RETRIEVING AUSTRALIA FORUM

I noticed in the last dogs Vic gazette the photos of the place getters for the RATG trial that three of the dogs had orange dummies . I would never use an orange dummie in a trial . They cant see the orange like we do. I use orange dummies in cover when I want them to use their nose and not their eyes. I think it would be much harder for them to mark the dummie in the sky also .I dragged some info off the internet about dogs colour spectrum there is plenty of reading if you want to research it further.


Are dogs color blind?
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Question:
Are dogs colorblind?

Answer:
No, dogs are not colorblind in the sense that they see more than just black, white, and gray. However, the color range they perceive is limited compared to the spectrum we see.

To put it in very basic terms, the canine color field consists mostly of yellows, blues, and violets. "Human" reds, greens, and oranges are not distinguishable to dogs and instead appear somewhere on their yellow to blue spectrum.

The reason? The retina of both species contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The human eye, however, contains more types of cones while the canine eye has more rods and no fovea, which is responsible for sharp visual detail in humans. The result is that dogs have superior night vision and are better at tracking movement than we are, but see fewer colors and shapes and objects appear in much less detail.

The bottom line is that tossing an orange ball onto green grass may look like yellow against yellow to your dog, but his acute motion-detection ability will help him fetch it anyway.

Re orange dummies. Exactly as you say Peter, dogs don't see orange as we do. I have found that using them really depends on the conditions. If a trial has cover you want the dog to use it's nose and not run around aimlessly looking for something as I have seen some do. They need to learn to sniff it out and these help to teach. If the day calls for somthing to be more visible you just cover the dummy with a dark sock. Many months ago I was advised that these were excellent to use in RATG and have found no problems so far.

Hi Peter,

At the completion of judging on Sunday at presentations I commented on the use of orange dummies, advising the competitors of the difficulty dogs have seeing orange and suggested for competition covering the dummies with a dark sock or similar.

We (Noel and I) also only use orange dummies when we train to encourage the "nose" they work brilliantly when doing down wind work.

Kate