Ep. 376: Houndations - How to Raise the Ceiling on Your Dog's Performance

On this show, Professional Trainer Bob Owens, explains his strategy for getting the most out of every dog, regardless of age or genetics.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Houndation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson. It's still the dog days of May here
at Meat Eater, and I'm going to talk to a
dog trainer named Bob Owens today. Bob hosts a podcast
called Loan Duck's gun Dog Chronicles, and he is a
master of figuring out how to get dogs to level up,
which is what we are going to dive pretty deep

(00:22):
into right now. This episode of Houndations is brought to
you by Shields, an employee owned outdoor powerhouse where you
can get a new set of golf clubs, a high
end fishing rod, and of course dog training supplies. You know,

(00:43):
whether you're in the market for a new crate, maybe
an e caller, or maybe just a fresh set of
training bumpers, Shields has you covered. Check out their offerings
at shiels dot com. I met Bob Owens down in
South Carolina a few months back at the Southeast and
Wildlife Expo in Charleston, and predictably, we almost instantly started

(01:05):
talking about dogs. Bob is the host of a podcast
dedicated to all things related to training dogs, but he's
also just one hell of a dog trainer. Himself, who
has molded some of the best bird dogs and field
trial dogs in the country. He's an absolute expert at
getting the most out of dogs, and that's what we're
going to talk about on this show right now. Bob.

(01:28):
It is good to see your smiling face, buddy.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So you spent all day to day training, huh I did?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
I just got back and dogs are fed and cooling
down and chilling out and hop on a podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
How many dogs did you work with today?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
We have twenty twenty one right now, and this is
like the window of you know, I go south in
the winter and come home and summer's kicking off. So
by middle of May, we'll be up to about thirty dogs.
And that's kind of mine.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So how many of those do you actually get your
hands on a day, all of.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Them, all of them multiple times today?

Speaker 1 (02:05):
How do you manage that?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
It's a great question. Really, it's being motivated and disciplined
with your time. So, you know, I eat lunch in
three minutes, you know, I bring my lunch and you know,
today it was a rotisserie chicken that I just wolfed
down as fast as I could with a Seltzer water
and I'm onto the next dog. So really making the

(02:31):
most out of your time from the minute you wake
up to the minute they're done. I do have a
couple of employees, and so I can say, like, you guys,
take this crew over here and do that while I
run blinds and then we come back together. But typically
dogs are getting two to three setups or sessions, you know,
could be collar conditioning and obedience and then go out

(02:53):
and get their marks, or they're doing force fetch and
dogs stand work while I'm running teapath stuff like that,
so we it's not just me touching all thirty but
yeah we're rolling.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, so you have to plan. You have to kind
of meticulously plan your day out and know that you
have a you know, twenty minutes for this dog or
a half hour for this dog or whatever, and you
got to get the most out of them in that
timeframe because you can't see something and decide, well, we're
going to go an extra hour with this dog because
it's just not a possibility.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, actually that's I would argue that that's even too
much time. So we do know an obedient session might
be five to eight minutes. You know, you start them out,
bringing them up, getting them high, having fun. Let's go
loosen them up, and then we get into whatever they're
working on with their obedience session, jumping on a dog stand,

(03:46):
getting in the ground blind, doing a little heel work,
jumping on the dog stand, get a bumper heel work,
get them going, and then end on a high note.
If you were in that'll be my first piece of advice.
I guess for the show is a lot of folks
will overdo their one session a day. I'd rather break
it up into smaller mini sessions so that dog comes

(04:06):
out hot, because what you would end up doing is
you've got that dog for ten or fifteen minutes, it's
doing really well, and that last fifteen minutes you may
be losing steam and they start making mistakes, They're getting hot,
they're getting mentally exhausted. I'd rather end on a high
note and get back into it, you know, an hour later,
a half hour later, put them up, have a you know,

(04:26):
swig of water, chill out, listen to a couple songs,
pull them back out and do it again.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
So I'm glad you. I'm glad you clarified that because
that's a really it's a poignant thing to point out.
Is I think that a lot of times people think
about a professional trainer and you've got all of these
different drills set up, and you're putting in a ton
of time each day to these dugs. But really what
you've done is you managed to figure out how to
be really efficient with them, utilize that attention span, you know,

(04:55):
for however long it is, and you're talking when you're
talking ten to fifteen minutes of training, I mean, that's
half a Simpsons episode. Man Like, when when people are like,
I don't I don't have the time, it's it's not
that it's like you don't you don't know what to
do in that little time frame to get the most
out of them. And that's really one of the reasons
I wanted to talk to you. When we were chatting

(05:16):
out at Seaweed down in Charleston where we met, you
were talking about a lot of the dogs that you've
trained to like a really high level. You know, these
these dogs that are field trial dogs and they've got
you know, amazing blood in them, and there's like a
that's like a whole different kind of world that's not
you know, generally probably not that interesting too, like the
average dog owner, but the lessons are like huge, and

(05:38):
so that's that's kind of where I wanted to go
with you, is how does the average person recognize the
ways in which they can sort of level up their dog?
And you know, the average guy's not dealing with a
field trial champion or anybody who's going to be in contention,
but he's dealing with a dog that probably has more
potential than he things.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I think that there's a lot of things that
we could dive in to to take. You know, a
puppy that they get from their buddy who he hunts
with the dad, and the dad's a good duck dog,
and you know it got bred to the neighbor's other
lab and he gets his free puppy from his butt.
You know, that dog still could level up and have

(06:18):
like a pretty high glass ceiling that hand thrown bumpers
in your backyard, fenced in backyard, and it can sit
still and go and get that thirty yard throw. That's
not challenging the dog at all. You're just exercising the dog.
And so the main thing that you know, a short
answer to this would be what are we working on,

(06:41):
what are our goals? What is the end goal look
like to you as the dog owner? And then in
each session you're pushing the dog within reason to accomplish
these goals. So the example I just gave of hand
throwing bumpers in your backyard, that's you know, fifty foot
long by fifty foot wide. That's not challenging them. You're

(07:04):
just you're feeling good about dogs having a good time,
but you're not advancing it and reaching its potential. So
go to the soccer field down the road, go to
your state land or or you know, BLM, whatever I mean.
There's plenty of public land that you can take that
dog and challenge them in new environments. There's plenty of
training tools that are relatively inexpensive compared to the cost

(07:28):
of a dog's life. You know, the handheld shooters. Right,
I can throw a bumper probably thirty five forty yards,
and due to my profession, I'm pretty accurate. Okay, But
if I only throw thirty five yards every day of
that dog's life. When you knock a duck down and
it sails off, you know, crippled and kind of cuts

(07:48):
its wings and sails off seventy That dog is going
to one hundred and ten percent. Stop at thirty five
yards and begin hunting. We need to get those dogs
stretched out, is the term we would do. We stretch
them out and get them confident on land and water,
going further than you even think they're capable of. Now.
So we've got a ten month old puppy hit from

