Testimonial – Meggie the English Pointer, Gundog Training.

I must have Googled ‘pointer recall’ and every variation of that phrase a hundred times before I found Damian. Meggie is a beautiful English Pointer; I researched the breed and she ticked all the boxes: enjoys exercise, good temperament for a family pet and from working stock so easy train – how wrong could I be.

After attending local puppy classes it became obvious that my English Pointer was not like the other dogs. She refused to lie down, didn’t want to walk to heel and there was no way she was ever coming back. As one of the swiftest dog breeds, this was a problem. I persevered with all kinds of training techniques but by the time Meggie was 18 months old had settled with walking her on a long line all the time, not what I had envisaged. I followed Damian on Twitter, wishing that he was just down the road in Yorkshire rather than across the Pennines in Preston but eventually, after a particularly disastrous walk, I called him.

We talked for 20 minutes. In the nicest possible way, Damian told me I was doing it all wrong and despite the two hour drive, I was to come and see him as soon as he had a free slot. So I did. Damian knows about gundogs. He knows that they are different from your average pooch in the park. He explained how they learn, about the bond I needed to establish with Meggie before she would do a thing for me and about getting her to work to her breed standard. By the end of the hour she was walking to heel with him and hanging on his every whistle. I nearly left her with him.

Since then I have visited Damian every couple of months. He gets Meggie – English Pointers are the aristocrats of the gundog family – they don’t like getting wet, they don’t respond to harsh words, they work at distance so they need to read your body language. He is always encouraging and we both know, it’s more about training me than training Meggie.

I have spent hours in wet and windy fields teaching Meggie to quarter, to wait and most importantly, to come back. It has not been easy and there have been prolonged periods when it seemed that we were making no progress. So I would call Damian, have a good grumble, he would give me a pep talk and off I would go again.

It’s worked. I now have a dog that responds to my whistle, looks at me for directions, waits at the end of the walk and most importantly, comes back. She watches me, she chooses me over the open fields or scents of the wood. She makes me smile every day. She can run free while she is out so she is calm at home, plays fetch with the kids, spends hours snoozing. She’s not perfect but we have come so far, I just wish I’d taken her to Damian when she was 12 weeks old.

Damian has given me a dog that is happy because she knows what’s expected of her. His knowledge of what makes gundogs tick is outstanding and unusually, he’s also great with people. He made me laugh at myself, relax with my dog and enjoy training her to become the dog she was meant to be.

Posted: December 2, 2014