Look I am not knocking pro trainer I am just saying if you train your own dog you will learn from your mistakes and it will learn from you. Training your own retriever will give you more satisfaction than you can imagine like I said it is a learning experience. I wish to goodness I could transfer my knowledge to you about duck dogs. Not that I am brilliant, I have trained a few, I have not written a book, I am not that smart, I know all dog are like people they are different. You have to find what will fit into their personality. Some are soft some are hard some will take pressure and some will not. Spend some time with your dog and try to fit into their personality don't make them fit into yours. Correct them when need and praise them when needed. Just my thoughts. Oh how I miss training. It was fun but most of all educational. I learned more from dogs than I did from teachers in school.