Ask your assistant to help you again with this part of the training. While you hunt the dog up in a suitable area, use your stop whistle to sit your dog up. As soon as your dog drops into the sit your assistant will fire a single shot. If your dog is steady to this shot, be sure to give your dog a little praise. Cast the dog on again to carry on hunting. Repeat the stop whistle and shot pairing one more time. That should be enough for the dog at the moment. You can practice this once or twice over the coming weeks.

If you have any issues I would suggest you go back to the earlier training stages. Making sure you don’t have shots fired to close or in fact to many shots. Working on the basis that all is well. You can now start to pair the shots fired with a retrieve for the dog. It should be noted that all aspects of retrieving and hunting should be solid if not you should really address these issues before moving on in your training. During the hunting up session with your dog. Use your stop whistle to sit you dog up. Your assistant will now fire a single shot as soon as the dogs bum hits the ground. If the dog is steady to the shot your assistant can calmly put a dummy out for the dog, if the dog remains steady to the dummy being thrown then now is the time to send the dog for the retrieve. It’s likely that the dog was stopped in front of you, as it was hunting up prior to the shot being fired. Therefore I recommend that you walk out to your dog and send the dog for the retrieve from your side. If you were to cast the dog remotely there would be an increased possibility of the being prone to running in. once your happy with your dogs steadiness and after lots of short practice sessions you may look at casting for a retrieve remotely. As with all training don’t be tempted to rush this or over train it. Little and often is my best advice.