Kong Zingers on the beach
August 27th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Kong Zingers are great on the beach. They throw really far, bounce and roll a long way along the sand. And float in water. The dogs absolutely love them, a big thumbs up from us.
training update
August 26th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Since the debacle at the SRHP working test, we have been focussing on building Grey’s confidence up. An analysis of the problems might run something like:
1) When unsure, Grey will return to me on a blind retrieve – giving up and leaving the dummy out there.
2) Even on a seen retrieve which requires sustained hunting, she has a tendency to give up and return empty-mouthed.
3) If sat or handled when feeling unsure, she will remain sitting and refuse to take casts.
4) When sat at my side, and being lined up for a retrieve, she will refuse to look along my hand at the line given, instead doing what US retriever trainers call ‘bugging’ – deliberately looking elsewhere.
5) She experiences the sit whistle as, in itself, a punishment – because it brings freedom to an end. This is despite the fact that the sit whistle has been taught using the clicker and treats, and is rewarded with these. She is great at obeying the sit whistle, but the result of using it is that every sit whistle dints her confidence when handling on a retrieve, ironically making her less and less likely to obey the next cast given. Hence the situation whereby she ends up superglued to the floor whilst I do aerobics in front of her.
6) She does not appear to be a soft dog, other than in these ways. She seems to be brimming with confidence (and a fair dollop of obnoxiousness!). So the softness has taken me by surprise – I probably would have done things much more gradually and with the emphasis on confidence, right from the start, had I known she was ‘secretly’ a soft dog.
In short, when she is unsure or experiences pressure of any sort, she responds with all kinds of avoidance tactics: Bugging; no-going; stopping herself out in the field and sitting down; returning, having given up on a retrieve. She does not respond to failure or difficulty as Slate does – which is to ‘give it a go’ and keep trying until eventually something works.
So: I’ve decided, in response to this, to stop all handling exercises for the foreseeable future. I’m even prepared to accept that Grey may never be a handling dog: HPRs in their native continental countries are not taught handling for tests and trials, and neither are they handled in the US for tests or trials. This is no excuse for our current difficulties, but it does demonstrate that it’s not something they are bred for – unlike labradors, for example.
In UK HPR tests & trials of years gone by, dogs would be much less likely to be handled than they are now on blind retrieves. Handling, as a desirable quality for a HPR, has arisen gradually over the years from the influence of retriever folk. The old-style HPR approach would have been much more along the lines of ‘send your dog out and wait, whilst it quarters an entire area’. The dog would have to have persistence to keep going for quite some time without input from the handler, and without holding a line.
You can see this same quality being assessed in the NAVHDA ‘duck search’ in the US, for example – as on p 21-22 of that .pdf link. The dog is expected to hunt for at least 10 mins for a duck, and it’s not the dog’s ability to find the duck which is being assessed (since a dog, having hunted for long enough, can be called off and still achieve a good score), it is the ability to keep hunting that long – without input or encouragement from the handler. In the UK, we have no such equivalent – the dog which brings the thing back fastest, gets the best score – persistence in hunting will not get the best score if another dog (even flukily) discovers the retrieve faster.
With Grey, we are now working on her initiative and independence: On marks, we are being very careful so that a mark she struggles with, is always followed by an easy one. If she looks like she is giving up and about to return to me, then, as a last resort, Adam (dummy thrower) will walk out towards the dummy to help her ‘succeed’. The goal is never to let her believe she has failed. (Even when she pretty much has.)
On blinds, I have returned back to dropping a dummy as we walk along and then sending her back for it – but keeping it really easy so she always spots the dummy before giving up. I now don’t stop her if she goes off a line and I allow her to quarter wherever she wants to find the dummy.
In all ways, we want her to learn that she is back in control and so cannot go ‘wrong’ or ‘fail’. I think we can achieve this and I think we can have a confident dog back, when freely hunting for blinds and marks. However, I do believe that the same issues will occur, when/if we attempt to put the handling back in again.
SRHP health report out now
August 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The SRHP Health Report, which was written by Kate Reevell and is being hosted on the SRHP Club website, has been posted online for download here.
nature versus nurture
August 14th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
When we first got Slate, I was influenced by someone who is very successful with dogs – although not in gundog work.
This person believed that you could (almost) train any breed of dog to do anything and that the vast majority of handlers are terrible trainers with no knowledge of learning theory. Essentially, that the dogs themselves were naturally brimming with desired qualities for gundog work (and pretty much everything else you might want to do) and any lack of success was almost entirely and always the fault of the handler. So, I reasoned, if only I could become a good trainer, I’d pretty much have it made with almost any dog. (This is also an argument put about sometimes by judges at the end of working tests: ’Your dogs are all superbly great and know what they’re doing: You, as trainers, are crap.’)
