REMY: WORKING IN A PICKING-UP TEAM

UNTIL NOW, REMY’S training has been quite solitary. He has been worked on his own without any distractions from other dogs. However, as I plan to work him with the rest of my picking-up team, the time has come to see how he gets on watching other dogs work and whether he can remain calm and under control.

This stage of a dog’s training can be fraught with problems — if you don’t do it carefully, it can lead to the snatching of retrieves, running-in or, even worse, making a noise out of frustration.

To ensure that this exercise goes as smoothly as possible, it is important that you use one experienced, steady dog to work alongside your youngster. In this case I used Jack, my 12-year-old springer, who has seen and done it all.

I have been sending Remy out for retrieves by his name only and this conditioning is starting to pay dividends.

STAGE 1

First, I sat both Remy and Jack next to me, and as an extra precaution I kept Remy on a lead. I had previously put down a memory retrieve for Jack, as throwing out a dummy might excite Remy a bit too much. Once Remy was settled, I sent Jack (by calling his name only) out for the retrieve and kept an eye 48 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE on Remy to watch how he reacted. You need to be alert for when the older dog comes back with the dummy. As Jack returned, I gave the lead a bit of a tug to remind Remy he is not to interfere with the dog making the retrieve.

STAGE 2

Remy was fine with Jack bringing back the dummy, so the next stage was to step up the temptation by using cold game. At this point I kept Remy on the lead and again made it a short memory retrieve for Jack rather than throwing out the bird.

Jack has a nice delivery, so when he came back I made him sit up in front of

Neil sends Jack for the retrieve, using his name; Jack delivers his find as Remy looks on (right)