da55bums I'm sorry for your loss. I have two black labs myself, and have had black labs all my life. The last one I had it took me a week before I got over her death and it took me two years before I got another one. I've had my current two professionally trained I just don't have the time or the enough places to go to do blind retrieve training. Trust IMO is the biggest hurdle one must have with a hunting dog. We has hunters tend not to trust our dogs as much as we should. I've gotten to the point now I just send my dog up wind to the last area I saw the bird go down and let the nose do the rest of the work. They always know better then we do.