April 23, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Tony explains why we should try to spend time around skilled dogs and handlers, so that we not only understand what's possible, but can also improve our training game.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about putting yourself
in a position to watch talented dogs and trainers do
their thing and why this can help all of us
level up. I know this episode probably seems pretty obvious
on the surface. If you witness good dogs and skilled trainers,
(00:23):
you'll understand what dogs and people are capable of. But
it's not enough to acknowledge that. It takes more. I
know in my life, when I've been exposed to people
who could do something I can do only way, way better,
it has always changed my perspective. This goes for the
outdoor stuff, playing guitar or running, just about anything I've
thought I was pretty good at until I saw someone
(00:44):
who was actually pretty good at it. Now It's no
different in the world of dogs, which is what I'm
going to talk about right now. You've probably heard of
a fella named Machiavelli, or at least heard the Termkivellian
thrown around in conversations about politics, which I won't get
(01:05):
into here because I like I'm guessing every one of
you is just so tired of having that shit interjected
into our lives NonStop under the guise of being informed,
but mostly under the pretense of selling adspace on digital platforms.
Macchiavelli was born five hundred and fifty six years ago
in Italy, when the world was a much different place.
(01:28):
He was a diplomat and historian, philosopher, and an author
who came to be known for his works regarding political science, which,
fun fact, is what my college degree is in and
has been about as useful to my life as a
ten foot unicycle would be. The interesting thing about Machiavelli
(01:49):
is that his name has become synonymous with shady and
unscrupulous political maneuvering. It's interesting because even back in the
late fourteen hundreds and early fifteen hundreds, he observed that
the more politically savvy members of society, you know, the
ones who seemed to be able to make things happen,
whether viewed right or wrong, weren't what you'd call super
(02:10):
ethical folks. He called it as he saw it, I guess,
and actually, according to some historians and their interpretations, encouraged it.
Now was he nefarious and just like the slithery of
politicians he encouraged to keep snaking their way into higher
positions of power and more enrichment for themselves. Maybe there
is a good case to be made for that argument,
(02:32):
but he was also commenting on human nature and he
didn't sugarcoat it. He saw what needed to be done
in those roles, and he clearly didn't think that there
was a better, more wholesome way. It's ironic that five
centuries ago the politicians of the time were perceived largely
as the politicians are today. And you know, you wouldn't
(02:53):
call that perception flattering, just as you wouldn't call it
flattering if someone accused you of being Machiavellian at work
or in your relationship or whatever, because you can rest
assured that it probably was not a compliment. Human nature
is pretty wild and understanding. It is way beyond the
scope of this mid level outdoor writer. But I will
(03:13):
say this. I think about one of his quotes, A
lot which goes. A sign of intelligence is an awareness
of one's own ignorance. Think about how quickly in society
we go from being experts in whatever hot button issue
is raging through our collective minds, and how we really
only have surface level knowledge of most things. I recently
(03:37):
listened to someone who I happen to be married to,
who has a doctorate. By the way, explain the space program,
you know, NASA, and she interjected a little SpaceX talk
in there, and while I was listening, my eggshell brain
nearly cracked. I'm a space geek, and so as I listened,
I was mildly blown away by how many times she
(03:58):
filled into blanks with absolute horseshit. It was one of
the best moments in my life to be able to
be the dbag who goes, actually, this is blah blah blah.
One's own ignorance comes in many forms, and we look
at it like it's a negative, because it's not really
a positive to be ignorant, I guess. But we can
(04:20):
soften that language up by saying, you don't know what
you don't know, and all of us don't know a
whole lot of stuff, most stuff, I'd say, when it
comes to dogs, there is an awful lot all of
us don't know. And that is a category that is
ripe for filling in the blanks. We do it all
the time. I recently saw a thread on dogs and
(04:42):
the poster casually made the claim that great Danes are
way better dogs than the Labrador retrievers. Now, maybe I
took that too personally, like if someone casually said Justin
Bieber is a better musician than Johnny Cash ever was.
