John what a wonderful surprise!
I think that dogs do have good memories - for example I taught Moss to "play dead" in a ten minute session at the end of the Summer hols (an exercise of amusement for my little cousins who said that dogs who could play dead were cool
) So he learned the words "play dead" and a hand signal for it.
Then just over Easter when my cousins saw Moss again they asked whether he could still play dead. and I thought ooooops, because I hadn't repeated the exercise with him since that one time during the summer hols
But I decided to be cool
and said "of course he can still play dead, Mossy is a very clever little chap
" and then I called Moss over (said a little prayer to myself
) and asked him to "play dead".
I simply couldn't believe it when he quickly lay down with his legs held up in the air in the dead dog pose
(I had been busily making up plausible excuses in my head as to why Moss wasn't doing it properly, e.g: he's too excited to see you all again etc...
) But instead I was able to very smugly say "I told you he could still do it, he's not stupid you know!" to my cousins
(Obviously Moss got an awful lot of treats that afternoon for being such a clever boy
)
I think that if Willow is keen to pick up her old gun dog training then I'd go for it. Just be very steady and kind with her, because as you have said previously - you're not sure how friendly her first gamekeeper home was to her, so she may have some bad memories about certain aspects of the training which you will need to convince her are not going to be enforced in the same nasty way that she might remember etc...
Good luck to Willow
Mary xxx
