hundred yards and more in every direction. I make no attempt to practice recall during these jaunts, and I don’t know at this point whether he would come or not.
• Lancer is new to our household, and at seven weeks old, has no chance of keeping up with Lightning. Mostly he bounces about shadowing me as I walk around the field setting up and later taking the setup down, and I practice recall with him at every opportunity when Lightning is off running around with his keep-away toy. Although Lancer does interfere slightly with Lightning’s handling drill, since he repeatedly tries to bite Lightning while he’s setting up for a retrieve, the impact is minor and I won’t say much more about Lancer during this post.
• Next I take out a water bowl and a jug filled with water for regular replenishment of the bowl, and place them about three yards from where I plan to plant the lining pole that will represent our start line. I’ve found that Lightning will drink from the bowl frequently during the session, even in chilly weather. I make no effort to rush him when he’s drinking, much less prevent him from getting water whenever he wishes, even if it interrupts our setup for a retrieve, which occasionally happens. Fortunately he has never made an effort to get to the water bowl when in the midst of a retrieve, though he may rush to it as soon as he has delivered the article at times. Mostly he visits the bowl to drink during his keep-away breaks.
• After putting out the water, I set up the field for the Double T, using six orange lining poles and 24 orange 2″ bumpers. Here’s what the setup looks like:

a. I plant the lining pole that will be our start line.

b. I walk 90y down the centerline of our setup area and temporarily plant a pole there. That is point P, akin to the pitcher’s mound in baseball although there will be five “bases” around it instead of three. Point P is where I will stop Lightning whenever we run a handling retrieve, and it is from that point that I now measure out the five destinations.

c. I place an Over lining pole and two bumpers 30y to the left of P and 30y to the right.

d. I place a Come-in lining pole and two bumpers on a 45° diagonal towards the start line to the left, and another lining pole and two bumpers on a 45° diagonal toward the start line to the right.

e. I then pull out the pole I had planted at P and carry it another 30y further out along the centerline, where I plant it as the Freebie lining pole along with the remaining 16 bumpers.

• With the setup complete, I return to the start line and sit down on the cooler I use to carry the bumpers when they’re not out being used, or I may remain standing and, as I mentioned earlier, take the opportunity to play recall games with Lancer.
• During the time that I have been setting up, Lightning frequently brings his keep-away toy to me. I respond in either of two ways, both of which he clearly finds reinforcing. One option is for me to take delivery of the toy and immediately fling it away for him to chase it, pick it up, and resume running around with it again. The other option is for me to take delivery of the toy, take a treat out of my pocket and give it to him, and then immediately hand him the keep-away toy with the cue Go Play or fling it for him. He has no way of of knowing in advance whether I’m going to give him a treat or not, and I try to make it as random as possible.
• For treats, I use thin hot dog slices that I carry in a plastic baggie. I also use those as treats for Lancer’s recall games. Luckily, both of these dogs consider that to be a high value treat. If that were not so, I would switch to something that does act as a high value reward. I see no point in reinforcing with something that does not provide high value to the dog.
• Generally fairly soon after I complete the setup and await Lightning at the start line, he is ready to do some work. He signals to this to me by bringing me his toy, and when I give him a treat and give the toy back to him, saying Go Play, he just takes a step or two away and then turns back to me, possibly getting some water, too. I take the toy, give him another great, and toss the toy into the cooler.
• Now I run him on two sets of 12 retrieves. In each set, I run him on four handling retrieves and eight freebies. All the retrieves begin with a send toward point P. For the freebies, I just let him continue on to the Freebie lining pole. For the handling retrieves, I stop him with a whistle sit at P, then handle him to one of the Over or Come-in poles. Once he reaches the correct target lining pole, I whistle come-in or sit + come-in, and that cues him to pick up a bumper and run back to me to deliver it to hand. In the early sessions, and whenever needed as a refresher, I fire a blank pistol the instant he picks up the bumper, which produces a nice, high-energy pickup and return rather than a bout of shopping first.
• I utilize the order of retrieves in each set to try to defeat his attempts to anticipate which target is next. If he’s been peeking or popping, I front load with several freebies. If he favors one of the lining poles with a looping sit, I send him to one of the other poles instead, at least if any still have not been used in this set.
• If Lightning veers toward one of the handling poles when I send him, I stop him and either call him in or handle him to the Freebie pole. While that latter action has the disadvantage of somewhat reinforcing his poor line, it practices the single most common handle actually needed in running a blind. But calling him in is also a valuable lesson for him, since it acts as negative reinforcement for holding his line toward P.
• If he repeatedly veers to one of the handling poles when I send him, I move our starting line up along the centerline toward point P until we’re close enough that Lightning can run to the Freebie pole without veering. In that session or later ones, we work our starting line back to its original position.
• Occasionally I give Lightning a treat as he returns with one of the retrieves. I make that as unpredictable as possible. This is in keeping with my recent decision to try to make Lightning always aware that reinforcement comes from me, and is not just the intrinsic reinforcement of doing the work.
• After each set of 12 retrieves, I hand Lightning his keep-away toy and cue Go Play. Each time he brings it back to me, I give him a treat and then hand him the toy and cue Go Play again, until he indicates he has had enough of that game.
• At the end of the last keep-away jaunt, I take delivery of the toy, give Lightning a treat, and open the back door of the car for him to hop in. I let Lancer stay out so he can shadow me while I walk around the field to pick up the lining poles. Once everything is collected, I put the lining poles, the cooler filled with bumpers, the water bowl, and the jug back into the car. Finally I pick Lancer up and put him in the back with Lightning.

