The Cherry on the Bakewell Tart

I feel that, when training our dogs to retrieve, we can take a lot of inspiration from the Bakewell Tart. This fabulous dessert has three defining characteristics: the pastry, the filling and of course, the cherry on the top. So how does this in anyway relate to dog training?

Well, as I often say to my clients, you can’t have the cherry on top until you’ve made the rest of the tart. The cherry is the dummy, it’s the first thing the dog wants. Of course, we want to eat the cherry first but that is not how it works, first we have to make the cake. So we start with the pastry – this is the sit wait, the steadiness you want to see in your dog. Then you have to add the filling – this is the recall. If you don’t have recall without the dummy, then you certainly won’t have it with the dummy.

Only once you have made your pastry and your filling can you move on to the cherry – your dummy retrieves. The first thing the dog wants is the last thing we give, otherwise they get to enjoy the cherry on top of the Bakewell Tart without doing the work to get there.

We have to tick all the boxes. We can’t cut corners. There is no use introducing a dummy before we have the recall; no point doing recall until a sit wait is established. Like any successful recipe, you have to follow the stages. Only then can you get to enjoy the cherry on the top.

Posted: May 16, 2019