Remote Drop

written by Butch Goodwin
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Northern Flight Retrievers  

Many years back, one of my clients, a Tennessee duck hunting guide, asked me to train his dog to drop birds on command and then hide in a camouflaged dog crate a short distance from the hunting blind. (This was in the days before we had the nylon camouflage pop-up dog blinds.) To a trainer accustomed to teaching each dog to come to heel and sit to deliver birds, this seemed rather bizarre, and I asked the guide why anyone would want to teach a dog to drop when we spend so much time teaching them to hold and deliver to hand. He replied that because of convenience and safety, he didn’t want to climb over his hunting clients with their loaded shotguns to receive the birds; he wanted the dog to deliver cripples to him, but the dead birds could just be dropped on command.

What he was requesting made sense, but I had never tried it. Traditionally, a retriever trainer teaches the dog to sit at his side, heel at his side, line-up and mark from his side, and return to his side with the birds. After all, this is how we train for the competitive events, and it’s what all those training books and videos teach, right? Suddenly, I was going to ask the dog to do something different, and I wasn’t real sure how to teach it or how it would play out.

But, as I was to discover, once a dog’s fundamental training was solid, teaching him to drop on command was relatively easy. The most difficult part may have been teaching the dog to go into the crate far away from my side without trying to pick up the bird or bumper he had just dropped.

I also discovered that it was necessary to teach remote marking, remote steadiness, and remote send. I discovered a new set of rules by which a hunting dog may be asked to perform and how essential self-confidence, self-control, and the ability to think for himself are to a reliable gun dog’s success.

After basic yard-work training, including force-fetch and the “fetch-leave it” drill, where the dog is taught to fetch only when commanded and ignore the retrieve when told to leave it (see Retriever Journal June/July 1998), I found it easiest to begin teaching the remote drop by continuously reinforcing the “hold” and the “drop” commands. Most retrievers that have been through a force-fetch program know that when they are told to hold, they’re expected to hold the retrieve securely in their mouth until - commanded to drop. These two commands and “leave it,” along with ‘kennel,” proved to be all that were necessary to teach the remote drop.

The first step in teaching the remote drop is teaching the fetch-leave it drill.	...then "drop"
The sequence starts with a "stay" and "hold"...	... then "leave-it"

We started by placing a plastic dog crate — with the gate removed — in the field. My helper attached a checkcord to the dog’s collar, stood beside the crate, and told the dog to kennel, leaving slack in the rope so the dog would completely clear the crate if he broke without being sent. With the dog in the crate and my helper standing behind out of sight and securely holding the rope — I walked a short distance in the field, fired a shot, and tossed a mark. Remember, this dog had been through basic training, and his fundamentals of Obedience, elementary marking, steadiness, and basic lining and casting were already fairly solid. But this was a new and different situation for him. He was accustomed to sitting beside the trainer and watching while birds were thrown or shot. Marking from inside a crate with the trainer nowhere to be seen was a totally new concept.

...followed by 'kennel"...

...and finally, "stay"

When he made the retrieve and returned with the bird, rather than having the dog sit at heel to deliver it, my helper would take a few steps away from the crate and have him sit or stand in front, facing him while he reminded the dog to hold. Then he would put his hand under the bird without touching it, and tell the dog to drop. At first he would catch the bird in his hand, but he eventually let it drop to the ground. The dog’s first reaction to having the bird fall was that he had made a mistake and must quickly pick it up, but when he was told, “leave it,” he began to ignore the bird. Then, he was told to kennel into the crate, and the training continued. Within a few days, the dog was beginning to feel comfortable with the exercise, and we began to set it up to more accurately resemble the hunting conditions in which he would be working. First, we added a portable duck blind about 10 yards away from the crate. We also included my helper calling with a duck call from the blind before the mark was thrown or a live bird was shot. After a few days of this training, we switched from shooting in the field to firing a shot or several shots, first with a blank pistol and later with shotgun blanks, from the blind while the bird was in the air. The combination of the calling, shooting from the blind, and using live birds at varying distances, served to make him quite steady in the crate We used mostly clipped-wing pigeons or ducks with their wings and legs tied for the marks, shooting at them with shotgun blanks. Occasionally, we would kill a live bird, letting it fly a long distance before shooting it, to increase the temptation.

After the dog made a successful retrieve and return, my helper wouldn’t even leave the blind; he would put his hand up — palm forward like a traffic cop — and tell the dog “Stay,” then “Drop,” then “Leave it,” and finally, “Kennel.” The dog would then immediately return to his position in the crate and await the next mark.

The training was successful, although it took quite some time and some frantic phone calls to teach the dog’s owner to handle him correctly, and this dog picked up hundreds of birds every year for his owner and his owner's clients. Now this dog is getting up in years, and the owner has sent us a youngster to learn the same skills — but this time he has upped the ante:
He wants us to also teach this dog to work out of a boat blind, dropping the birds into the boat before going back into his blind. I only hope this dog is as smart as the last one