Intrepid's Cassady at the Wheel

Hey folks, hope all is well with you and your pups! Cassy is doing great, and getting heavy! She's 30 lbs already but looks smaller... I guess she's just all muscle :) I'm taking a much different approach with her than I did with Stella - as much as an experiment as anything. I haven't used one command with her besides "kennel". When Stella was this age we could walk at heel downtown without lease and she would sit on a dime at 30 yards in the woods. With cassy it's been only retrieving and birds. She's a retrieving machine and has always delivered enthusiastically to hand. We use bumpers only and won't use birds (even frozen) until force-fetch is complete at 7 months or so. This gives her less reason to run off with it and develop bad habits. I try to throw bumpers for her every day, especially in water. On weekends I have a thrower toss it - but if I wasn't single I'd do that every day. We play with birds every other week at least. So far we've used quail but they are too easy to catch - switching to chukar this weekend. I just let the birds fly into some cover (or lightly plant if necessary) and then get pup and let her find And flush them. That's it. If your birds are weak and pup keeps catching them, i'll start using a check cord to prevent feathers in mouth. That is bad. Like I said, no obdience yet. Never told her sit. Yet she walks great on a leash and even sits when I stop. She is very responsive and I'm worried that she will be toooo responsive If I start control work too early and won't learn to hunt independently. But each pup is different and it's definetely not to early to at least start teaching some commands. But i would suggest that if your doing control work, balance it with plenty of bird exposure and retrieving. And read Julie's book. Again.