But it's also just a silly statement. The sample size
used to make that claim was the ownership of one
(05:03):
lab at one point and a great dan and at
another point. Well, that's great, but there are a lot
of dogs out there, and a lot of trainers, and
a lot of situations where that statement would just be
patently false but also kind of unprovable since quote unquote
good dog is a great intangible Now, what I do
know is this, and I believe this in my heart
(05:24):
of hearts. Since we don't know a lot about dogs
and how to get them to do what we want,
one of the best ways to get there is by
putting yourself in a position to see dogs in action
and trainers who are more talented than you doing their thing.
And on that last note, let me say this, you
don't have to suddenly bombard your local pro trainers with
(05:46):
requests to observe their work on a daily basis. They
won't let you, probably, And that's not where I'm going
with this now, As an aside, if you do have
a pro trainer who will let you watch, you damn
well should watch. That will be an education worse that
every single time. But instead, what I mean is to
figure out ways to watch someone who is just better
(06:06):
than you. Now, there are two parts to this that
I have to tease out. I promise you that if
you're listening to this podcast, there are people who are
better at training dogs than you. I also promise you
that it's easy to give the dogs most of the
credit when it comes to observing great dog behavior. But
there is no great dog without the right training. It
(06:27):
just doesn't really happen. They can be chock full of
amazing genetic potential, but without someone to coax it out
and mold it into something really special, it just really
doesn't happen. Now, a shitty trainer could make something out
of a gifted dog, but you don't see something really
amazing without the good dog and the good trainer combo.
So here's the thing. It's mostly a matter of getting
(06:51):
over our own egos. Now, I'm talking mostly to the
men in the crowd here, of which I'm one of them.
You might think that you have a great handle on
your ga and that you have the whole thing sussed out,
But there's always something to learn. Look for those opportunities
in your life. Now, you might just know someone who
is ahead of you and the race and who understands
(07:12):
dogs better. Great, figure out a way to watch them
in action, train with them, or have them watch you
in action. That's simple stuff and it can be very
meaningful when you're trying to level yourself up or level
up your dog. Now, maybe you don't know anyone like that.
Look around. Is there a local training group you can attend.
Maybe you can find a field trial or a hunt
(07:34):
test in your neck of the woods to watch. Some
trainers offer handler workshops, and while they won't be free,
they will be worth the price of admission. There are
online courses for training that are great too. There are
a lot of ways to skin this cat. But the
truth is it just takes some effort to try to
find someone or some way to watch someone truly work
(07:54):
dogs that is better than you. And I'll say this too,
if you go this route, there are benefits to finding
someone who works with your breed, but that's not the
end of the conversation. Sure, if you run wire hairs,
it would be nice to hang out with someone who
really knows how to handle wire hairs, but that's often
upper level training. When you step back and forget breeds
(08:17):
for a second, as long as you stick to the
working or sporting dogs category, you realize that dog behavior
isn't wildly different from breed to breed. At some level,
you know, dogs are just dogs, and there's a lot
to learn at that level, and I'd argue it's probably
more important for most people to learn about dog behavior
(08:37):
generally than breed specific behavior. The key to all of
this is to find a way to watch or work
with someone who understands the game better than you. What
this does is give you a chance to understand the
little details so the whole thing isn't overwhelming, Which brings
me back to the point I was trying to make
earlier about great dogs and how we give them all
(09:00):
of the credit. Look at it this way. If you
eat a piece of an amazing cake, you know, one
that is just freaking delicious, you might think that it
had everything to do with the ingredients, and you don't
get an amazing, freaking delicious cake without the right ingredients.
But those ingredients alone need someone to turn them into
a cake, and there is a skill level there that
(09:21):
transcends just possessing the right eggs and flour and sugar
and whatever else goes into the cake. There's a baker
there somewhere who knows what to do with that stuff.
When we get overwhelmed by training or see a dog
that has just been trained super well, it's easy to
believe the dog has just kind of always been a
rock star and it's the dog, not the trainer, who
(09:43):
deserves the credit. But that's silly, because there isn't one
without the other. And to push this analogy a little further,
a great baker could do pretty well with mediocre ingredients,
but you put together an amateur baker with low quality ingredients,
and that cake is going to suck donkey clackers. Before
(10:14):
I move on from this, I want to say one
more thing. There are a lot of ways to find
someone better than you at training, or someone who just
has a different approach. I have people all of the
time come up to me in the summer when I'm
working my dogs, and many of them have dogs themselves.