(08:09):
New Jersey. His owners came and saw him after our
winter trip and he did one hundred and seventy five
yard single in my backfield and they were like, holy cow,
Now it's cool, right, That's why I was And he's
he is nice, he's special, but he's not that special.
He's just a was taught how to have confidence and
see where that thing fell, run to where he saw
it fell, establish a good hunt, and pick it up.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
So do you like what percentage of dogs that you
get in because that's a really common thing, right, Conditioning
them to the length in which we can throw or
the distance which we can throw a bumper, never using
the dummy launcher, never getting a buddy out or a
partner to help you do these long range deals, or
even just having a dog that's trained to sit and
stay and walking out fifty yards and then throwing it
the next thirty five yards.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Great.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
How often do you see that all the time? That's great.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, that's an epidemic, right, it's what people know, it's
what they're comfortable with. But like you said, you've got
a partner, you've got a hunt and buddy, maybe you
have kids. Send them out and do we call them
walking singles. So they've got a bucket full of big
white bumpers and they just start walking through the field.
So every mark, and a mark is a bird that

(09:20):
that dog sees. A blind would be a dog or
a bird that that dog doesn't see, and you have
to kick them loose and stop them on a whistle
and handle them. But a mark is one that they see.
And so they're going to walk through this field and
throw these bumpers or ducks, which would be great too,
But again that's something that people have a harder time
getting their hands on, which we can maybe talk about

(09:41):
as we go. But get them out there, and that
person who's helping you can help that dog be successful
with different drills and tools to get the dog to
stretch out and feel good about running seventy five yards
ninety yards fifty yards.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Right, And this is I mean, you know quite a
few dog trainers, you know, Docin talks about this a lot,
like this is a very common thing that pros recognize
and the average dog handler or a dog owner doesn't.
And what it is is, you know, I talk a
lot about how professional dog trainers can see into the future,
like they know what a dog's going to do, and

(10:17):
they know the circumstances and the situations that people are
going to put dogs in. That when you're training in
the backyard, you don't think about that dock sailing like
that that that teal that you just tickle a little
bit and he makes it way down there in the
slough or whatever. But you're going to run into that,
like you're never going If you bird hunt even a
little bit, you're gonna have birds, even roosters. Sometimes we

(10:37):
shoot them and they do that, you know, that flutter
out like one hundred and fifty yards and then they
land and you're like, okay, now we got to got
to get a real mark on them. Because the dogs
never have a real mark on that. They're already looking
at something else. And so that is like something that
the lesson there anyway, is you have to think about
how your training is conditioning your dog to perform and

(10:59):
where that's going to be at odds with what that
dog is going to actually be asked to do in
the field, because eventually it's going to be asked to
do something that you didn't train for.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Like that exactly the thing that we say all the
time is you want to over prepare so your dog
is underwhelmed. Right, So if he's never seen a shackled
live duck and you go duck hunting and the first
bird you shoot is crippled and it's flipping and flopping

(11:28):
and swimming and diving, and it spooks the young you know,
eight to ten month old buppy on its first experience.
He was not over prepared and he was overwhelmed, and
it can not always screw him up, but it can
make it a little bit your job a lot harder
to get him to be successful the next time. So,
you know, building life experiences from March first to October

(11:53):
first is imperative in your dog's first hunting season. And
then you know you had made a comment about that
five your old dog, Well, once they're steady and obedient
and can do you know, fifty to one hundred and
fifty yard marks. What else could we do? It's fun
to go out and make that dog better. You're supposed
to enjoy the great outdoors. And it's a sunny, beautiful

(12:15):
day today in central New York. Why wouldn't you want
to take some bumpers and your dog and go and
progress and work on some handling drills and get them
running some blinds and teach them multiple marks, and you
and your buddy and your two hunting dogs can go
out and start honoring each other and working together like
there shouldn't be a ceiling whether your dog is exceptional,
okay or not great, there's always ways that we can

(12:37):
improve them little by little.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Right when you're when you're talking about that, one of
the things that I get reminded of almost every year,
Like with our with our late season feast hunting, which
I talk about all the time, we do we do
cattail hunts, right Like the public land has cattails on
it because it's wet and they can't farm it, and
that's where all the birds come in. When the weather
gets shitty and it's you know, the winner's starting to
kick in, and you see those dogs that don't have

(13:01):
any experience and cat tails try to find a rooster
and they are just lost, like they've never been in
that habitat. And you know, I mean, and you've got
a factor in the excitement level. You know, it's chaos.
It's just super overwhelming tons of stimuli for them. And
you think you can't you know, you can't like perfectly

(13:21):
create that training, but you certainly can train in different
types of habitat and teach those dogs to work and
thick stuff and think through those problems. And if you don't,
you're eventually gonna have to figure it out on the
fly and it's not gonna work.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, And or give your dog grace during huntings. Right,
That's a big no note to me is losing your
patients on the hunt. Like nobody likes to hunt with
the guy And I've done it. I've been that guy
where you lose your patience because the dog doesn't deliver
what you expect of it or hope to expect of it.

(13:55):
And so if you're hunting with a buddy and you're
yelling because the dog's not coming back and it's not
listening and it's chasing pheasants, you know, four hundred yards
away as they continue to fly. That's not being prepared either.
You know, you're not going to want to go hunting again,
right right.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
And that's again, you know, it's just sort of looking
into the future and going, what what how can I
get my dog pretty dang comfortable with a lot of
different stuff and a lot of different distractions. And when
you talk about you know, you talked earlier about you know,
the eight to ten month old dog that encounters that
first you know, crippled greenhead or whatever. When you talk

(14:35):
about that kind of situation with that first season, you
got to give them a lot of grace because they're
they're going to screw up. I mean, I'm reminded of
this a lot when I watch my kids in sports
and you see them, you know, you see them shooting
baskets in the in the you know, driveway, and they're
pretty confident and they're pretty cocky. And then they actually

(14:55):
get in a game, which doesn't matter at all because
it's like seventh grade girls basketball, right, nobody gives a
shit but them. Listen to this, right right, But you see,
you see just this atrophy and performance, and I think
about it with myself all the time, I have missed
a lot of big bucks that I could have hit.
I could have hit them with a rock in some situations.

