“Hello, I am a novice gundog handler and was hoping that you could give me some advice on training my Labrador bitch. She is two-and-a-half-years-old and is from working stock. I have never taken her to a professional trainer and she knows now is from me. She is also a family pet and lives in the house and she has done since the day we brought her home. She does have a few problems which I was hoping you could help me fix.

When walking to heel, although she does it, she does she seems quite unenthusiastic. She simply walks slowly next to me sniffing the floor as she goes, not looking or paying any attention to me at all. I've tried holding a treat in my hand while doing it, but she still pays no attention. What can I do to make her more enthusiastic?

Also she does have a problem bringing the dummy to hand. When she retrieves, she does it well, sitting quietly off lead waiting to be sent. When I send her, she retrieves it back to me, but as soon as she gets within two to three feet of me she will drop the dummy on the floor. I have tried fixing this problem by continuing to ask her to fetch it until she brings it to my hand. If and when she does I give her a lot of praise and play a little game with the dummy with her in an attempt to keep her interested. Without doing this she will lose interest and never bring the dummy to hand, what can I do? Sometimes she seems like she has very little interest in working, and I have a very limited access to real shot game. The only real game she has retrieved is rabbit and never a freshly shot bird. Can you help me? I will eagerly await your reply. Yours faithfully, Sophie.”

H&C blogger and top gundog trainer Howard Kirby replies: “Hi Sophie, it sounds as though you have been having a lot of fun training your dog and it’s great to hear that a lot of her basic training is going so well.

There are all sorts of reasons why dogs appear to be lacking in motivation when playing or working with a handler. As far as an enthusiasm for retrieving goes, there are a few things you could try. Making the dummies more interesting, different textures, shapes and weights as well as variation can increase a dogs interest, balls are often good as the movement increases the dogs prey drive as will fur and feather, and we often use balls wrapped in rabbit skin which can be purchased from gundog equipment suppliers.

Sometimes if a dog has constant access to toys, when you throw a dummy for her your dog might simply be bored by the whole toy thing and not want to retrieve and hold the dummy. Some dogs simply have a limited interest in this kind of play and will only want to retrieve occasionally.

Sometimes less is more; if you can imagine being able to play at your favourite sport seven days a week, after a while the novelty simply wears off and you loose interest. Limited access to play can often increase drive considerably which would then mean that you can use the dummy to lure your dogs head up off the ground when teaching heelwork. Heelwork like so many dog behaviours requires an element of obedience from your dog but the dog can only be obedient to a command she thoroughly understands.

Heelwork is probably the most difficult behaviour for a handler to learn and teach so if possible get a very experienced friend or professional to help you.

Hopefully some of these tips will help, keep an eye on some of my other Ask the Expert answers as you might see some other general training advice on those. Good luck and don’t forget to keep us up to date with your progress.

Howard.”