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Cheating Singles
BY PAT NOLAN
Field training is commonly separated into
three phases: basics, transition, and advanced. In basics
dogs learn obedience; force fetch; e-collar conditioning;
and to go, stop, and cast on land and water. The
transition phase is made up of drills and field setups
designed to transfer these skills to the field. Advanced
training is an ongoing process — dogs can continue to
improve and polish skills throughout their entire careers.
While there are no rules about which
drills belong where, one drill commonly used during the
transition phase to teach dogs to go straight on the
water is cheating singles. Before starting work on this
drill your dog should have had many water marks with no easy
land route options to establish momentum on the water and to
build confidence swimming. He needs to have been e-collar
conditioned and learned T work on land and swim-by,
including force to go on the water.
Rules
for Ensuring Success
Few untrained dogs can do the
technically challenging water marks found in hunt tests and
field trials. Most dogs will not learn to do them simply
through trial and error (failure). You can use cheating
singles to advance your dog’s water skills, starting with
easy marks and progressing to more challenging ones. As you
work through teaching cheating singles, follow these basic
rules:
Teach key water
concepts one at a time. Your dog should learn to
recognize and negotiate four key water concepts: 1) the
channel or slot, 2) swimming past a point, 3) over a point,
and 4) parallel to a shoreline. Teach them one at a time
starting with the channel. The para llel shore mark is often
the most difficult and should be taught last.
Change only one variable
at a time. When your dog understands going
straight on single-issue marks, increase their difficulty by
adding distance, entries, exits — and then angles — both on
entries and exits (see illustrations at the end of this
article). Once your dog has mastered several individual
concepts, combine multiple concepts on short marks and
before working multiple-issue water marks at long distances.
Correct for disobedience,
not for errors.
In yard work you were
sending and casting to known locations and visible targets.
It was easy for your dog to know where he should go and
therefore easy for you to know when to correct for refusals.
As you make the marks more challenging in transition and
later in the advanced phases in the field, it becomes
increasingly difficult for your dog to discern the correct,
straight route.
The famous researcher Ivan Pavlov
observed that when his dogs were presented with increasingly
difficult problems of discrimination, a point was reached
when the dogs could no longer discriminate between the
desirable cues and the undesirable cues. When they could no
longer tell when they would be rewarded and when they would
be corrected they had, in effect, a nervous breakdown. To
avoid correcting for errors and to ensure you are correcting
for disobedience on this drill, follow these guidelines:
Ø
First,
handle to show the approved route and correct for cast
refusals. (Do not correct for the deviation.)
Ø
Second,
on repeats correct for deviation from the known, approved
route.
Application: Teaching an Over-the-Point Mark
Step 1 — Handle to Show
Approved Route; Correct for Cast Refusals
Stand
on the edge of the water and have the mark fall on the
opposite shore. Using white bumpers, throw a short or
medium-length water mark so that the straight route is over
a point.
If at
any time en route to the fall your dog deviates from the
straight line, stop him with a sit whistle and cast to keep
him on line. Stop him as soon as you see he has decided to
deviate from the line — this tells him that the choice to
deviate was wrong. We are not as interested in teaching him
where not to go as we are in teaching him not to deviate, so
don’t wait for him to get way off line and into trouble
before handling.
As
long as he makes improvement toward the line, continue to
handle without correcting. However, it is important to
establish the straight route to the fall. If your dog
refuses to handle, correct. To correct for cast
refusals, using the e-collar, whistle “sit”-nick-“sit”, and
recast your dog. Alternately, after a cast refusal, call him
in a short distance to interrupt the incorrect momentum,
whistle “sit”-nick-“sit”, and recast your dog.
Whether or not you corrected, repeat the mark. Continue to
handle to show the approved route and repeat until he does
the mark correctly without handling. In the early work, if
he takes your casts you do not need to correct. Most dogs
will either 1) stop trying to avoid the hazards and go
straight or 2) quit handling. If he gives in to your casts
and goes straight, you have won with a minimum of pressure.
If he quits taking your casts, you can fairly correct for
direct disobedience to command.
In
addition to correcting for cast refusals, you can force for
“go straight.” To do this, throw your mark. When your dog
deviates from the straight route, whistle sit and cast
toward the fall. When your dog turns and heads toward the
fall, have your helper re-throw the mark and, making sure
your dog sees the throw, force en route water on a “back,”
e-collar nick, “back” command.
After
teaching several of these cheating singles you can increase
the responsibility you place on your dog by correcting for
cast refusals on the first attempt of a new cheating single.
Step 2 — Correcting for Deviation from the Approved Route
Now
begin to correct on repeats for deviation from the known
straight route. Let’s look at the over-the-point mark to see
how this works.
You
run the mark, and as your dog exits the water onto the
point, he breaks hard right to stay on land and avoid
reentering the water. You whistle sit and cast to the
correct line. Your dog takes the cast and enters the water
on or near the correct line and finishes the mark cleanly.
Then, on the repeat, your dog makes the same break to avoid
the re-entry. This time, whistle sit and e-collar nick and
whistle sit. Then cast for the re-entry. Again, when you are
correcting for the deviation and not for a cast refusal, it
should be done on a repeat.
Correcting for Deviation from the Approved Route on the
Initial Line
As you begin to add entries to the
marks (see diagrams), there may be times your dog chooses to
avoid the straight route to the mark on his initial line. If
you have taught “No” in the yard on a cover drill or another
initial line drill, begin to use “No” here. Don’t try to
correct or overwhelm him with the volume of your voice;
simply command or say “No” loud enough for him to hear and
then call back. Re-send.
Do not stop him with a whistle sit
command and then call back. In the trial/test, every time
you stop your dog on a whistle you will handle on to a bird
— you do not want to teach him to come in after a whistle
sit command.
On the resend after being called back
on “No,” he may go anywhere forward to avoid correction —
except to the same spot. If he doesn’t get the correct line
on the second try, again stop him with the command “No.”
Call back and re-send. Only correct if he returns to a spot
you have “No’d” him off. When you need to correct, e-collar
nick on the “here” after “No.” Because you are not
correcting for the poor initial line but rather for
disobeying the “No” command, his initial lines should
improve without him getting worried about where to go when
sent.
Be careful about calling back. If you
need to call back more than twice on a given mark, move
forward and re-throw the mark. If you find that you are
calling back frequently, you may be extending the length or
technical difficulty on the marks too fast.
No-Go
Sometimes after being corrected or
after having been called back, dogs will opt out, saying in
a sense, “If I don’t like the way you play, I won’t join the
fun.” For a no-go by your side, command and e-collar nick on
“heel” as you step toward the fall to establish forward
momentum in response to command and pressure. With sensitive
dogs, you can use low-level force on “heel” after calling
back preemptively; don’t wait for a no-go.
Summary
While you are training to improve your
dog’s technical skills on the water, make sure to balance
your work on cheating singles with shot birds and lots of
momentum marks on the water. Work on cheating singles is one
good way to transition going straight on the water from
swim-by to your bigger water setups. However, they are not
only for the transition phase of training — they can be a
good tune-up drill for the rest of your dog’s life.
For illustration
of typical cheating single click here
—
Pat Nolan |
