RE: Thoughts on training
One of the things that helped me alot was watching a dvd on training, I know there has to be several out there, the one I used was Training Your Pointing Dog by Scott Miller. It was pretty good for what I had wanted and helped alot. What I am hereing you say is your pup might be getting to much of the whoaing and it needs to get a little running in to go with it. I am not sure if you are near a place where you can let your pup run and try and find a few birds on it's own or not. That is something I would throw into the mix when I was training mine. I had also taken mine to a bird farm a couple of times so I could have better control and watch what he was doing. After coming home I would take him to a field up in back of here and through a chuckar around and tel him to retrieve. Sometimes I had to tease him with it to get him interested in it. Then have someone hold the my setter until I was ready to get him to retrieve it. I also tried to make it as much fun for my dog as I could and for me it worked out good.
Good Luck with your pup Mite..