When is a derby ready to break ?

At the top of the page is a picture of Shadow Mountain Jack, pointing birds at 25 months of age.  The birds had been flushed, and we were working on him standing with style, after flush.  He has been "steady " since he was 13 months old.  At this stage of his training, we are working on style, standing for long periods after flush, and standing out of site, and stops to flush.  I feel all these topics are inter-related to the mentality and thinking process of the canine.
To me, breaking a dog as we do it for field trialing, is a mental process.  If you do not let the dog develop "bad" habits, then the process is so much shorter, as you do not have to do any displacement, only developing an understanding of what you want.
At this level, we need to talk about being smarter than the dog to be in control.  Who is training whom ?
I often say when you get your dog to understand English,  then you can teach him, them, any thing.
They are really smarter than we give them credit for.  They under stand your posture, voice inflection, touch, body language, and many more concepts that we seldom think about.  An example is feed every day for a week at 10:00 : a.m.  Then let 10:00 a.m. come and go.  notice the noise level of the kennel at 10:15.  They will all vocalize that it  is past time to eat. What happens when you then sound mad, and yell at them ?  Yep its hit the dog house and be quiet time.
So learn to use all of your body posturing, as well as vocal to teach your dog.
Also learn where to touch your dog, and how to put your hands on your dog, so that it  is comforting, and assuring.  Learn by doing, observing, and changing.  Mike Johnson is one of my very best friends, and was very successful as a major circuit trainer with dogs like Millers White Diamond, Millers Excell, Kodak Moment, and many others.  Mike did not want his owners, or any one else touching any of his dogs, ever.  We had a lot of long talks about this and other training techniques.  His thoughts were, he did not want the dogs to have to re-adjust their education about people, because of mixed signals. 
Has this conversation given you reason to think about your approach to training ?  Drop us a note and lets discuss it.   bud