March
2008
Progress at last!3
Well, after months of incredibly slow, at times backwards, progress with training a retrieve…… we have finally got somewhere. Incredible what you can achieve when you choose a training method that suits your dog!! I’d been trying to teach Mist to retrieve in the way I learnt with Thule (who also took a very long time…. she clearly thought it was boring…. and can’t say I blame her 
) - teach her to hold an item for 1 second, then 2 seconds then 5, 10, etc. etc. Then teach her to hold it sitting at my side, then get her to take it from my hand while standing at my side and sit down….. this is where we got stuck! And it took months to get that far. She could hold an item I gave her as long as I wanted, but didn’t ‘offer’ anything more. If I indicated to her with my hand that I wanted her to sit, she dropped the item and sat!
So, in frustration, I decided to ’shape’ the retrieve instead. A few evenings ago, I took 4 items (a sock, a knotted piece of fabric, a small plastic child’s toy and a piece of hosepipe) and laid them on the floor in the hall while Mist watched through the glass door. Then I opened the door and waited to see what she would do. She went straight over to the objects, tail wagging. I clicked/treated for sniffing, then picking up an item, and within 5minutes, she had progressed to picking up each object and holding it still in her mouth while looking at me - this earned her a good game of tug! Not bad for a first try 
. Next evening, I did the same again and within the same time, she had brought each item towards me a few steps. The third session, she was bringing each item to my feet!
Ok, so I need to work on the ‘delivery’ and ensure she is good about not chewing them, but her enthusiasm for this new ‘game’ is such a relief after seeing her become less and less excited about holding things I gave to her in my ‘old’ method.
Not being too patient at the moment (I’m just so happy to be back to training again!)…. today, while we were out for a walk, I thought I’d try a little test. I got Mist to sit on the gravel road (Vedafjell), while I tramped out an area about 6m x 4m, showed her that I was holding a glove and then dropped it at the far side. I went back to her and said ‘ok’. She shot out, clearly searching for something. Whether she really knew what she was searching for, I don’t know 
but anyway, it wasn’t long before she found the glove……. AND BROUGHT IT BACK TO ME I rewarded her when she was about a metre from me, as I was fairly certain she would otherwise drop it before getting to me (I can work on that last bit). We did the same thing again with the glove and again, she searched, found it, and brought it back to me! After a short walk, I set up the same exercise although with a ~10m x 5m area and using a cardboard tube from a firework that I’d found on the way and put in my pocket. Even though the item was totally ‘new’ for Mist, it had my scent on, and she searched as before, found it, looked up as if to say ‘hmmm, is this really what I was supposed to find’ and then picked it up and brought me it.
So, I’ve found a fun way to train Feltsøk (article search) and retrieve. I’ve even noticed that she’ll bring a toy back to somewhere near me too…. something she hasn’t done for months ( 
)…. so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself (and Mist, of course!)
. By shortening the distance and getting the ‘body’ to fire her up a bit on the midline first, we got her barking, but it wasn’t really good deep barks like she had developed in previous training sessions. The second session was a little better - this time Kristin and Kai-Erik were ‘bodies’. Kristin had the biteleathers, and these do seem to be better at getting Mist excited and barking properly. She loves playing with a ball, but isn’t so good at bringing it back, even if there are two, and although her ‘drop’ command is excellent, it puts her into ’sheepdog’ mode, crouching and staring at the ball and moving in slow motion. In contrast, she chases, tugs and shakes/’kills’ the biteleathers (or any toy on a rope) and gets really excited by them.