(15:15):
Pretty capable with a bow when you put me on
the range, But every once in a while, you put
me in the woods and I will whiff with the
best of them. And that first season with those dogs
is like you're going to see that play out a lot.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
You just tell her every duck that they get during
their first hunt, hunting season is life experience. So all
training season we're building those life experiences little by little
to prepare them right. But then that whole first season,
you've got to look at it like your taking a
seventh grader and showing them the ropes every little duck

(15:50):
that every duck that they pick up, they're going to go, ah,
this one landed outside of the decoys. This one landed
in the decoys. And I didn't break, or I did
break and I got brought back and made to sit still.
I learned from that. Or the crippled goose that sails
over the cornfield and goes two hundred yards away, and
maybe you walk that dog halfway and lock them in

(16:11):
on it and convince them that they're right, those things
are huge, or or maybe they just struggle to pick
up the dang goose right. I mean, I've been around
guys that are yelling at them that I just go
get the goose and play with it and let them
figure it out.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
You know, if you're out there and you're yelling, you've
lost the plot, buddy. Yeah, and it's I mean, everybody
does it right, and it's it's you know, a lesson
for us is the more people you hunt with, the
higher likelihood your ego is going to step in and
you're gonna get you're gonna feel ashamed of your dog,
and then you're gonna yell. I mean, it's one of
the reasons like I preach solo hunts a lot. I mean,

(16:46):
I know it's a little different thing with the duck world,
but it doesn't doesn't necessarily have to be, especially with
a young dog, But in the upland world, I'm like, man,
if you want that dog to relax and work through
these problems of where the rooster went or where the
grouse went, there's nothing better than having no one else
to think about and just going I'm gonna let this
dog work that spot where that bird went. Down until

(17:08):
it happens. And sometimes you know how it is, like
sometimes it's like ten fifteen minutes and you're watching them
and they keep going back to one clump of grass
and you know, kind of paw a little bit and
run around, and then you're like get them, and you
can see them start to solve that problem. But when
you have other people walking in there and everybody's getting
impatient and the other dogs are coming in now, all
of a sudden you think that your dog is not
good at recovering wounded birds. And it's like, man, you

(17:31):
just didn't facilitate an opportunity for that to play out
where it learned. Start to finish on what that particular
bird did, because will that lesson will never go away?

Speaker 2 (17:40):
That's right, I think you just hit the point inadvertently too.
Don't hunt it with other dogs, right, you know that
other dog coming and stealing the bird from them, that
can for a softer dog, a softer personality dog that
can crush them, you know, where they felt good about themselves.
And then bam, the big boulder dog comes and steals

(18:01):
it or or rams into them or whatever the case
may be. And all of a sudden, that more timid
animal just goes this wasn't fun. I don't know what
just happened. And it's all about building. I'm all about
giving a dog a correction when it's needed and when
we're training, and there's this and that. But I'm also
their biggest advocate and coach and team player and making

(18:25):
sure that they have positive experiences to gain from it.
You know, if they break, that's going to probably be
a negative experience. But then as soon as they get
back on that platform, I'm patting them on the back. Hey,
good's it good? So down good? You know, you've got
to be a team player, and you got to be
a coach, not a dictator.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Well that that point you made there with the two
dog thing or the multiple dog thing. Man, if there's
one thing we've kind of gotten wrong as dog people,
like in the bird dog world, it's that idea that
the old dog's going to train the young one or
the seasoned dog's going to train the pup. And it's like, man,
that's almost always a nut neg to have that other
dog there. You know, if you want to development. I

(19:04):
wouldn't say always, but I would say a lot.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I would say a lot. Let's go eighty twenty because
it could now. I think when you came on my show,
we talked about this with my dad's dog and my
old dog. My old dog was a pheasant finding fool.
He was a maniac. So he'd go in the briers,
he'd go in the thick, nasty, he'd go in those
cattawls lows and just root them out and be all
bloodied up and bat of the bone. Well, my dog,

(19:27):
my dad's dog, learned that if I stayed out of
all that stuff, one would come flying out, and he
would be rewarded by not doing the hard work and
getting in there and finding him. And so for a while,
it took several years for him to become emboldened to
go and do that because we always hunted him together.
And so I think that there's some benefit to having

(19:49):
that older dog get that range out of the younger dog,
or put that younger dog in positions to find birds,
and you know they get some positive But as soon
as you see little light bulbs going off on that
young dog, pull the old dog away and just hunt
that young one and let them gain all those experiences themselves. Right.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, we talked about this on your show with my
old dog and my young dog too, because when I
first started hunting Sadie her first season, I think Luna
was a so Luna was, you know, aging out just
a little bit, but like really rock solid, especially when
you talk about recovering wounded birds, and she would recover

(20:32):
most of them. And it never clicked in my head
that Sadie could kind of had learned to just like
I don't need to do that, like the other dog
will find them, until I only had the young dog,
and then I was like, man, there's a big hole
in her game there that I didn't see because I
was just blinded by the hunt, you know. And so
it it's just like a it's like a situation where

(20:53):
we kind of take it for granted. We're like, oh, well,
it's always good to have that old dog there, and
it's like, man, lots of times it's not, you know.
But on the other side, like you said, there are
some positives, right, Like I noticed when I started out
Sadie and I had Luna there just the sheer amount
of flushes we were going to get because of the
old dog. There's like a benefit there, you know, like

(21:14):
the bird contact and like it can go both ways,
but you have to be really careful again, like what
are you conditioning both dogs for? Because you're seeing you're
kind of blinded by the performance of having two dogs,
which is nice, like it's fun to have two dogs
working and two dogs looking for wounded birds, but there
might be something happening there that will will come back

(21:36):
around and bite you in the ass eventually.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah. Absolutely, Let's can we take like a double back
on that conversation of the glass ceiling and giving people
tools to maybe follow in essence, like a quick program

(21:59):
of what I'm doing with that dog so that they
can think outside of the box with themselves and their dog.
So when I get a puppy myself, you know, we
raise it, right, a lot of positive experiences, a lot
of treat training, a little bit of just a couple
retrieves a day, building retrieve drive. We're teaching them to
look out via bird boy marks, jumping on a dog

(22:22):
stand and staying there for two seconds, right, and you're
just building a dog that's learning how to learn and
having fun learning and building marking ability and getting them
swim in and blah blah bay when I get them either,
you know, client dogs that are six months old. We're
going to go through a very formal obedience program. Everything
is going to be on leash. We're still going to

(22:43):
use treats. Once I know that they understand what is
being asked. Sit, heal here, it's all good stuff. On lead,
I'll collar condition the dog and collar conditioning, you know
Layman's terms is shock collar. But if it's taught properly
and overlaid with commands that they already know, then the

(23:05):
dogs are understanding. Like if you snatch the lead and
pop the lead to make a leash correction, they understand
the e collar is the same thing. It's an invisible leash.
So when I say sit and I lift up on
the leash and their butt hits the ground, the leash relaxes.
The same idea with the collar. Right, collar's turned on,
but hits the ground, Collar's turned off. Good dog. So

(23:27):
I'm going to go through very formal obedience and teach
that over the course of maybe two weeks, maybe the
average person who can do a little make it four weeks. Right.
I also force fetch my dogs. I don't think you
have to. It's just a great tool. It teaches the
dog how to learn how to comprehend something uncomfortable, how
to turn the pressure off and succeed. And what that

(23:50):
ends up being is delivering to hand nicely, so going
and getting something, bringing it back to me, sitting down,
not chopping it, not spitting it out at my feet,
not dropping it, come out of the water, et cetera.
And it also leads the groundwork for like blind retrieves.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Let me ask you this on force fetch, because people
ask about this a lot, right, and you said, not
every dog needs this, Like in your experience, what percentage
of dogs do you see that You're like, what percentage
are you like, yep, they absolutely need this or what
percentage you see that.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Don't all of them?

