[Pete Marcellus]

Larry wrote:

but she has picked up on the cue.

Just curious, if you use the 300 yard cue on a 100 yard mark, does your dog go 300 yards?

Pete

 

[Losthwy]

Re: hands down

I use a hand down in three different manners as a visual cue to help differentiate distance. For anything out to 100 yards, I place my hand just barely in front of her eyes but high enough as to not interfere with her line of sight. From 100 to maybe 200 yards, I move my hand forward about 10" but always well above her line of vision. Out beyond 200 yards my hand goes forward another 10-12". Once positioned, my hand never moves. We don't generally do any retrieves beyond 300 yards and those are kept to a minimum, but she has picked up on the cue.

Interesting. Do you also use verbel cues (easy, way out) or only the hand cue?

 

[Guest]

For me, the hand down -- on both marks and blinds -- is first and foremost a confirmation to the dog that they are looking in the right direction.

In addition, it creates a "barrier" for breaking. If you use it consistently, the dog understands that there is a sequence where it is not released to leave until the hand is down AND you have said its name. If you just say the name or back, the dog may (at some point) go on any breath or word it hears from you or someone else.

I line a dog up using Andy Attar's SHEA (I'm not sure if this is on his video, but it is in his workshop material) -- spine, head, eyes, attitude (in that order). Then my hand goes down on most things (except short memory birds) prior to sending.

There are things tha can be distracting. I feel that extra words and movements can be, so I use them carefully. I don't do a lot of "verbal coaching" with my dogs on the line. Nor will you generally see my feet move a lot, if at all, when I'm communicating to a dog on the line. I do think those things are distracting. And maybe with some dogs if you add a hand to all kinds of other movement, it could make things worse. I don't know... But for me, my movement is minimal to begin with. I want the dog to focus on the field and concentrate on where the birds are. And then I use my hand to tell them "that's right, that's where you should be going".

Of course, it's not always that simple, esp with a young dog just learning. But, in a nutshell, that's how and why I use a hand...

-K

 

[Rick Hall]

Dave, I'm much too lazy to drag my scrawny butt up out of the pit to properly align my guys' spines when birds go down unmarked, so I teach them that the hand points the way to blinds.

(The current miniature Bay dog somehow wound up with your nom de net for a call name.)

 

[Peake]

Whoa, who revived this peake post from deep in the archive! Somebody must of been really bored!
Peake - Four years later hands down now on all blinds and sometimes on the long memory...
________
Anime sex

 

[larrynogaj]

hand down

Larry wrote:

but she has picked up on the cue.

Just curious, if you use the 300 yard cue on a 100 yard mark, does your dog go 300 yards?

Pete

Good question. First, a little background. This is the first dog that I've trained. 5yr old golden female. She has her Senior HT title but she's my meatdog and I'm working on stretching out her distances for when we need it, and besides that, I enjoy doing it and learning something new. I do almost all of my training by myself and I don't own a launcher, so most of the marks that we run are within 100 yards. With spring on the horizon, I'll enlist my wife for some assistance on some longer marks. So I've used this comcept primarily on blinds. I was getting some popping and she was looking for me to help her out. I've been working on the confidence factor and i'm happy with our progress. It was something that I threw into our preparation, hoping that she'd pick up on it. I started doing this back in december when duck season ended, so we've been at it for 3 months on weekends when we've been able to get out. I couldn't say for sure that it helped, but I know it hasn't hurt. Since I started doing it, I've never given her a false signal, but your question has me thinking. After we work on it a bit more, it would be interesting to set up an in-line double and send her for the long bird fist and see what the results are.

 

[larrynogaj]

Re: hands down

I use a hand down in three different manners as a visual cue to help differentiate distance. Once positioned, my hand never moves. We don't generally do any retrieves beyond 300 yards and those are kept to a minimum, but she has picked up on the cue.

Interesting. Do you also use verbel cues (easy, way out) or only the hand cue?

For long marks I use Waaay back, get your mark, Daisy.
For long blinds I use Waaay back, dead bird, Back

 

[ksubigbuck]

IMO using a hand cue on marks is a great confidence builder on blinds. The dog gets used to the hand cue when fetching marks, then when you use the hand cue on a blind he thinks "there is the hand, there must be bird out there somewhere" They run more confidently because they have always found a bird before when using the hand...why wouldn't they find one this time?

Building confidence regards,
Hunter