4 Ways to Get More Out of Your CATO Place Board

If you've picked up a Cato place board from Gun Dog Supply, you already know what it's there for — teaching your dog to go to "place" and stay there until released. That's right there in the name. But if all you're using it for is the basic place command, you're leaving a lot of training value on the table.

Jared Thatcher, who runs a training kennel and breeding operation at TDF Kennels in Kentucky, uses a CATO board every single day with the dogs in his program. He walked through some of his favorite ways to put a place board to work — from the first day a puppy sees one, all the way through casting drills with a finished dog.

Start Early, Even with a Puppy

You don't have to wait until your dog is older to introduce the board. Jared starts puppies on it right away, and for good reason: a puppy that's already comfortable stepping up on the board has a head start when it comes time to actually teach the place command.

The goal in those early sessions isn't obedience — it's association. The place board needs to mean something good. Treats, a retrieve, some praise and petting — whatever it takes so the puppy learns that good things happen up there. Get that foundation built early, and the formal training later on goes a lot faster.

Use It to Shape a Clean Delivery

Once a dog knows place, one of the simplest and most useful applications is shaping delivery — teaching the dog exactly where and how you want a retrieve brought back, whether that's a bird, a bumper, or just a tennis ball in the backyard.

Jared demonstrated this with Crush, a nine or ten month old dog still working on the fundamentals:

Front delivery — stand directly in front of the board, send the dog for the dummy, and have him return and deliver right there in front of you. Heel delivery — reposition so you're standing at heel to the board, and have the dog bring the retrieve back and deliver at heel instead.

The board gives the dog a fixed, known target, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of delivery training. If you've got a young dog and delivery isn't clean yet, this is a great place to start.

Use It as the "Pitcher's Mound" for Casting

For older, more experienced dogs, Jared uses the place board a little differently — as a home base for casting drills, or what he calls "playing baseball." The board becomes the pitcher's mound: a known spot the dog casts off of and a known spot the dog comes back to.

It works well for a couple of reasons. It gives the dog a consistent target to return to after a cast, and it also gives you a consistent spot for delivery once the retrieve is finished. Over time the board becomes a reliable "home" the dog understands and trusts — a good place to work from and a good place to come back to.

Turf vs. Rubber: Which Top Should You Choose?

Jared has trained on both the rubber-top and artificial turf-top Cato boards over the years, and he's landed on a preference: the turf top. It's not that the rubber boards don't work — he used them for years with good results — but he's found the turf surface gives dogs noticeably better grip when they're leaving the board, which matters for drills like casting where the dog is pushing off quickly in a specific direction.

If you're deciding between the two styles, that grip difference is worth factoring in, especially if your training involves a lot of explosive movement off the board.

The Bottom Line

A Cato place board earns its keep well beyond basic place training. Start puppies on it early to build a positive association, use it to shape front and heel deliveries in young dogs, and lean on it as a home base for casting work once your dog is further along. As Jared put it, there are plenty more ways to use one and build off of — but this is a solid place to start.

If you've already got a place board, put it to work. If you don't have one yet, now's a good time to get one going.