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- Basic Obedience. "Sit", "here", "stay", "heel", all on and off leash.
- Force Fetch. Review the Tri-tronics Hold and Fetch tapes as an excellent way to get a handle on force fetching your dog. Even the most driven retriever must be force-fetch trained if they are to be successful at the higher levels of field work.*** If you START with a force-fetch taught dog you will not be fighting this problem all along and the dog can then learn the other things they need to learn. I do not advocate STARTING this work with an e-collar, however. The traditional methods using ear-pinch or toe-hitch are better as the dog then correctly associates the force as coming from the handler rather than the environment.
- Some people with "clammy" dogs (a dog whose response to pressure is to freeze up or turn inward and react by increasing the stoic nature) may find that introduction to retrieving a bumper or any object for that matter, is more successful when useing the clicker method of training. Once the dog understands the term "fetch" then you can begin to use "pressure" to enforce the action. With the stoic dog (clammy) use lots of animation to keep the dog moving! Work fast, lots of praise for small positive steps and use short training sessions.
- Knowing how to swim and being comfortable in the water.(see Beginning notes)
- Proof the understanding of the taught commands by standard obedience proofing techniques.
- Introduce whistle comands the same way you introduced "here" and "sit" verbal commands.
- Collar Conditioning. If you are going to use an e-collar it is important that you begin its use after your dog has learned and understands basic obedience commands. The Dobbs method of collar conditioning is not good for Poodles as it increases their fear of terrain. A Poodle must understand that the command and correction is coming from the handler for best long term results and dog understanding of corrections. The best discussion of collar conditioning that I have found that is applicable to Poodles is the Mike Lardy discussion in the Retriever Journal, June/July, 1996. For Poodles I would recommend beginning collar conditioning with the command "here" or "come" rather than "sit", however, as many Poodles will wish to "clam up" when collar conditioning is started and learning "sit" first seems to promote this response.
- "Force to a pile" on land. Again, the best and most readily understood discussion of force to a pile is by Mike Lardy in the Retriever Journal, Oct/Nov., 1996.
- Steady at heel sitting when a bird or bumper is thrown
- Delivery to hand in the heel position
- Retrieving a single bird from land and water with delivery to hand
- "Force to a pile" across a small body of water (maybe 20 yards or so).
- Then progress into Intermediate Training
REMEMBER:Keep a balance in your training. Balance fun with work, marks with drills, water with land, so that your training moves forward on a broad front.
If your dog understands the above it should easily attain a title equivalent to the Junior Hunter. If you hope to go on past JH then you may wish to go well into intermediate training prior to entering a JH test.
update 4/15/06
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