My Bella works, she's almost three now and she's getting a bit of experience at beating and picking up under her belt. She no longer gets overly excited by the shoot, you can see her relax into concentrating on what you ask her to do now, because she's not so suprised by what she flushes or what she has to go and pick up for you.
She's still slightly unsteady on rabbits, there's just something about that bobbing white tail!
But we're trying to conqour this by going walling for rabbits along the dry stone walls in order to familiarise her with what rabbits and how she's not spposed to want to catch them!. She locates the rabbits in the wall by smell, then I reach into the wall and grab the rabbit (unharmed), we then go out into the middle of an open field and I have bella at my heel. I put the rabbit on the ground and it bolts. Bella is kept to heel and walked towards where the rabbit went and then I say 'leave' and walk in the oposite direction with her to heel, then I praise her and give her a dummy to go and retrieve for me.
So far this all seems to be going very well and she will no longer chase after a bolting rabbit when we're out beating. However she has had a few mishaps where I've been lazy, on a walk for instance where she is off lead and she finds a rabbit when she's relatively far ahead of me and she does sometimes choose to chase. In that case I blow the recall whistle and walk in the opposite direction to where she's gone and she's always returned pretty much immediately looking rather sheepish! I doubt the issue of rabbits will ever be truely sorted for my little Bella, but apart from this weakness she's a joy to go shooting with and makes a lovely pet as well.
There's an absolutely gorgeous black working cocker bitch who works on the same shoot as us every year and she doesn't chase rabbits (or maybe her owner has just been very lucky!!
) and is beautifully behaved, so she is what we're wanting Bella to aspire to!
Mary