Getting that retrieve

My cocker works a nice pattern, hunts hard, takes hand signals and stops on the whistle. Unfortunately, he won’t bring a retrieve to hand, spitting it out on the return. Is there anything I can do to cure this?

Graham says: Difficulties of this sort can be avoided if you work on the dog’s retrieving capabilities before any steadiness training is started. Believe me, once you have trained a dog to be steady it then becomes very difficult to give sufficient retrieves to rectify any problems delivering to hand. If the dog will walk properly to heel off-lead, drop a retrieve and walk on 10 or 15 yards before sending him back for the dummy. As soon as he picks it up, turn around and walk away, at the same time commanding him to walk to heel. The aim is to get him to walk happily alongside you carrying the retrieve. If he drops it, send him back immediately for the retrieve as you carry on walking.

Repeat until he will walk next to you carrying the retrieve, without dropping it. Now, as you walk, bend down and gently take the retrieve from him. This may take several attempts to rectify and should only be tried with a retrieve that he really likes to carry.