Speaker 1 (24:22):
All of them?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah? So I say you don't have to do it because,
like you, we kind of talk about what are your
goals for the dog. If you are totally okay with
them dropping the bird at your feet and totally okay
with them shaking off at the bank and dropping it
and then picking up and bringing it back, and that
is your seeing, like that's what your goal is for
your dog is just to go and get a duck

(24:43):
and bring it back. Then I think you're fine. I
think when you really start thinking about it. What if
we had a what's your if you could kill one
bird this duck season, what would it be? What's your
bucket list?

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Duck man? I'm a terrible duck hunter, so every greenhead
I kill is awesome. Yeah, I don't have I like
mallards because I live off a teal in wood ducks.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Mostly I love mallards too. So you get this perfect layup,
he's cupped up, he's coming in. You make a killer shot,
dog makes a beautiful retrieve. He drops it at the shoreline,
and it cripples and is swimming up and gets under
a log, and now you're doing a ten minute try
and find in ITBs run around game. Literally why they

(25:27):
call it a wild goose chase? Right right? What the
heck man? Just if he had just held it, you'd
have had that green head that had the band on it.
I mean, you name it, it could happen. So I force
fatch every single dog it comes through the program because
it gives me tools to teach the dog you don't have.
You know, it's got a lot of negative connotations out there.
There's a lot of other styles of training, right, The

(25:50):
British style of training where they do a hold, But
I would be the guy that would argue, they're still
forcing the dog to hold it right, So you're just
it's different, but you're still every time the dog drops it,
you're putting it back in their mouth, popping them under
the jaw.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Hold hold, hold.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
So I do think that there are some dogs that
have a little more natural delivery to hand, but when
the going gets tough, that training is going to drop
down a little bit. So you got that crippled rooster
whose wings are beaten like crazy and their legs are kicking, right,
you know what I'm talking about. That dog is going
to drop it twenty times on the way back to you.
I'll bet one hundred dollars, and they're going to regrip

(26:31):
and regrip and regrip and regrip because it's flapping. If
we have a properly force fetched dog, that stuff doesn't
happen and it's just cleaner. So my answer is all
of them go through the force Vetch program. They're all
better for it. They learn how to learn. The end
result is they delivered a hand, but they're learning how
to learn, how to comply, how to work hard, how
to succeed, how to do something that's stressful and difficult

(26:54):
at times, and then they come out the other end emboldened.
I can do this. You know. I was a little
weird about this at first, but three days later I've
got it. Light bulbs are clicking and they're learning how
to learn. So that's why a forcevetch. So once I
go through my collar conditioning forcetvetch, they're still getting marks
in the field and in the water. So I'm teaching

(27:16):
them how to mark. I'm teaching them decoys and all
the good stuff, and we're starting some gunfire introduction and
dead birds and live birds. And if they drop it,
who cares. They're not done with force ftch. But I've
got this process and a foundation that's solid. And I
think a lot of folks have a dog that's pretty obedient,
but not really when the going gets tough, right, other

(27:38):
dogs around rooster flies away, you know, grouse flushes, and
that dog's over the hill and through the woods and
grandmother's house they go. So, you know, having a good recall,
having at especially duck hunting a strong sit. So when
me and you are in the duck blind, that dog's
not breaking on our shot and we can't shoot a
cripple or whatever. They need to be steady. So having

(28:01):
that really strong foundation is imperative and that'll help make
life easier. If you do the little things great, the
big things are easier to do.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
And you're so, just to reiterate, you're talking about the
dogs that come in that are six months old, right,
and you're talking about you're you're talking about doing a
lot with these dogs, right, Like I mean, you're assessing
them for their what do they know? What do they
need to learn? Of the basics, so you know, you
can go to the collar and you're not dealing with
false positives and you can go to the force fetch

(28:30):
and you're talking gunfire intro and live bird intro. How
long do you have your hands on these dogs?

Speaker 2 (28:36):
So my gun dog program is four months long? Okay,
So they stay with me for four months and they're
getting work five to six days a week and they're
getting like we said earlier, two to four sessions a day.
And you're right, it's drinking from a fire hose for them.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
What So you get these different dogs in, right, they're
six months old, they're ready for this level that you're
going to put them through. And you're putting them through
a lot, but they're like people are going to listen
to this and be like that's so much, but it's
not like that's the window to do that, Like that's
the window they learn and they're starting to mature enough
to handle these things. What do people do wrong that

(29:17):
they should do? So when those dogs get there, they're
just easier for you to just level them up through
all these different layers.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
I think the big one is being confident. That's a
big one. And you can't blame folks who work forty
fifty sixty hours a week, have kids in soccer and basketball,
and you know, family parties and things like that, but
they're always on a leash because they don't listen. That's
part of why I have a job. So they're always

(29:47):
on a leash. And they probably have a fenced in
backyard and so the dog knows it's fence in the backyard,
it knows it's living room, but it hasn't gone and done.
Take it on hikes, Let it be a puppy and
jump through a stream and clamor over a log and
run through brush and fall and trip and have fun.
You don't it doesn't have to be perfect. I don't care.

(30:10):
I've got a treat full of or a pocket full
of treats, and when he comes towards me, I'll I'll
get him to come to me and I'll pop them
some treats. But I want that dog that's super emboldened,
that can you know, almost strut man, just feels good
about themselves. Swimming there's a great way to do it,
and there's a lot of wrong ways. The great way

(30:31):
to do it is wait till the water's nice and warm.
You go to a shallow entry place, not a sharp
drop off, not waves, not a river. Those are like
my no nose. Put your waiters on, or maybe your
swim trunks, and go up to your knees, and that
dog will follow you. You have a relationship with him.

