Thank you

Haha and to confuse matters further, my son is called Ben

How far is your dog going on a sendaway?

I train the sendaway and the position at the other end completely separately

Yikes!!

Tips are welcome

My dog is only going out about 30 yards or so at the moment.

Might be worth working with Tynewater at your next session on the send away if you can't make Sunday.

As SB says, train the components at different stages, and don't make the beginners mistake (been there, done that) of over training and the dog gets bored. Keep the enthusiasm really high, the next stage might be to increase distance, perhaps with a brow of hill in the middle in a while, but don't move on too fast.

I lost my send away with Lady at one point as I over-trained it. On advice, went back to 10 yard send-aways and built it back up. Number one thing the dog needs IMO, is confidence in what you are asking it to do.

We ensure that at every step on the sendaway the dog understands what is needed.

When teaching an adult dog the start of the sendaway, the first thing we would do is teach recognition of, and position at the marker, our chosen position would be a down for preferrence.

When the dog knows its job at the end of the sendaway we would start outrun training, quickly lengthening the outrun, as we have already taught control at the end, the dog knows its job is to lie down, and say there until something else is requested.

Hi Jenny, good info. This is the way I start it as well, training an extremely positive association and the position at the marker. Picked that up from Doug / Brian.

I teach the sit for two reasons. For some reason I'm more comfortable with it, can't really explain why. Second is long grass. However a lot of the experienced triallists seem to go for the down and it seems to be that the dog will tend to hold position better there, especially the pastoral breeds - out of interest is there a reason you use the down?

I prefer a down because it is a stable position, it is obvious if it has or hasn't been taught sufficiently, so your training can be adjusted. It is a definate position for a dog, which they have to think about doing.

When competing it is obvious to the judge when the dog has stopped, if you get a slight drop in behaviour at a trial, as sometimes you do, chances are the dog will still be stable, if not in a down.

Thanks Nick - good points. I was training every day for a while, but could see the enthusiasm for sendaways and search square, as well the general control (but not tracking interestingly) ebbing away, so am back to training every two or three days and only very short enthusiastic sessions.

Thanks for your advice Jenny. I think perhaps I have been asking too much of my dog before he knows what is required of him. Back to the beginning again

I'm sure June and Gwen will be delighted you've been practicing, it will give them something to work with when you go again.
When you first start out training things you are not used to, it will be trial and error, but if you never try anything, you'll never get anywhere.
You will always learn something from the session, even if its never do that again.