Make do and mend

COVID-19 put paid to Ellena Swift’s planned programme for Keepa and Lizzie so it’s a good time to give both dogs a refresher course

It might seem like I have plenty of time to plan, lots of equipment and endless ground to train on. While I am lucky to have access to more ground, and I do own dummy-launchers, remote launchers, remote ball-droppers and most shape dummies, I have limited time.

Much of my training with the dogs is not planned. It is simply going out into a field with a few dummies and the dogs. I have an idea of what I want to do, but it can be best simply to have a walk round.

My goal for Keepa this season was to win a trial. COVID-19 has put a stop to that. He did have a couple of early runs and more than held his own, getting in the awards. So I am now aiming him at open tests over the summer and team tests. I will keep his training sessions quite short and not too frequent. I do not want to bore him with too much dummy work.

Lizzie has come along beautifully in the past few months and I wanted to get her out towards the end of the season for a drive with my other dogs. With those plans thwarted, we will keep her training progressing on the dummies. She has plenty to work on and it’s not the end of the world that she won’t get out on game this year.

As a wise man once said, it takes years to train a dog and seconds to ruin it. So there’s definitely no rush.

IN DETAIL

KEEPA AND LIZZIE: LITTLE TWEAKS