Completely Gundogs

12/10/2026

🐾 NEW! Complete Beginner Gundog Weekend

We’ve made our Complete Beginner Workshop even easier to attend!

Our December workshop with Gemma Cox will now run over Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th December — two full days of training, with no need to take time off work!

Perfect for anyone who is completely new to gundog training, whether you’ve got a young dog, a pet gundog or simply want to discover what gundog training is all about.

Expect a friendly, supportive environment, small groups and plenty of practical training using positive, reward-based methods.

🐾 All gundog breeds welcome
🐾 No previous gundog training experience needed
🐾 Small group of just 7 handlers
🐾 Beautiful private training grounds in Mid Wales
🏡 Optional on-site accommodation

Come and discover just how much fun gundog training can be!

📩 Message us for more information or visit

Helping you achieve all your gundog goals with our gundog training holidays, online masterclass replays and one to one tuition.

11/10/2026

🐾 NEW WORKSHOP! COLD GAME TRAINING WITH GEMMA COX

📅 5th–6th December 2026
📍 Completely Gundogs, Mid Wales

Is your dog ready to start retrieving game? Or perhaps you’ve already introduced cold game but would like to develop more confidence, consistency and reliability?

We’re delighted to be adding a two-day Cold Game Workshop with Gemma Cox to our December programme!

Over two days, Gemma will help you and your dog develop the skills needed for confident, reliable game retrieving.

We’ll be looking at:

🐾 Introducing cold game positively and building confidence

🐾 Developing enthusiastic, reliable pick-ups

🐾 Improving holds, carries and deliveries

🐾 Working through common problems such as reluctance to pick up, dropping or poor delivery

🐾 Building steadiness and control around game

🐾 Understanding why your dog might be struggling and how to help them progress

As always at Completely Gundogs, our training focuses on building confidence, understanding the individual dog and using positive, reward-based methods.

🌳 Our venue

Training takes place on our beautiful private grounds near Llanidloes in Mid Wales, with fields, woodland and varied training environments.

We keep our groups small, with just 6–7 handlers, ensuring plenty of individual attention and practical training time.

🏡 Want to make a weekend of it?

We have a range of dog-friendly accommodation available on site, so you can stay right where you’re training!

The details:

📅 5th–6th December 2026
⏰ 9.30am–3.30pm each day
🐕 Trainer: Gemma Cox
💷 £280 per handler for both days

Whether you’re preparing your dog for future work in the field or simply want to develop their retrieving skills, this is a fantastic opportunity to train with Gemma in a friendly, supportive environment.

Just 6–7 places available!

📩 Message us for more information or book through our website.

www.completelygundogs.co.uk

10/10/2026

🐾 IS YOUR DOG REALLY IGNORING YOU?

We’ve all been there.

Your dog knows how to retrieve. You’ve practised it hundreds of times. But suddenly, out training, they seem to have forgotten everything!

They run around with the dummy, wander off, refuse to pick up, or simply don’t respond when you ask them to do something.

It’s easy to think they’re being stubborn, naughty or deliberately disobedient.

But what if we’re asking the wrong question?

Instead of asking “Why won’t my dog listen?”, what happens when we start asking “What’s driving this behaviour?”

Because behaviour doesn’t happen in isolation. There are emotions, motivations and experiences behind the choices our dogs make.

And understanding those can completely change how we respond.

💛 THE GUNDOG MIND — LIVE WEBINAR
Is Your Gundog Really Being Disobedient?

📅 Wednesday 18th November 2026
🕖 7pm | Live on Zoom
💻 £25

In this webinar, we’ll explore how to:

🐕 Recognise what your dog’s body language is telling you

🐕 Look beyond the behaviour to understand what’s motivating it

🐕 Identify what might be getting in the way of learning

🐕 Make more thoughtful, fair and effective training decisions

You’ll also have the opportunity to submit a behaviour you’re struggling with for us to explore during the session.

This isn’t about following a particular training ideology. It’s about becoming more curious about our dogs, understanding them better and finding ways forward that work for both ends of the lead.

I’d love you to join me!

👉 https://completelygundogs.co.uk/is-your-gundog-really-being-disobedient-page

📸darrylowenphotography

When things go wrong in training, it's easy to assume our dog is choosing not to listen. But what if there's more going on? Join me as we look beyond the behaviour we see and explore what might actually be driving it, and what that means for how we respond and train.

09/10/2026

🐾 YOU ASKED, WE LISTENED!

You can now spread the cost of your Completely Gundogs training holiday! 🎉

I’ve had a few conversations recently with people who would love to join us for a training holiday, but paying for training and accommodation all at once can be a big outlay, especially when booking months in advance.

So we’ve introduced a new monthly payment plan option!

