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The last two weeks have
brought both progress and a problem to solve. We
have made progress in several areas, but especially
with gunfire.
Gunfire
Over the last few days I have brought the 12 bore closer and closer, so
that Lottie is now quite comfortable with the gun
being fired next to her, and with me opening
and closing the gun, which was spooking her a little
until recently.
Steadiness
This is going well. Lottie
comes with me in and around the pheasant pens,
feeds the ducks, and walks at heel.
She is also steady at
heel
whilst a spaniel quarters open ground in front.
I think we are nearly ready to start showing Lottie
a flush or two. For this I will be taking her
with me at heel whilst I 'dog-in' some of the
shoot boundaries with a spaniel.
Retrieving
I have stretched out
Lottie's 'baby' blind retrieves just a little to 30
or 40 yards, and our nice straight lines are
holding up. One of our meadows has been cut
quite short again, which has given me opportunity to
do some simple lining exercises putting out
white dummies 'around the clock' and sending
her from the centre for each in turn. Apart
from a few exercises like this, Lottie has had
very few retrieves, but has had to sit and watch the
spaniels retrieve a good deal. I am hoping
this will help to prepare her for her role as
'observer' on her first shoot outings.
Whining
I mentioned a few days
ago that Lottie was getting quite excited in the car
as we arrive at the shoot. This had now become
worse with her 'whining' and paddling her feet
even though I have never released her from the car
crate until she is sitting quietly. I
have given some thought as to the best way of
putting a stop to it.
There are several clear
'triggers' to the whining, these are:
the change in motion as the car goes 'off-road',
stopping the car and putting the brake on, turning
off the engine, opening my door and getting out,
opening the back of the car, and, opening the
crate. Each of these actions generate an
increased amount of whining and pacing or paddling
of feet. So that by the time I get to the back
of the car, I sometimes have to wait a minute
or more for her to settle before I can open the
door.
I decided a few days ago
to break down this behaviour into its individual
components, to reward silence at each point and to
punish noise at each point. Up until recently,
I had only been giving a consequence to the last
stages in the chain - the opening of the back
of the car, and of the crate itself.
I am now rewarding each
point in the chain by moving on to the next,
and punishing any noise at each point by going back
to the previous step in the chain. I am
also marking the silence with a click from the
clicker. So, for example, if
she is quiet when I stop the car and put the
handbrake on, I click and switch off the
engine. Still quiet, click and open my
door. If she whines when I switch off
the engine, no click, and I restart the
engine. And so on.
This probably sounds
like a huge big deal... and it was for the first day
- I was stopping and starting, driving
on a few yards, stopping and starting again,
maybe 20 times. Probably not very good for my
car! But.. it seems to now be working.
On our trips out this week Lottie has made no noise
at all, apart from a brief whine when I
reached the back of the car on one occasion. I
returned to the drivers seat for a moment and then
went round to the back of the car again, and
she remained quiet whilst I opened the crate.
She is however still much more excited than I would
like and sometimes spins around frantically as I
open the back of the car
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