E 158. "Establish high standards" with Kevin Cheff (Part One)

What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of loan ducks, Gundog Chronicles. I'm really excited about this episode. We've got our guest Kevin Sheff, the retriever coach is back. He is one of our top listen to podcasts of all time because he brings the heat every time. So much knowledge, so many great tidbits for you to take away. And today's episode focuses on the fundamentals of mechanics coming off of duck season and coming off of winter off. We're all gearing up. We're all getting excited for springtime and training and advancing our dog. But let's not worry about the sexy stuff. Let's make sure that we're moving the dog along in a way where the foundation and fundamentals are key and he's got it laid out. This dude is on his A game. So I'm excited for the episode. But first, do me a favor. Jump on our patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters. It's a community where we hang out, do every other month a happy hour. It's like buying me and coming to beer. If you enjoy the show, if you enjoy the guests we have on, if you enjoy the information, if we answer the question, whatever it may be, if you enjoy it and want to support, jump over to patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters. There's plenty of great information there too with training tips and videos, etc. Next up, loan duck outfitters.com. Anything you need, baby, loan duck hats, loan duck hoodies, winter is almost over. So maybe you want to grab a t-shirt, I'm not sure. But there's a bunch of different gear on there. And this website is actually being renovated. So I'm super excited to launch that in the coming months. So stay tuned for more on that. Next up from the duck blind to the holding blind, baby, it's PioRina, the food that fuels the truck alone duck. Our big dogs are on their 3020 pro plan and our puppy, Ramblur, is on the large breed puppy formula. Typically, we say wait a year until you move them up to that 3020, even though the 3020 is an all life stages formula. Next up, gunner kennel, man's best kennel. I was at the southeastern wildlife expo seawee this past weekend here in Charleston, South Carolina. And I got to spend some time with the crew of gunner kennels and really, you know, there are two dudes, Luke and Joe, Joe is the CEO. You know, Addison is the founder, but Joe is the CEO and class act guy, like way cooler than I am. Nice, nice guy that just open arms gives you a hug kind of guy. And it just instills in me the quality of people and the quality of product. And they're constantly innovating our industry. They've they've might have shared some stuff that's coming down the pipes with me that I can't share with you yet. But stay tuned for that. I'm excited for the new products of 2023. Next up, shooter shoot, baby. Bus, duck seasons over. Low is me. I'm sad, but I had a great season. A lot of fun memories made sending bismuth down range at the old waterfowl. Can't say enough good things about them. The thing I can tell you is I do want to get better at shooting and Kevin and I have some seven and a half steel. Actually, excuse me, lead, seven and a half lead that will be slinging at some clay birds this year. So, you know, try and improve and get ready so that when we're sending bismuth down, we're knocking them out of the sky. Next up, smoke them if you got them, baby. Trigger grills. I don't have mine down south and I miss it terribly. Kevin, have you smoked anything in the recent past to my taste buds? Yeah, we did some salmon recently. It was delicious. I'd highly recommend anybody firing up the smoker and putting a hot one on there. And then did some chicken brass recently too. Not as sexy and exciting, but still. It's like the winter time. It still turned out great. And were you out grilling? Well, you're down south. That doesn't count. Other people up in the great white north, probably not grilling as much. Yeah. Shmoak them if you guys are very pretty. Real excited about it. Well, all right. Let's get into the show. We've got Kevin Schaff again. Kevin, welcome back to the show. Well, everybody, what's been going on since the last time you've joined us? Well, it's been a really, really busy year. Lots of seminars this past year. But the big thing that's been going on is we've been working feverishly on my new online digital training platform called Fetch, which is a complete training system. It's an idea that was born probably in 2014, which is years ago. But I've been working on that since and that program is designed to take people right from basics, treat training all the way through running coal blinds. And it's designed to not only teach people how to do those things, but also you've got access to me to coach you through it when you're having problems and whatnot. So lots of things I want to tell you about, but we'll save that for later. But just to let people know, if you want to know more about it, go to my website, www.theretrievercoach.com and click on the fetch tab. Lots of great things to tell you about there. But stay tuned till the end and I'll give you more info on it. Awesome, dude. Yeah, that's exciting. We did a force fetch course. It's one of those things like Pat Burns came on and he's doing a, like everyone, it's such a great tool, right? We have a course like I shouldn't be worried about you having a course and everyone else having a course. Screw that. I want to learn what you've got to say. I want to learn what Pat has to say. When we were growing up doing this stuff, we had a few books, maybe DVDs started coming out and it was like now people coming into our sport have so much information that they can be a sponge on that I think it's fantastic. And there's enough of the pie to go around that everyone can be successful doing their courses and helping more people. And that's the end goal is helping more people, right? Like if I can help someone at this podcast and help someone if they learn about something from you, if they learn something about Pat Burns, like everybody's can be a sponge nowadays and grow their relationship and skill levels with their dogs. It's super awesome that more people are jumping on board and doing it. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And I think we all have a duty to move the needle forward and in terms of making the training better and doing better for our dogs. And however we can do that, I think I just think that's really important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Well, anyways, that's super cool, man. Let's get into the show. We text it back and forth on the concept of we're into March, whether starting to get better, the Northern folks are starting to see some grass again. We're in February, but grass is growing and we want to get back out with our dogs. And so this episode is going to be about coming off a duck season, coming off of a winter and getting your dog further than they were last year. So I know that you've got copious notes. I'll let you kick it off, my friend. