We went out to Dan's today instead of tomorrow, as our weather is supposed to turn really ugly tomorrow.
Another great time!
First we spent a lot of time working hard on getting the monster boy steady to flush. He does great, until it's a big rooster pheasant.....but of course he had a grand time flushing the birds today. (there were several drills that came first).
Then we finished off with some singles and doubles, he put up some nice hunts including one that we NEVER would have dreamed he would have come up with the bird since he originally over ran it by about 50 yards. But he did finally check up, and quarter back, so we had a lot of high-5's about that!
A fun day. I hate the bad weather on the way. We've been very lucky so far!

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Gibson's Golden Girl, CD, CGC, TDI (born 3-20-1997), a.k.a. "Tiny"

CH Rosewood Little Giant, UDX VER RA SH MXP MJP VCX WCX CCA CGC FFX-OG (born 3-10-2007), also UCH HR UUD UJJ URO1 UHIT a.k.a. "Tito" (the Tito Monster)

and my heart dog
Gibson's Golden Guy, CD, CGC, TDI ( 01-31-1998 - 01-02-2012) a.k.a. "Toby", "HRH"

Faelan has been stretched to 125-150 yard double T work and is working cold blinds well. He has also been stretched to 20 retrieves working on his perserverance - it is an area where he has shown some weakness and so he is being stretched beyond what he will ever encounter in tests.

Brady is retrieving perhaps 30 yards successfully, flat easy puppy retrieves. He is actually following the rise and fall of the bumpers/birds from the launchers.

Grins

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Golden moments shared with
Casey, Faelan, Towhee & Brady too !

and forever in my heart, my golden Bridge boys
Rowdy & King

During the same period? If I understand your post, your dog is still working his way through T work, but is also running cold blinds?

EvanG

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"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that. But the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great." ~ Mark Twain


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No, this is over the course of a while. Just an update post really. His distances on T, TT are being stretched, but have been in place at shorter distances .

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Golden moments shared with
Casey, Faelan, Towhee & Brady too !

and forever in my heart, my golden Bridge boys
Rowdy & King

Last Saturday I started adding the diversion bird with our doubles. Jige tends to be a shopper but so far he has only ran after the diversion bird once he did pick up it but then dropped it grabbed his bumper and came in. I gave him a harty NO and we did it again with better results. The terrain has changed with the snow cover so we have been working on better marks in the snow too. I really need to get brighter bumpers as the black and whites are hard to see even for me not sure how Jiges marks them so well, but Jan I am going to find some money to buy us orange ones. I only have 4 orange bumpers.

Also we are tring something new here at home. My son goes out about 100yrd in the field with his dog and I stand at the start point with Jige and we take turns running marks for our dogs while ours has to honor the other dogs run. That has been fun and really good for the dogs. Jige is getting much better if I have to walk out to help ATEM with a hey hey.

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U-CH, CGC, TDI Top Flights Reap What You Sow " BaWaaJige"

The honor is something I forget to practice.
My Winter has a heck of a time seeing orange bumbers against the white backround of snow. I usually use black and white ones on the few occasions we train in snow.

Yesterday my son threw up a black and white one and against the hazing sky and bare trees I lost it and so did Jige. He was in the general area but about 10ft off I let him hunt for a couple of minutes then I had my son hey hey him back and over a bit. We did that mark again with an orange bumper and he was spot on.

We do alot of honors here Jige is very steady with them. I was standing in the wrong spot for the honor during our first upland training and the bird landed a few feet in front of Jige but he was rock solid. I got a lot of praise from my fellow training partners for that honor.

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U-CH, CGC, TDI Top Flights Reap What You Sow " BaWaaJige"

Perhaps I should clarify my question. Actually I had a couple more questions, but this one was first. As you work your way through T work you are establishing a critically important set of skills your dog will need to become a handling dog. But they are basic handling skills, not advanced ones, which are needed to run effective cold blinds. No sound modern training program advocates running cold blinds while going through Basics because dogs in Basics don't have the skills to deal with it.

My second question is why extend distance on land T to 125-150 yards? T drills are not lining drills, and extending distance only adds needless fatigue, not skill. There is so much running on T's that 100 yards has proven to be plenty to achieve the scope and purpose of T work, including maintaining adequate momentum, while working through de-popping, and no-goes.

If you have done a sound job of force to pile prior to running land T, you can certainly teach and run some pattern blinds. But I caution against attempting cold blinds, land or water until you are through Basics, and have begun Transition.

EvanG

__________________
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that. But the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great." ~ Mark Twain


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Saturday morning we are planning on having the puppy retriever class indoors for a change. In the afternoon we are meeting up with AKGOLD (John) and his dogs. John is super into field trials. So he is going to work his dogs for us along with our trainer Gwen's dog. Gwen is wanting a pup out of John's boy, so it should be fun for us all to see the dogs. Gwen, my trainer, runs the field trials in the summer. I'm bringing my husband along to see how the dogs are run. He's only hunted mutts on the farm as a kid, so he's never seen how field trials are run. Forecast is zero to 10 above and sunny. Another beautiful winter day in Anchorage. I'll try to remember to get some photos and post here. The birds have all long flown south, so we won't have any distractions with real ones. We are meeting Potters Marsh at 1:30 if anyone is interested. PM me if you are thinking of coming and I'll let you know which parking lot.

Darn, it was -16F at the house when we went to meet AKGOLD (John)and Gwen. I shouldn't complain it was a beautiful day. Forgot to bring a camera and my phone was frozen, so no photos. John's dogs are amazing. They are normally trained down in Oregon and Washington, so their coats were a bit thin for Anchorage weather. We only threw the ducks few times before putting the dogs in the warm truck. Topbrass does a great job breeding pups! Makes me excited for an early spring. I'm planning on continuing with winter training. My dogs do just fine in the cold.