Many handlers secretly worry that obedience will dull their retriever. They want a powerful duck dog or field trial retriever, not a stiff, mechanical heel machine. They are afraid that sitting, heeling, and lining drills will “take the spark out.”

Pat’s answer is simple: you train obedience in drive, not instead of drive.

Train in drive means you deliberately put the dog in a drive state. He wants the bumper. You let him know you have the bumper. The conversation becomes:

You want the bumper.
I want you to have the bumper.
Let me show you what you need to do to make me produce the bumper.

Reward markers, used as a conditioned secondary reinforcer, connect the dog’s behavior with the reward he wants. Obedience becomes how the dog answers both questions Pat builds his training on:

•  What makes reward happen
•  What turns pressure off

The goal is straightforward. The dog learns that doing what you ask is the fastest way to get what he wants, without losing his desire to go hard for birds.

Stillness As Part Of The Hunt

To shift how people think about steadiness, Pat often uses a hunting picture and sums it up in one short line: being still kills more.

He asks you to imagine a hawk in a dead tree. The bird is locked on a rabbit in the grass. It does not fidget. It does not scream. It sits rock still and waits.

That hawk is not bored or shut down. It is fully engaged in the hunt. Stillness is part of the kill.

A steady retriever at the line should feel the same way. The dog is not “held back.” He is holding himself together because that is how he gets the bird.

When you train in drive, you show the dog that sit, stay, and heel are not dead, disconnected obedience. They are how the hunt works.

Why Teach The Indirect Path To Reward

Pat is clear that he does not teach the Indirect Path because he wants to get rid of direct pursuit of reward. When you actually shoot a duck, he wants the dog to go straight to it and bring it back.

The problem is that many of the things we need to ask a hunting dog to do in training and in real hunts feel, to the dog, like they are getting in the way of getting the bird.

Examples:

•  You ask a young Lab to sit in the blind while more birds are working. He thinks, “You are stopping me from getting that bird that just fell.”
  
•  One bird is dead in the decoys and another is drifting away out in deeper water. You need to send him on a blind to the bird he did not see so you do not lose it. The one in the decoys is right there and obvious. From the dog’s point of view, sending him away from the bird he can see looks crazy.
  

If the dog does not understand the Indirect Path to Reward, these moments feel like a fight. When you say “Come here, do not get that one in the decoys,” he thinks, “You are trying to stop me from having what I want,” and he pushes harder against you.

Pat teaches the Indirect Path so the dog can think a different thought:

I want that bird.
He is showing me what I need to do to get that bird.

The Indirect Path does not replace direct pursuit of reward. It gives you another tool so you can ask for obedience that appears, at first, to pull the dog away from what he wants, without turning it into a battle.

What Is The “Indirect Path” To Reward?

Most retrievers start with one simple pattern that feels natural to them and their handlers:

•  Bird falls.
  
•  Dog rushes straight to the bird.
  

Obedience can feel like the handler stepping in between the dog and the bird. That is where conflict starts.

The Indirect Path to Reward flips that picture.

Instead of blocking the dog’s path, you give him a new path that runs through obedience, and you pay that path with reward markers and retrieves. This is the same principle Pat breaks down in his Connecting Obedience with the Pursuit of Reward webinar.

A simple version looks like this:

•  You throw a bumper to the left at 9 o’clock.
  
•  The dog clearly wants that bumper.
  
•  Instead of lining him straight to it, you first send him to a raised table in front of you at 12 o’clock.
  
•  When the dog gets on the table as commanded, you mark that choice with a clear reward marker such as “Yes.”
  
•  Immediately after, you cast the dog off the table toward the bumper at 9 o’clock.
  

Very quickly, the dog starts to see the pattern:

“The bumper is over there, but I have to go to the table first to get it.”

He is not just tolerating the table. He is using the table to get to the retrieve. Pat calls this the Indirect Path to Reward: the dog reaches the bird by following your cue, not by ignoring you.

Turning Obedience Into A Tool, Not A Roadblock

Handlers often talk about “drills” as the boring part of retriever training and “marks” or “hunting” as the fun part.

