[2tall]

I did not want to derail the very interesting thread on the Derby Judgement, but the following statement caught my attention and raised some questions for me:

"Throwing a bird to the back side of a point, in the water is a tough AA mark."

It seems to me to pretty straight forward, as the dog not only sees where the bird is going down, he can also get a good look at it floating in the water as he goes over the point. So I guess my question is what are the concepts the dog has to have covered in order to succeed?

BTW, I have run this particular mark several times, only because the pond I have to work in sort of requires it. At another place we train, the bird lands either on the point or on the far shore. We have had more trouble with that than in the water.

 

[paul young]

if the bird lands on the back side of an island, IN COVER, that's a tough mark. especially if the rest of the test is made up of longer marks and the island bird constitutes a memory situation.

this is much the same problem to the dog as a mark thrown into a weedy ditch, as a memory bird.-paul

 

[Patrick Johndrow]

"Throwing a bird to the back side of a point, in the water is a tough AA mark."

It seems to me to pretty straight forward, as the dog not only sees where the bird is going down, he can also get a good look at it floating in the water as he goes over the point. So I guess my question is what are the concepts the dog has to have covered in order to succeed?

Tough mark because the nature of most dogs would be to check down coming out of the water and most dogs are going to have a head of steam getting back in the water and will over run the bird....it is kind of like hitting a blooper over the second baseman's head... the bird is in no mans land.

The dog really has to mark the bird.

 

[Angie B]

Any time you throw over a factor it's a hard mark. Throwing over water to a island. Throwing over a strip of cover,,,, etc.

Angie

 

[2tall]

Oh, I get it now. I was visualizing a mark thrown WAY over the point out into open water. That is what we have done. I can see how if it was close to the back edge how the dog could overrun it. Maybe I ought to go try it now to see what I need to work on!

I knew it couldn't be that easy.:monkey: Thanks guys for the clarification.

Duh......regards.

 

[DarrinGreene]

I'm not taking credit for this one but someone told me recently to "think about what the dog sees"...

In this scenario the bird disappears behind the point... giving the optical illusion that it landed ON the point. It's the same as throwing a bird behind a hill. Visualize it yourself and you'll get what I mean.

If the dog can't see see the bird floating in plain sight, they will probably hunt the point and even if it were in plain sight a water soaked hen bird might not be so obvious to a dog with a strong focus, especially if some SOB was shooting a flier over the point previously that created some scent.

Thank you Mr. Carrion.

 

[FOM]

Oh, I get it now. I was visualizing a mark thrown WAY over the point out into open water. That is what we have done. I can see how if it was close to the back edge how the dog could overrun it. Maybe I ought to go try it now to see what I need to work on!

I knew it couldn't be that easy.:monkey: Thanks guys for the clarification.

Duh......regards.

Thought you were just doing OB for a while with the wild child?

 

[cakaiser]

What makes island birds, short birds, boat birds,etc, difficult is, in part, many of us don't train these type of things too often. Or, we train them, but only after other habits are established.

We train down the shore a lot, that is where many dogs will hunt, not back in water and over to island. Many start doubles,with long gun as memory bird. If dog breaks down,we correct for that. Suddenly, we want check down bird, dog is confused.

Hard to find good places to throw a bird into the water, so we don't, much easier to put them on land. Boats, how many of us do that very often?

 

[2tall]

Lainee, the last time we ran this set up was about a month ago. We are working on OB EVERY SINGLE DAY. I try to set up some marks about once a week to see if anything is working better. Some yes, some no. The biggest problem has been finding out if the ob is really sinking in, as he is a perfect angel with no stimulating influences. We can heel like a rallly dog now and he is getting pretty good with Place. One day last week when we set up the marks he was phenomenally better. I tried it this morning and he was all wound up again, so we stopped and went back to ob.

I haven't changed the program, (again).