The best piece of canine wisdom I have been given is that the time to train your dog is the off season: using it during the season is more likely to undo training than perfect it. That said, what with trips to Texas, South Africa, and beyond clogging the first months of the off season, I find myself behind on the remedial work I’d intended for my canine team. To complicate matters, my weakness for spaniels has left me with 3 breeds in the kennel, each of a different bent and all comedians in their own rights. Fortunately, a summer lounging on the armchair in the office between surreptitious raids in the kitchen seems to have done my lab no harm and he is back in full working order. Now that he has had a couple of days on the grouse, he’s convinced that we’re for the off every time the door opens. The postie has had a couple of near misses.

For whatever reason, once cockers get to a certain age, all they want to do is shout. Satch started squeaking when on a line a couple of seasons ago, and it has progressed to what Jumpstart calls ‘feral’: baying like a pack of hounds after every flutter of wings. No amount of training is going to convince him that silence is golden, so you won’t be seeing a lot of him this season. But pushing 10 he’s earned a slow season (even if I have had to fortify Fort Knox to make sure he stays put). He’s been superseded by Int. Ftch. Meggie Moo (as No. 2 insists on calling her). All that’s required is a little sharpening and some fitness outings to get rid of a summer’s spare tyre (hers, not mine).

And then there’s Heck (formerly Hector, abbreviated to reduce the swearing that follows in his wake). I now know why Clumbers aren’t mainstream. He can hunt, as proven last year, and practiced on the chickens all summer. Now if I could just convince him to retrieve. By using a high-pitched voice and rolling on the ground with him, I can incite and excite him enough to retrieve a dummy a couple of times. He has style, but one that is going to leave him with some decapitated pheasants or propelled by partridge if he’s not careful. Hopefully once he’s working on the real thing, he’ll sort it out for himself…eventually. It did take him 9 months to master the dogflap in his kennel…he’s destroyed two since then.

If you are out on a day and Heck’s retrieving, don’t stand in his way…

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