My nine month old male pup is doing great. Except for a nice square whistle sit. Is it better to physically walk out and reposition him or use the whistle to get him square? My goal is for him to handle like a corvette not a dump truck!
square sit
gward
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My nine month old male pup is doing great. Except for a nice square whistle sit. Is it better to physically walk out and reposition him or use the whistle to get him square? My goal is for him to handle like a corvette not a dump truck!
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You can get a checkcord on him and square him up that way by getting him to move with the pressure from the rope..a little tug, Whistle SIT..
You can also get his attention without the checkcord and twirl a white bumper around by the rope..Boom, most of the time they'll square right on up to ya'..Keeps him on his toes, and toss it from time to time for a quick mark...
You can also get his attention without the checkcord and twirl a white bumper around by the rope..Boom, most of the time they'll square right on up to ya'..Keeps him on his toes, and toss it from time to time for a quick mark...
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How did you get him to this point? Did you do 3-handed casting and convert it to Mini-T? Did you do this with a rope/check cord? If so, that's how you square up and sharpen the sit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mx5_s71tY
Is this how you're doing it?
Evan
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I'm using Tri-Tronics Retriever Training with Jim Dobbs, I know, old school, but it works for me and is easy to understand. We are currently doing double T work ( weather permitting) and he does a good job except for sitting square at the intersections. I can square him up with a come in whistle and a quick sit whistle. I just don't know if this is the right thing to do. Guess I can always go back to the rope!
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I know the come-in whistle is a popular treatment, but I would caution you in a couple ways. First, it doesn't tend to produce lasting results. That's very important. But in place of the crooked sit will tend to be the expectation that your dog now has that when you call him ("toot" - "toot") he only needs to come a couple feet.
I've seen so many that did that be virtue of this treatment, and they won't come when the handler needs them to, especially at the end of blinds when they've passed the bird, and instead of coming as called the dog goes into a hunt.
It may work fairly well, but there are more efficient ways.
Evan
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Yup. My dog did exactly what Evan describes here. I now only use the whistle to straighten a crooked sit in must do situations.
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I'm just wondering how many think the square sit thing is overrated/over-emphasized. I say that because I've seen the tendency in most dogs to sit pretty squarely near the handler and more askew farther away from the line after they've gained momentum. In Lardy's videos, few of the dogs sit perfectly squarely. In Open trials, few of the dogs sit squarely. Yet, most of the dogs handle very well.
I'm not saying or even implying that it shouldn't be something taught to the dogs in the early going. What I'm saying is that at some point, if the dog is handling well, how much is really to be gained by trying to square up the sit at any distance in relation to the time involved?
I'm not saying or even implying that it shouldn't be something taught to the dogs in the early going. What I'm saying is that at some point, if the dog is handling well, how much is really to be gained by trying to square up the sit at any distance in relation to the time involved?
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I am pretty sure I read in Lardy's material that you do not worry too much about this if the dog cast well from a crooked sit. It is all about the cast.
Guess it all depends on whether you are training or testing.
During training I'd want to make sure the dog was trained to the highest standard possible, but during a test/trial it's all about results. Yes/No???
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I am pleased with your goals!
A few questions you might want to ask yourself:
1) Is he sitting with "anticipation" of being sent one way or another?
2) Does he turn right or left more naturally/and - is this the direction that he tends to lean toward in his sit?
3) Was the same type (same standard) of a sit when you did single T or did it just creep up when you moved up to double T?
I think your method for "fixing it" would be influenced on what caused it. If its been the same all along I say - go back a few steps and "straighten him out" no pun intended before doing TT / 5 handed casting etc...
I do a little reward based whistle sit drill (game) with some young dogs involving a tennis ball that you might be interested in doing with Doc. Give me a shout on the phone and I'll describe it. Its "Un-conventional" but has been super effective for me and some others who have tried it!
For my 9 month old ... I think taking the rope back out might cause a bit of stress.. she can be pretty sesitive about stuff and I might wory about a "pressure" issue reaction; but thats just my pup ... its important to read the dog and kind of think about WHY its happened, what may have caused it.
PS - How bout some pics of that boy in the snow!
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Danielle, he always turns to his right he just doesn't always come all the way around probably like you said in anticipation of a cast. I just dissagree with some of the previous posts that its no big deal. I believe dogs orient off thier shoulders and they need to sit square to take a correct cast. Thanks for the help Danielle, and I will be giving you a call about the tennis ball thing cause I really hate rope!
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Jim has forgotten more about dog training than many will ever learn...He used to be a Rex Carr assistant...He is a very nice man too...the book may be old but the principles in it are solid
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Come on, D. Lardy's dogs aren't "trained to the highest standard" because he's not correcting for angled sits in advanced training??? Many of the machine-like Open dogs I've seen smoking blinds are somehow trained to a lower standard because they may sit at a 45 degree angle or more? That's basically what you're saying. As Lardy put it in his "Marking" videos, at some point you just accept a dog's idiosyncracies as long as they're not interfering with his or her performance even in training. As long as a dog is handling well, it just seems most pro trainers think there are bigger fish to fry than straight sits from 200 yards away.
J, of course Lardy's dogs are trained to the highest standard. Just remember, gward is not talking about advanced training. I'm simply trying to address gward's original post by saying he/we ought to be training to the highest standards. And IMHO, that means training a young dog to sit squarely. You ought to at least start out teaching a young dog to sit squarely on the whistle...Yes/No???
I doubt gward and his 9 month old pup are able to read and react to one another just yet the way a more seasoned team would (one that's running 200 yard blinds). I'd advise him to straighten the sit until he gets a little more experience and learns how to read his dog the way Lardy describes in that material you mentioned (I haven't read this particular piece, so I'm stretching a bit).
J, somewhere my first post's message didn't come across correctly, because you gotta know I'm not dumb enough to say what Lardy is doing isn't correct. Right? I'm not that dumb, am I?
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