Upland Retriever - Page Five
Page Five: Cooper Takes Wing.
Cooper continues the ups and downs of training - mostly ups. It is also “up” to the trainer(s) to make good use of Cooper’s wonderful desire to learn. Often, to Cooper, it’s more a game than learning a skill. This is by design. Keeping Cooper’s interest-level up makes him an awesome dog to work with; that is, until the inner-puppy comes out and wants to revise the way the “game” is played. Having found out that Cooper just turned 10 months old explains a lot of things and makes our achievements even more impressive.
Cooper still requires work on his remote sit, his requirement to stay sat, and will test, from time to time, the willpower of his handler. That has required a little stiffer hand than some dogs but he’s got broad shoulders and takes the reprimand like a champ. Cooper’s desire to work and please must always remain.
Working on “floppy” hold during a retrieve.
We have worked on field handling along with retrieving pretty much exclusively and have gained much. Varying exercises, numbers of training bumpers and, today, blind retrieves, keeps Cooper thinking. And Cooper excels at “thinking”! This makes it all the more important to be consistent in his training routine, because Cooper retains just about everything that’s put to him - right or wrong. Something as seemingly harmless as allowing him to get up from a sit to have a sniff at the ground or a lie-down during a long chat between his handlers will be stored and attempted when you didn’t want him to move later.
Taking a photo of Cooper flushing a bird was a near miss for the pigeon and me!
Using his incredible desire for retrieving bumpers has been a key element in this latter training technique. When Cooper anticipates the command and breaks, the bumper is removed - no reward. You can bet that on the next opportunity Cooper will comply without a mistake. The same principle has been applied to training Cooper to flush birds. If he bolts toward the bird without a command, the bird would be removed. I say, “would be” because I haven’t been able to get him to make a mistake.
I can see that gun fire and water retrieves will be in Cooper’s near future. I may try using frozen birds for retrieving as early as our next session. From here it’s just repetitive drills and introduce Cooper to as many similar situations as possible. All in preparation for the wild birds of autumn.
Epilogue: Cooper did begin his autumn of wild birds and proved to everyone that he was a reliable Upland Retriever, indeed!
Early fall, 2023