I approach people quite often too, at least if they
(10:35):
look like they know what they're doing. How they take
the bumper from their dogs, or how steady their dogs
are or whatever are all clues into what they do
that might work for you, And it's important stuff keep
an eye out for opportunities to interact with someone better
than you at dog training. Maybe that's the best way
to put it, And maybe this whole thing could have
(10:56):
been one line instead of nineteen hundred words about Italian
authors no where cares about. It's too late for that now.
On the dog front, watching a great dog work through
a long distance or tree or hand signals or triple
blind retrieves, or sit stock still while someone else walks
a dog past them, or I don't know, a pair
of Canadian honkers grazes the grass twenty feet away. That
(11:18):
does something for us too. Now, right away, we generally think, man,
I wish I could have a dog like that, as
if that dog is unavailable to most average people, as
if those specific types of bloodlines are available to only
people who know the secret knock or you know who
put on cloaks and masks and meet once a month
under the full moon to pray to the tree, gods
(11:39):
or whatever. That dog is available to you, and seeing
it work is all the evidence you should need. That's
the thing about this stuff. It's often just motivation to
figure out our own dog lives better. What I mean
by that is we get locked into a breed or
a type of dog, and that's fine, but we also
(11:59):
on intentionally install sort of like a mental ceiling around
that breed or our training abilities or that type of dog.
We think, well, my uncle has always had Goldens, and
I love them, so I'm going to get a golden,
and then that dog will go about as far as
our uncle's dog did, which might not be that far
because we don't know what we don't know. But then
(12:22):
you get to see a field bred golden that has
tons of good blood in him, and he's been under
the tutelage of a great trainer for five years, and
you see that dog can do just about anything that
a good working dog can do. And there are also
plenty of rumors about how good the dog is at
finding pheasants and making them fly well within shotgun range,
or about sitting in a duck blind in the freezing
(12:42):
cold to retrieve greenhead after greenhead with just perfect marks.
That might seem beyond most of us and our dogs,
but it's not, and the first step to getting there
is understanding that it's even possible in the first place,
and the best way to understand that is to just
see with your own eyes. Every year in August up
(13:03):
here in the northern part of the Twin Cities there
is an event called the game Fare. They run like
fifty thousand people and their dogs through on two different
long weekends, and it's something worth seeing if you really
like dogs. There are all kinds of time trials and
dock jumping events and things that people can enter their
dogs into to test their skills. Now, if you watch them,
(13:26):
and I've watched hundreds of them over the years, you
see a wide breakdown in dog skills and handler ability.
Most dogs aren't very good at most of the events.
There is the chaos of the fair, which definitely influences
some dogs because it's distraction central. But you do see
dogs that can tune out everything and just perform like
(13:48):
they're supposed to, like it's their job, and they stand
out because they aren't common. Most of the dogs either
fall apart completely or at least partially, but maybe I
don't know. Five percent of them are just solid in
their skills and they not coincidentally, all seem to be
handled by people with an air of confidence who clearly
(14:11):
understand how to get dogs to do what they want
them to do. It's kind of a thing of beauty,
and it's easy to not really understand until you're sitting
there watching the whole thing play out. And speaking of easy,
it would be easy to watch one of these events
at the game fair and pay close attention to the
superstar dogs and just be dismissive about it, to fill
(14:34):
in the blanks and say you don't have the time
or the motivation to try to get a dog to
do that whatever level it is, Hey, that's fine, but
knowing that dog exists and that you could actually have
it is super important. It's kind of like being friends
with a bunch of people who don't exercise, and then
one of them goes on a health kick and changes
(14:54):
their body, and when you see them, you realize that
they were static in your head, all of you and
that friend group were sort of uniform in your design.
But then one of them just breaks the mold and
you realize that the only thing between you and that
is well you. A great dog can show you that,
and so can a great trainer, And if you watch
(15:15):
a combo of the two, you'll see something kind of
close to watching professional sports. It might be just a
bit too unrelatable to sync in, but you're not trying
out to be a cornerback in the NFL. Here, you're
working with a dog and you have access to all
the knowledge necessary to get that dog to level up
(15:36):
and to force yourself to level up as a dog trainer.
