Another easy lesson in untraining your dog

Why is consistency so hard to achieve?  After all, it is entirely in your hands and not the dog's.

After a fine but hot land practice, Larsen and I went to the water for a hunt dead and a cooling water retrieve.

I set the bird out 60+ yards on the hunt dead and Larsen went right after it.  He picked it up and trotted back as fine as you please and then breezed right by me.  I pipped him back, which he ignored.  I pipped him again.  Finally, after this sort of pipsqueaking, he returned with the bird.  Can you spot the mistake?  What happened to zero tolerance on failure to deliver to hand?  Where does the fault entirely reside?

Enough.  You know the answers and so do I.  The answers do not have embedded in them "but it was hot," "but it was the end of a long day," "but the bird was a bit torn and tastey."

To repair the setback, this week, Larsen has been on the table fetching various objects.  Not as punishment, since he really did not much more wrong than simply test me, but as a reminder to both of us that fetch means fetch.