(30:51):
He loves you beyond belief. He's going to follow. If
he doesn't follow, I'm going to you know, I'm using
my bumper to tease him and coax him and just
give in, and he'll start moving in. And then you
give them a little bit more and he'll start moving
in a little further. He'll come and he'll or she
will follow you in and follow that bumper and then
I stay in between the dog and the shore the

(31:14):
first place if they do swim, the first place they
want to high tell it to his land. I want
him to be cool about swimming. So I'll maneuver in
between them and the shoreline and then you know, coach
them into me grab that bumper and flip it back
out so they just spin around and head back out.
And so you're just keeping them in a couple two
three reps and then let them get out. But if

(31:34):
the first thing they're thinking of is land, land land, land,
land land, let them get out. I gotta get out.
I gotta get out. You know, they go into like
a panic mode to get out. But if you can
kind of just keep them in the zone of just
playing with them, they'll they'll water, will be positive. But
don't ever throw them in. Don't do the old school
take them on a canoe and paddle to an island
and says you'll swim when you want to come back.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Yeah, don't do that.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
I don't do that. I've heard it.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
So when you I just want to back up a second.
So when you talk about these six month old dogs
that come into your program and the biggest issue across
the board is just confidence. Do you think that a
lot of the people who have those puppies, because I
would assume that when they get that puppy, they know

(32:19):
they're coming to you. A lot of them know they're
coming to you at six months old.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah right, I would say again eighty twenty. Some people, Okay,
I can't handle it. I thought I had time for it.
I don't know what I'm doing right.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yes, some people just figure out they're just not cut
out for it and they got to find a pro right.
But a lot of people know, I'm getting this dog,
and I'm not confident enough to take my dog through
gunfire intro and right on down the line. So I'm
going to bob whatever. But do you think that that's
part of the problem with the confidence thing that people go,
I don't want to do anything to screw this dog

(32:52):
up before he gets his hands on it, and he's
going to mold this dog into this perfect thing, like
I think. I think one of the things that I
see so much with people's relationship to professional trainers is
they don't see it as a it's sort of like
an invisible partnership, you know, like if you don't do
what you're supposed to do with your dog. The pro

(33:12):
can go pretty far with it. But you know, on
the front end, on the back end, if you don't
keep that up all that a lot of that stuff
washes away. So do you see like a is a
part of that. Just people are like, I'm just I
don't want to mess this up, So I'm going to
just play with my dog in the backyard. I'm not
taking them to new environments.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Like, yeah, I think that there. You do hear that
a lot. It's like, oh, he looks good. I just
didn't want to ruin him for you. It's like, it's
kind of hard to ruin a dog. They're pretty multible,
they're prettyly pliable, and they bounce back quickly in most
circumstances as long as you don't coddle them. And you know,

(33:50):
I guess I can digress on that if you want
me to. But if if every time they get nervous,
you're like, oh baby, it's okay, it's okay. What are
you doing. You're patinum and you're at the he's fearful
or nervous and you're just patting them and praising him.
So don't do that. Just if he gets nervous or something,
roll on, ignore it. So would want to do it?
Make him do it ten or fifteen times until he's

(34:11):
not nervous again.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Right, So what would you recommend? You know, because when
you when you talk about dogs not being confident coming
into your program, I mean one of the things that
I just go back to, like mentally is, you know,
we preach about socialization a lot, and people are always like, oh, socialization,
and so my dog is like a nice dog around people,
and I'm like, man, there's like there's so much more

(34:33):
to it than that, as far as just building their
confidence in a variety of different situations with a bunch
of distractions where they're just like, like you kind of
said that strutting dog, has that been there, done that?
Mentality that's a huge component of socialization and just those
early months of like train them here, work with them there,
walk them here, like you know, let them play in
this little bit taller grass, like just let them let

(34:56):
them just figure this stuff out.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I think I think that there's like a real
art to it. Right. It's it's not a plus b
equal see there is. I kind of talked about my
foundation and how I go step by step so that
I'm not jumping ahead or having to go backwards to
fix things. But I think that there is this like
feel to when the dog is ready to go to
move on. There's a feel for how the dog is

(35:19):
feeling in this moment, and I think, you know, you
hit the now on the head, like, yeah, it should
like to meet new people, but it should also feel
comfortable to wander off and go sniff the grass. And
you should feel comfortable that it can go further than
ten feet from you and it's going to be okay.
So put the dog in situations. Take it to the
soccer game, take it to you know, the family party

(35:42):
where there's kids poking and brought in it. You know,
get it out and let it be a dog. Let
it be a puppy. It's going to have a job
if you will, for the rest of its life. And
let it be a dog. Let it go wander off.
And you got to call it twenty times. That doesn't
bother me as much as the dog that you know,
you move quick and it shoots to the end of
the leash because it's spooked.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Right, you can rein it in.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Yeah, you canen it in. Then have to pump it
up all the time.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, I think, you know, this is gonna be a
sort of a weird message to give, especially with what
you've kind of mentioned about coddling dogs and stuff. My
dogs are. They go everywhere with me that dogs can go. Typically,
you know, we go to Cabela's to buy some swim
baits to fish with or something they go with. You know,
like the more that you just include that dog in

(36:31):
your life as like a as like a partner, right,
not like that baby that you're like, like you said, coddling,
but actually as like a part where you're gonna go
walk here, or go scout deer there, or do whatever
like that stuff. I feel like it's just it's just
so it's so good for them on so many different levels.
And it's good for us too, because we get to

(36:51):
start to learn to read our dog and see, you know, like,
is he really hard to call back, like recall in
this situation? Okay, Well that's gonna be something you got
to work on. And I think that I think that
people get scared, you know, including a dog that way
in a lot of parts of their life, but throughout
the rest of their life. That's an important thing, you know,

(37:14):
like and of course you have to be careful, like
I don't. I don't know. Have you ever been to
the game fare out here? I can't remember if we
talked about that before, Yeah, a couple of years ago. Yeah,
so you you know, for the people listening, the game
Fair is this two long weekends here in the northern
suburbs of the Twin Cities. It's all about bird dogs.
It is a chaotic situation. I mean, it's like fifty

(37:38):
thousand what's that got where i'd take a puppy, right,
That's where I'm going. So it is a bird dog
friendly show. It's an outdoor show. Tons of booths, you know,
fair food, all kinds of different kinds of like events.
You can run your dog through, doc jumping and long
distance retrieves and time things and it's really neat. But

(38:01):
there's a lot of clay page and shooting going on.
There's a lot of people blowing on duck calls that
have no business blowing on duck calls. And it is
a loud, chaotic environment with literally thousands of dogs going
through every weekend. And when you think about those dogs,

(38:21):
you're talking everything from amazingly well behaved dogs that can
run quadruple blind retrieves at three hundred yards without bat
and I and a lot of dogs that are on
the other end of the spectrum. And so we look
for situations like that because we're like, well, that is
a dog friendly thing. But then you see people bring
puppies to it, and there's gunshots going off constantly, and

(38:44):
that puppy is a foot tall, and there are people
and big dogs everywhere, and it is just such a
bad environment for a young dog. And so when we're
talking about this, be a little careful, right, Like if
you take the dog of the park and it's July fourth, like,
you know, let's be careful.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Well, And I mean we met at Sewee. I didn't
have a dog with me. There's other factors too that
I would encourage you to think about, as like how
many of those dogs are carrying some sort of kennel
cough or something weird going on. I mean, they don't
need to be drinking from bulls, they don't need to
go to a dog parks. There's good places to socialize,
and then there's stuff that's a little overwhelming and a

(39:25):
little too much. Again, the big thing you're thinking about
is how can I make this dog the most successful.
If you think that's not going to be helpful, pull
back if you think it could be helpful, and let's
let's try it for ten or fifteen minutes, you know,
and just be off to the side, and yeah, we
could work that. But yeah, the gunfire stuff is spooky,
the big dogs, the feet, the people, the everybody poking

