All About Retriever Training Dummies

Training dummies are a staple of a good retriever training program. Whether you call them dummies or bumpers doesn’t matter, but what does matter is picking the right style and colour to fit your training situations.

Dummies come large or small and in plastic or canvas. They also come in a variety of colours, the main ones being white, black, black/white, and orange.

At first look, you might reckon there aren't heaps to think about when choosing a training dummy. But, any decent retriever that's got a pedigree worth the paper it's written on reckons that chasing and fetching pretty much anything is the best fun a dog could want. Even so, your training sessions will go better with a bit of planning when it comes to using and picking out dummies.

Contrast, Contrast, Contrast!

The first rule of setting up worthwhile retrieving, or 'marking', drills is that you have to give your dog every chance to see the throw. Otherwise, what's the point?

Always consider the background and try to envision the way your doggo is gonna see the throw as you set up marking drills. If you're chucking against a dark background like a tree line, you should obviously be using white. If the throw is gonna take the dummy up against a bright sky at midday, a black/white dummy should offer that much-needed contrast that will help your dog see it clearly.

Keep the all-important contrast factor in mind and you can't go wrong. When you're working on building a dog's confidence, white is going to get the nod almost every time because your dog won't have to work too hard at finding the dummy as it gets close to it. As for water training, nothing beats the way a white dummy practically sparkles on the water if you're running your dog with the sun behind you. That can be a big motivator when you're working on longer retrieves.

A lot of people don’t understand why their dog can’t easily spot an orange dummy, even in short grass. It’s because to a dog’s eyes, an orange dummy appears grey and therefore blends into most ground cover. Orange is tops during training for blind retrieves when you want to be sure your dog can’t see the object you sent it to fetch. But I should also add that orange does have a place in marking drills. It seems to provide plenty of contrast when thrown against a bright sky, and in that situation may even stand out better than white.

Matching Dummy Size to Dog

It's important to start out with a smaller-diameter dummy during puppy training. You want to encourage your pup to grab it in the middle. When a dummy is too large for a dog to carry comfortably, it will tend to grab it by the throwing rope or on the skinny part near the grommet, and that can lead to bad habits that become hard to correct.

Speaking of the throwing rope, I suggest leaving the rope off of puppy-sized dummies in the early stages of training. That's one less variable to contend with.

One factor that I reckon is often overlooked as a dog gets bigger is that you need to make sure it gets used to regularly handling a larger dummy. Whether it’s plastic or canvas, a chunkier dummy that fills the dog’s gob better means less chance that they’ll be able to fumble it in their mouth and chomp on it, which can lead to hardmouth. Plus, gamebirds such as ducks and pheasants are pretty big, so this is a top example of where you want to follow the “practice like you want to play” principle during training.

Canvas or Plastic?

Most trainers head to the field well-equipped with both plastic and canvas-covered dummies. Plastic's good for just about any situation. When you're looking at colour contrast, all the previously mentioned factors apply to both kinds. Canvas, though, offers a bit more versatility since it's more like a real bird. Let me explain.

It's important to train with real birds when you can, but let's face it; live or fresh-killed ducks and pheasants aren't always on hand and can be dear as poison. A large canvas dummy can fill the gap. Strapping a pair of duck or pheasant wings to a canvas dummy with electrical tape makes a bulky, weighty object, and the wings chuck in a bit of real-bird feel. All up, the result is a ripper dose of excitement during training drills.

An extra advantage of canvas dummies is that they'll let you know if your dog is developing a mouthing problem. If your canvas dummies are full of deep teeth marks or you see that your dog is puncturing the canvas, it's not much of a stretch to imagine what will happen with real birds. If you see evidence that hardmouth is becoming a problem, it's time to get with a professional trainer who can revisit force-fetching and find a fix.

Scent Considerations

While the focus with training dummies is the crucial part of practising marking throws, there are times when you might want to work on scent-related drills. Again, nothing tops real birds, but a dummy with bird scent can be a fair stand-in.

If you want to give your dog a leg up in using its nose to find plastic dummies, slap on some commercially made wax-based scent. I prefer wax over liquid scent 'cause the wax will hold the smell longer and thus needs less topping up.

Canvas dummies are excellent for absorbing and holding liquid scent. If you’re working on trailing drills (for pheasant-hunting practice for example), a canvas dummy laced with liquid scent and dragged through light cover should give a dog plenty to work with.

A retrieving dummy is as simple to use as it is valuable. Putting some thought into what styles, sizes and colours you’re using will help you build a more successful retriever.