First water retrieves with a three month old puppy

[WalkedUp]

 

[ditchman]

3 mths old ...wooow........lots of love and praise ...excellent 

[Cranfield]

Very impressive, good to see the dog walk into the water confidently.

I hate seeing "trained" dogs running and jumping into water, a good friend had his lab killed when he fell on to a submerged fence spike.

[old'un]

Brilliant first retrieve from water, well done.

Can I make one suggestion,  when you send the dog for the retrieve try laying your open hand alongside the dogs head so he/she can see it, have your hand pointing to the dummy, hold it there for a few seconds then push your hand forward at the same time give the out or fetch command.

[WalkedUp]

An accurate observation 👍

To explain why I didn’t cast the puppy off as I would normally in this situation: geeing pups up and releasing quickly ensures their over excitement exceeds any nerves about swimming. I concentrate on entry and swimming rather than the other aspects. Any visual distraction (looking anywhere but the dummy, your hand or face etc) can cause hesitation in a young pup. If a pup is particularly hesitant about water, or even retrieving a dummy, I will tease with the dummy dragged on the floor (like a cat toy) the quickly tossed with the young pup allowed to run in. The steadiness can be put back in easily enough once the premise is established. Now that he confidently retrieves from water a proper cast off is used.
 
The pup is hears the command ‘side’ as to align to the handler (me) whilst the handler faces the direction of the dummy. (To train this in a pup you walk in a direction to heel then sit to a pip, followed by ‘side’ so the pup slowly learns the correct form.) The lead is removed from the dog and secured to the handler, the dog makes eye contact with handler, wait 5/10/20 seconds to avoid the dog ‘predicting’ the command, bend down crouched to the side of the pup, slowly raise arm in direction of travel, a flick of the wrist to lift the hand accompanied with the command to retrieve releases the dog. It is all slow, calm and steady. The cast off procedure is reinforced on retrieves as the pup knows the dummy direction and learns it is aligned to the arm. It is taught specifically so that the dog can be spent in different directions (for blinds) or for a specific dummy in a seen or memory split. On a shoot day you triage runners not belly up birds and so casting becomes critical as the belly up birds laid in the field will be visually apparent and tempting to the dog wanting to pick a bird.
 

With water retrieves or any aspect really, I tackle the little parts separately and bring them together into larger pieces as the dog’s experience increases. Eventually water retrieves are just retrieves that happen to be in or over water and need no accommodation. 

Edited September 8, 2023 by WalkedUp

[WalkedUp]

3 hours ago, Cranfield said:

Very impressive, good to see the dog walk into the water confidently.

I hate seeing "trained" dogs running and jumping into water, a good friend had his lab killed when he fell on to a submerged fence spike.

I am very similar, I am fortunate to have marl pits all around my house but travelled 30 mins to the perfect pond for the puppy’s first time. Shallow bottomed, small beach, can’t run around it. We’re now in the marl pits near me but soon will need the brooks 10 mins away to retrieve over. I took the pup to the beach last week to just practice walking into and along the surf, without breaking stride. These are all best done in warm weather so that by the time the water is icy the pup is a confident swimmer and isn’t fazed by the cold.

My friend’s GSP was sliced open on corrugated galv sheet that had rusted into a ragged saw just below the surface. Also it isn’t very controlled on a shoot day if you don’t want to scare ducks when crossing ponds etc. I like my dogs to slink in silently like crocodiles, and not make any wake when swimming. 

[old'un]

12 hours ago, WalkedUp said:

An accurate observation 👍

To explain why I didn’t cast the puppy off as I would normally in this situation: geeing pups up and releasing quickly ensures their over excitement exceeds any nerves about swimming. I concentrate on entry and swimming rather than the other aspects. Any visual distraction (looking anywhere but the dummy, your hand or face etc) can cause hesitation in a young pup. If a pup is particularly hesitant about water, or even retrieving a dummy, I will tease with the dummy dragged on the floor (like a cat toy) the quickly tossed with the young pup allowed to run in. The steadiness can be put back in easily enough once the premise is established. Now that he confidently retrieves from water a proper cast off is used.
 
The pup is hears the command ‘side’ as to align to the handler (me) whilst the handler faces the direction of the dummy. (To train this in a pup you walk in a direction to heel then sit to a pip, followed by ‘side’ so the pup slowly learns the correct form.) The lead is removed from the dog and secured to the handler, the dog makes eye contact with handler, wait 5/10/20 seconds to avoid the dog ‘predicting’ the command, bend down crouched to the side of the pup, slowly raise arm in direction of travel, a flick of the wrist to lift the hand accompanied with the command to retrieve releases the dog. It is all slow, calm and steady. The cast off procedure is reinforced on retrieves as the pup knows the dummy direction and learns it is aligned to the arm. It is taught specifically so that the dog can be spent in different directions (for blinds) or for a specific dummy in a seen or memory split. On a shoot day you triage runners not belly up birds and so casting becomes critical as the belly up birds laid in the field will be visually apparent and tempting to the dog wanting to pick a bird.
 

With water retrieves or any aspect really, I tackle the little parts separately and bring them together into larger pieces as the dog’s experience increases. Eventually water retrieves are just retrieves that happen to be in or over water and need no accommodation. 

I guess we all have our own ideas, but I always found that training water retrieves were easier once the young dog was well grounded with this method on dry land.

Having said that, the dog is only 3 months old so plenty of time yet, I agree about distractions, either verbal or visual when training a young dog.

[WalkedUp]

Agree completely, my dogs have to swim hundreds of yards across the estuary against the tide in sub freezing conditions and so I need them bomb proof for water from puppy age. If one is using a dog to retrieve lowland then the dog will almost never encounter difficult swimming conditions. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by WalkedUp

[Williams E]

Fantastic to see.