(39:47):
and prod and it can be overwhelming for certain puppies
that you're hurting not helping right.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
And I mean, if you screw that up in the
wrong way, we get like gun shyness or something settled in,
then you've then you've made a big mistake.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
You know.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
I've seen I mean this is total tangent here, but
I've seen people do doc jumping drills with their dog
at those events, and you know, you watch those dogs
and some of them leap off and they jump eighteen feet.
Some of them run up and they hit the brakes
and fall off, and it's funny. But I've seen situations
where dogs have run up there and done kind of

(40:22):
that stutter step thing and sometimes jump off, sometimes not.
And I've heard people say, well, he's never been in
the water before. And you're like, man, you know I
actually saw that one time at the why was swimming lessons.
I saw a kid jump into the pool to get
his test, to get his wristband, and he went straight
to the bottom and the lifeguard jumped in and pulled

(40:42):
him out, and the mom said, yeah, I didn't know
if you could swim. He's never tried before.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
So anyway, that's awesome, right, Parenting bad idea when you
talk about these dogs, so you have a four month program,
they come in at six months, go through all this
different stuff.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
How many of them get to where you're like, yep,
that I'm I'm good with that progress? Is it all
of them?

Speaker 2 (41:11):
I go ninety eight percent? I mean there's a couple
you just can't get there. Yeah, there's a couple that
just it's not in them. And it's not fair to
the dog to make me make them, and it's not
fair to the owner to pay, you know, the amount
of money that they invest in me and that dog
for at the end of four months to not be satisfied.

(41:32):
I mean, my name's on the line too, right, So
but I think overall, like I've had some dogs at
month three finally swim and then they crush it. But
the whole time you're being honest with them, like, man,
are you sure you want me to keep going? Right?
Maybe he's just a tough dog.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Is this in your opinion? Those that two percent, that's
just kind of the washout Doug, where you're like, I
just he doesn't have it. Is it just a blood thing?
Is it a bloodline thing?

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah? Yeah, sometimes it's breed thing. I don't want to know.
I hate knocking on different breeds because we're all dog
people and everybody loves their dog, and that's what a
good dog. A good dog is a good dog. I
don't care what it looks like and how it walks,
and it doesn't matter to me. But if it there

(42:20):
are some breeds that you're not stacking the deck in
your favor that it's going to help you make your
life easier, let's let's.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Talk about those, because I mean, can't I mean, I honestly,
this is something I write about a lot where I'm like,
we look at dog breeds and we go, I like
the look of that one, or my buddy has this

(42:47):
wire hair and I love it, so I want that.
But we don't sit back and go how good of
a trainer, am I? Like what am I bringing to
the table? You know, people ask me all the time
like why female labs? Like, I'm not a professional trainer.
So if I get a lot of really good blood
and a female lab, she's going to be soft, tons
of retrieving desire and I can work with that, Like
I need that for myself because it's that's the easiest

(43:10):
kind of dog for me to reward, and you know,
it just it just works for me. Like I if
you handed me a chessie, it'd be a different story, right,
So just like what are the breeds where you're like, man,
this is just a bigger challenge for the average person, right.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
So the first one that comes to mind because someone
asked me the other day if I would do it,
and it is a toller a Nova Scotia duck tolling
retriever and retriever's in the name. But they for you know,
years and years and years and years and years, they've
been bred for show, not hunting, and even hunting, they
were more they were literally a toll them tolling is

(43:48):
running up and down the bank, playing flashing their tail. Yeah,
and that duck would get curious and come in for
them to shoot. That's not doing. You know icy rivers
of Central New York, you know one hundred yard retrieves.
That that one is tough. So I've trained a few
of them in my past and one of them turned

(44:10):
out good and the others turned out fine. You know,
could do it, but it wasn't fun for the dog
and it wasn't fun for me. And it's just it's tough.
So again we're stacking the deck in our.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Favor, so you don't have to worry about that. I
had that. I did an article on tolling and novascoes
to duck tollers one time, and they came after me too,
But it was like, you just have you just have
to recognize, like there's a reason they're not very popular.
And it's not to say that that can't be a
badass dog for you. You're the average dog trainer or

(44:44):
the average dog owner and you're like, I need a dog.
It's going to retrieve some ducks and kick up a rooster. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
I think it's also about being honest with yourself. If
you hunt forty days a year and that's probably not
the dog. If you hunt two or three and it's
a little wood duck hole where they've got to do
thirty yard swims and relatively warm water probably be fine.
But if you're the guy or gale that goes out
on Lake Michigan and is hunting diver ducks and it's

(45:12):
twelve degrees out, that is the wrong dog for you.
And I think I'm going to go back to like
a German short hair, a German wire hair drop. Some
of those breeds or some of those individuals in those
breeds are great duck dogs, but they may not point
as well. Or if they're great pointing dogs and they

(45:33):
don't really retrieve it as well or have much desire
for swimming at all, those are really difficult to get
to love it because innately they were bred to do
the other thing. So if you want one like that,
if you want to be different, you got to do
your research ten times more because there are breeders who
might specify and really choose a real ducky watery drop

(45:59):
verse a pointing draft. So again you look at yourself, Hey,
I hunt forty days a year and I'm hunting divers,
and it's probably still gonna be A short hair is
not gonna do well in January in Lake Michigan. There's
probably one or two or five that are going to
listen to the show and send us a picture saying,

(46:20):
my dog does it, but I'll show you five hundred
that didn't.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
Right well, And that's I mean, that's a really good
point there too, because the popularity thing goes both ways. Right,
If you look at the tollers, they're not they're not
that popular out there. They're just not. And there's reasons,
right whatever, Uh, wear hairs and drafts have gotten pretty
popular in the last you know, ten years, and so yeah,

(46:44):
you can you can go find those dogs that are
be they're used in duck blinds like crazy, and they
perform awesome, and they can be such badass dogs, Like
they can be such badass dogs.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
But several that were awesome.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Yeah, they they really can't. But if you're like I'm
a hardcore duck guy and this is what I want,
Like is that the best choice? You know, Like if
you're a dual purpose upland waterfall, like there's a different
case to be made. And so it's again, like you said,
it's just like we got to be real honest at
this point, Like what's the best.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Choice yeah, and I said it a few times. You're
stacking the deck in your favor. So if you've already
gotten a dog, that's your dog. But if you're listening
to this podcast going boy this spring this summer, I'm
thinking of adding one to my family. You need to
look at the different breeds. You need to look at
how you hunt. You need to look at how much
time and energy you can put into a dog, because

(47:39):
maybe a German short hair isn't the right one because
they they do need a lot more energy where most
labs they've got a better on off switch. I would
say most, not all. So you're looking at how much
you haunt, what your family lifestyle is, how much you
want to train, how much you want to put into
the dog. And then we're stacking the deck in our

(48:01):
favor by choosing a good breeder that is responsible, reliable,
does all the health testing has like the parents have.
I compete with my dogs. Getting that little dinky ninety
cent ribbon is proof that my dogs are smart team players,
work hard, can mark and can can can do it.

