diff --git a/spacy/syntax/nn_parser.pyx b/spacy/syntax/nn_parser.pyx
index 94369a828..ed4697302 100644
--- a/spacy/syntax/nn_parser.pyx
+++ b/spacy/syntax/nn_parser.pyx
@@ -624,11 +624,12 @@ cdef class Parser:
             sgd = self.create_optimizer()
         doc_sample = []
         gold_sample = []
-        for example in islice(get_examples(), 1000):
+        for example in islice(get_examples(), 10):
             parses = example.get_gold_parses(merge=False, vocab=self.vocab)
             for doc, gold in parses:
-                doc_sample.append(doc)
-                gold_sample.append(gold)
+                if len(doc):
+                    doc_sample.append(doc)
+                    gold_sample.append(gold)
         for name, component in pipeline:
             if component is self:
                 break