Gundog Training Forum

shes just over 2 years old. She is a failed police sniffer dog. Failed the training very early on and was in kennels for ages before I re homed her.
I don't plan on working her, but like the retrieving dummies etc as enjoyment for us both. Her recall on dummies is brilliant, comes back to me every time, although wont give dummies that well, but getting better.
We are mainly working the basics - Sit to command and whistle, heel work, recall, stay etc which is all getting there, just very slowly. Stay for example - taken a month to get her to stay whilst I walk about 5 meters away, very fidgety and breaks the stay at any further distance currently.
We do about 4-5 10 minute sessions during the day and a little bit on her evening walk, usually ending in some dummy retrieves.
We are on the second trainer as the first, I felt, wasn't right for us as we made no progress. The latest trainer is much better, but only had 2 sessions so far.

It's always tougher to de-train well established but unwanted behaviours. And from what I understand of sniffer dog training they have probably encouraged the over excite ability on balls/retrieves. So such strongly established behaviours are very resistant to being stopped, can and will crop up again from time to time for quite a while after being stopped, and the behaviour will probably get worse before it finally does stop. I'm with SP that you need to develop patience and also make it rewarding for the dog to sit or stand with 4 feet on the ground. But this will be quite a challenge and if you aren't going to work the dog do you really need it to sit for the retrieve? You have a mad keen dog for retrieving or chasing balls and that can be a valuable tool in developing recall etc. Without the sit.n

Naj

Thanks for the replies. Although not going to work her, I would like to train her in the gun dog ethos rather than just a pet dog who brings back a ball etc. Working with dummies doing retrieves, blind retrieves etc she enjoys and I do to. I do have the chance to go beating if she ever made the standard, so it would be a possibilitie if I changed my mind.