A Common Marking Mistake During Retriever Training

A few years ago, I was working with a new retriever owner on marking drills with his young dog. He couldn't understand why his dog repeatedly failed at even the most simple of marks over and over again. He was very enthusiastic about training his dog as they trained on a regular basis, usually several times a week, but his frustration continued to grow as his dog kept having problems with marking.

As we begun the training session, he reached in the back of his truck, grabbed a handful of rubber training dummies and handed them to me to throw for his dog. I immediately knew what the problem was and told him I wanted to try show him something so I grabbed a few of my dummies and walked out in the field.

As he called for the first dummy to be thrown, I gave the dummy a high throw and quacked loudly on my duck call. The dog did indeed struggle to find the mark. I told him to repeat the mark and I would use one of my training dummies. He signaled and I threw the dummy. The dog raced out to the fall area, and after a very short hunt, found the dummy and raced back to the owner.

The owner was elated. That was the first mark the dog had done in a long time with no help. As I moved to another location for the next mark I threw one of my dummies on the first mark. Just like the previous mark, the dog quickly found the dummy and returned to the smiling owner.

As we proceeded to work the dog I would mix in his dummies and my dummies one various retrieves. The dog struggled on almost every mark with the owner's training dummies but did very well with the new ones.

After we were done with the retrieves, I walked back and asked him if he saw what the difference was why his dog was able to mark the new dummies over the old ones. Noticing they were white as opposed to his orange dummies, he made a reference to the difference in color but wasn't sure why that made a difference.

I grabbed two dummies, one orange and one white, told him to watch the next throw and see what dummy he could see the best. After I walked out about 75 yards, I stopped and threw both dummies in the air at the same time against the dark background of the wasatch mountains.

As I walked in he said he couldn't believe the difference in how much better the white dummy showed up against the dark background. This is why his dog was having so much trouble with the marked retrieves, he couldn't see the dummy very well.

Compared to us humans, dogs have poor eyesight and are actually color blind to some degree. They see colors differently than we do. Dog's can't see the bright orange color of commonly used training dummies in the same manner we do. They need a vast contrast in color between dummy and background, for example, such as a white dummy on a dark background.

This is important when selecting training dummies for your retriever. Orange dummies are great for blind retrieves since the dog can't see them but you can. White training dummies and black and white multi-colored dummies are better suited for marked retrieves as they give a better contrast to many given backgrounds for the dog to mark. The dog can't mark what he can't see.

Check out our website, www.sprigkennels.net, for a good selection on training dummies and other training equipment for your hunting retriever.