Multiple placed retrieves

We are making progress with the dog, but we are still a long way from having a formal send away. The dog goes out only because it knows there is a ball waiting and it knows there is a ball waiting because, before each send, it sees its handler go out to the target spot and put the ball there. Obviously, if the dog does not first see its handler go out into the field, it will not go either.

There is a simple, elegant way to “fog” the relationship between the handler’s doings and the presence or the absence of a ball at the target spot. When the handler goes out to the spot that first time, he does not leave just one ball, but three or four.

The first send away is a “hot” one. The dog has just watched its handler walk out to the target spot a few seconds before, and it therefore has every reason to believe that a ball awaits it there. But the second send is a little “colder.” The memory trace of seeing its handler out there is fading, and the third and fourth sends are strictly on faith. The animal goes to the spot out of habit and each time finds a ball. Soon it begins to have the blind conviction that, even if it can’t see a ball out in the field, and even if it hasn’t seen its handler put a ball on the target spot, if it goes out it will still find one.

The handler can strengthen this conviction in two ways:

1. By concealing the cluster of balls a little bit more all the time so that, eventually, the dog cannot see them until coming within twenty or twenty‑five feet of the target spot. As a result, the dog makes by far the greater part of its run blind.

2. By placing the balls on the target spot without letting the dog see him do it. (He leaves the animal in the car.) In this way the first send is also a “cold” one.