Hi again!
Sorry for such poor update, but it's hard writing here when I don't know how many is reading and what you wanna read about. But I'll try to better up ;) Todays to-do have mostly been excersise and trying to increase the motivation and intrest to carry one of the ducks I bought of Sara Neogard whom I trained some fetching with yesterday (which went fine btw). He clearly has intrest in the duck but doesn't quite know how to handle it yet, at least not on dry land. But when I launched it into the water he set off for it and since he wanted it back to the shore he had to carry it. I admitt that first time it wasn't with such nice hold as you see all the other bird dogs grab the duck, but in the end he managed it pretty decently and if he let me take it I threw it away again so he could fetch it.
I've noticed that that's the best way to encourage him in the training, no candy needed. Just throw him another dummy to fetch. This is however nothing that surprises me since fetching is, for a retriever, the same kind of thing that herding is for a border collie; it's natural and the best you can do to encourage and motivate them is to let them continue their work. I deeply hope that I can get Zorro used to ducks and then move on to other birds like pigeon, partridge, pheasant and maybe I try my luck with crow and sea gull. Though those last two birds will be a tough challenge since tollers have problems carrying those birds because they don't seem to think it's worth the work. Understandable if you think about what they were used for back in the old days, fetching fallen ducks for the Mic Mac Indians. Those birds were food for the Indians, the tollers had an important mission to fetch them so their owners wouldn't starve to death. So why bother to carry a crow which no one will be using?
Clever dogs eh ?
Sorry for such poor update, but it's hard writing here when I don't know how many is reading and what you wanna read about. But I'll try to better up ;) Todays to-do have mostly been excersise and trying to increase the motivation and intrest to carry one of the ducks I bought of Sara Neogard whom I trained some fetching with yesterday (which went fine btw). He clearly has intrest in the duck but doesn't quite know how to handle it yet, at least not on dry land. But when I launched it into the water he set off for it and since he wanted it back to the shore he had to carry it. I admitt that first time it wasn't with such nice hold as you see all the other bird dogs grab the duck, but in the end he managed it pretty decently and if he let me take it I threw it away again so he could fetch it.
I've noticed that that's the best way to encourage him in the training, no candy needed. Just throw him another dummy to fetch. This is however nothing that surprises me since fetching is, for a retriever, the same kind of thing that herding is for a border collie; it's natural and the best you can do to encourage and motivate them is to let them continue their work. I deeply hope that I can get Zorro used to ducks and then move on to other birds like pigeon, partridge, pheasant and maybe I try my luck with crow and sea gull. Though those last two birds will be a tough challenge since tollers have problems carrying those birds because they don't seem to think it's worth the work. Understandable if you think about what they were used for back in the old days, fetching fallen ducks for the Mic Mac Indians. Those birds were food for the Indians, the tollers had an important mission to fetch them so their owners wouldn't starve to death. So why bother to carry a crow which no one will be using?
Clever dogs eh ?