If you do much training alone, like I do, you might be interested in this. I wanted to work on steadying my lab a bit this year. Last year I had her perfectly steady with hand-thrown bumpers, but when a hen would flush and fly across a field in plain vision or in real waterfowl hunt situations her excitement would get too intense and she's break. I noticed that my cheap (25$) clay target launcher excited her A LOT, so I rigged some luggage strap clips to the ropes on some light bumpers and clip them onto the launching arm of my skeet thrower. It's great for freeing up your hands (not having to throw the bumper) and it get Ruby pretty riled up, making it a bit more of a test for her. If nothing else, we both have fun with it!
Here are a couple of videos. In the first one, she looks to me and loses sight of the mark, then she takes a bad line. Remembering the old training trick that dogs dont' learn by failure, I cast her to the mark instead of bringing her in and sending her again, as I would do in a real hunt.
In the next one she gets it right
Here is the rig
-Croc
Here are a couple of videos. In the first one, she looks to me and loses sight of the mark, then she takes a bad line. Remembering the old training trick that dogs dont' learn by failure, I cast her to the mark instead of bringing her in and sending her again, as I would do in a real hunt.
In the next one she gets it right
Here is the rig
-Croc
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