Gundog Meets Gunfire

Today, Lumi and I made a four-hour round-trip to a field training site for gundogs. Originally planned as Lumi's introduction to both real birds and real gunfire, I decided in the last few days we better just stick with seeing how Lumi does with gunfire, and then take some dead birds back with us as homework for next weekend. That turned out to be the right decision.

FIRST SHOT FIRED
Lumi was apparently the only dog there with possible sound sensitivity, and when I introduced myself to a couple of the organizers and mentioned my concern, they were naturally too busy to point me in any particular direction where Lumi and I could get far enough away so that the first gunshots fired would be sub-threshold.

Trying my best to understand the training layout, I took Lumi several hundred yards from where I surmised the guns would be fired and we began playing retrieve and tug games with one of her dummies. Lumi is quite enthusiastic about these games, and I didn't want to wear her out, but I did want her to be in mid-game when the first gunshot sounded. As luck would have it, she was just about to pick up her dummy.

Well, I think it's fair to say that, despite my best effort to make an accurate estimate of how much distance was needed, we were not sub-threshold. Lumi froze, and was completely unwilling to pick up the dummy or play in any other way.

MAKING A START
Since we were clearly too close to the gunfire after all, I moved us out another three hundred yards or so, and ran up against woods and a wire fence or we would have gone further.

There, we started worked on D&CC, first just asking for recalls, then running around in the meadow whenever a shot sounded, and finally chasing the dummy together an instant after each blast, though Lumi would still not pick up the dummy when we got to it.

This was an interesting time to me, rich in variety and nuance, but it would not be interesting to record, I think. I will mention these notes, though:

• It was gratifying that, even unwilling to retrieve, Lumi's recall remained strong during this period.
• I was able to be somewhat objective in measuring Lumi's progress during this hour and a half. Since I couldn't use play for the counter-conditioning, I used food, and had three different kinds of treats with me. At the beginning of the process, Lumi would only accept one of the three kinds. By the end of this work near the trees, she was happy to accept all three.
• Lumi is not a dog who leans on people (including me), but for this one time, Lumi would lean against me as we stood together waiting for the next gunshot. Based on that, and also how Lumi has acted the rest of the day, it almost seems as though this experience has brought Lumi closer to me in a way, perhaps less independent than she usually is. A part of me admires her independence, but I have to admit that I like it when she wants to be close even better.

DISCOVERY
Though pleased with our progress, I was disappointed that Lumi was still unwilling to play with her dummy. The breaks between shots seemed to be around 10 minutes, so there weren't that many in an hour and a half. But Lumi clearly did not consider that area by the treeline to be any more hospitable to play than the meadow had been. So we began wandering further afield, first one direction, then the other.

Suddenly we came upon a pond hidden in the woods, complete with clumps of reed and decoys scattered here and about. Lumi's demeanor transformed the instant she saw the pond's surface glistening through the trees, and I didn't hesitate. I broke into a run, Lumi at my side, and as we approached the waterline, I tossed the dummy into the water.

I knew at the time that if Lumi didn't retrieve it, it was lost, because I sure wasn't going after it. But I was certain it wouldn't be a problem, and it wasn't. Lumi was back to her old self.

We played the rest of the morning at that pond and two others, each successively closer to the original meadow. Besides retrieving her dummy from the water, we played tug, short land retrieves, and even a little catch and tug with her soft disc.

Staying sub-threshold was not easy, and I wasn't always successful at it. First, everything is fine for a while, and you figure you can move closer. But you can't move an inch at a time or a foot at a time, because its fifty yards or more to the next good place to play. Then you think the dog is fine there, but after a few shots, you realize that she's tensing up and that you need to retreat back to more distance

Of course, we could have stayed at that pond in the trees the whole time, but we could barely hear the gunshots there. If we just wanted to play in the water, we didn't need to drive four hours to do it.

ALL'S WELL
We finally quit around noon, though gundog training continued at various locations around the facility. Lumi may have had more energy, but I was done. We stopped at one of the training stations to select two dead birds -- a duck and a pheasant -- and then we were on our way home. In the next few days, I'll see if I can get Lumi to retrieve either or both of the carcasses. That should be another interesting challenge, but she's already shown me that her issue for that training will be lack of interest, not fear.

As for gunfire, we only have one more chance to work at the same training site for the rest of the season, and that's next weekend. We'll be there, and once again we'll work on D&CC. But this time, we'll start at that pond in the woods with the clumps of reed, and the decoys scattered here and about.