Really appreciate your post, thank you. Time is the biggest challenge for me - Coral is a hunter first and generally at very high speed, to the extent that I've been told (so many times by so many people) to reduce her protein level to try to bring her down a notch.
Watching John with the winning dog was like watching Coral hunting - I suppose it's because of that I'm thinking that I should at least try to get her to the standard to enter a working test, potentially field trial, if nothing else to show that I've done the best I can for her (given she was 'gifted' to me via a rescue). I have no aspirations to win - just to be recognised at the right level. Plus the training will give us both a purpose / goal over the summer.
Coral and I have attended a number of training days already and thoroughly enjoyed them - the last being with Adrian Slater who is inspirational. He's running a course this summer that we are booked on to - assuming the black exorcet has stopped being a teenager 😉
I'm very lucky in that OH is a part time gamekeeper so have ready access to a lot of land, rabbits and pheasant pen for steadiness but will opt to get back to trainer a bit closer to home to use his pen for the first couple of times - mostly so I understand what it's all about!
Pearl has no prey drive (well didn't until the last shoot of the season for us- at lunch she blanked in the next drive on her own......lucky it went that way, needless to say she was put away for the afternoon) so has been very easy to train. Coral on the other hand is on a long line and apparently deaf although can hear the opening of a box of natural instinct from 3 rooms away!