1-1 Lesson

We had a 1-1 training lesson today in Westerham, Kent.
This was our first gundog lesson since Olive was 5 months old with a new trainer I had never met before. Overall I was pleased with the lesson. The trainer said Olive's heel, sit, stay, steadiness, stop to whistle, retrieves, were all really good and didn't even need any work. What we need to concentrate on is her quartering and getting her out more. She hunts well and uses the wind, but I still dont know how to send her into the wind properly ( I am such a dummy with this ). She hunts better through woodland and gets out further than she does on a field. I dont ever practise the hunting with her, for fear of doing it wrong so now I feel I know abit more and have something to work on. I need to just practise walking in the quartering pattern with her into the wind so she is turning into the wind each time, Olive looks to me alot for direction all the time so I need to ignore her abit and just encourage her to get out and hunt further.
We did marked retrieves and memory retrieves and she did them all brilliantly so I was really chuffed with this and so was the trainer. Now I need to be teaching her to hunt in undergrowth for things. So we practised hiding rabbit dummies in thick undergrowth and then I send her out for a retrieve, stop her on the area, and then indicate for her to hunt low to the ground in this area. This is something I have never done before and she didnt really understand at first, me shouting where is it?! where is it?! and she was just looking at me like what are you on about now mum. In the end we found that saying 'steady', 'steady' and a hand signal circling the ground worked for her and got her doing it, which she found really fun in the end. This is definitely something I want to work on now and build up with her. Eventually I will be able to use this comand to hunt low in blind retrieves to hold her in certain areas. When we have got this sussed the trainer did show me how to get them to look high too. She put a dummy on a tree branch and then directed her lab towards it and then asked her to 'look high', the lab jumped up and grabbed the dummy and it was pretty impressive.
We did some steadiness exercises where we left Olive and her lab in sit stays next to each other, and then practised holding our own dogs in place and the other person recalling and giving commands to the other. The trainer was really pleased with Olive on this as she didn't move once unless I called her or gave her a command. I thought she was going to be running off with the lab as soon as the trainer called it, so I was suprised with how good her steadiness was!
So we have lots to get working on in the week now!!