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Weather conditions have
put a stop to our water work for the time being.
On the shoot grounds, our ponds and streams are a
raging torrent, with dams bursting and
impossible off-road driving conditions.
Torrential rain and floods, plus a work overload
have eaten into my training over the last couple of
weeks, but we have still managed to make a little
progress in the training field. Unfortunately
I have also managed to upset this very sensitive dog
and set her training back a little as you will see.
First - our progress.....
Casting
Being restricted to the
training field has at least helped me focus on
Lottie's handling. Lottie is now
proficient at simple casts to the right, left or
back. I am still only throwing two dummies out, and
always sending her for the first thrown, and then
re-throwing the one she delivers before sending her
for the previous one. She 'knows the score' and
responds neatly and reliably in any direction.
I am increasing the
level of difficulty in a couple of ways. Firstly I
have increased the distance between her and me when
I cast, and the distance of the dummies in
each direction. Secondly I am beginning to
introduce the concept of changing my position
relative to hers in between throws. So
if I throw the first dummy over her head for
example, and the second one to the left,
when she has collected the first dummy, I will
sometimes leave her in the new position where she
delivered, and move away from her, sometimes
in a different direction so that the remaining dummy is a different cast.
She finds this quite difficult so I am making the
distances much shorter again when we do these.
Combining the 'stop' with casting
We
have also made a start with combining the stop
whistle with our casts. Sometimes I throw out
a right hand dummy, then a left hand dummy,
send Lottie for the right hand dummy, stop her
half way, and redirect her to the left hand dummy.
No problem with this. Sometimes I throw a
dummy over her head, recall her, stop her half
way, and send her back for the dummy. No
problem with this either. However, a
couple of times, I have lined her out from my
side and blown the stop whistle on the way out.
This she treated as a recall and returned
right back to me.
I don't want to spoil
her outrun by practicing this too often, or to
correct her for returning to me, so I will do some
more work on the stop whistle in less challenging
situations, and give some more thought to this
before trying it again.
And now for some
problems....
Gunfire
We have had to take a
step back with gunfire. Although Lottie seemed
comfortable with single shots from the .410,
as soon as I attempted to fire several shots in
succession she showed signs of concern -
firstly by jumping up at me (which she only normally
does when she is nervous, but which I initially
misinterpreted as 'messing about'), and then by
scooting behind my legs when the shot was fired.
I have therefore had to take the gun right back out
to 100 yards again.
After the shots which
upset her, she did not even want to run past Duncan
whilst he was simply holding the gun never mind
firing it. I am kicking myself for not
realising there was a problem here.
However, we have
restored her confidence in running past a thrower
holding the gun, and Duncan can again fire a shot at
100 yards or so, throw a dummy, and she
will happily run out and past him and the gun to
fetch it for me. So I will have to be patient
and build slowly on this again
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