🐾 Secure your place with an initial £150 payment

🐾 Spread the remaining cost over agreed monthly instalments

🐾 Payments are collected automatically, so there’s nothing to remember

🐾 Everything is paid off at least six weeks before your holiday

And yes, you can include your on-site accommodation in the payment plan too!

Our usual payment options are still available if you’d prefer to pay in full.

Simply choose your preferred holiday and accommodation, then click Request a Payment Plan on our website. We’ll check availability and put together a personalised payment schedule for you.

👉 https://completelygundogs.co.uk/gundog-training-holidays

More flexibility, the same fantastic training holidays! 🐕🌳

08/10/2026

🐾 LAST-MINUTE AVAILABILITY | 23–25 OCTOBER 2026 🐾

Fancy a last-minute gundog training getaway in beautiful Mid Wales?

We’ve had an unexpected cancellation on my 23rd–25th October advanced Retriever training holiday, and our lovely two-bedroom Y Beudy cottage has become available too!

Even better, we can accommodate two handlers sharing the cottage, so why not grab a training buddy and come along together?

🐕 Three days of practical gundog training with me

🌳 Beautiful training grounds here in Mid Wales

🏡 Comfortable accommodation right on site

🐾 Plenty of time to enjoy your dogs and immerse yourself in training!

Interested? Drop me a message for details and availability.

📍 Completely Gundogs, Mid Wales

www.completelygundogs.co.uk

Places are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

07/10/2026

Something I’ve been working on for a long time is finally starting to take shape…

The Gundog Mind.

Over the past 16 years of working with gundogs and their handlers, I’ve become increasingly interested in what sits behind the behaviour we see.

When a dog ignores us, runs in, refuses a retrieve, won’t give up the dummy or simply gets things “wrong”, our first thought is often:

How do I stop this?

But I think there’s another question we need to ask first:

Why is the dog doing it?

What we see as disobedience may have something very different sitting underneath it, excitement, frustration, uncertainty, fear, motivation, learning history, pain, or simply a dog who doesn’t understand the task as well as we think they do.

That’s what The Gundog Mind is about.

Not telling people there’s only one right way to train. Not another training ideology.

It’s about becoming more curious about the dog in front of us, so we can make training choices that are kinder, fairer and more effective.

I’ve now launched a new section of the Completely Gundogs website where you can read more about The Gundog Mind and what’s coming next, including my first live webinar this November and the book I’m currently writing for publication next summer.

This feels like the beginning of something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.

Keep asking why 😊.

📸 Darrylowenphotography

https://completelygundogs.co.uk/the-gundog-mind-208460

05/10/2026

A pretty special result for two of our Windlemoor pups ❤️

Huge congratulations to Nikki and Harrison, who won the NDNH, and Gemma and Gwen, who finished 2nd place in intermediate just one point behind the winner at our charity working test.

Both Harrison and Gwen were bred here at Completely Gundogs, with my lovely Grace as their mum, so seeing them take 1st and 2nd is incredibly special.

This is an old photo of Gwen as a puppy, which makes it even nicer to look back on now. 🥹

I’m obviously very proud of the line, but breeding a talented dog is only the beginning. Nikki and Gemma have both put so much into their dogs and deserve all the credit for what they’ve achieved with them.

And I’m very lucky that they’re both part of the Completely Gundogs team too!

Great dogs, great handlers and a very proud breeder. ❤️

03/10/2026

🐾 BRAND NEW — COMPLETE BEGINNER GUNDOG WORKSHOP IN MID WALES

11–13th December with Gemma Cox

Have you got a gundog but feel like you don’t really know where to start?

Perhaps you’ve never been to a gundog training class before, you don’t understand half the terminology yet, or you’ve watched other people training and thought my dog definitely isn’t ready for that! 😂

This one is for you.

We’ve added a brand new three-day Complete Beginner Gundog Workshop to our December programme, taught by Gemma.

We’ll be starting right at the beginning and introducing the different games and skills that form the foundations of gundog training. There’s no expectation that you or your dog already know what you’re doing, that’s actually the point!

And because it’s December, we’ll be making really good use of our barns as well as the outdoor training ground.

There’ll be plenty of sessions where just one dog works at a time while everyone else watches, giving you the chance to really see what Gemma is doing, ask questions and learn from the other dogs without worrying about constantly managing your own.

We want this to feel relaxed, friendly and genuinely educational, somewhere you can ask the questions you might feel silly asking elsewhere (there are no silly ones!), understand why we teach things and go home with lots of simple games and exercises to continue with.

🐾 Complete beginners welcome
🐾 All gundog breeds welcome
🐾 Three days of training
🐾 Indoor and outdoor sessions
🐾 Lots of observation and discussion
🐾 Small, supportive group
🐾 11–13th December in Mid Wales
🐾 Accommodation on site
🐾 Taught by Gemma Cox

If you’ve always fancied having a go at gundog training but haven’t felt quite brave enough to join a course, this is the one I’d choose.