(48:24):
And so you know, just going down the road to
the guy who has a pure bread lab, to bread
to a pure bread lab, and boy, they hunt and
you hunt forty days a year on Lake Michigan. Well
what does it hunt? How to? You know? Has he
had to throw twenty rocks to get it to go swim?
I don't know, but he hunts?

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Well, that's I mean, that's a really common mistake that
a lot of people make. Is like it's purebread, so
it's good enough, and it's it's this breed, so it'll hunt,
But like, how will it hunt? Like all of them,
all of them will probably go pick up a dead bird,
you know, like most of them, and you know they'll

(49:04):
they'll do parts of it, but really it's like, what
are you going to be working with in that dog?
And that's that's the thing about you know, Like one
of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is
because the ceiling for these dogs. You know, every individual
dog has its top level, right, But what you're talking
about is start with a dog where the top level

(49:24):
is going to be pretty freaking high, right, Give yourself
that to work with first. Even if you maybe personally
can't get there with that dog, at least it's there.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
It's going to make your life a lot easier and
more enjoyable and you'll be problem solving a lot less.
And the cheapest part about owning a dog is buying
the dog. So if your budget is a thousand bucks,
we can probably find you a decent one. If your
budget's four hundred, save your money and wait for a thousand.
And realistically, most puppies that are well bred and have
all the health testing done and have competed and whatnot,

(49:57):
you're in the fifteen to twenty five hundred range.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Right when you when you talk about this too, I mean,
I think there's a really good point there. When you
get good blood, you know, you you have those things
you want, right like you have the drive, you have
the intelligence, you're going to get a problem solver, you know,
health the whole thing, but that the relationship with that dog.

(50:19):
You know, you want easier training, Like you want a
dog that shows up to work, and you want a
dog that will like be fun to train, and we
don't we don't really talk about that a lot. But
when you get your hands on one that has really
good blood, it's just you're gonna train it more like
it's kind of a like a it's like a snowball
effect where you're like, man, I enjoy working with this dog,

(50:40):
because this dog is leveling up fast, and it shows
up and it looks me in the eyes and it's like,
what are we doing today? That's so much of a
different experience than getting one that will retrieve, you know,
six seven times and then it's going to go off
and lay down, Like there's a there's a component of
that that not only is that a better hunting dog
or it will be just general, but also your overall

(51:02):
experience of just working with that dog is going to
be so much more enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I don't think
we have to beat the dead horse on it, but
I just think when you really you're stacking the deck
in your favor by doing your research and finding the
right breed and the right breeder to bring this family
member into your home. If you're lucky, that dog's gonna
live twelve to fourteen years and if you really hunt
and you really want to hunt, you're going to and

(51:28):
it doesn't you're gonna now still own it for twelve
or fourteen years. So let's do it right the first time.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Right, So when we're talking about, you know, how high
up a dog can go, like what level they can achieve.
What's the best dog you ever got your hands on? Like,
what's the one where you were like, oh my god,
Like this one is just the most special.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Oh, that's a good question. I have a handful and
for different reasons. First dog, because he's your first and
we you know, I was probably twenty two twenty three.
He'd go, we'd go back to college together and have
a time of our lives. We hunted a ton, We
trained a ton. He taught me a ton. He taught

(52:14):
me a lot about being more patient. Remember we talked about,
you know, not being that guy that dog got the
worst end of the deal sometimes, and but it taught
me not to be that guy and not to be
that guy that hunts with you. Right. But he was
a pheasant finding fool. I would send him on retrieves
that I wouldn't send a dog on. Now, you know

(52:37):
ice flow rivers of Central New York and it's one
hundred and twenty yards across and that we kind of
don't know where the duck is. And I'd make that
sucker swim across that thing, and he'd hunt the shoreline
and sure enough he'd come back with the wood duck
or black duck, or you'd shoot up hooded merganza and
it starts cruising downstreams, you know, down the river, and

(52:58):
he'd be gone for ten or fifteen minutes and you're
like freezing cold here he comes back with a hoodie.
I'd be like, let's either get the boat or we
let that one send, because that's not safe. I mean,
if they're crippled, they're going downstream and it's January, not safe.
And I've learned from that too, But he never quit.

(53:20):
I had a Chesapeake that was a client that I
I raised for him. He's a college buddy of mine.
Ended up having kids and just you know, I can't
do the puppy deal. Tried to. I got it at
three months old, and she was not the highest drive dog.
Some days you'd open up her dog box and she'd

(53:40):
like wake up and be like really, dude, and you'd
close and be like all right tomorrow, and then tomorrow
you'd open up. She'd be like I'm ready. And I
loved her. We passed the Master National twice with her.
One of the years I think there was only a
hint like maybe four or five female chessies that passed.
She just had a lot of heart and a lot
of like heart for me. And the going got tough,

(54:01):
she would go and do it and you'd kind of
look at her like, I don't know, she kind of
looks like she wants to be lazy today, but she
just would. She would give you her all in her
own way. She was real special. The probably highest title
dog I have trained. Her name is Lizzie to another client,
dog very soft, very well composed, and then lives for

(54:28):
it one hundred miles an hour. But she doesn't. She's
not like jittery or anything crazy. It's very well like
in her brain. She's just composed, but as giving you
one hundred and ten percent every time she's she got
qualified all Age QA two she passed her. She's only
ran one Master National and passed it. And every day

(54:49):
she shows up to work and gives you everything she's
got and does it well.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
So the last two dogs you've talked about, that dog
and that female Chessie, you've kind of said it without
saying it that you could ask a lot of those
dogs and they would just deliver. Yeah, that's so cool.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
It's so cool. And some of the things that we do,
we kind of talked about it in the beginning of
just hand throwing in your backyard. If these dogs only
had that, they never would have accomplished what they've accomplished.
They've done some amazing things and amazing retrieves and competitions

(55:31):
are fun, man like for anybody who's listening to this
it's never been to one with their dog, go and
watch and then think about signing up. Because hunting season
is sixty days long hunt tests, you could go and
make new friends and be around buddies and have a
little lunch on your tailgate and take your dog and

(55:51):
have a nice Saturday with you and the family at
a hunt tasting. It's not for everybody. They are ninety
cent ribbons in the grand scheme of life, what ebbs.
But it's a cool accomplishment and it does give you
these goals to say, like, boy, we got our junior hunter.
What a great accomplishment has to deliver? A hand has
to be relatively well mannered, has to be relatively steady,

(56:11):
and it has to do sixty seventy yard marks with
live birds at least one being live. And you know
that's a good duck dog. Well, now the next level
is they've got to do a double. They've got to
sit steady and watch another dog work, and they got
to run a blind retrieve. That's a real duck dog.
We can hunt together and if it doesn't see it fall,

