At Christmas I was lucky enough to get a dummy launcher to help with training and last Sunday I got to use it for the first time at my brilliant new training location.

It’s going to be really useful for Otto’s training for two reasons, firstly it makes a big bang so simulates a shotgun and secondly and most importantly it will help me further with his steadiness training.  The plan will be to launch about 4 dummies and only let him retrieve one.

​Here's a couple of videos...

Following my earlier blog here's the second part of my photo highlights from 2017....

Not sure why but I failed to post many photos taken in 2017 here on my website, it seems that I've been busy posting on my social media accounts but not so good on keeping the website up to date.  Therefore here is part one of a few highlights from 2017...

At the end of 2017 a HPR trainer moved to our area - Matthew Ball of Dorntanza Gundog Training.  Having read Matt's impressive CV (see his website) I decided I'd like to pursue some one to one training with him, with the aim of improving Otto's steadiness, hunting and possibly his game retrieving. 

We've had two sessions thus far, both really useful giving me idea and things to work on.  Matt's training is really clear and he also sends really helpful written documents to confirm what you've been working on and tips for home training.

​Below are a series of videos of Otto and I (self filmed on my GoPro) training last week, here I'm working ​on getting him to wait for me to send him for retrieves, sometimes picking up the dummies myself and other times letting Otto pick them up.  I'm also mixing up between seen, blinds, memory and spilt retrieves.

He managed three Novice working tests, scoring well in the first two to finish in the top half of the competitors and then right at the end of the summer we managed a 3rd place which was a really nice surprise as the various injuries meant we hadn't trained as much as we hoped to.

The training we did manage to do was mainly with a new group set up by Brenda Moss and Larry Wilks of Arany Gundogs at the Commonleys Clay Shoot.  Brenda put on an excellent Natural Ability Test which included hunting and pointing partridge, a pigeon retrieve over a jump and another from water, a track of a rabbit off the leash and a gun sensitivity assessment.  Otto performed beautifully all day scoring really well, particularly with the pointing and tracking.

When the shooting season started we were stopped in our tracks again with Otto getting injured for a third time, so we missed out on a shot over training day for newbies.  However once Otto was better Brenda & Larry invited us on a rough shooting day which was very educational and fun, I learnt a lot and realised I need to do a lot more training with Otto. 

Frustratingly Otto has started to not retrieve game properly, fussing with it rather than bringing them straight back.  Frustrating as his retrieving has always been his strongest part of the Hunt, Point, Retrieve.  Best advice for now is to take a break and revisit game next year to see if he grows out of this...  I really hope so!!