She's got drive for sure, marks well, and has a good nose, but breaks and goes on the retrieve without being sent and whines/barks when I make her stay put. No she not professionally trained and I'm not sure I'd ever send her to training. Anything I can do around the house to help it.

Sit means sit. She shouldn't be allowed to retrieve anything until she is quiet and sitting. You will need a check cord or a small goat lead on a collar. You have to create the standard and maintain it. If she doesnt comply then she doesnt get to retrieve. Put her back in the crate and try again later of the next day.

Be willing to work the dog and let others do the shooting. Bad habits are hard to "break"

Robby

Mine learned by me throwing the dummy, when I did so she was sitting at heel, I'd grab one ear and hold it like pinching her ear. Tell her to sit, stay, then throw, if she wants to break, you pinch or hold her by the ear. Try that for about 2 weeks. 30 mins a day. That's what I did

If you have any plans of force fetching (which I highly recommend) I would advise not doing this.

Might not be possible for you but the best thing I have found for this is to use another dog. Honoring is something a young dog just can't comprehend. Not every retrieve is theirs, only the ones that you allow them to retrieve are theirs. I have two labs and both are super steady, I believe because I force them to take turns on their retrieves.

I have each sit and mark a bumper, then I release one and the other gets to watch. The pup would break when the older dog was released so I put a check cord on the pup. A few days of this and the pup realized breaking isn't a good plan. A week later both dogs are steady and only go on their call name. You can mess with them and use other words with inflection and they won't break until they hear their name.

Transferring to the blind, neither leaves until they are released. Haven't had either break in as long as I can remember, but I do train this off and on year round.

No quite what what you asked but seems to be the most rock solid way I have found of training a breaking dog.

The whining is a hard one but I won't release a dog until it stops whining. My dogs figured it out pretty quick but under a year old they have trouble controlling that energy. Seems to get better with age, and not letting them get the reward of the retrieve until they are quiet. Repetition and consistency on your part. Whine = no reward Breaking = no reward

That's my amateur $.02.

I've used a slip lead for this in the past. Seemed like after the pup realized that she would get the reward of the retrieve after compliance then she was able to just go with the lead hanging and weaned her off of it completely from there.

Thanks fellas

I think this is one of those things you just have to do. Throw a slip lead on the dog like passthru mentioned above and be diligent about sitting until told to go. Bill Hillmann's traffic cop video is a great resource for this if you want to get serious about it.

Also nothing wrong with hunting with a slip lead on. I used one for my dog's first few hunts until I realized he was going to be steady.