Bea is 8 months old now (ignore my mistake in the video) and is in for 4 weeks training. The goal for her owners is to have her working alongside Pru...
Bea is a tracker. She loves to get her nose to the floor and follow the scent. This is fine when she is hunting, but not when she is on the lead or off the lead by my heel.
The longline is my safety net, so to speak, when I first start training a dog. How quickly this can be removed depends entirely on the dog, but Bea seems to be a natural follower, so it did not take long.
Not to tempt fate, but Bea seems very keen and has a natural retrieve.
Having watched Bea yesterday, the plan today is to work on her patience, and we will continue that every day.
The sit and stay command is one of the most important parts of training a peg/picking up dog.
Steadiness all round is the perfect way to create a nice, controlled retrieve.
Building on from yesterday's sessions and introducing the whistle to Bea.
All retrieve training should be game play. That’s how you get your dog to become fully focused.
Steadiness should start before you even let them out of the truck.
The more distance I can get from Bea it is going to help me start some of the good stuff.
Bea is going to be part of a team, so just for fun, I had her heel and wait with my working Labrador, Drake, today.
As I move into the second week with Bea, I'm pleased with her progress. However, not every training session can hit the mark. Some days present more challenges than others. It's important to focus on these as learning opportunities. This approach helps in maintaining steady progress.
Today, the snow kept us indoors, so we focused on practising Place and steadiness with Bea.
Don’t let bad weather stop your training. Switch your activities indoors to keep moving forward with your steadiness .
After a few busy days, we’re back with Bea, sharpening her focus and rebuilding her drive for retrieving.
A dog's behaviour is made up of small actions working together. If one action, like running in, disrupts the process, the entire behaviour needs careful breakdown for better understanding and management.
So today I continued from the work we did yesterday, adding more control and direction work.
Every dog has a boredom threshold. The key is to push through it so you can eventually have longer training sessions.
The infamous stop whistle becomes a stumbling block for every dog I work with. Some get it quickly; others take time.
Day twelve with Bea, and despite the awful weather, we still had to train her.
The wind was strong today, and the rain was heavy. We are just two weeks in, and we are seeing amazing progress with Bea, especially now that we have a semi-decent stop whistle in place.
It’s day fourteen with Bea, and her progress is great. Filming was tricky today as we focused on improving her retrieving, especially with multiple retrieves.
So I followed my plan despite the weather today and headed to Harlston Firs with Bea.
This certainly challenged her steadiness. Although she did not stop on the whistle as much as I would have liked, she never once missed the retrieve.
As the training session moved on, I started to really challenge Bea by upping the game.
Big day today as we headed to the field to introduce her to the Air & Go launcher.
I could have simply change the direction of the launcher but with where it was situated it was limited so I changed the line I sent Bea from instead.
Team work makes the dream work so they say and as Bea is going to be part of a team she needs to learn what that means.
Knowing the psychology of a dog is just as important, if not more so, than knowing how to train it.
Had some fun with Bea as I introduced her to the principles of standing to peg.
This is Bea's first time retrieving a feather, and she did well until she found some exposed meat. I explain this in the next video. However, I am very happy with her retrieves today.
It happens; a dog gets a taste for exposed meat and then refuses to retrieve. It's all about working them through it, and that's what I had to do with Bea.
Yesterday's training with Bea went well, and I was pleased overall. However, she ignored the whistle at times, so I'll need to focus on that today.
Bea won’t grow if every retrieve is too easy. She has to push herself and finish the job. Her success depends on grit, not shortcuts. Teaching her to never quit will build her confidence and determination.
Bea struggles to focus on blind retrieves. At just 9 months, this is to be expected. However, today she did well. Although she faced some difficulty, her casting and focus improved significantly.
I have been working on the blind retrieves with Bea and fine tuning some of the commands for the last few days. Now, we have better consistency, and her progress is clear to see.
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