Im so proud of my girl, she is 4 and a half months, yellow lab, ive just started gundog training with her, and she is already got a perfect recall/heel, and retrieve, and now almost perfect sit to whistle.
My question:

I dont want to rush things but when can i start directional training??

Thanks to anyone who takes time to reply
Marie

Be very careful Marie, you are moving very fast and could be in danger of her getting bored and coming to a standstill. Although I do a puppy retrieve with very young puppies I then stop at the point where they start to change teeth and don't restart retrieving again until they have the full set of adult teeth. Two reasons for this, one is that the mouth is very tender at this time and if she feels any pain which she relates to the dummy she could go right off the idea of retrieving. And Two, as I said, I do a puppy retrieve at a very young age (Starting at 8 weeks) and in order to get a little excitement into it I allow the puppy to run in. The break for teething gives a complete break from retrieving and when I restart I start straight in on a proper adult retrieve with no running in.

The adult teeth will be through by something like 6 months so I will then be working on steadiness, throwing dummies around the puppy whilst it sits in the stay and waiting to be sent rather than running in on a retrieve. I would also retrieve by hand at least 50% of all dummies thrown.

By around 7 to 8 months old I would expect my dog to be reasonably steady and now would be the time to start on direction control. I would sit my pup with her back to a fence and would take a few steps back away from my dog out into the field, toss a dummy out the one side of the pup. I then give a blast on the stop whistle and a stop hand signal followed by a clear (And exaggerated) direction hand signal to send the dog. I only use one dummy at first, sometimes throwing it to the right, sometimes the left. At a later date I will start to use two dummies, one to the right and one to the left and then with hand signals send the puppy for the one I want. I teach the "Back" command last. Again using a fence to keep lines straight I sit the pup side on to the fence then back off a few paces along the fence line. Tossing the dummy over the pup's head I again start with the stop signal followed by a "Pushing" hand signal to send the pup back for the dummy.

This little lot combined with the recall command will give you control in all four directions and personally is all I teach. Some people also teach a 45 degree direction but to me that is an un-necessary complication and should never be taught to a young dog.

Regards, John