Testimonial – Milo the Cocker Spaniel

After reading a pile of books and trawling the internet on how to train our 1 year old cocker spaniel, Milo to be a gundog, we were making little progress. We had made the mistake of over fussing and “playing” with our defiant cocker! Milo pulled like a chariot and would ignore our commands, we relied on treats to gain any sort of task! At this point, last October, we began researching for gundog trainers and came across Damian at Tessleymoor Gundogs.

By the end of our first session, Damian had managed to get Milo to walk to heel and enforced the sit whistle! Instant success! We were very encouraged and felt motivated to cement these basics and build a better bond with our rather headstrong Milo. Over the next few sessions we built up to recall, hold the dummy and sit and wait. Training your dog is easy by following Damian’s instructions, training ourselves as owners to maintain consistency is the difficult part! Damian does let you get away with anything, which is exactly what you need if you want to succeed when training your gundog!

We decided we would send Milo for residential training with Damian for a 3 weeks before Christmas. We got regular updates and pictures of our boy, plus instructions of what we needed to focus on when he returned. We noticed a massive difference in Milo when he came back and from there we have built on this, whilst still ensuring the basics are perfect. Milo now is focused, engaged and willing to please. He will walk to heel with ease, sit and wait, hunt, stop whistle, quarter etc. Currently we are working on his delivery of the dummy with Damian. We are thrilled with the huge progress made in the last few months with Damian’s help; we are looking forward building on this, and finally getting Milo out in the field!

Posted: February 16, 2020