Obedience and agility are my areas of focus with Griffin. Sometimes we work on other things. One of those is field work/retriever work. It’s great to see him do what golden retrievers were intended to do and he loves the running parts and the water parts. We also don’t really know what we’re doing. I know just enough to get us into trouble.
These sports have a history and there are standard efficient and effective training techniques developed and utilized by most of the trainers and participants. As we’re not going to be pursuing this extensively due to limited resources (time, help, money, my knowledge), I don’t mind breaking some of the training rules set by the typical retriever training protocols.
This is not a how-to. I don’t know enough to know if these things will get us into trouble later. These are just a few of the things we do now.
Tugging: Griffin will retrieve large items and will hold well if he’s in training mode. But he really would prefer to not do so. With his toys, his obedience dumbbell, and his bumpers, I will often tug slightly before verbally cueing the release. I want him to be keeping a firm grip in expectation of that little tug. We also do play tugging with bumpers. Due to the size and shape, he can’t get a good grip for really nice tugging, but he does enjoy it and the tugging increases his interest in bringing the bumpers back to me, rewarding the retrieve, and building his interest and motivation for the bumpers.
Water Exits: Dogs like to shake off water. It’s just uncomfortable for them and it’s probably really hard to run with all that extra water dripping off. Griffin isn’t a really heavy coated golden, but he does pick up enough water that he’s uncomfortable. It’s preferred that retrievers get the bird/bumper and swim/run directly back to the handler, not stopping to shake off when exiting the water. To help facilitate this pattern, we do a lot of retrieves where I toss a less preferred toy into the pond. Griffin swims out, grabs it, and comes back. Just before he gets to the shore, I throw his Very Favorite toy in the direction he is headed so that he RUNS out of the pond to go and get that toy. I’ll race him to it and we tug and play. I get drenched in water, but he may be learning good water retrieve habits. At the very least, he’s not practicing the stop and shake!
Other items: For whatever reason, Griffin really likes the bumpers. We use boring tennis balls for some of the retrieves and when he brings those back, he gets a short toss with a bumper.
Food: I use food treats. Typically after Griffin returns and after he releases the bumper on cue. If he was crazy about food I would use even more of it. He’s received a lot of his meals for sitting and holding the bumper for a period of time.