re: Retriever training

I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and my dog surprises me. She's not perfect, but I'm proud of what she can do. Like other's have said, basic obedience is the key. Once she learned to sit, stay, and heel, the other stuff came easily. She naturally likes to retrieve, so controlling it is a lot easier once you have the obedience down.

Literally only work with her for about 15-20 minutes a day, 3 days a week at most. She's picking up on hand signals pretty well. Again, I had absolutely no experience. This is my first dog as an adult.

Also, I did not force fetch my dog and it shows. When she doesn't want to retrieve any more, she's done. Which doesn't happen often, but you don't want them to decide when it's time to work and when it's not. And from what I've read, force fetching would have helped a lot to collar condition my dog. Only thing I can correct with the collar is the heel command, other than that, she loses track of whatever she's doing once she's hit with it. I may send her to someone to get it done, she's a little over a year now.