Online Trained Retrieve Course Open Now!
Our Trained Retrieve online course is open for registration now. Winter is the perfect time to work on development of a reliable retrieve. In this course we’ll break down the teaching of this complex behavior into very small chunks, making it easy for you and your dog to grasp. Utilizing both rewards and pressure you will work to develop your dog’s reliable and enthusiastic retrieve. Because of the unique way that we introduce the retrieving behavior, and our focus on maintaining a positive working attitude in the dogs, this work can be started with young dogs.
If you participate in NAVHDA and completed your Natural Ability test last year, this course will leave you in great shape to begin developing all of the Utility level retrieving exercises as soon as the weather warms up. For dogs running JGHV tests this year, you can get a head start on your retrieving even if your dog hasn’t run the VJP yet because our unique approach minimizes or eliminates conflict in the training process.
For companion dog clients interested in taking this course, you will learn how to apply the trained retrieve to a variety of useful tasks such as retrieving household objects, fetching a beverage from a fridge/cooler, and turning lights on and off. The retrieve offers a lot of utility in remediation of behavior problems as well due to the training process inhibiting inappropriate mouth use and the fact that layering the retrieve into basic obedience increases the level of responsibility required of the dog around competing motivators.
This course covers:
Building the hold behavior with positive reinforcement (rewards)
Incorporation of your choice of pressure signal (ear, collar, etc.)
E-collar overlay
Strategies for maintaining a positive attitude throughout the teaching process
Teaching a clean finish and presentation of the bird to the handler
Application of the retrieve to various tasks and advanced concepts
Gun Dogs
force to pile and water force
dragged game retrieves
duck search
lining, marking, and memory drills
Companion Dogs
inhibiting inappropriate mouth use
increasing responsibility in basic obedience
Service Dogs
retrieving household items
turning lights on and off
Online sessions take place via Google Meet. Session recordings will be made available to all participants. In addition to live Q&A, online support is provide through instructor review of training videos that students are welcome to submit as frequently as they would like. Because every dog and handler moves at their own pace, participants will maintain access to recordings and instructor support for three months after the end of the course.
Listen… I know times are tough and money is tight for a lot of people right now. If you can’t afford to enroll in our online trained retrieve course right now, I have a write up of a more traditional force fetch process (with videos!) that is free to access. It’s from one of my old websites and I’ve copied it over to this blog. This isn’t the way I teach the retrieve now (we incorporate a lot more positive reinforcement now, and offer options for enforcement pressure besides the ear pinch), but it’s still a useful guide and a few people used it successfully to prepare their dogs for hunt tests such as the NAVHDA Utility and JGHV HZP tests last year.
You can find it HERE.
— Nate
About your instructor
Nate is the current President and Training Director for the Potomac NAVHDA chapter, and a regional representative for Kleine Münsterländer - Group North America. He has been a professional trainer for ten years and has a wide variety of experience with many different breeds. He began training retrieves on non-sporting breeds as a component to intervention in behavioral problem cases. This breadth of experience provides him with the ability to approach training problems with creativity when cookie cutter, paint-by-number approaches prove limited. He is an approve trainer of The Koehler Method of Dog Training, and a NePoPo® New Gold School graduate.