Training day on 25th

Yesterday we went to a Gundog Training day set up by the WCGB in Hampshire. It was a bit of a drive from us, but as we don't go to a regular class I rely on these training days to get experience.

Arrived nice and early and we were in Improvers group one. We had a fairly small group with a nice trainer so we were lucky, not too much waiting around.

We started with a few steadiness exercises which I really liked as something I can never practise at home. We did sit and stays, and then recalling your individual dog from them all in a stay. We also did a great exercise where we all walked in a line with our dogs in off-lead heel and the trainer through dummies over our heads landing in front of the dogs. Exercise was to leave the dummies and stay at heel.

We did some basic retrieves such a memory and a split. Good to do these things around lots of other dogs as I do them so much on my own with her, but never know how she will fair when theres lots of distractions around.

In the afternoon we made them jump a countryside fence which was interesting. Olive jumped over without much fuss one side, but couldn't get back across from the other side as the ground was a lot lower. She tried and fell backwards on her back which I thought might have knocked her confidence, but luckily it didn't.

The trainer had a dummy that made a bang like a cap gun when he pulled the toggle. This was a good one for Olive, and she wasn't scared of the bang at all. In fact I think she was excited by it. She can be bad at marking retrieves, which results in a lot of directing from me to get her to find them and the bang really helps her pay attention to where the dummy falls. We also tried her with a dummy launcher which was really loud and fired incredibly far. She loved this one and retrieved it fine with no problems.

Lastly we did some hunting which I was pleased about as this is our real problem area, through lack of practise on my behalf. The trainer got us to hunt them up the field, stopping them to the whistle when he asked us to, and then sending them out left/right to get them on further. Good exercise and she did so well with directions considering she has only just cracked them this past week. I also finally learn't what 'back-casting' is, something I read about and never get. When I am walking along the field and she is hunting up the field, as she gets to the edge and turns I need to push her forward and tell her to get on, as if I stand still she sometimes will back-cast and turn into the ground towards me. Probably just made no sense with all of that but I understand it in my head!

Overall she was great all day and I was so chuffed with her. Her retrieves are good, and she never drops the dummy anymore, her stop whistle is 100% and her directions are good...just got to keep going with those til she really knows them well. Now it's warmer better start on the water retrieves too. Getting her too hold the dummy out of water has always been a hard one!

We had some lovely comments from our trainer and she got a rosette for being best in her class which was nice :)

Hopefully get her to some more training soon.