(56:33):
I can stop it on a whistle and change directions
and get it there. And what a great goal to
have for you and your hunt buddy, go out there
and get better. Man.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
So that is a great maybe last point for us
to wrap this up with, because I've been writing about
this a lot lately, and I feel like, at this
stage of my life, I notice, you know, the very
first lesson that I really got that's like this was
when I started tournament fishing when I was in college

(57:04):
and I was fishing pro am so I was an
amateur or a pro co so I was a co angler,
and I got paired up with dudes who were so
good at this thing that I was very passionate about.
But the level that they were at, Like, there's some
of the guys that I drew in those tournaments. The
things I learned from them, I use them every year.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
All the time.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
I've taught so many people, and it was merely it
was just like a matter of being exposed in person
to somebody who had that skill set. And I think
about this with dogs all the time, where you know,
you think about you got to get around a guy
like you, or you got to get around doc or whoever,
and that's great. Like watching somebody work who really knows

(57:44):
what they're doing. Is that that education is important. But
even just like you said, going to a trial, going
to hunt tests and watching what the dogs are capable
of and watching you know, seeing where the wheels fall
off and seeing where somebody just it's just perfect and
then you realize, like what's possible, and those dogs, those

(58:05):
are the dogs you have access to, Like if you're
listening to this, you can have that dog that has
that blood. Like what you do with it is a
different story. But seeing that and seeing how they're handled
and seeing what they can do is so important for
just opening our mind to going. Man, I've been like,
you know that backyard trainer, you go, there's so much

(58:25):
more I could do with this to level up my
relationship and help my dog level up.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yeah, there's nothing better than having a hunting buddy kind
of give you the pad on the back and be
like that dog was awesome. That was the coolest retree
I've ever seen, or boy, what an enjoyable dog to
hunt with. That that's a great compliment, and that should
be everybody's goal to train, own and hunt with a

(58:50):
dog that everybody compliments because it's an enjoyable hunting companion
and brings the birds back.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Yeah, I mean, it really is. And it's it's crazy
how how easy it is to sort of go through
life and not be exposed to that. And it's a shame,
you know, but you kind of have to seek it
out a little bit, and you kind of have to
put yourself around people who at least know what they're
doing or at least can recognize that situation. But it's just,

(59:20):
you know, I think about this all the time with
I have two buddies who run ultra marathons. One of
them runs the hundred milers in the mountains. The other
one does like, you know, fifty k's and like long shit, right,
like real runs, right. And when I started running, you know,
eight nine years ago, you know, I would be like

(59:42):
struggling to get like a five k which is three
point one miles, and I'd be talking to my buddy
and he's like, yeah, I did a forty mile training
run this morning, and it's like you could be discouraged
by that pretty quickly, right, Like you could be discouraged
if you if you hung around the wrong trainer, you
watch the wrong field test or something. You could be like,
it would be easy to be like, I'm never going
to get there. I could never have that. But it's

(01:00:04):
almost just a mindset thing to just go, Okay, maybe
you will never train like Bob Owen. It's probably not.
But if you take away something some part of it
to just help your dog get a little better here,
or to help yourself not lose your shit when your
dog doesn't do what you want, it's just a net

(01:00:25):
positive and so getting around those people and those dogs
that are good, it's just so important.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Yeah, I don't ever want to run fifty miles. I'm
just gonna throw that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Out, dude. Most people don't. Most people don't, but it's
it's so valuable. I mean, I had a conversation last night.
We're going way off in the weeds here. But our
old neighbor moved away probably like five years ago, and
his daughter is still really good friends with my daughters.
He's he got divorced a year ago, and he was
talking about he's been going to the same gym I

(01:00:57):
go to, but he's he's like very nervous about the
weight room, which a lot of people are, and I
was talking to him about it, and he's like, I
don't know how to lift weights. I want to, Like
he's kind of back in the dating game, and he's
not like right right, He's like, what can I do
to stack the odds in my favor here? And I'm like, dude,

(01:01:19):
come lift with me. I'll teach you. And he's like,
he's so nervous about that. And I told him, I
said the first time that I went into the weight
room after I quit drinking, and I was like, I
didn't want to go in there, right, Like I was
in terrible shape, but I'm like, I wanted to lift
weights and get stronger. The very first dude I met
is this jacked, totally jacked, sleeve tattoos, bald head. He's

(01:01:43):
actually a canine police officer here in the Cities. He's
a really good friend of mine. Now he's a badass.
Dude runs this Belgium malanoa that is a He's a
cool dog. I hear a lot of stories from him
about dog work. But he was like super nice and
just like totally non judgmental, just like another one of

(01:02:04):
the dudes in the weight room. And I told you
this old neighbor that I was like, man, nobody cares,
just like, go try to get better. And I see
that in all these aspects of our life, where like
if you're scared to run your dog because of this
or that, it's like you think that you're gonna go
to that field trial and those people haven't been through
that a billion times, that's right, they have. They're gonna

(01:02:25):
walk up to you and be like try this, you know.
Or I had a dog that was just like that
and I had to do this and now this and
it's like, oh, you'll be accepted in it's a different
thing and it will help you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah, that's super fun man. I just again, it extends
your hunting season. Why wouldn't anybody want to do that
with their dog.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
It's great, right, absolutely, Bob. This has been so much fun. Man.
Where can everybody listen to you? Find your socials all
that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Yeah, no, I had a great time. Thanks for having
me on. Everybody who tuned in appreciate your attention. I
know it's pulled in every different direction, so the fact
that you listen to us to this point means a
lot to us. You can find me on Instagram. That's
where I'm most playful. It's at Loan Duck l O
n E. Duc K. Our podcast is called Loan Ducks

(01:03:13):
Gun Dog Chronicles, a lot of training tips, a lot
of hunting stories, and we've just had fun with it.
It's great to just talk with people like yourself and
get to know your backstory and you're hunting dogs, and
then you know, training tips to get you to the
next level. And then YouTube. I've got a couple hundred
videos on YouTube that help you get you where you
want to be with your dog. So here to help,

(01:03:35):
and again, Tony, thank you for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Hey, what's the YouTube channel, Loan Duck Outfitters. Okay, perfect,
Thanks Bob, Yeah, thank you. That's it for this episode.
Keep tuning in every other week for regular Houndations episodes,
but also keep an eye out for more of these interviews.
We have a lot of big stuff playing in the
dog space here at Meat Eater, and as you can
probably guess, a lot of it will be produced by

(01:03:58):
yours truly always thanks for listening and for all of
your support. If you want some more dog content like
training articles, or maybe you want to watch Sadie and
I go crunch some public land roosters on film, head
on over to the media dot com and you can
check out our latest content. We drop new stuff every
single day. There's so much good stuff there, and again,

(01:04:20):
as always, thank you so much for your support.