Hi everyone,

So here's my pup. Molly, AKA Belmont's Thunder and Lightning. She's a little over 8 months now.

[Picture coming]

At this point the plan was to have her go in and be trained with Kevin Hill for four months and bring her back as a good started gun dog. Unfortunately, life got in the way and we had a flood at our house which meant I had to put the moneys I had set aside for her training and put it toward fixing our house. I should be able to save enough money to get her in to see Kevin when he returns from Alabama in April, but at that point she'll be a little over a year old.

So between now and April I'm going to have to do my best to train her.

At this point, I've got her responding well to the whistle, one blast for sit, two for come back (here). I've got her doing singles and the odd forced double.

I'm now trying to lay the ground work for blind retrieves by getting her to sit and then I'll walk out place a bumper down in a straight line and then I'll go back to Molly and point to the bumper and tell her to retrieve it by using the commands Molly, BACK. I know there is a lot more to a blind retrieve, but I'm trying to re-enforce the idea of her holding a line and coming back with the bumper.

Areas that I'm having trouble with relate to her not always holding on to the dummy when coming back or worse yet wanting to play tug of war with the bumper (she'll do this to her leash as well).

Overall I'm really happy with her progress and it seems her pedigree and natural ability make things easy for me. My question to all of you is this: should I just keep up with these basic tasks and leave complex things like Birds, Gunfire conditioning, Forced Fetch and Blind Retrieves to Kevin?

Thanks in advance!

Ben