Training notes

We tried a new tactic on Sunday.  We did an exercise similar to a mark.  I sat Larsen by my side and Cathy tossed the bird, which Larsen marked.  I then sent Larsen using the "back" command rather than his name.  As he hot-footed to the bird, I hit the whistle and made him stop and sit.  He sat, and then I'd call him back and send him again.  Sometimes I'd stop him and return him, sometimes I let him go get the bird.

Larsen cheated and I repositioned him.  On another turn, I sent him and then hit the whistle and he peeled off  like a fighter jet being called off from a run at the last minute.  I repositioned him again.

His retrieves were messy, and I gave him a very no-nonsense correction that told him to just knock off the play.

These corrections paid off.  On his last few turns, he sat when whistled (in one sweet turn, he self-corrected by wiggling his sitting rear-end backwards toward me).  His deliveries were flawless.

Finally, we set Larsen up for quartering with the check cord and a clip wing.  Our thought was that we wanted to put the pieces together but make sure that he was fully under control.  Larsen sat to the flush and the bird hopped away.  I called him to me and sat him.  The bird flushed and flew (evidently not as clipped as we thought) and Shoni shot it.  I sent Larsen who missed the mark (possibly just due to overload) and he headed to the river's edge.  I found him patiently waiting for me after he tangled himself on a log.

This was a successful outing.  The drills increased the probability of success from 50:50 to 99%.  We knew he could do these things, and at this point, we need to get to rock stability and 100% success before moving forward.  In the future we will trick out the drills and change them around and introduce new challenges so that we don't get stale and he can move forward, but this was an ideal outing.