Places are now available to book through the Completely Gundogs website.

https://completelygundogs.co.uk/product-details/product/6abe8227f7c1913e689cccc6

01/10/2026

🧠 THE GUNDOG MIND

👣 Does your dog really have a “delivery problem”?

It’s something we say all the time in gundog training.

“My dog has a delivery issue.”

But what does that actually mean?

A dog that comes straight back, presents the dummy and then struggles to let go has a very different problem from a dog that drops the dummy short.

And both are completely different again from the dog that picks the dummy and runs around with it.

Yet we can easily put all three under the same label poor delivery, and then try to fix them in the same way.

Jimmy is a good example. As you can see in the first clip, he has a trained delivery. He knows exactly how to come back, present the dummy and release it.

But in certain situations, particularly when his arousal is high, he can come straight back, present the dummy and then seem unable to let go.

For Jimmy, I don’t think teaching the delivery again is the answer. I need to look at what is different when this happens. Other dogs around, waiting his turn, excitement and the general pressure of group training can all make things harder for him.

So with him I’d lower the arousal work him on his own, keep the number of retrieves down, get a couple of successful deliveries and move on.

Now take a dog that picks the dummy and runs around with it.

I’d be asking completely different questions. Has keeping the dummy and running around become more rewarding than bringing it back? Is there any worry about approaching the handler? Has keep-away simply become a really good game?

For that dog, fun swapping games and making coming back part of the reward might be far more useful.

Then there’s the dog that happily comes back but routinely drops the dummy at your feet.

That may simply be a delivery that hasn’t been fully trained, or dropping short may have been inadvertently reinforced.

Three dogs. Three “delivery problems”. Three potentially very different reasons for them.

And that’s why the label itself isn’t enough for me.

Before deciding how to change a behaviour, I want to understand why this particular dog might be doing it.

💭 What does your dog’s “delivery problem” actually look like?

28/09/2026

£1,620 raised for YoungMinds! 💚

What an absolutely brilliant day.

Our charity working test is over for another year and I’m incredibly proud to say we raised £1,620 for YoungMinds.

A huge thank you to our judges Shayne Price, Tom Cantwell, Wendy Neville and Sam Davis for giving up their time and making the day possible. Also a big thanks to Skinners and Sporting Saint for sponsoring the event.

And now for the results…

SPECIAL PUPPY
🥇 Radana Hlinikova & Keeper
🥈 Sue Lander & Barley
🥉 Emma Pearce & Whizzy
4th Sue Cole & Louie

NDNH
🥇 Nikki Aley & Harrison
🥈 Emily Wilton & Ralph
🥉 Emma Jeans & Jess
4th Louise Musgrove & Frankie
COM Ciara Hovey & Dylan
COM Tracey Pendlebury & Grace

INTERMEDIATE
🥇 Sharon Whitney & Quinn
🥈 Gemma Cox & Gwen
🥉 Sharon Whitney & Ella
4th Helen Barratt & Nero
COM Emma Pearce & Mav

Second place in Intermediate came down to an exciting three-dog run-off!

SPECIAL AWARDS

💛 The Gundog Mind Award — Dave Coghlan & Wilf

🏆 Judges’ Choice Award — Ciara Hovey & Dylan

I was also very proud to see three dogs I bred out of Grace amongst the awards, including the 1st and 2nd placed dogs. ❤️

Congratulations to you both — two awards that recognise something a little beyond the final scores and placings.

The weather was remarkably kind to us too, with the worst of the rain arriving conveniently at lunchtime, and Stwff n Things were a huge hit keeping everyone supplied with fantastic food and drinks throughout the day.

There are so many people behind an event like this.

A special thank you to Gemma and Sam, who helped me by taking the training for the two days beforehand; to Sam for somehow managing to park four caravans while I took my daughter back to university; and to Gemma for looking after my dogs while I was away. I genuinely couldn’t do what I do without my Completely Gundogs team.

Thank you to my wonderful partner Andy, who took on the rather challenging job of getting everyone parked; Ann Marie for holding the fort on the front desk; and my fabulous mum for running the raffle AND taking responsibility for the scoreboards!

And this year we had more helpers than ever before. Thank you to every single person who gave up their Sunday to steward, throw dummies, help with tests, move equipment, keep things running and generally muck in wherever they were needed. That support made an enormous difference.

And, of course, thank you to everyone who entered, donated, bought raffle tickets and supported the day. £1,620 going to YoungMinds is something we can all be really proud of.

I announced beforehand that this would be our last charity test because they’re a LOT of work to organise.

However…

It was such a success, I had so much help, and apparently I’ve finally learned the art of delegating 🤣 that I’m beginning to think I may need to reconsider that decision.

Never say never… 😊

Thank you everyone. What a day. 💚