Steve I have a buddy who breeds and trains labs for duck hunting. What he does for a long blind retrieve and it does work is. He will take two posts with a long piece of cloths line. Attach the line to the posts. Then attach a short lead to the line and to the dog.
Basically he is forcing the dog to go in a straight line only.
Then the whole "back" thing and lots of praise, never any treat rewards bla bla bla. :thumbsup:
Mobus, I agree with Steve on ".. STAY CALM and take lots of deep breaths..."
Now myself I will teach force fetching but I will echo what Steve said in that FF, you are also establishing things well beyond fetching.
All dogs take a pack mentality. If in the dogs view no one is willing to be the Alpha dog, they will take that position. But being a "Alpha" to a dog does not mean the trainer needs to be heavy handed. Rather for myself, the dogs I work with get such high praise for the smallest things (during training) that a firm NO with eye contact normally instills the dominance into a dog.
So while teaching FF I repeat steps A LOT. Basically just doing the battle of the wills with the dog.
But I still keep those sessions short and always finish a training session with something the dog can do easily so I can get back to the high praise for a good job.
In my view, always leave a training session on a positive note, even if that means going back to a very basic command.
Training a dog can be very rewarding for the owner. I feel a dog trained by a different trainer other then the owner, will still need to get the owner to establish the dominant role, or the paid training was a waste of money.
But just because one needs to be the dominant "Alpha" does not mean you have to be a heavy handed handler. I like the way Steve describes how to teach the FF...:cheers:
