This week was a great week for Benelli. A trainer I started working with when Benelli was a few months old told me something I've never forgot, "Benelli will only be as good as her trainer." Having said that, there were a couple things last year I didn't spend enough time and training on to expect great results. First and probably foremost is Benelli would not stay steady. As soon as the sound of a muzzle blast went off she was off to the races to retrieve. I plan to fix that next week. She will stay steady out of her ground blind throwing just a bumper, but you add live birds, calls, and her retrieving instinct takes over. It is hard to find the balance of discipline and not taking away her instinct to retrieve. Next week should show some good results for that....
My quality of pictures are pretty poor, I need to stop using the phone on my camera. This week we focused on retrieving a goose. She retrieved a few last year, but she struggled for the most part. I blame that on not training her with any geese, and partly her size. Last hunting season she was still less than a year old; a big goose can be 10-15 pounds. That is a lot of goose for the 8 month old pup she was. I'll start adding her ground blind to her drills this week, and hopefully add the gun in by Saturday.
 A few (literally, probably 3 retrieves?) times out to the park and she was golden. She'll now run 200 yards, pick up this heavy 10 pound bumper, retrieve to hand, heel, sit, and wait for her command to drop.



And last but not least, what an awesome picture! Makes me really excited for when Jack will be old enough to have and train his own dog. If only training a kid was as easy as training a dog!