Positive Pigeon Drill - Filmed With Our New Drone!
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Welcome to Standing Stone Kennels! In this video we work Rev and Harley on the Positive Pigeon Drill and watch them work from a drone. It provides a very cool vantage point from which we can see exactly how they are working the field. Thanks for our Patreon members for your support. You make it possible to continue to up our production value and make more awesome content.
Full Transcript
Just like that. Both of them stop. And then they get to chase another one. We have Rev and Harley here. They are playing a game that we like to call positive pigeons. This is a great way to develop the introductory parts of the whoa behavior as well as to build some cooperation between dog and handler. If you haven't seen this before, if you haven't been following any of her stuff in the past. Basically the idea behind this game is I have a pigeon in my hand. The dogs learn that once they stop and stand there I released a pigeon and then get to chase it. This is all done with no verbal cues, no check cords, no E-collar. The dogs are just being rewarded for stopping and standing there with another pigeon. Now in this situation you get to learn a lot about the dogs, especially in the beginning stages of training.
We can see Harley is a little bit more cooperative, maybe. Maybe has slightly less prey drive. She doesn't chase the birds quite as far and is definitely coming back faster. Where Rev, a little dog busting off the left side... the right side of the screen there has a little more prey drive and desire to chase these birds. As soon as that pigeon comes up, Harley stops and then we are going to wait here on Rev. Once he gets stopped, move a step or two to help build some more steadiness and then there goes the pigeon. Now as they get better at this, we will start to incorporate the cue whoa. But we don't want to do it too early. We want to make sure that they are consistently stopping and fully understand how to get an extra reward. Just like that, both of them stop, and then they get to chase another one. This is an awesome game, like I said, to build cooperation between dog and handler as well as to... From a trainer standpoint, be able to evaluate the new dogs that are coming in to tell, you know, maybe what level of prey drive they're going to have, what level of cooperation they're going to have. We can learn a lot just from this little drill.
Now I'm sure that you can see this. Harley is, like I was mentioning, a little more steady naturally, and she showing, um, and that can be either just a little bit lack of prey drive, but also a stronger cooperation level. Rev is spunky and happy and gets the game, but definitely loves the chasing part of it, more than the standing part, which isn't that abnormal. But, all in all, uh, this is an awesome, awesome drill to start any young pup with. Um, and this being able to shoot this with the drone gives a kind of a little better feel of what the dogs are doing. And what we're doing is handlers to help not only incorporate, whoa in the beginning stages of training completely positively, but also to, to build an early bond between us as a handler and the dogs in training. I'm gonna dump this last bird here and this session is over. Thanks again everybody for watching and remember like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more great videos just like this. Thank you.