Back in the Saddle... so to speak

[TuMicks]

No saddle... but I am in TX.

We drove the trailer down here in October. Trained a whole bunch. I ran the Waterloo Retriever Club HT (Master) and could have kicked myself. We did great marks, and blinds... and when confronted by a p!ssy little nothing blind, I screwed up. Ergh!!! But we worked on stopping on the whistle, plus a lot of other issues involving blinds, and then ran Brazosport and qualified. So we are half way to the MH title. So we were 1 for 2 for fall, and then it was time to return home for the holidays.

I got back to TX about 10 days ago. And... my e-collar died. (Good grief. It was only about 15 years old and they don't make the parts anymore.) Now I own a Garmin Pro 550. I'm training alone for the most part, working on keyhole blinds, taking corners of water, getting quick sits and accurate casts. And line manners. (But what else is new!!!) For example:

[barry581]

Congrats on the pass! I too am struggling with line manners with Brooks. It sure can test your patience.

[smartrock]

Yee haw! Good to hear from you, it's been a while!

[TuMicks]

Congrats on the pass! I too am struggling with line manners with Brooks. It sure can test your patience.

For me patience has been the key. The dog's default setting is GO-GO-NOW-GO-LET-ME-GO-NOW-NOW-NOW. If I wait her out... I get more of what I want. It's helped that she has to go through the same routine for her dish of dog food, exiting the house, or her crate or whatever. And this is coming from a big e-collar person, right??? (Oh, the irony!)

[Anna Scott]

Good to hear from you. Congratulations on the passes. We are doing open obedience right now as the weather is the pits. I like the look of that pond. You can do a tremendous amount of work on a pond like that. How far back can you get and what is the distance on the exits? My swim-by pond does not have great distance for entrances and exits so we run a drill cutting its corner and re-entering the large pond and handling across a short point. Looking forward to spring. Keep posting so I can train vicariously.

[TuMicks]

There is almost infinite land all around this pond. The property is a cattle ranch, that is it is leased to a cattle rancher but owned by a FT person. It's the rainy season (though mother nature is a little bit stingy this year) and the pond is kinda changing shapes all the time.

I abbreviated the drawing a little bit in the initial post. It is actually more like this:



So the other day we did a blind spread and as you can see we had some bad initial lines as we went along. If I had done a simple swim-by it would have been no problem, but having crossed the pond 3 times, well... it took a little convincing to get her to swim to the end. On the land blind, #5, she either flared the water (though none of the whistles in the water involved pressure or nicks) or she was headed toward an old blind. Not sure.

Oh man... you want to imagine a dreamy pond for water work... think about THIS!



I feel very blessed to be able to park my trailer here and have run of the place

[Jollymolly]

Really glad to see you on the forum.

[IRISHWISTLER]

Good On ye Lass. Keep at it.👍

Mikey ☘️🇮🇪🇺🇸

[TuMicks]

I've been training alone for several weeks. But met a pro who is very knowledgeable, long time retriever trainer... he is taking me on for day training. I really respect him. He has a gorgeous facility.