Rocky is a new edition to the kennel and is trying to find his feet.

Rocky has come from a pet home showing all the bad habits which generally come from to much freedom, not enough boundaries and too much love and affection!

This will all sound very strange to many dog owners! How can you love them to much?

To much love with no boundaries gives a puppy no direction in life allowing them to try and call the shots. They generally become very boisterous, vocal, hard mouthed and frantic in their behaviour.

The British Veterinary Association recommend 5 minutes per month of age regarding hands on training with young puppies. I would imagine a huge percentage of people overdo this by some way.

Dogs generally look and need a good leader, we will see how Rocky’s progress comes on with the right training. I would imagine he will enjoy the early days but when things become more serious he will ask more questions of me. We want his early training to become smooth but unfortunately it will be a rocky road to success!

Harry is another of our home bred Labradors. His training has started really well.

I have been and done the same activity with Treacle but a different way round to keep her on her toes!

This time she is showing more confidence that there is something to find when i send her in a certain direction.

Really pleased with the outcome of this training session.

As treacle is coming on in her ability i am now trying to test her a little to she how capable she really is.

THINGS TO REMEMBER AT THIS STAGE.

*Her age.

*We are only training so if she needs help i will give help! I wont let her confidence go backwards intentionally.

*Watch and learn how she works things out.

Below i have added two videos, the first is of Treacle our 9 month old black Labrador and the second is Timber our Golden Retriever who’s 2 years old.

I’m doing the same activity with them but they are at different levels as you will see.

I took Treacle out training somewhere different to see what results we got on new ground.

Treacle had a few retrieves from the pond and stubble filed individually which then built her up to a double mark. One retrieve from the water and the second from the field of stubble.

It was an extremely windy night but Treacle took most of it in her stride use the wind well to find the dummies.

It may sound simple that you want a dog to look in the direction your hand is pointing but towards something they haven’t seen placed. This is where it can become more of a challenge!

I’m just starting to teach Treacle to look down my hand and if she looks in the right direction she will see dummies which hopefully stand out to build her confidence.

As you’ll see from the videos I’m having mixed results at present!

With the heat of summer we have been very careful not to over exercise our young dogs and cause any issues.

Now the weather is back to normal we have been back on the training field. I have taken a step back to see if the young dogs are still understanding their training.

In this video clip I’m trying to show you how i introduce the whistle to early training.

I start by continuing activities that Treacle has been doing regularly to try and build confidence whilst introducing something new, and today its the whistle.

You will see how careful you have to be as drive level drops quicker than you would think when something arises that hasn’t been heard before.

We use 3 whistle commands whilst training our gundogs using a 211 and 1/2.

1st command is one pip which means stop and sit, as dogs become more experienced most dogs will stand when they have stopped and that’s OK.

2nd is 2 pips in quick succession which means turn and hunt in the other directions.

3rd is continuous pips which means come back to hand.

Iv added this video of Vixen a home bred working Golden Retriever.

Although I haven’t logged her training from the start you will see all the same traits in her training that I have done with treacle our black Labrador.

Many people say you never train 2 dogs the same, I beg to differ slightly.

I think dog owners interpret this in the wrong context, if we had to think of new training methods for every dog we trained we would soon run out of ideas.

However, we do come across some dogs that you really have to think outside of the box to get the best from their ability.

Iv added this video mainly to show you that from a puppy our training methods are the same with each puppy but differ for the dogs personality and breed traits.