OK. As far as you not knowing if she' ll bring you the bird or just take off with it:
If you are training to " turn on the pointing gene" , you don' t want her to get any birds in her mouth. The birds need to be flyaways.

If you are doing retriever training, then you need to use frozen birds - she won' t be able to crunch them or eat them. Again, I would not suggest that you use quail -- to easy to swallow even if frozen. You need birds at least as big as a LARGE pigeon on up.

So, for a Pointing Lab. At her age you need to let her find (and point or flush) three or four birds every other day for a month. Then, after that, NO MORE LIVE BIRDS until retriever training has progressed to being finished with Force Fetch. DO NOT let her catch any birds during this portion of " turning on the pointing genes" .

It won' t be long till your dog is teething - once she starts teething, then you should ALMOST totally stop retrieving (only a couple retrieves a day using either a paint roller or an old sock that' s stuffed with more old socks). During the 6 weeks or so that she will be teething, you should pretty much only work on Obedience.