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- Basic Obedience. "Sit",
"here", "stay", "heel", all on and off leash.
- Force Fetch. Review the
Tri-tronics Hold and Fetch tapes as an excellent way to
get a handle on force fetching your dog. Even the most
driven retriever must be force-fetch trained if they are
to be successful at the higher levels of field
work.*** If you START with a force-fetch taught
dog you will not be fighting this problem all along and
the dog can then learn the other things they need to
learn. I do not advocate STARTING this work with an
e-collar, however. The traditional methods using
ear-pinch or toe-hitch are better as the dog then
correctly associates the force as coming from the handler
rather than the environment.
- Some people with "clammy" dogs
(a dog whose response to pressure is to freeze up or turn
inward and react by increasing the stoic nature) may find
that introduction to retrieving a bumper or any object
for that matter, is more successful when useing the
clicker method of training. Once the dog understands the
term "fetch" then you can begin to use "pressure" to
enforce the action. With the stoic dog (clammy) use lots
of animation to keep the dog moving! Work fast, lots of
praise for small positive steps and use short training
sessions.
- Knowing how to swim and
being comfortable in the water.(see Beginning
notes)
- Proof the understanding of the
taught commands by standard obedience proofing
techniques.
- Introduce whistle comands the
same way you introduced "here" and "sit" verbal
commands.
- Collar Conditioning. If
you are going to use an e-collar it is important that you
begin its use after your dog has learned and
understands basic obedience commands. The Dobbs method of
collar conditioning is not good for Poodles as it
increases their fear of terrain. A Poodle must understand
that the command and correction is coming from the
handler for best long term results and dog understanding
of corrections. The best discussion of collar
conditioning that I have found that is applicable to
Poodles is the Mike Lardy discussion in the Retriever
Journal, June/July, 1996. For Poodles I would
recommend beginning collar conditioning with the command
"here" or "come" rather than "sit", however, as many
Poodles will wish to "clam up" when collar conditioning
is started and learning "sit" first seems to promote this
response.
- "Force to a pile" on
land. Again, the best and most readily understood
discussion of force to a pile is by Mike Lardy in the
Retriever Journal, Oct/Nov., 1996.
- Steady at heel sitting
when a bird or bumper is thrown
- Delivery to hand in the
heel position
- Retrieving a single bird
from land and water with delivery to hand
- "Force to a pile" across
a small body of water (maybe 20 yards or so).
- Hidden guns
- Three-handed casting with introduction of hand
signals and proofing of whistle commands
- Simple re-entries. In otherwords going from
land across water, out onto land and then back into water
for retrieves (in a straight line, of course)
REMEMBER:Keep a balance in your
training. Balance fun with work, marks with drills, water
with land, so that your training moves forward on a broad
front.
If your dog understands the above
it should easily attain a title equivalent to the Junior
Hunter. If you hope to go on past JH then you may wish to go
well into intermediate training prior to entering a JH
test.
Thanks
to VIP
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