Oftentimes it only takes exposure to good dogs and people
who are just better than you. And I'll say this again,
who do not have to be professional trainers? Think about
it this way. The motivation to be better on its
own is worth this effort. But what if you figure
(15:56):
out a better way to address your dog when you're
issuing a command. But if you see one drill that
just helps a dog make better choices, and you realize
you could easily teach your dog that drill, and then
once you do, your dog is going to be way
better off for it. I had a pro trainer one
time who I was photographing. He watched me take a
bumper from one of his dogs, just a simple move
(16:18):
I've done one hundred thousand times in my life. He
walked over and said, next time, position your hand this
way and let the dog give it to you. The
change was mostly really subtle, but also just a better
way to do things that one little, seemingly kind of
insignificant tip. It changed how I handle dogs in a
(16:39):
small but meaningful way. And that's what I want to
leave you with on this We look at the big
picture and decide it's too much work or it's just
too far beyond what we can handle. But with dogs
and how we work with them, it's the little stuff
that stacks up over time to create a better product.
You don't have to go from knowing nothing to collecting
a whole bunch of first place where ribbons at field trials.
(17:02):
You just have to try to be better and that
will come in baby steps that can be ushered along
by facilitating some ways to be around good dogs and
better handlers. That's really it. So think about that, think
about coming back in two weeks because I'm going to
talk about positive associations and training and how they are
like the secret sauce to keeping your dog happy and
(17:23):
motivated to put in the work. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you
so much for listening. I know you're busy right now.
It's finally time to fish in a lot of places
and go shoot some turkeys and do a lot of
stuff and get out and train your dogs. But if
you have some downtime, or you're just interested in maybe
(17:43):
a new recipe, maybe you want to live vicariously through
one of us and watch a turkey hunting film. Whatever,
the medeater dot com has you covered. And by the way,
we're starting to put up a lot of dog training
articles on there, so if you want to read a
little bit more about how to get about better dog
or how to make a better dog, you can head
over to their to the mediatter dot com and check
(18:04):
it out. Thanks again,
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about putting yourself
in a position to watch talented dogs and trainers do
their thing and why this can help all of us
level up. I know this episode probably seems pretty obvious
on the surface. If you witness good dogs and skilled trainers,
(00:23):
you'll understand what dogs and people are capable of. But
it's not enough to acknowledge that. It takes more. I
know in my life, when I've been exposed to people
who could do something I can do only way, way better,
it has always changed my perspective. This goes for the
outdoor stuff, playing guitar or running, just about anything I've
thought I was pretty good at until I saw someone
(00:44):
who was actually pretty good at it. Now It's no
different in the world of dogs, which is what I'm
going to talk about right now. You've probably heard of
a fella named Machiavelli, or at least heard the Termkivellian
thrown around in conversations about politics, which I won't get
(01:05):
into here because I like I'm guessing every one of
you is just so tired of having that shit interjected
into our lives NonStop under the guise of being informed,
but mostly under the pretense of selling adspace on digital platforms.
Macchiavelli was born five hundred and fifty six years ago
in Italy, when the world was a much different place.
(01:28):
He was a diplomat and historian, philosopher, and an author
who came to be known for his works regarding political science, which,
fun fact, is what my college degree is in and
has been about as useful to my life as a
ten foot unicycle would be. The interesting thing about Machiavelli
(01:49):
is that his name has become synonymous with shady and
unscrupulous political maneuvering. It's interesting because even back in the
late fourteen hundreds and early fifteen hundreds, he observed that
the more politically savvy members of society, you know, the
ones who seemed to be able to make things happen,
whether viewed right or wrong, weren't what you'd call super
(02:10):
ethical folks. He called it as he saw it, I guess,
and actually, according to some historians and their interpretations, encouraged it.