These are exhilarating training sessions for me. Lightning does such excellent work, becoming ever more proficient in his handling skills. But more importantly, we work together as a team the entire time, rather than him ever finding the need to take matters into his own hands and play keep-away when I’m trying to work with him. It is night and day from those dark times of the past, before I learned how to address his keep-away issues.

In “Slipper retrieve,” a post from four years ago, I introduced the concept of “discovery training.”

The idea is that some of the behaviors we want our dogs to learn are self-reinforcing, to the extent that an extrinsic reinforcer such as treats is not only unnecessary but may even detract from the natural discovery process of the dog learning the pleasure of the behavior itself. Examples of behaviors well suited to discover training are house-training, wherein the pleasure of the dog relieving himself is an intrinsic reinforcer for the act being performed outside, and wherein, for a dog with an innate instinct to retrieve, the act of retrieving is a powerful reinforcer for the act itself.

Because I dislike being on the receiving side or the sending side of coercion and manipulation in human interaction, and perhaps for other philosophical and psychological reasons, such as an attraction to simplicity and efficiency, the notion of discovery training appealed and I guess still appeals to me, and I believe I’ve often Incorporated it into my efforts at dog training.

But as I was rethinking the concept of discovery training recently, I suddenly had one of those Eureka! moments. Wait! Perhaps my use of discovery training with Lightning has caused or exacerbated his keep-away habits!

Well, it’s probably more complicated than that. For example, in “The Prisoner’s Dilemma, keep-away, and patience,” I described another mechanism that is also likely in play. And growing up with Ryley, DW Renée’s Golden Retriever, who is almost the same age as Lightning, may have also been an important factor. In TRT, Mike Lardy says something along the lines that he has never seen a successful field retriever who grew up with a sibling as a companion.

Nonetheless, discovery training means that the dog looks to himself for the rewards of his behavior. I would think that’s desirable in human development, but I have now begun to think it’s counterproductive in dog training.

My reasoning is this. Dog training is about engaging in the bargain that the dog gives you what you want, and in exchange you give him what he wants. For the dog, that takes place unconsciously, as the behavioral mechanism called operant conditioning. But that mechanism nonetheless loses its power to the extent that the dog doesn’t depend on you for reinforcement.

Instead, I now think that to maximize the effectiveness of operant conditioning, we want to maximize the give and take in our relationship with the dog. Thus treats and other extrinsic rewards that are available only from the trainer are preferable to intrinsic rewards for the vital goal of engendering cooperative interaction.

For Lightning, I think the most prominent example of this principle is his tendency to go into keep-away mode rather than complete a retrieve, a tendency I’ve been battling, and finally, gradually defeating, literally for years now. Keep-away is a game he can play without my cooperation. In fact, it seems likely to be more pleasurable, as a game for the dog, the more the behavior annoys and animates the other party. It may be a healthy game for dogs to play with one another, and in any case probably is inevitable in doggy interaction, but it is destructive when you’re training a dog for a team sports activity.

So this is the new plan: I won’t be reluctant to incorporate intrinsic reinforcement into my interaction with my dogs, but in the first place I won’t be shy to also use extrinsic reinforcers, and in the second place, I’ll make an effort to pair intrinsic reinforcement, when it occurs, with rewards that the dog associates with our relationship rather than just pleasure the dog obtains without my participation.