Winter dog training

[Todd Caswell]

It's been along winter, first time in 6 years that I have not had a dog down South training, I have two young dogs a 24 monthe old and a 28 monthe old, neither of them will most likely make FT dogs but we have decided to keep both of them and train them for what they are, gun dogs and run HT with them rather than FT's. There both pretty special in there own way, live in the house, are part of the family and for the most part I have done all of there training.

I was first introduced to the retriever games by a FT person and prefer FT over HT , mainly because of my competitive nature, but I train with a FT group part of the week, a HRC (HT) group on mondays, and a AKC HT group a couple times a monthe, plus I hunt my dogs. So when I was asked to be a MOD. for this forumn I figured I could be a asset because of my versitility in the different groups I train with.

I was supposed to be getting a new pup to start a few weeks ago and the plan was to show a week by week monthe by monthe progression but life got in the way and I had to cancel because of family issues.

With all that being said, in my mind winter is over and we got out training tonight, haven't done a whole lot this winter because of the weather but here is a example of a 4 leg blind drill, on the lake. The two chairs are just to create a diversion, 1st blind is around 150 yards, 2nd blind is around 250, there was a specific spot I wanted the dogs to cross the road that you can't see in the vid but we used attrician with a recall and a recall with a " Here Nick" to get the correct cast, wind was blowing left to right pushing the dog to the right. 3rd. Blind is around 150 4th. Is about 300 off the backside of the chair, with this dog I have been working hard on getting good starts on blinds so that's why I recalled him on the last blind, go where sent. And after watching the vid. i should have recalled him on the first blind as well. This is Cooper he is 28 monthes old.

[TylerS]

Love when the snowmobiles come through and the dog keeps going. That was great!