Now was he nefarious and just like the slithery of
politicians he encouraged to keep snaking their way into higher
positions of power and more enrichment for themselves. Maybe there
is a good case to be made for that argument,
(02:32):
but he was also commenting on human nature and he
didn't sugarcoat it. He saw what needed to be done
in those roles, and he clearly didn't think that there
was a better, more wholesome way. It's ironic that five
centuries ago the politicians of the time were perceived largely
as the politicians are today. And you know, you wouldn't
(02:53):
call that perception flattering, just as you wouldn't call it
flattering if someone accused you of being Machiavellian at work
or in your relationship or whatever, because you can rest
assured that it probably was not a compliment. Human nature
is pretty wild and understanding. It is way beyond the
scope of this mid level outdoor writer. But I will
(03:13):
say this. I think about one of his quotes, A
lot which goes. A sign of intelligence is an awareness
of one's own ignorance. Think about how quickly in society
we go from being experts in whatever hot button issue
is raging through our collective minds, and how we really
only have surface level knowledge of most things. I recently
(03:37):
listened to someone who I happen to be married to,
who has a doctorate. By the way, explain the space program,
you know, NASA, and she interjected a little SpaceX talk
in there, and while I was listening, my eggshell brain
nearly cracked. I'm a space geek, and so as I listened,
I was mildly blown away by how many times she
(03:58):
filled into blanks with absolute horseshit. It was one of
the best moments in my life to be able to
be the dbag who goes, actually, this is blah blah blah.
One's own ignorance comes in many forms, and we look
at it like it's a negative, because it's not really
a positive to be ignorant, I guess. But we can
(04:20):
soften that language up by saying, you don't know what
you don't know, and all of us don't know a
whole lot of stuff, most stuff, I'd say, when it
comes to dogs, there is an awful lot all of
us don't know. And that is a category that is
ripe for filling in the blanks. We do it all
the time. I recently saw a thread on dogs and
(04:42):
the poster casually made the claim that great Danes are
way better dogs than the Labrador retrievers. Now, maybe I
took that too personally, like if someone casually said Justin
Bieber is a better musician than Johnny Cash ever was.
But it's also just a silly statement. The sample size
used to make that claim was the ownership of one
(05:03):
lab at one point and a great dan and at
another point. Well, that's great, but there are a lot
of dogs out there, and a lot of trainers, and
a lot of situations where that statement would just be
patently false but also kind of unprovable since quote unquote
good dog is a great intangible Now, what I do
know is this, and I believe this in my heart
(05:24):
of hearts. Since we don't know a lot about dogs
and how to get them to do what we want,
one of the best ways to get there is by
putting yourself in a position to see dogs in action
and trainers who are more talented than you doing their thing.
And on that last note, let me say this, you
don't have to suddenly bombard your local pro trainers with
(05:46):
requests to observe their work on a daily basis. They
won't let you, probably, And that's not where I'm going
with this now, As an aside, if you do have
a pro trainer who will let you watch, you damn
well should watch. That will be an education worse that
every single time. But instead, what I mean is to
figure out ways to watch someone who is just better
(06:06):
than you. Now, there are two parts to this that
I have to tease out. I promise you that if
you're listening to this podcast, there are people who are
better at training dogs than you. I also promise you
that it's easy to give the dogs most of the
credit when it comes to observing great dog behavior. But
there is no great dog without the right training. It
(06:27):
just doesn't really happen. They can be chock full of
amazing genetic potential, but without someone to coax it out
and mold it into something really special, it just really
doesn't happen. Now, a shitty trainer could make something out
of a gifted dog, but you don't see something really
amazing without the good dog and the good trainer combo.
So here's the thing. It's mostly a matter of getting
(06:51):
over our own egos. Now, I'm talking mostly to the
men in the crowd here, of which I'm one of them.
You might think that you have a great handle on
your ga and that you have the whole thing sussed out,
But there's always something to learn. Look for those opportunities
in your life. Now, you might just know someone who
is ahead of you and the race and who understands
(07:12):
dogs better. Great, figure out a way to watch them
in action, train with them, or have them watch you
in action. That's simple stuff and it can be very
meaningful when you're trying to level yourself up or level
up your dog. Now, maybe you don't know anyone like that.
Look around. Is there a local training group you can attend.
