Took my year old for some water mark work to the lake this morning. He has been retrieving to hand very well up until now , with very little guidance, on land and out of water. However this morning he dropped the dummy to shake when he came out of the water. i do not want this to develop into a habit. Anyone any ideas on how to fix this before it becomes ingrained??Many Thanks Mary

Force fetch with the hold command training if this has not been done. If you have completed force fetch then i would suggest going back to the bench for more training.

If you put a rope on your pup you can encourage him to come into you before shaking off...
Also, try meeting him right at the waters edge and when he reaches you run backwards encouraging him to come along with you. If he drops the bumper and shakes off, tell him NO, here and give him the bumper again...(if he has been taught to 'hold')
Be animated and try to get him to forget that he is wet.

Also teach him the shake off command...after he delivers the bumper, tilt your hand back and forth with the 'shake off' command...give the command every time he shakes off, no matter whether you have asked him to or not....

Another trick I will do is to take the bumper from the dog at waters edge and immediately throw it again so that the dog does not have the opportunity to shake off (not requiring the dog to sit or heel for delivery).

teaching 'hold' will help him to realize what you want.

Juli

Thanks Juli, will try those ideas. not familiar with forcefetching methods here . He is an extremely advanced pup for his age. Had him out on driven pheasant shoot and 7 months intending only to watch but after one day was picking birds from cover and delivering them to hand like an old pro. Thats why i'd like to encourage that natural ability if I can at all.

River here is the problem with that though. If he is still a pup, and picks up bad habits like this, you will not know how to correct them. When he gets older these habits can then become even more frustrating to you! Try looking up some videos on FF. It is a wonderful way to help your dog understand what you want and expect from him. I have my dog being trained right now and i am no expert at doing this! However after watching videos, reading and getting great info here i have come to the conclusion that this method will enhance the relationship you have between you and your dog in the field. JMO

It is completely possible to teach him to hold the bumper or bird and deliver to hand with attrition....

It will take longer than if he was ff - but is not impossible.

John is right that you do not want it to become a habit...so from now on, make it a habit to encourage and reward proper delivery.

It is also possible to teach him NOT to shake off when he exits water w/out having a retrieve involved.

Sit him across a channel, with a rope on...call him to you. (You are standing at water's edge) As soon as he gets to you he will try to shake off. Grab him by the scruff and tell him NO, SIT. IT doesn't matter where he sits, just that he sits..It is important that you don't let him finish shaking off. Once he is sitting for a couple of seconds, tell him 'shake off' with the hand signal...He will more easily figure out that you don't want him to shake off if you teach it seperately from other work (esp retrieves)....

Juli

One or two easy things to try,

Try backing up(running away sometimes) from the dog as he is exiting the water. Also, back up behind something and hide from him, pop out and give a few good boys then a stern, HEAL! It will help him forget about being wet.

I have always taught "shake" as a hand command. At heal, when retrieve/marks have been picked up, I step away, and give an open palm and twist my wrist and say shake. She shakes. Start this whenever they are shaking at a young age and it turns into a command. It is a very, very handy command to have when inside a small blind or duck boat and you don't want a face full of cold water....Paul

I don't FF my dogs, and a well-timed "here" as Pup emerges is generally all it takes to help get them in the habit of delivering before shaking. But I have used both the meeting-at-water's-edge and running-backwards these folks have suggested to keep a pup or two from getting into the habit of shaking at water's edge. And that, I think, is the real "trick" of it, to do whatever it takes to prevent it from becoming ingrained as habit.

(I've had varying degrees of success with shaking on command. Some picked it up and even learned to move off first on "go shake". Others never made the command connection and shook shortly after handing bird or bumper off regardless.)

quote:

Sit him across a channel, with a rope on...call him to you. (You are standing at water's edge) As soon as he gets to you he will try to shake off. Grab him by the scruff and tell him NO, SIT. IT doesn't matter where he sits, just that he sits..It is important that you don't let him finish shaking off. Once he is sitting for a couple of seconds, tell him 'shake off' with the hand signal...He will more easily figure out that you don't want him to shake off if you teach it seperately from other work (esp retrieves)....

With all due respect, don't ever tell a dog NO when they are working in the field as they may associate it with something other than what you are trying to no them off of. Les & Nancy Lowenthal would give stern lectures on this when you were working a dog if you told the dog no. If you need to tell them something, "aaah" seems to suffice followed by a heal, here, or some other constructuve command.

The thing here is that you have to be watching your dog and ready to keep him focused on the job at hand before he has a chance to think about shaking as he comes out of the water, and perhaps shorten up the distance he has to travel on the land, and gradually lengthen it back out when he understands he has to keep moving once out of the water.

Paul's and Rick's suggestions were great.

Kathy Miller

guess I'll have to respectfully disagree Kathy...

If a dog is doing something you don't want him to do, regardless of where he is, he should know to stop that action or behavior when he hears the word NO (or ehh, hey, or whatever, which I also use)IF the behavior can be isolated...

this method has worked well for me, and my dogs understood pretty quickly that I was not wanting them to shake off upon exit....Please keep in mind, (in case I wasn't totally clear in my post), that this is when the dog has reached you at the waters edge and you can physically reach down and stop him from shaking with the command no sit, or no heel. With no retrieve involved he should be able to figure out that it is the shaking you do not want....
...besides even if you use another term or vocalization of some sort, the dog knows he is doing something you don't approve of....


Now, if I cannot isolate the specific behavior, then I will try not to use NO because yes, it can confues the dog (And I readily admit to using No at the wrong time).....Nor do I use 'No Bird' at the line...I use 'leave it' if I want to pull the dog away from a mark or gun station....



Last year in a hunt test Hitch was running a water blind in which the line to the blind was very close to the old fall of a previous mark. Of course he wanted to go to the old fall, after two unsuccessful attempts at getting him to carry the cast away from the old fall I told him NO, and cast him again away from where he wanted to go...and what do you know, he responded correctly....

Juli

Juli,

Everyone is entitled to train their dog the way that works, but many field people will tell you it's not good to ever use "no" in the field because often times the dog doesn't know what the no goes to and may quit on you.

I was only pointing that out for OTHER PEOPLE who also read these boards!

If it works for you, then do it!

Yeah, yeah, some people will say I don't know what I'm talking about either!!

Katny

I definitely agree Kath....I think it is important the dog understand fully what the No is for .....sometimes it seems like it should be clear to them, but it isn't.

BTW - I once trained with Roy McFall and he was helping a lady train her dog swim by a point on a blind - I don't remember the specifics of the training, but I do remember Roy telling her to yell at the dog 'No!' if she swam toward the point...and it did work...

Juli

Thanks guys for all the advice.i started teaching the 'HOLD' command this week to my year old and My 4 year old bitch. Not surprisingly Winnie, my 4 year old ,picked it up very quickly. Bertie is slower, resisting a bit but I'm in no hurry as I know where I'm going with him. Winnie has had several placings in working tests but her one sticky point has also been dropping to shake. After teaching the HOLD on land all week I decided to try her at water this morning. First couple of times I stood right in the water and as she was reaching shore , gave the command HOLd and held her head , just for a couple seconda, asked her to give , she gave the dummy then released my hand from her head, she shook and I said shake. I repeated the procedure for five more retrieves slowly lenghtening distance but at the same time I finished only 10feet from water's edge and she did it. I know i still have a long way to go to get reliability but its a start and I can see progress. Thanks again.