My Duck Dog Training A to ?

Last night I trained at The Farm with Greg, Lee, Howard and Mike. We ran 9 dogs through a triple, double blind and derby double. Not bad for only a couple hours training.Tucker ran a tight triple left to right, long-long-short. Go bird no problem. Middle bird he had difficulty on locking onto it for the send. I was patient and he finally settled down and locked on. About 20 feet after the send he scalped out to the left hand bird - Mike even made comment ‘that lying bastard!’ I allowed Tucker to collect the left bird and on his return I received some ‘input’ from Lee about why I had allowed Tucker to carve to the left bird without any thought of correction or intervention. I simply (and wrongly) stated that that was the bird he wanted. Lee’s advise was then to put Tucker up BEFORE I sent him to the middle bird and rerun the set up after all the other dogs had run. While this conversation was taking place, Tucker had returned and had locked on to the middle gun station. I arrogantly decided to send Tucker to the middle mark. Tucker left the line, went out about 30 yds of the 200 he had to go and proceeded to pop. NO-HERE and then I put him up.

After the other dogs had run I once again brought Tucker to the line. While he never left the mat, he was doing pushups and fidgeting while the birds came out - for which he received a stick correction. Once again the go bird was collected easily. Middle bird - scalped hard back to the go bird AOF. NO-HERE. Can’t get him locked on to the middle bird - ask the gun to wave arms to attract his attention - success. Lined him up for the left bird, he begins to head swing badly. I finally get his attention onto the left bird and, after the send, he scalps hard right back to the middle AOF. NO-HERE. Ask the gun station to throw another bird - it is Lee’s station and he’s out of birds so he throws the bucket! Tucker locks on and collects the bird. The dog may not have learned much but the handler hopefully did.

Next set up was a double blind with a stand out gunner for suction. The All Age dogs were sent through a large juniper bush on route to the long blind. I modified the blind and ran Tucker beside it - he ran the short blind well and the long blind OK, he had to back to back cast refusals and I gave him a sit-nick-sit to which he responded well.

The final set up was a very wide double about 180yds each. Tucker’s line manners were much better on this set up. He collected the go bird well. On the memory bird he ran out about 40yds and began to pop - I gave him a loud verbal BACK and he resumed his running and collected the mark after a good hunt. This pop was (I believe) caused by the earlier set ups recalls after the sends.

Before everyone arrived I was able to run Artemis through a 8 bumper wagon wheel drill.  She did well but still needed some help to suck her hips in on ‘Heel’ when she wanted to lock on a bumper other than the one I wanted to send her to.

Artemis ran the triple as singles and did a fine job on them. I wasn’t going to run her on the blinds but Lee encouraged me to with some simplification - hid the gunner and moved the line to avoid many of the enroute factors. Artemis did well on both of the blinds. I am finally understanding the need to handle her for casting rather than line. That is - literal cast her, if she scalps, cast her again with the same cast, if she scalps again then sit-nick-sit and cast her again same cast. When she takes the cast don’t worry about the line to the blind let her run, this lets her know she took the correct cast - even if it takes her off line to the blind. On this long blind she only received one nick and than was for a slow sit.

Artemis’s final set up was a derby double. She pinned the go bird and on the memory bird she ran a good line to the AOF and almost ran through it, checked up, set up a good hunt and dug the bird out. I’m beginning to get excited about this coming weekend at Long Point - if I don’t screw her up she should do well.

Lee beat my chops about MY mistakes with Tucker and hopefully I’ll remember and more importantly, put into practice what I learned last night.