I decided to take advantage of the sub-freezing temperatures, snow and ice by doing a little foundation and obedience work the last couple weeks. I think that I haven’t been doing enough foundation work as dogs need this periodically to “remind them” of concepts they have learned in the past. Though we are doing advanced drills and concepts in the field, I was getting some mouthing of the bird from Q and some lackluster driving out from Prinz. Dogs do not learn in a straight line, I had been taught this and so I do not shy away from a little backtracking!

I reviewed the trained retrieve and obedience steps in Tom Dokken’s retriever training book and some other books. As I was reading it, I realized how many steps the pro trainer that I had trained with skipped when I was learning how to teach a trained retrieve for the first time. It turns out she skipped about the first ten steps! I had heard that pros skip steps and do the minimum required to get the dog performing but I didn’t think mine did, as I read through the steps and how they build on each other I knew that reworking their trained retrieve would help us a lot.

Those first steps turn out to be really important for the dog to remain relaxed and pliable and to teach the concept of hold. Going back through the process really made me realize the weaknesses where the pro had skipped entire chains of steps and virtually all the table work preparing the dog step by step. We tend to trust our pros because we see they get good results, but as we learn and grow as trainers we can adjust, and we have the luxury of taking more time when training our own personal hunting dogs and doing things better…. the “boutique” treatment, if you will. Of course it went quickly, since the dogs really knew the concept already and we were just solidifying, clarifying. For Q it really solidified hold and for Prinz it really added urgency to reach aggressively for the object. I am excited to see how this will translate to their field work now that we’ve revisited this…..

In our sessions I also worked on fine-tuning their obedience going back to the leash and choke chain, heel stick and then the collar and really reinforcing these concepts. They know the concepts, don’t necessarily understand it’s expected anywhere, anytime no questions asked. I taught behaviors with treat rewards, but never did a good job before now, of reinforcing … without treats, but because, it is their job.

This is the “not so sexy” side of dog training, although I have really enjoyed these last couple weeks and watching the light bulbs going off in their heads. We are virtually through our “refresher” program and ready to go back to the field soon. I would encourage anyone struggling with advanced performance issues to go back to basics for a little while like this and reinforce their early training, whatever concept they are struggling with. It needn’t be a drag, there is lots of fun and positives incorporated into it. Also, maybe you only need to go back to, say, the backpile or ladder, not all the way back to trained retrieve. Only you and your dog know what point you need to go back to where the confusion occurred.