For the dog to be able to stay at the top of his game you must train or test him often. Dogs that see few marks during the winter need extra training in the spring to bring their skills back up to par. If you have kept him in the game through hunting season as well as the long months of winter he will continue to excel. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to send him to a pro trainer during winter, but you do have to dedicate a substantial amount of time.

When everyone thinks of advanced techniques, they seem to think of distance. And with some drills it’s true. Stretching your blinds out is very important with the advanced dog. Getting him used to barely hearing the stop whistle and concentrating on taking your cast from far away is an advanced tactic.

In some advanced drills we basically do the same drills as we had before but at greater distances. It isn’t the fact that one day bam, you start running long stuff, it’s a gradual increase as the dogs get older and more experienced.

We also tend to be more critical in our handling. As the dog gets older we get tighter on our arm movements expecting the dog to respond accordingly. As in handling a dog on an angle back. We start out with a big angle at first maybe sticking our arm at a forty five degree angle and jump to the left just to get the dog to deviate fifteen degrees and with an older dog we will give the arm angle that takes the dog to the bird. Some trainers call this literal casting. We teach these angles to the dogs to be fair as they learn.

When running multiple blinds with older dogs we incorporate very tight angles into and out of water at great distances. We also keep a very high standard with an older dog to avoid "training bad habits". For example, when training we let the dog heal a foot or two ahead of us. At the hunt test he will heal five feet in front of us. The more a dog gets exited the more magnified a problem becomes.

First things first. Keep a calendar or log of your dog and rate your dog in his abilities as a judge would. Then keep track on the work your doing with him. Also write down the things you want him to know, marking, retired guns, walk-ups, etc.

A calendar is easy to keep and this way you won’t forget to tune him up. You can also keep track of how many land marks, water marks, etc. he has had. A balanced training regime is most important.

Rating your dog using a score of one to ten is sometimes difficult for amateur trainers. You don’t have to make this a big deal. If he is perfect, it’s a ten. If he hasn’t been taught the concept then it’s a 0 or N/A. The key is to be consistent. And of coarse the abilities he scores low in are the things you want to concentrate most in training. Although it’s difficult to keep a dog perfect, you should be able to achieve a good balance. Some numbers will go up, such as marking, while others may take a slight dip, such as handling. You will always be trying to balance his skills. The more you work on it, the more balanced he will become.

A good balance of drills and tests are your best bet. If a dog’s re-entry isn’t very good, by all means work on it. But don’t let it take away from other training that’s needed to keep him proficient. Otherwise you’ll quickly be correcting something else.

Advanced dogs should be able to accomplish multiple land and water marks up to four birds without much deviation off line because of factors (things that affect the dog to not take a straight line to the bird). He should be able to accomplish these retrieves at long distances. The distance for marks should not be so far that the dog can’t see the arc of the thrown bird. Back grounds and light will affect this.

Advanced dogs should also be able to accomplish these marks along with land and water blinds without deviating from the original line. Again, they should accomplish this while running thru different types of cover along with re-entries (coming out of the water and going into the next body of water) never stopping or starting a hunt until he is told by the handler.

Along with these advanced marks and blinds, the dog should be able to deal with different diversions, for example. A mark will be thrown while he is returning with another bird. The dog will continue bringing you the bird he has, without dropping it and running for the deviation bird. Or a helper standing off to the side will shoot a blank shell, to try and make the dog think something was thrown there, and you send him on a blind in a different area. These diversions are designed to try and trick the dog into doing something he wasn’t told to do. This type of training is justified because these scenarios do happen while hunting. It is also great obedience.

Poison birds also need to be practiced on occasion. These are simply birds that the dog sees fall but can’t pick up until he accomplishes one or more blinds. Have the mark thrown, then tell him "no", "no". Point or turn him towards the blind tell him "right there", "right there". Then send him for the blind. When he returns with the blind send him for the mark (poison bird).

Wipe out birds are birds thrown very close to the dogs position as the last bird thrown in a marking setup usually directly in front of him trying to get him to forget the other longer marks.

Walk-ups need to be in set-ups too. While walking up to the line you signal for the birds to be thrown. The dog should know that if a duck call is blown or he sees a bird in the air, he should immediately sit and watch the bird. These tests require great concentration on the dogs part as he has little time to analyze the grounds. These can also be poison birds.

Of coarse we must also honor with our dogs as much as possible. The older a dog gets, the sloppier they can become. Strict guidelines will be needed on all honors.

Delayed marks are done occasionally. A delayed quad would simply be a double mark is thrown. After the dog picks up the "go bird" (last bird down, first to be retrieved) another double is thrown and the dog is sent for the remaining birds, making it a delayed four bird set. It’s basically taught to improve memory.

You can incorporate all these things into one test. Here's the test. It’s a walk-up triple water mark with a double blind. On the way back from the third retrieve your dog is thrown a diversion poison bird. That means he must first run the blinds before he can pick up the diversion bird. The two blinds are planted at 200 and 100 yards respectively in line with each other and in between the middle and right mark. The dog has to run through an old fall while going after the deep blind, and also run past areas he has already picked up birds. The marks are, left bird 150 yards, middle bird 50 yards, and right bird 100 yards making this type of mark called an indented triple. That is the middle bird is closer to you then the right and left birds. The poison bird is thrown to the left of the marks at 30 yards, making it very tempting. After he runs all downed birds he must sit and honor another dog. (see illustration).

This setup tests the dogs marking, memory, trainability, obedience, discipline, style, and conditioning. If your dog does this well, you have an Advanced Retriever.