Well, Mississippi's Riverboat Explosion, AKA Tuck, got his start in life when a very reputable breeder from Pennsylvania decided to take the best features of AKC Registered Hunt Test Titled dogs and carefully breed them for the all around ultimate hunting and family dogs. The following is the Story of Tuck, one such dog that resulted from careful and planned breeding....
We had brought Tuck home when he was exactly 7 weeks old or on the 49th day of his life and that was the day we started the training. The first thing we worked on was the "No" command and also the "sit" command. Although Tuck was only 7 weeks old, he took right to the sit command. We would make him sit before we would put his food in front of him, and if he broke, we would pull the food until he got it right. It only took Tuck about 3 days to understand that sit means sit.
If any of you have ever raised a Lab puppy, then you know how easy or complicated house breaking can be. We crate trained Tuck so house breaking was a snap, with only two accidents that were completely our faults and not Tucks.
At around 10 weeks of age, Tuck was sitting on command and starting to get the feeling for what "heel" and "here" was all about, not to mention potty training to the command "go pee" and a whole LOT of the command "NO" and "NO BITE".... 
At around 12 weeks of age we had the last of the shots and the world was wide open for exploring and playing follow Dad around in the high grass. Tuck soon learned that if he would take his eyes of Dad, Dad would disappear and Tuck would be left whining and crying trying to find him. It didn't take Tuck long to realize that he better keep his eye on his Dad because Dad would sometimes disappear. Honestly, if you want to train a dog to never leave your side, take them out to a field with high grass and hide from them just once or twice when they are a young pup and I can guarantee that the dog will never take his eye off you for more than a few seconds or leave your sight...
We started working on retrieving and Tuck soon learned how much fun it was and how much Dad would love up one him if he would run his fastest to get the bumper and then run back. Oh Dad would just go crazy and play me when I took that little white bumper back to him. Little did Tuck know that Dad had a master plan all laid out to this fun and that one day real soon this little game would grow into and become the foundation to the life purpose and job that Tuck would give his life to. 
Now we will skip ahead a few months bypassing the time that was spent going over and over the basic obedience commands of "sit", "here", "heel" and "down", almost to the point where Tuck was anticipating the commands and would execute them flawlessly. It was at the 5-1/2 months of age mark when the basic obedience commands were solid with Tuck. We are talking about 4 point heels, sitting to the whistle, remote sits, remote downs, and returning on the here command almost like their was a fire in his hind end. It was at this point, and after Tuck had his adult teeth, that I decided to make Tuck understand that the fun of retrieving also has a command and that is "Fetch". This is actually called Mouth Conditioning and this is where you teach the dog how to "fetch", "hold" and "give". This is where Tuck will learn that when Dad says to Fetch, Tuck BETTER run out there and fetch it up no matter how cold the water is, how mean and gnarly the cripple with spurs can be, Tuck will learn that fetch means fetch, no exceptions!!
Now, mouth conditioning is both hard on the owner and the dog and from my understanding, there is NO set time length on how long the conditioning should take. I have heard of dogs taking up to 6 weeks and I've heard of dogs only taking a week or two. In tucks case it took 3 weeks, 2 times a day until the light came one. Keep in mind, in order for mouth conditioning to be successful, you have to touch the dogs soul and the dog will in turn trust you with his soul...
After we worked the table, we went to walking fetch. Tuck understood what he learned on the table so the walking fetch only took 2 days. We then moved on to force to pile or FTP work. This is where you take several bumpers and put them in a pile about 15-20' in front of you and the dawg. then you give the command fetch and the dog runs to the pile to retrieve on command. After a few days of FTP work using the command fetch, you start slipping in or transitioning the fetch command to a "fetch-back" command. Eventually you will continue the pile work until your dog is FTP'ing on the command "back" only.
This is the foundation to all lining and casting retrieves, which will lead to the ultimate goal of blind retrieves.
At this point, Tuck and I have been working water and other land obstacles and have been continuing on to the more advanced training of lining and casting. As Tuck progresses, I will add his progress here.
