Mite

Jonesy,
I agree with PA Gobbler but I thinking in a more fundamental sense. Yourtips are great and should be in a training book but thinking about training methods, like evaluating different training methods. For birddogs thats hard because there's no getting around overlaying.You can't represent actual hunting. You can only mimic it like field trialsdo (that's if you only need a hunting dog; FTs are something else again).

Retrieving work is one command in which yard work can closely resemble field work. I have never considered FF my dog because I don't mind picking the bird up.Simple retrieving work would be nice but not really essential. So, whenmy dog was young, I did the hallway and the yard, toss, checkchord trick. When she was older, I tossa ball and say fetch afew times, sheran, picked it up and dropped it within a few feet of me (which was great).

Now, I tossa ball and say fetch, she runs to it and picks it upbut I have to userecall if I want the ball again.

I could stand and make her fetch but then it would be FF, hold the object, then 'give' or a pinch. I don't need FF because I don't shoot that many birds a year andshe won't be exposed to the command fetch enough.

If I were to do it, in this case w/o worrying about steadying her fetch up, would this have worked instead of the hallway and yard &checkchord trick?

(I would do this at theage of4-5 months old.)

I put a checkchord on her. I then get a pheasant wing (to represent the bird or better yet a frozen coturnix quail). I let her get used to the smell. I then place it on the ground in front of her. Say 'fetch' excitedly thensomehow make her pick upthe wingand make her drop it in my hand. Praise her loudly. Repeat until she gets it correctly.

At this point, she should have made an association: "fetch" - pickup wing and drop it - he's happy.

So then any subsequent variation, like toss it to the left, right, in the bushes, is still the same lesson and using the same association you built previously: "fetch" - pick up wing and drop it - he's happy.

In a sense, that is what you would do to force fetch. Place the dog on a table for better control, teach it step by step what you want done. But FF is pressure applied, where there is nothing I wrote above has pressure. The only repeating is done is to show the dog whats need as opposed to constantly repeating a routine like saying fetch then tossing a toy then pulling her in.

It's like an average house dog.Say'come' and it comes. Say 'sit' and it sits. Say 'stay' and walk away and it stays. Now, instead mix it up. Say 'sit' and it will still come to you first. It won't do what you told it to do, that is 'sit' on the spot. Or say 'stay' and it will likely just come to you and sit. It's conditioned to a routine. That's different from FF because in FF you are teaching the dog exactly what you want. There's no routine. It takes awhile but you only have to teach it once in the dog's lifetime (unless it forgets). You don't FF a dog during summer then FF again before hunting season then FF again the next summer, etc.

So, in this case I would go directly to a simplifed FF without the pressure (pinch). Would that work?