Maybe you can find a field trial or a hunt
(07:34):
test in your neck of the woods to watch. Some
trainers offer handler workshops, and while they won't be free,
they will be worth the price of admission. There are
online courses for training that are great too. There are
a lot of ways to skin this cat. But the
truth is it just takes some effort to try to
find someone or some way to watch someone truly work
(07:54):
dogs that is better than you. And I'll say this too,
if you go this route, there are benefits to finding
someone who works with your breed, but that's not the
end of the conversation. Sure, if you run wire hairs,
it would be nice to hang out with someone who
really knows how to handle wire hairs, but that's often
upper level training. When you step back and forget breeds
(08:17):
for a second, as long as you stick to the
working or sporting dogs category, you realize that dog behavior
isn't wildly different from breed to breed. At some level,
you know, dogs are just dogs, and there's a lot
to learn at that level, and I'd argue it's probably
more important for most people to learn about dog behavior
(08:37):
generally than breed specific behavior. The key to all of
this is to find a way to watch or work
with someone who understands the game better than you. What
this does is give you a chance to understand the
little details so the whole thing isn't overwhelming, Which brings
me back to the point I was trying to make
earlier about great dogs and how we give them all
(09:00):
of the credit. Look at it this way. If you
eat a piece of an amazing cake, you know, one
that is just freaking delicious, you might think that it
had everything to do with the ingredients, and you don't
get an amazing, freaking delicious cake without the right ingredients.
But those ingredients alone need someone to turn them into
a cake, and there is a skill level there that
(09:21):
transcends just possessing the right eggs and flour and sugar
and whatever else goes into the cake. There's a baker
there somewhere who knows what to do with that stuff.
When we get overwhelmed by training or see a dog
that has just been trained super well, it's easy to
believe the dog has just kind of always been a
rock star and it's the dog, not the trainer, who
(09:43):
deserves the credit. But that's silly, because there isn't one
without the other. And to push this analogy a little further,
a great baker could do pretty well with mediocre ingredients,
but you put together an amateur baker with low quality ingredients,
and that cake is going to suck donkey clackers. Before
(10:14):
I move on from this, I want to say one
more thing. There are a lot of ways to find
someone better than you at training, or someone who just
has a different approach. I have people all of the
time come up to me in the summer when I'm
working my dogs, and many of them have dogs themselves.
I approach people quite often too, at least if they
(10:35):
look like they know what they're doing. How they take
the bumper from their dogs, or how steady their dogs
are or whatever are all clues into what they do
that might work for you, And it's important stuff keep
an eye out for opportunities to interact with someone better
than you at dog training. Maybe that's the best way
to put it, And maybe this whole thing could have
(10:56):
been one line instead of nineteen hundred words about Italian
authors no where cares about. It's too late for that now.
On the dog front, watching a great dog work through
a long distance or tree or hand signals or triple
blind retrieves, or sit stock still while someone else walks
a dog past them, or I don't know, a pair
of Canadian honkers grazes the grass twenty feet away. That
(11:18):
does something for us too. Now, right away, we generally think, man,
I wish I could have a dog like that, as
if that dog is unavailable to most average people, as
if those specific types of bloodlines are available to only
people who know the secret knock or you know who
put on cloaks and masks and meet once a month
under the full moon to pray to the tree, gods
(11:39):
or whatever. That dog is available to you, and seeing
it work is all the evidence you should need. That's
the thing about this stuff. It's often just motivation to
figure out our own dog lives better. What I mean
by that is we get locked into a breed or
a type of dog, and that's fine, but we also
(11:59):
on intentionally install sort of like a mental ceiling around
that breed or our training abilities or that type of dog.
We think, well, my uncle has always had Goldens, and
I love them, so I'm going to get a golden,
and then that dog will go about as far as
our uncle's dog did, which might not be that far
because we don't know what we don't know. But then
(12:22):
you get to see a field bred golden that has
tons of good blood in him, and he's been under
the tutelage of a great trainer for five years, and
you see that dog can do just about anything that
a good working dog can do. And there are also
plenty of rumors about how good the dog is at
finding pheasants and making them fly well within shotgun range,
or about sitting in a duck blind in the freezing
(12:42):
cold to retrieve greenhead after greenhead with just perfect marks.
