Reliably honoring another dog’s point during an actual hunt will likely require quite a bit more practice and time.

But Hanna wasn’t thrilled about pointing the rear end of anything but Huns and grouse, and whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d steal another dog’s point. I figured she’d come around eventually, so I kept correcting her whenever she refused to back, knowing that sooner or later the lesson would sink in. But the truth was, by the end of the season last fall she was no more interested in backing than she’d been when we started. She was one and a half years old.

She started this season at close to two and a half, and suddenly, backing is no longer a mental sticking point. After I ran her through a couple warm-up sessions in my yard, her backing had progressed nicely, if unevenly, with much less reluctance on her part to honor another dog. That I hadn’t given up on her training is important, but equally important is that she’s had another nine months or so to mature and absorb what she learned last summer. In dog years, she’s skipped from the sixth grade to high school. When a young dog willingly begins to play by your rules, it’s a sign that it is easing from adolescence into maturity.

Back to training. By the end of last summer’s schooling, Hanna was steady to wing and shot, and she remained that way until my annual trip to Wisconsin at the end of October. Maybe it was the skittish grouse, maybe it was the phase of the moon, but she had no more set foot on Wisconsin’s black and peaty soil than she abandoned the steadiness I’d painstakingly drilled into her like a worn out leash.

This was déjà vu all over again. As I would with Juno the following summer, I had a decision to make: to follow my natural inclination to pull out my hair, scream, and jump up and down; or to do what I knew was best for Hanna--step back, take stock of the situation and start over again.

That meant temporarily shelving my gun while I concentrated on getting Hanna to mind her manners. When she broke, I’d give her a nick, then pick her up and set her back in place. When she persisted in breaking, the intensity of the collar corrections went up. Finally, at last convinced that I meant business, she gave in.

One day she resumed holding at the shot as abruptly as she’d abandoned the practice a week earlier. Just in time, incidentally, for the arrival of my buddy Mike Bartz, who was duly impressed with her behavior. Wisely, I kept my mouth shut. My momma didn’t raise no fool.

It takes time for any dog to adjust to a new situation. That is why (and undoubtedly to the regret of those who hire me to train their dogs) I harp endlessly on the importance of sticking to the dog’s training program when it leaves my kennel and returns to theirs. Young dogs need constant guidance, it is true, but they also need an owner who understands that to finish his dog, he has to give it the time and free rein to incorporate what it knows but may not yet be ready to accept.

Pushing it too hard won’t get the dog there sooner and may well set it back. Time, then, always belongs to the dog, but patience must always belong to you.