Real Duck

As Lumi and I were leaving yesterday's field training, the woman who organized it was kind enough to say we could take along a dead duck and a dead pheasant to work with at home. I chose one of each and put them in the freezer when we arrived.

BEST LAID PLANS
This morning, I thought I'd try out the training plan I had come up with. I took Lumi to one of her favorite places, a wooded park with a strong, deep stream running through it. As we walked from the van to the stream, I brought along Lumi's favorite water toy (a retrieval dummy with a tennis ball surface) and the frozen duck.

The theory was, I'd toss the dummy several times, and of course Lumi would run and grab it and come back all crazy to play tug or for me to throw it again. I'd do that a few times and then throw the duck instead of the dummy.

Tried it, didn't work. Lumi had no interest in picking up that duck. She wasn't afraid of it, but she wasn't interested in having it in her mouth.

FALSE TRAIL
OK, she needs to generalize what we're doing here, I thought. So I added a big stick/small log to the mix. Toss the dummy, yay! Toss the log, yay! Toss the dummy again, yay! Toss the duck . . . nothing. "I know what you're doing, Daddy. I just don't want to pick that thing up."

Hmm, maybe she's thinking too much, was my next idea. Instead of a retrieve, we'll play catch. So I lobbed the dummy to her, and she leaped at it and caught it and came right back for a quick game of tug, as per usual. I lobbed a small stick, and she caught that, too, then brought it back so I could toss it for her again. Lobbed the duck . . . and Lumi stepped back so that the duck could fall to the ground in front of her. She glanced at it for a second, then up at me. It was kind of comical.

CLICKERLESS CLICKER TRAINING
So much for capturing this behavior, I finally realized. We're gonna have to shape it. Too bad I don't have my clicker, but we'll make do. I assume you know what I mean by "shaping", so I won't discuss the general concept. But here's a description of how it went.

I brought the duck and the dummy over to the edge of the creek, lay the duck on a little mound, and stared at it for a few moments. Lumi knows this game, and knew exactly how to get started. She put her nose an inch or so from the bird and I shouted "Good job!" (that was our click for this exercise) and flung her dummy into the water. She leapt after it, brought it back, and we played a little tug. Then I took the dummy away from her, as though I were about to throw it in the water again.

But no, I looked at the duck again and waited a few seconds. Lumi took it in, understood what she needed to do to get what she wanted, sniffed the duck again, and then I flung the toy into the water.

RAISING CRITERIA
On the third or fourth rep, I didn't reinforce the simple sniff. After hundreds of shaping sessions, Lumi knows what that means, too. Got to try some variation, got to try harder in some way. So she put her mouth on it. "Good job!" and there goes the dummy flying into the water.

I wondered if we'd run into some barrier, but we didn't. Lumi progressed smoothly to putting her mouth around part of the wing, to dragging the bird an inch and then further, to lifting it an inch off the ground and then higher, to putting it into my hands, to retrieving it when I tossed it a yard away and then further, to retrieving it out of shallow water, and so forth.

A HUNTING DOG
Our last rep went like this. With Lumi in a sit-stay and watching me like a hawk, I walked 30 yards away through the woods and tossed the bird up in the air, so that it dropped on the ground a few feet from me. Then I ran back to Lumi, excitedly called her to left heel, and cued "go out". Off she flew. She found the bird, picked it immediately, and headed back. She accidentally dropped it at one point, got a better grip, and finished the retrieve. Good! With practice, she's teach herself how to get a solid grip the first time.

That final image of Lumi lingers in my mind. Less than an hour of meeting her first duck, she looked like an honest-to-goodness hunting dog, running toward me through the woods with real quarry in her mouth.

PHEASANT NEXT
We'll do a similar session with the poor dead pheasant at some point in the next day or two. I assume it will go even faster, but another hour wouldn't be bad.

I just have to wonder how people who don't use shaping would have solved this. How many just give up on a dog who doesn't instinctively offer the desired behavior?