The fact is that there are some dogs which – effortlessly and with little training – just get the job done. I’ve seen them at tests and trials. I’ve spoken to their handlers in an attempt to find out what they were doing. There never seemed to be any specific thing, in fact their training activities were usually very similar to those who were not successful at all.
And then there are dogs like Grey, requiring endless never-advancing struggles and a lot of research and reading-around. And although you ultimately end up a better trainer for all those tools in your toolbox, the dog just doesn’t get much better.
Take Grey’s tendency to give up when getting it wrong: Even when clicker training her indoors, if she gets something wrong twice consecutively, she will go and hide under the table. She finds getting it ‘wrong’ punishing, in and of itself, to the extent that she won’t keep trying. This makes her a difficult dog to train, because I have very little margin for error and very little leeway to get any new sort of behaviour. It’s also what’s behind her stickiness on casts (she is unsure what I want, and afraid to get it wrong) and her returning to me on blinds – every instance of her ‘giving up’. And this lack of confidence is also behind her anxiety about picking game – she is a bit scared of it. Where Slate will try and keep trying in the face of anxiety, and offer me new behaviours… Grey will just give up.
There are a lot of other examples of this; of qualities which are genetic and inherited, which make it easy to train some dogs and harder to train others. Even obvious ones like how much easier it is to train a labrador to walk at heel than a HPR: Labradors have been selected for decades, for the predisposition to walk easily at heel. HPRs have been selected for decades for the predisposition to be in front of their handler, quartering and hunting. It IS harder to teach a HPR to walk at heel. (But not impossible.) To insist that it is entirely and absolutely down to poor training is simply not true. New HPR owners who have come to believe that they should be as successful as a collie owner, when applying the same principles, are just going to feel they are failures by comparison, if these breed differences are not pointed out and allowances (not excuses) made. This is an obvious example, but it demonstrates the same thing which is at work in much more subtle qualities of a dog. Like the differences between the HPR subgroups.
Suffice to say that I will be paying even greater attention to any future dogs’ genes and parentage. It simply is not true that almost any dog can be trained to do almost anything, with equal effort on the trainer’s part. It simply is not true that all dogs are brimming with great natural abilities and it is only the trainer who makes or breaks the dog. Yes, many trainers do make too many excuses for their dogs’ inability to do something. But there is a difference between making excuses and making allowances. An ‘allowance’ acknowledges the difference without accepting a lower standard; just that it will take longer to get there. An ‘excuse’ means that someone won’t continue to address the problem because they believe it is entirely outside their control. It is fine to make allowances. It is not fine to make excuses. Whichever you make, though, you won’t get there without the right genetic stuff to start with.
To be anywhere near successful, you gotta start with genetically super-duper material in terms of performance and achievement. As in, a pedigree saturated with it, so that the chances of your individual dog inheriting those qualities are high. It’s not enough for mum and dad themselves to have the qualities you want; further back, the ‘depth’ of the pedigree is more important.
Some people do get lucky, and end up with a good dog, despite the breeding and the pedigree being unexceptional; all sorts of variety is produced in each litter and it’s perfectly possible for a dog with great ability to be in an unexceptional breeding, from unexceptional parents. But you can’t know if you’ll pick that random pup at 7wks. It’s a gamble. Whereas a pup from a great breeding, with a depth of quality on the pedigree, has a statistically much greater chance of having the qualities you want.
And then you also gotta be a good trainer. But a good trainer simply can’t compensate for the lack of quality in a dog’s breeding. You just won’t get there.
SRHPC Working Test
August 13th, 2011 § 8 Comments
This was a great day and one of the best organised and run tests of the season (thanks to Colin, who has done the Club proud).
There were not many SRHPs in evidence, considering it was the club’s test: There were none in Open. Grey was the only SRHP in Graduate. There were (according to Mick’s comment below!) 3 in Puppy. There were 4 in Novice and 1 in Special Beginner, making a total of 9 SRHPs. Surely there should be more than 9 SRHP owners who are interested in working their dogs? Surely the purpose of breeding a working breed, is so that they can work? Why are breeders over-producing this breed when there is obviously so little demand for them, as working dogs?
Anyway, the tests…
Grey
Was a pain in the arse. Highly embarrassing. If I’d just turned up with an untrained dog, and decided that a bit of public humiliation would be nice, it would probably have looked something like this. I guess I am a bit spoiled from handling Slate, who tries so hard and takes casts. Grey was pathetic and I was mad. (Is a summary of events.)
