Working Italian Spinone

Out on our walk this morning and Freya has a good point on a bird and was steady to flush...she was well pleased with herself

I know this is a long video but those of you who know me and Freya will know why it means so much to me. Freya is a lovely and biddable dog, takes direction, is confident to work away from me and is always looking to please her Dad. One thing I’ve always had a problem with is retrieving back to hand. I’ve tried almost everything and I don’t know what the triggers are and there is no pattern to the spitting the dummy short so I can’t even second guess when she is going to do it. At the Test of Work at Trawden a few weeks ago Freya spat out her seen and water retrieve and brought the split back to hand. After chatting with Jean and our Novice Judge Rob about the issue I decided to combine both pieces of advice and changed my training methods. I’ve done 8 small training sessions with Freya over the past 10 days, only about 10-20 minutes each session and the results have been astonishing. I’ve changed the way I approach our sessions, much more calmly and I have grown in my own confidence as well as having more confidence in Freya who I think now understands what is expected of her. This video is from our 20 minute session this afternoon where she brought 3 water retrieves back to hand (and water has always been the worst for spitting the dummy out) and a memory and a seen all back to hand. I could actually cry happy tears that after all these years I think something may have just clicked. So proud of Freya ❤️

A new piece of ground on my local walk which is abandoned, an old driving range but I knew there would be birds in there, so we jumped over the fence and the dogs had a great time