I have a lab who really likes retrieving and she's very enthusiastic about the whole process. So far she retrieves well with a decent finish on bumper, dead frozen birds, and tied live birds. I was hoping to use her on snow geese in spring.

The issue I'm having is that I want to be able to stop for safety reasons a retrieve on the send out just as you can do a drop on recall. I'm just not quite sure at this point how to train it to either result in a recall or a command to finish the retrieve. I've consulted several books and hunters and so far I've not found a way to do this without some serious corrections which I'm not quite ready to do yet. I'd rather not take the drive out of my retriever if I can help it.

Before you say if it ain't broke. There are often times in the field where you might not be able to see a safety issue for a dog until the dog is sent into the water. I am pretty careful with my dog before sending but I've seen situation where a flooded area hides a hidden barb wire fence, or you send a dog after a bird only to find out it's just crippled and heading for dangerous water or in the case of one hunter I read about over a cliff.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Generally, the stop is taught when you teach directionals. At closer distances, intially, I'd introduce the stop, reward it with a retrieve.

DFrost

I can do directionals but I haven't yet been able to marry directionals with a sighted retrieve yet. Usually the directionals are used to get the dog to the bird not stop the dog once the bird is sighted.

I've given it some thought and I think the nearest drive level may have a solution for me in sheep herding where the dogs are constantly given order changes and interruptions. I've got a couple books in mind for reference.

I guess i haven't seen many people hunting who do train this command.

When doing directionals, how does the dog recieve the directions without stopping and turning to look at you? If you want to work with good directionals, that include a stop, check out how the directionals are taught for SAR. It works very good. You can work voice, hand and whistle if you chose.

DFrost