That might seem beyond most of us and our dogs,
but it's not, and the first step to getting there
is understanding that it's even possible in the first place,
and the best way to understand that is to just
see with your own eyes. Every year in August up
(13:03):
here in the northern part of the Twin Cities there
is an event called the game Fare. They run like
fifty thousand people and their dogs through on two different
long weekends, and it's something worth seeing if you really
like dogs. There are all kinds of time trials and
dock jumping events and things that people can enter their
dogs into to test their skills. Now, if you watch them,
(13:26):
and I've watched hundreds of them over the years, you
see a wide breakdown in dog skills and handler ability.
Most dogs aren't very good at most of the events.
There is the chaos of the fair, which definitely influences
some dogs because it's distraction central. But you do see
dogs that can tune out everything and just perform like
(13:48):
they're supposed to, like it's their job, and they stand
out because they aren't common. Most of the dogs either
fall apart completely or at least partially, but maybe I
don't know. Five percent of them are just solid in
their skills and they not coincidentally, all seem to be
handled by people with an air of confidence who clearly
(14:11):
understand how to get dogs to do what they want
them to do. It's kind of a thing of beauty,
and it's easy to not really understand until you're sitting
there watching the whole thing play out. And speaking of easy,
it would be easy to watch one of these events
at the game fair and pay close attention to the
superstar dogs and just be dismissive about it, to fill
(14:34):
in the blanks and say you don't have the time
or the motivation to try to get a dog to
do that whatever level it is, Hey, that's fine, but
knowing that dog exists and that you could actually have
it is super important. It's kind of like being friends
with a bunch of people who don't exercise, and then
one of them goes on a health kick and changes
(14:54):
their body, and when you see them, you realize that
they were static in your head, all of you and
that friend group were sort of uniform in your design.
But then one of them just breaks the mold and
you realize that the only thing between you and that
is well you. A great dog can show you that,
and so can a great trainer, And if you watch
(15:15):
a combo of the two, you'll see something kind of
close to watching professional sports. It might be just a
bit too unrelatable to sync in, but you're not trying
out to be a cornerback in the NFL. Here, you're
working with a dog and you have access to all
the knowledge necessary to get that dog to level up
(15:36):
and to force yourself to level up as a dog trainer.
Oftentimes it only takes exposure to good dogs and people
who are just better than you. And I'll say this again,
who do not have to be professional trainers? Think about
it this way. The motivation to be better on its
own is worth this effort. But what if you figure
(15:56):
out a better way to address your dog when you're
issuing a command. But if you see one drill that
just helps a dog make better choices, and you realize
you could easily teach your dog that drill, and then
once you do, your dog is going to be way
better off for it. I had a pro trainer one
time who I was photographing. He watched me take a
bumper from one of his dogs, just a simple move
(16:18):
I've done one hundred thousand times in my life. He
walked over and said, next time, position your hand this
way and let the dog give it to you. The
change was mostly really subtle, but also just a better
way to do things that one little, seemingly kind of
insignificant tip. It changed how I handle dogs in a
(16:39):
small but meaningful way. And that's what I want to
leave you with on this We look at the big
picture and decide it's too much work or it's just
too far beyond what we can handle. But with dogs
and how we work with them, it's the little stuff
that stacks up over time to create a better product.
You don't have to go from knowing nothing to collecting
a whole bunch of first place where ribbons at field trials.
(17:02):
You just have to try to be better and that
will come in baby steps that can be ushered along
by facilitating some ways to be around good dogs and
better handlers. That's really it. So think about that, think
about coming back in two weeks because I'm going to
talk about positive associations and training and how they are
like the secret sauce to keeping your dog happy and
(17:23):
motivated to put in the work. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you
so much for listening. I know you're busy right now.
It's finally time to fish in a lot of places
and go shoot some turkeys and do a lot of
stuff and get out and train your dogs. But if
you have some downtime, or you're just interested in maybe
(17:43):
a new recipe, maybe you want to live vicariously through
one of us and watch a turkey hunting film. Whatever,
the medeater dot com has you covered. And by the way,
we're starting to put up a lot of dog training
articles on there, so if you want to read a
little bit more about how to get about better dog
or how to make a better dog, you can head
over to their to the mediatter dot com and check
(18:04):
it out. Thanks again,
Host
Cal Callaghan
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