The Indirect Path game blurs that line. From the dog’s point of view:

•  Going to the table is no longer random work.
  
•  Taking a cast is not something that pulls him away from the bird.
  
•  Heel, sit, and place are the moves that make bumpers and birds happen. These are the core moves you practice in Pat’s Table Games and Basics in Drive work.
  
  

You begin to blend the ‘drudgery’ of obedience with the pursuit of gain until the dog can no longer see where one ends and the other begins.

Obedience stops feeling like a wall and becomes a tool the dog uses to get what he wants.

How To Set Up Your Own Indirect Path Game

Here is a straightforward version you can try at home. Pat teaches this in more depth in his Table Games for Retrievers and upcoming Basics in Drive program.

Start simple:

1. Pick a familiar yard or training field.
   
2. Set up a stable place platform or table at 12 o’clock from your position.
   
3. Toss a bumper off to your left at 9 o’clock.
   
4. Heel your dog at your side. Let him see the bumper.
   
5. Give your place or table command and send the dog to 12 o’clock.
   
6. When all four feet are on the table, use your reward marker word.
   
7. Immediately cast your dog toward the bumper at 9 o’clock.
   
8. Praise on the way back and take the bumper cleanly.
   

Run several rotations until your dog clearly anticipates that going to the table leads to a retrieve.

As your retriever gets comfortable, you can:

•  Rotate the positions of the table and the bumper
  
•  Add more obedience between table and send
  
•  Use birds instead of bumpers for your hunting dog training
  

You are always keeping the pattern clear: obedience first, then the retrieve.

Blending “Drudgery” And Desire

Bernard Waters wrote that a dog’s best work comes when the effort and the reward are so closely joined that he cannot see where one stops and the other starts. The quote comes from his book Fetch and Carry, a Treatise on Training Retrievers, published in 1878.

In modern retriever and gun dog obedience training, the Indirect Path puts that idea into daily practice.

You are still building all the work many handlers call drudgery:

•  Precise sits.
•  Clean place work.
•  Straight lines to a target.
•  Calm heel and delivery.

At the same time, you are feeding your dog’s desire:

•  He sees the bumper or bird fall.
•  He knows a clear sequence of obedience moves will send him.
•  He feels that every correct response puts him closer to the bird, not farther away.

The result is a dog that drives into obedience drills with the same energy he brings to a falling duck.

Where Training In Drive Fits With E Collar Work

For many handlers using e-collar training with retrievers, the Indirect Path is where things finally click.

Once the dog understands:

•  Obedience commands such as sit, here, and place.
  
•  Low-level collar pressure that backs up those commands.
  
•  Reward markers that predict birds, bumpers, or play.
  

You can blend them into one clear system. A typical sequence looks like this:

•  Cue the table or place.
•  If the dog hesitates, you apply light collar pressure on the known command.
•  When he commits to the place or table, you stop the pressure and use your reward marker.
•  You cast him to the bird and let him complete the retrieve.
  

You are using all four consequences in a clear way:

•  Reward to build behavior
  
•  Negative reinforcement when the dog turns pressure off by doing the right thing
  
•  Occasional, carefully chosen punishment when needed to stop behavior that cannot be allowed
  
•  The removal of reward when he chooses the wrong path
  

Most of the time, Pat prefers to put pressure on the desired behavior rather than simply punishing the wrong one. In this game that means, “Do the right thing here, and you will feel the pressure turn off and the retrieve open up.”

Even when the collar is in play, the path through obedience still leads to the thing the dog wants.

Why This Matters For Real Hunting And Tests

In hunt tests, field trials, and real duck blinds, your retriever is always choosing between you and the bird.

If obedience has always meant “you lose the bird,” that choice will feel like a fight. The dog will see you as the person who gets in the way of what he wants.

When you build patterns like the Indirect Path, the picture changes:

•  Obedience is not a detour
  
•  It is the direct route to the duck

That mindset is what carries a dog from simple yard work into the chaos of real hunting and competition. It is why training in drive, with a clear Indirect Path to Reward, sits at the center of Pat Nolan’s approach to retriever and hunting dog training.