Larry L wrote:
...
From a dog trainer POV ... why are you throwing dummies? If it's just to
exercise Ms Mutt than there are better ways, ways that will not harm her
owner, go for walks and let her be a dog, she'll cover lots of ground. If
it is to somehow teach her to mark, you can't do that to any standard worth
the effort with hand tossed dummies while she sits near you, you can't throw
far enough to be meaningful. Lots of hand tossed marks from your side will
actually make her a weaker marker over time, not a better one.

People training retrievers to mark to a high standard traditionally have
human helpers that toss the retrieving objects, so maybe you could create
jobs and hire a couple, I always hired college kids as I wanted the money to
help those trying to help themselves. G


Baring that, teach her how to do 'walking singles' ... i.e. leave her on a
sit/stay, walk out a ways, throw the dummy so that she can see it's arch,
send her to retrieve on her taught command, when she gets the dummy she
brings it to your new location, you leave her there on sit/stay and the
process starts over gradually increasing distance and terrain difficulties
.... it's simple with any obedient dog to get them doing single tough marks
out to a couple hundred yards this way .... and you get to walk off some
Budweiser G BUT, the dog must be steady and obedient, of course.

Thanks Larry. What you describe as "walking singles" is what I'm doing
right now. We're up to about a hundred yards away from the sit/stay,
and that brings up another question I'll ask later. Anyway, from that
distance I have to throw the dummies high enough for her to see them
and that's what's causing me to hoist my bottle of Bud with my left
hand tonight.

So, the other question. Kaylin's extended sit/stay will almost always
result in a down. In other words, by the time I walk a hundred yards
away from her and turn around she has gone into a down instead of a sit.
I don't think that's something I need to worry about, do you ?

--
Ken Fortenberry