Now that Homer was responding great to baseball it was time to teach him to take off after a bird he did not see fall. Up till now I only used his name to send him after a bird or dummy. With a blind retrieve I use the command “BACK” and a hand signal too send him off. This was by far the most difficult thing for Homer to learn. Here again I think most of “Homer’s” difficulty was me expecting too much distance too quickly.
Gun dog training, especially the blind retrieve, is about building trust, confidence and desire in your dog. Starting with very short (10 yard max) easy blinds will build confidence and desire. You will quickly start seeing your dog “Charge” out after the placed dummies. For your gun dog, distance will be a matter of trust, the dog will begin to trust with lots of repetitions and a gradual increase in distance. A HUGE mistake new trainers make is sending a dog to “Nothing” just to see how far he will go.
If you give your dog the BACK command, be damn sure a retrieve is waiting for him. Sending him out for nothing will break his trust. Both the Gun dog and Game dog DVD’s will demonstrate the basic “Line” technique. Teaching the dog to “Take” and “Hold” a “Line” is where patience is a BIG TIME virtue. I started to use an electronic training collar at this time, the next post I’ll talk about that, as well as some of the problems and solutions I had for Homer.
Joe Dynarski.