In more detail: Grey was running in Novice and Graduate. First up was hunting for both. This test went relatively well. Grey didn’t range as far as I’d like, but she was for sure working and hunting and not just out for a dawdle. She sat to sit whistles quickly. Tony Russell (lovely man) said she was ‘nice’ and seemed to quite like her. We got 17/25 for Graduate hunting and I didn’t see what we got for Novice. I have to say that I believe I’m at fault for having 2 dogs which range poorly. I am such a control-freak with them (not in a heavy-handed way, just in a relationship-building way and being the source of all good things), that I think it affects their independence and focus outwards. So I always accept that hunting will be our crappest score. It is one of the things which makes me think that I’m much more suited to owning a retriever than a HPR.
Then came a Novice blind retrieve. This was: Heel the dog off lead about 50 yards. Sit the dog. A bolting rabbit (dummy on an elastic, for those non-gundoggy people reading) was then released immediately in front of the dog, horizontal to it. Once the bolting rabbit had passed, the dog then had to be sent for a blind straight ahead (ie – not where the bolting rabbit had ended up).
Well, Grey did the heelwork part, sit and steadiness to bolting rabbit just fine. (I guess this is progress; 2 yrs ago as a puppy, she was a nightmare with anything to do with steadiness.) I put my hand out and carefully lined her up for the retrieve straight down the path. We’ve only practised this a million billion times with various lining exercises and teaching her not to go for the last thing seen, but to take lines from us. What did Grey do? Decided – bugger Jo’s hand, I’m going where I want – and ran out to the right, where the bolting rabbit had disappeared, to check it out.
At which point (not very far away at all), I stopped her and cast her Left. She took this first cast fine, but soon banana-ed round back to the bolting rabbit. I again sat her and cast her away. The problem was that, with each cast, it was as if she had never done any lining before or casting, at all: She meandered around, not confidently holding any line (even the wrong line would have been a line). This meant she never really covered much distance and just was no where near where she needed to be. (Down the bloody path.) She just wouldn’t go that far. Now, we have practised and practised directions and lines and casts at much greater distances…
Then the stickiness began: As in training, she would sit and remain sitting and refuse to take a cast, just kept looking at me. I then did a great aerobics workout in front of everyone. Sheesh. I ended up with a dog which would sit to the whistle fine, but then remain sitting and refuse casts. When I finally (after god knows how many reps) got her to take a cast, she wouldn’t take a strong cast with a good line (as she does in training), but would get up and pootle roughly in the right direction (Back) for a few metres, before going off sideways. This would necessitate another sit whistle, and so the whole thing just repeated, with her then being stuck in the sit for bloody ages.
In fact, it was worse than a totally untrained dog: A totally untrained dog would probably have gone out and quartered the area and eventually found the dummy by persistence. Grey, left to her own devices, wanted to give up and come back to me. Several times she headed back towards me, having given up on the retrieve. If I hadn’t stopped her and cast her Back again (or tried to), she would have ended up coming all the way back to me without the dummy and ‘giving up’; that was what she really wanted to do.
Eventually, Grey did get this dummy. I was almost at the point of moving forwards with her, when I tried one more ‘Back’, and she luckily went just that bit further and ended up in the territory of the dummy.
After this debacle, we went off to try our hands (paws) at the Graduate blind.
This was a wide grassy ride between trees. The dummy was down an 80-100 yard slope, right in the middle of this grassy ride. Halfway down the slope were loads of hard plastic pigeons (decoys), set out in the middle of the path.
If I had had Slate with me, I would have lined her up for a blind, she would have run straight out and down the grassy ride. When she reached the pigeons, she would have been momentarily distracted, and I would probably have had to sit her and then cast her on Back, to the dummy. Job done.
So, I line Grey up, and she runs out perhaps 5-10 metres before veering off to the right and starting a detailed sniffing-around of the bracken on the bank. WTF?? I sit her, and cast her Left. And so on: An exact repeat of the Novice nightmare. In fact, the 2 retrieves were quite similar, in that they involved some form of distraction on a straightforward blind. And the other difference is that the distance is much greater than the Novice retrieve, and getting her Back that far proves impossible when she won’t turn and run straight back, given a Back cast. (Or even diagonally Back, or any Back at all!). Several times, she attempts to give up and return to me and is only stopped by my sit whistle.
Eventually, I have little choice but to walk down to just after the pigeon decoys and try her from there. Nope: Same problem, and I’m not going to continue the whole thing down there. So I decide to walk almost up to the dummy itself and just let her find it. Grey finds it, and I then walk away and let her run with it, so she would bring it to me all of… oooh… 4 metres. Grey drops it on the floor and decides she’d rather sniff a blade of grass. This was just too much, so I bellow ‘GIVE!’ at her, and she brings it to me.
In short: Hair. Tearing out.
