Training retriever dogs is the most fun thing you can do, especially when you're a dog lover, like me.

Retrievers are fun to work with. Every retriever has it's own personality, but they are all kind. It's easy to fall in love with these dogs.

All retrievers are gun dogs, used by hunters to retrieve shot game. They are very smart and can learn a lot of commands easily. This is one of the reasons that Labrador Retrievers are most often used to help blind people.

When trainig retrievers for what they were bred for, however, they should learn at least 6 important skills to qualify as good gun dogs.

a) Steady nerves. They should not get nervous when a gun is fired of when birds flap their wings around them in order to get away.

b) Keep track of fallen birds. They should be able to remember where birds fell down when their master uses the 'mark' command. After this he should be able to go to that location from memory.

c) A retriever is not always in a position to see where a bird falls. They should be able to find it using their smell sense and find the bird quickly before any other predators do.

d) They have to be patient and quiet, as to not scare any birds away. They should wait and listen for any commands their master gives them.

e) Retrievers should be able to deliver the prey to the hand of their master and let go of the bird only when their master tells them to.

f) They should shake their prey in order to remove any water from it.

While these tasks are much different from the ones people usually teach dogs in domestic settings, you'll find that they can be taught relatively easily to retrievers.

It is, of course, no problem to have them never learn any of these tasks. Since they love to please you and they love to learn new tricks, you'll find that training retriever dogs is actually a lot of fun for you, too. There are some great sites that'll teach you exactly how to do this, or you can of course buy a book on the subject.

Just take some time to train your dog. It's a lot of fun to spend some time with your four legged friend. You didn't get one just to decorate your house, did you?

If you don't know where to start, the basic idea is to teach him some tricks and reward him every time he does something right. Don't punish him when he does something wrong: it's most likely he just didn't understand what you meant. Keep practicing and you'll see you'll have a great time.