11/17/99 (21 Weeks 2 Days) 40.2 Lbs I had an e-mail discussion the other day with an observant follower of Rosie's story. The point of the discussion was that in following Rosie's story it looks as if everything always goes perfect with her. The reader was wondering how we manage to go through training without problems. The reader also brought up a very simple example of chewing up some expensive shoes and wondered why we do not have the same type of problems. The observations suggested to us deserve a response. Well, I have to agree that Rosie's story is painting a rosy picture and that we have not included much on the drawbacks we have experienced. My thanks to our e-mail friend on bringing this to my attention. Now for an explanation. We do experience the same problems as everyone else. The difference is in what we consider problems. The little things like chewing shoes, digging in the yard, house training are all stuff we expect to take place. We also try to train in a manor that avoids most of the little problems and are for the most part successful in doing so. Our training environment has been developed over time and in doing so it has become very non conducive to promoting these types of bad behaviors. We tend to keep pups busy doing the right thing which leaves them with little time to be doing the wrong thing. We also strive to make the training and drills we do with the pups something that they love to do and these same pups then become very unlikely to look for other "bad" things to do. A problem to me is something that occurs well down the road from where we are with Rosie. Some examples of things I would consider a problem would include: Bad marking skills. Poor angle entries. Squaring off on obstacles. Avoiding cover. Becoming collar wise. Admittedly, some of the things I consider little problems could be big problems to a beginning trainer. I know that at one time or another most were to me. In the future I will make an effort to include more info on specific things we do to correct problems. Even simple ones. I also think that almost every new trainer will experience a change in what kinds of things they consider to be problems. As they gain experience many more thing become little things and the problems become things much more advanced in nature. That said if there is some question regarding a specific problem please feel free to ask. I will answer and if it is something that warrants being included in Rosie's story we will try to include it. About Rosie and her problems: She is the exception rather than the rule and I feel very fortunate that she is the pup I chose to do the story on. She is making it easy for me and I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon. Her bad habits are for the most part limited to digging a hole to China and a true love of licking people. (Her hole is about half way there right now.) These are little things and I feel that correcting them at the moment is not a good idea. Both problems will require some direct correction/pressure and I don't think this type of training will keep our balance where we need it right now. This is a prime example of the old saying "You can take it out of them easy but putting it back in is tough." As expected our training last week was pretty limited. We managed a couple of sessions of marking practice that went well. One thing we did get to do with Rosie was to shoot quite a few birds over her. No....we did not take her on a duck hunt but what we did was real close to the same. We brought her to our lease and shot black birds for her. We did this on an area that was for the most part bare ground. She absolutely loved the game. During this "fun hunt" Rosie was a pretty good little girl and managed the whole event with just a couple of small infractions. The worst problem we had was when she was required to cross a small canal to find a bird. She would inevitably not want to continue on through the water to go get the bird. She does love the water and was quite happy to remain in the canal and play. This infraction was something I did not consider a problem. We are still working with a pup. It was solved by letting her play in the water while I shot a bird for Rusty. The sound of the gun and the falling bird refocused her attention in short order. Simple problems are usually cured by simple actions and notice again that our correction was very indirect in nature. A scolding would have been detrimental in the extreme. Rosie has continued to wear a dummy collar and considers it as her collar now. She will also get a microchip this week. Rosie's weight gain is starting to level off. I suspect this will be prolonged in nature and that she is going to be just shy of 60 pound when grown. Still thinking about starting handling........... We also had a couple of decent hunts with Rusty over the weekend. Lots of woodies in our area at the moment so we did not shoot many birds. Hopefully we will get some big birds soon. By the way... When you think you have a finished retriever on your hands try shooting snipe in standing rice. Rusty managed to get it done but with a good bit of handling. For the next diary entry, please visit Week 22 of Rosie's Journal.

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