re: Dog training help - teaching a retriever to hold after retrieve

Do you have any training experience at all? If so, you need to force fetch the dog. The only times I've ever seen force fetching not work were in cases in which the trainer didn't understand how to read his/her dog. Dropping at your feet on heel is dominance behavior and force fetching will correct that. Again though, if you don't know what you're doing, it's best to let someone else do it. It's very easy to mess up a dog through force training.

eta: I've never seen a force fetched pointer...just retrievers.