At this point, it is lunch time. So I eat my lunch and deliberate. I decide that I can’t see the point of taking up everyone’s time by running her in the afternoon. I also don’t think it would be very beneficial for Grey to bugger around like this and essentially detrain herself. (That’s assuming she retains any of her training, which it’s not looking like she does.) So I withdraw.
Slate
Slate had a reasonably good day with Adam and was not too far off 4th place in Open. She got stung by a wasp just before her hunting, so had to have antihistamine cream applied and a bandage on her foot. Her hunting on non-gamey ground is rubbish anyway, but this for sure didn’t help. Adam says that she baulked at crossing a huge ditch on a seen, and so needs more seens across obstacles of various descriptions. But she did pretty well on the other tests and we’re pleased with her. Which is more than can be said for a certain more hairy grey dog currently sleeping upstairs.
No more SRHPs for us, I fear.
Dokken goose practice
August 6th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
One of the issues Grey has with retrieving warm game is a slight reluctance to open her mouth wide enough to get it in there, securely. This means she can manage small game like partridge easier than large game.
One of the ways I’ve been working on this, is with the Turner Richards Hare dummy – which weighs a ton, well, 6lbs – and with the Dokken goose dummy:
Dokken Goose
We’ve had the Dokken goose a while now, so it’s not a new purchase but has been hanging out in the shed. For an idea of the size of it, take a look here:
Today Grey was very keen on retrieving the goose by its hard plastic legs, difficult though this was. So Adam pulled out the plastic legs…
Then she decided to hold it by the hard plastic neck. So I cut its head off. (Fairly easy as it’s attached just with a piece of cord.)
Finally, she began to open her mouth properly and hold it by the soft foam body! Hurrah, no more having to remove parts of the goose’s anatomy. (Just as well, since there is not much of it left to be removed now.)
Muck boots review
August 6th, 2011 § 2 Comments
I know it’s only August (just), but I’ve been getting some things ready…
Firstly, I remembered that my much-loved and 5 yr old Trent Muck Boots had sprung a leak last year. As I wear them every day when training the dogs, this isn’t surprising. Last week, I decided I needed a new pair before the winter and then embarked on a lot of research and online review-reading. I discovered that the Muck Boots which are most intended for outdoor sports and muddy conditions are the Tay Sport Muck Boots.
Tay Sport Muck Boots
These have lots of geeky specs which I won’t repeat. But those which interested me most were the anti-clog tred, which is designed to prevent mud clogging on the soles. (Very desirable, since in the past crossing a muddy field has resulted in something akin to feet being in concrete blocks.) And extra insulation, down to -47C. (Not that I plan to experience -47C, and if I did, I’d have other problems besides cold feet – but perhaps it will be more comfortable at -5C if the boots are designed for -47C.) It seemed that lots of fishermen are wearing these, for standing around in cold rivers waiting for a fish to bite.
I did try very hard to convince myself that I should get another pair of the less expensive Trents, but I’ve found their grip and tread to be somewhat slippy often and in winter my toes get a bit cold, so I wanted to try something a bit different. But this raised a new problem: I couldn’t wear the Tay Sports in the summer, no way, it would be too hot for them. So I decided to be very extravagant and buy both the Tay Sports and the Lunes:
Lune Muck Boots
The Lunes have the same sole as the Tay Sports, so the grip should be the same, without the additional warmth. So I’ll wear the Lunes in the warmer months and then the Tay Sports in the colder weather. Ta da! This is an expensive solution, obviously, and a darn fine excuse to buy a lot of Muck Boots. But as my last pair were 5 yrs old, I should get some good wear out of them.
They both arrived yesterday and first impressions are that they are bulkier, clunkier and slightly heavier than the Trents, but I think I just have to get used to them. I hope they are not going to make it harder going when I’m out all day…
walking baseball again
August 5th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I think I’m going to stop posting about walking baseball unless something truly amazing happens, because obviously I jinx myself by reporting any sort of progress with Grey on it, and this just becomes an incredibly boring blog where I just say ‘nothing happened, we did more of the same’.
Today she got every cast right, except for one. (A Left cast, which she went Right on.) However, every cast had to be repeated about 5 times before she went.
Sometimes, after a cast (which she looks at me for, but continues sitting there), she then looks back at the secondary (wrong) dummy. Then she looks back at me. I cast her again towards the correct one. She looks back at the wrong one. I can see her little doggie mind computing it all: ‘I most want to go to that dummy. But I don’t think she is sending me there. So where is she sending me? I don’t want to get it wrong, so I will think about it and watch it a few more times, and when I’m sure, then I’ll go.’ Meanwhile, my shoulder is getting nearly dislocated from my enthusiastic casting.
Adam did walking baseball with Slate at the same time, only Slate didn’t like the wet grass and kept standing up every time he turned his back, so it in fact turned more into sit-stay revision, proofing against wet grass…
