Amber’s First Shoot – through the client’s eyes

I first contacted Damian well over a year ago now regarding my Fox Red Labrador, Amber. 

Having been given poor advice in the past regarding her training, I was at my the end of my tether and was honestly questioning whether I was on the one hand capable of training Amber to any standard at all or on the other hand whether I had managed to acquire myself an untrainable dog.

To start with Amber had virtually no recall, would barely retrieve and quite frankly did whatever she wanted. Before meeting Damian I had tried a plethora of training methods from books, YouTube and other trainers. With these failing, I regularly found myself stood in some field in all sorts of weather with my head in my hands.

So by now I am surely painting the picture that Amber is by no means an easy dog to train. I regularly refer to her as a nuclear bomb. 

However what Amber lacked in obedience she more than makes up for with enthusiasm. 

Within around a month of meeting Damian she improved ten fold when retrieving and was even delivering to hand very quickly and has progressed in leaps and bounds over the last year and a half.

This brings me to now where I have gone on my first shoot day, where the months of hard work came to fruition. I took her on a small 50-60 bird a day shoot where she was sat on a peg behind a gun and took Damian’s advice of easing her in with only a few simple retrieves throughout the day. 

All together she picked 4 birds, the best retrieve by far being a cock pheasant retrieve with another bird falling around her. She remained steady and brought the bird back to hand without a second glance at the other falling bird which in the past would have meant she would swap retrieves. She behaved impeccably for the whole day which has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, with not only myself enjoying the day, Amber thoroughly loved every second of it. 

Anyone who is in the same boat as I was a year and a half ago, who maybe thinks there’s no hope of ever getting to the point of being able to go on a shoot, it does get better and with Damian’s guidance as well it makes it incredibly rewarding and extremely enjoyable, as it should be. I cannot thank Damian enough for helping myself and Amber achieve what was once thought as impossible.

Posted: November 7, 2019