It’s a bit of both. I grew up with Golden retrievers and they typically are very natural, almost obsessive about it. This is my first dog of my own, and I guess it’s typical of Brittany’s that they don’t get super excited about retrieving…so we trained a lot as a puppy. Still the practices are short, and have to be challenging or he loses interest in retrieving dummies (maybe 3 or 4 retrieves per session max.). Live birds and he is excited and never gets bored, he will hunt all day and do a dozen or more retrieves.

A Golden retriever will play “fetch” with dummies until he collapses with exhaustion.

I was lucky to have a lull in my work schedule while he was young, as that is the best time to train, between 8-16 weeks old. Just lays the foundation, rewires the brain and turns them into a learning sponge for the rest of their lives. Then just treated every interaction as a training/learning opportunity.