It's your fault - you planted that thought in my head! Perhaps I will try a trainer I have contacted several places - of which one did get back to me but they didn't do gun dog training - despite it coming up in the search and then others just haven't emailed me back. Who was that trainer you used that lives in Newstead? I'm sure you mentioned one..

Louie's heeling offlead is quite good - better than onlead for sure..

I'll have to mull over the methods tonight.. I do think Helen's method would be easier for him to grasp as he is already confused by me asking him to pick up the dummy - my fault I know!

For retrieve training you do not need a gundog trainer!

ANY successful trainer of Schutzhund, Obedience, Working Trials can teach you a superb retrieve.

A retrieve, is a retrieve, is a retrieve.

Why is your dog confused about picking up the dummy?

You just posted a thread of him picking it up and bringing it back?

I do not understand?!

I wouldnt say I inadvertantly trained him to do that because it doesnt happen often. Considering how hard his mouth can be, he sometimes doesnt have a great grip on the dummies and when he comes back at full speed and stops fairly suddenly he can, on occassion, drop it. It's not like he spits it out and then picks it up. I always mark the behaviour I dont want with "Ah! Ah!" followed by "hold it" and then praise when I take it from his mouth.

Well if the sawdust aint actually coming out of the dummy, his mouth can't be that bad!

No if I put it on the floor next to me - he gives me that look like - you already have it, I have no idea - maybe it's cos when I tried it earlier he wasn't motivated - he may be better tomorrow - battery is dying so will post back later.

Was that aimed at me? I'll reply anyway...!

The first dummy I ever bought is a wreck, sawdust fell out of that each time he had it in his mouth. My new dummies have no marks on them at all and yesterdays pigeons came back fine and there was no signs of him chomping on the run back.

I do think his hard mouth was my creation.

Usually is, but if he has brought back game with no damage you've done ok!

Louie is good with the dummies - wouldn't you say Leanne? He has a tendency to mouth them a little when first picking them up - in fact I need to go back to the pick up, he tends to drop them then scrabble them with his paws - it's why I like water retrieves better with him 'cos he has no option than to pick it up and he only picks it up the once because he is so focused on swimming (trying to touch the floor ) back that he doesn't mouth.

That's a thing I meant to ask you, water retrieves - what are the rules? I mean for things like shaking.. It'd be same as a land one wouldn't it, bring to you without dropping - so how do you catch them before the shake? - I'm getting ahead of myself I know - but for future reference

Rush rush rush.........

Yes the dog should not put dummy/game down, have a shake and then pick it up and return because of course "in the real world" if it was retrieving game, it might not actually be dead and a wounded bird could escape if this happened.

For the bird's welfare, you do not want a wounded bird going off to die a slow death.

If you remember that FT and GWT were designed as tests to determine the worth of future breeding stock to fulfil a function, these rules make sense!

The way you prevent this behaviour is, at the risk of repeating myself, conditioning the dog on LAND first, eg to shape the pick up and hold so the dog does NOT drop it at all.

If he tends to drop it on land, you can bet your bottom dollar that the FIRST thing he will do when he puts his feet on the ground after coming out of the water is DROP it.

One of the ways hard mouths are created is this continual dropping and picking up and repositioning the item in the mouth.

Obviously from a game point of view, each time you drop and pick up a dead bird the MORE it tends to get damaged. The reason for shooting the bird in the first place was to EAT it, nobody want to pluck, gut, hang and cook a car crash!

Once you have a rock solid pick up, and hold (trained, proofed and generalised as per my article) then you can start with the water issue.

You stand IN the water to begin with, with your palm flat to make the distance between "feet hit floor" and "open gob" as short as possible.

You then start to GRADUALLY (SLB I said GRADUALLY ) incrasing the distance between the exit and you........

I put the "shake" on command, so again the dog knows it will get reinforced for the retrieve to hand AND the shake but the rienforcement for the former is of higher value than the latter.

I'll have to invest in some waders then - hmmm attractive

Can't I do it backwards - I'm sure I'd get better results with water retrieves before I do with land.
We did get better results when we first took him out - he has much more enthusiasm for the water than land.

Dogs should be able to read - if he could I wouldn't be having any trouble!