Ripples on the Lake

Training a dog can be much easier if we remember to keep the dog near to us until it thoroughly understands what we are trying to teach. A very wise saying is ‘never ask a dog to do ten yards away that it isn’t perfect at five yards away’.

If a dog doesn’t have a good recall there is little point in letting it run off a long line. The recall given as the dog is a distance away is distorted and applied as the dog is running away! Far better to get the dog to run back on the long line and then give the recall, which will have a direct line to the ears of a forward running dog so the sound won’t be distorted, and the dog will associate the recall with coming back and not with going away.

When a pebble is thrown into still water it creates ripples which will spread, and the further they are from the centre the wider apart they become. If the water is a large area the ripples will not reach the edge as they would in a smaller area. In fact the smaller the area the closer the ripples will be when they reach the edge. But they will never be as close as they are at the centre, where the pebble first made its impression.

Think of a voice as the ripples and the nearer the dog is to the sound the better and the clearer the reception will be, as the sound waves are close together. But the further away the dog is, the wider the ripples become until it comes to a point when the ripples no longer exist.

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