Stress- and frustration-free learning in dummy work

Working with gun dogs to retrieve shot game and retrieving dummies as game simulacra are closely intertwined, as hunting assistants need to be kept fit through training during the non-hunting season for their work after the shot. For a long time, the work around the three retrieves, especially in Retriever circles, has become its own sport and testing discipline, in which an almost endless potpourri of task combinations is mastered by human and dog as a team. The path to a functioning team leads from the basics of so-called basic obedience, such as heelwork, loose leash, stopping and recalling, through the correct picking up, carrying and dropping of a dummy, to the three retrieves: marking, directing and searching. But even in dummy work: practice makes perfect! Labels such as "easy to handle" and "will to please", which are often attached to Retrievers, Pointers and Spaniels, do not make the development of dummy components a foregone conclusion: willingness to cooperate and an exposed holding puzzle piece in the genetic baggage are no dummy guarantee.
Anja Fiedler explains,
• what dummy work is and where it originates,
• which puzzle pieces of the predatory sequence fertilize dummy work,
• why too large training steps, frustration and stress in training will eventually backfire on us,
• what we should definitely equip our toolbox with,
• what good error management and dealing with errors look like and
• how small training steps in building the basics and three retrieves bring the team to the big training goal.
The Speaker
Anja Fiedler is the head of the dog school "dogable – what (hunting) dogs want". With her diverse seminar program, she travels throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
More about the author: http://www.dogable.de/node/5
Accreditation as further training
The webinar is recognized by the Chamber of Veterinarians Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony with 2.5 hours as further training, for this purpose our certificate of attendance must be submitted. https://www.kosmos.de/teilnahmebestaetigung
Photo credit: Anna Auerbach/ Kosmos