The Hawcroft DVDs are excellent, Simon Tyers is Caoimhe's trialling trainer/handler and he's the most naturally gifted (and nicest) gundog trainer - actually dog trainer - I've ever met. They're very thorough and very well done.
Nicola - Your red cocker is stunning. We would love a pup just like her. We have been in touch with Simon about where best to source a good pup from and we are waiting for some litters to be born. My background is working sheepdogs so gundogs are all quite new to me. We have a cocker bitch now but she is Show/Work X. She loves beating and flushing but I can simply not get her to pick up. I try and try but have decided she will just be a pet dog. We would like another pup to be a companion for her but one that has a chance at making a gundog (if it doen't work out, that's fine - we will just have two lovely pet dogs!). I have made lots of mistakes with our current bitch, Gretel. I used to breed English Partridge and had a big problem with Gretel digging them out and chasing them all over the village! I think that once a pup sees game, it can spoil them...
Thank you, even though I'm biased she is an amazing girl
Simon should be able to point you in the direction of some very close relatives of hers, he has a few of her half siblings (her sire is his dog Timsgarry Barlow). I would unreservedly recommend his dogs but if you're new to gundogs and looking for a working (as opposed to trialling) dog I would tell him that; although Caoimhe is very true to Simon's breeding in that she's very focussed, intelligent and trainable, as a FT dog she's also very fast, very driven and very 'hot'; she does everything at 110mph and literally makes you dizzy sometimes. If a pup gets free access to game and starts free hunting and chasing it can be very difficult to re-train them out of this again.
She doesn't believe in letting her feet touch the ground much