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm getting questions right now this time of year from people that are saying, hey, Kevin, what should I be thinking about doing as we're getting back into training? And there's a lot of things that we really want to make sure that we tackle before we get into the training that we typically do throughout the training season. And I think it's just a big mistake to jump in where you left off. You really want to review so many things to make sure that your dog is physically prepared and fundamentally prepared for all the things you're going to ask it to do, as well as yourself, by the way, I mean, how good are you at helping your dog target correctly? Or do you even know where your dog is pointed accurately? Because you haven't done it for months. So I think getting back to the yard and reviewing these things along with many other things, as well as things in the field is just super, super important. Yeah, we just sort of dabbled in it on our Patreon. Happy hour tonight. I had a lot of time off with my big dogs. And the fun thing to do would be to go throw marks and run blinds. The thing I have been doing is taking a step back and working on our mechanics, working on our communication and making sure that the little things are right, because they are a little bit sloppy. And I'm a little bit sloppy and they're a little bit out of shape. And I don't want injuries to happen and I don't want to get them in over their head because it's more fun running marks and it's more fun running blinds. But there's so much we can do to build them back up right. So let's jump in. What is your like... What's my recipe? You could segment it in like age groups maybe. Yeah, I think, well, just to kind of stick with my notes here, because that might be a little bit difficult for me to jump around. I've sort of got it outlined just a progression sort of from start to finish. But I think during that process, I'll also talk about what dogs should be doing this versus what dogs should be doing that. And for the most part, most dogs are going to do these things unless... I'm sorry, they're going to do all of these things unless they're not quite at that level of training yet. So I think the listener just has to say, yep, my dog's ready for that or no, my dog is not prepared for that yet. I still have some training to do to get them there. But the first thing that I think everybody needs to think about doing winter, coming off that winter break is conditioning. Conditioning is really important. As you mentioned, talking about what you were talking about on the Patreon recently, tonight, I think you said, most dogs have gained a little extra weight over the winter because they spent most of their days on the couch in the house, probably eating a lot of extra snacks and getting very little physical exercise. So we definitely want to be getting that extra weight off our dogs. We also want to do things that are going to improve aerobic capacity, stamina, strength, muscle tone. If we don't do those things, we're probably going to end up with a dog that's got an injury or we're going to cause minor injuries that are eventually going to add up to a major injury, maybe even a career ending injury. So conditioning is so, so important. What are you doing for conditioning? Good question. First of all, I want to say that I'm not an expert in physical development in a dog. And so I would encourage all the listeners out there to seek out advice from experts. But I can tell you that some of the advice that I've gotten from experts and one of my favorite people out there who most people have heard of is Dr. Janalapel, who has worked extensively in the field with dogs. I mean, real time work in the field and has developed a program that A, conditions dogs, B, help steel with injuries and so on and so forth. And what she has recommended to me in the past, and I can't say that this is completely current. So again, speak to your expert, but 10 minutes of brooding is a good place to start. And each day you can add up to a minute or two until you're up to about 20 minutes of roving. And ideally, you want to make sure that you're controlling how fast your dog is moving. If you're just allowing them to run willy-nilly beside a fore-wheeler, they're not maintaining a steady pace. And you want them to be running, or sorry, not running, but you want them to be moving at a trotting pace. So you're looking for that and you can do that by harnessing them to a fore-wheeler or by using a treadmill. Those are really, that's really the ideal situation. I'm sure not everybody has access to those things, but that's what you're looking for. Getting those dogs to do a trot for 10 minutes a day, add a couple minutes each day until you're up to 20 minutes and stay there at that. The other things that you can do are continuous swimming for seven minutes a day, and you want to build in an additional minute procession until you're up to 15 minutes. So that's what I would suggest. And again, don't forget to get the weight off. And stretching is really important. It's going to sound like I'm affiliated with Dr. Janelle, but I'm not. We're just friends. But I do know that she has a good video online where you can see some tricks that she has to get dogs to stretch before they work. Cool downs, warm ups, warming up before you start this stuff and cooling down after you get done. Also super important. We just really want to make sure that these dogs are not going to get hurt, and it's not just about making sure they're not going to get hurt, but if a dog is not in good physical shape, they're not going to be prepared mentally. If they're trying to catch their breath, then they're not thinking about putting the effort in to the work mentally that they've got to do. And so they may be failing mentally simply because they're out of shape. So get them in shape before you start this training. I think that is a huge thing. A dog who's exhausted physically is not thinking clearly. And then mind you, it's breathing heavy, so it's not smelling the duck as well or the bumper. There's so many things that being in shape will aid them in the decision making process and the ability to be successful doing their job. So yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. And I have watched her videos. So maybe Kevin, we can find it and link it in the description below because it is very good. And I also keep that in mind, folks have followed along enough to know Memphis had some arthritis and she's not that old. She's eight. And there are probably things I could have done when she was younger that would have prevented this. She's never had a major injury, but just years of wear and tear doing our job. It's showing signs of it now. And now we're doing daily physical therapy and daily stretching. And I wish I did that. You pay me now or pay me later. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. No, that's good. So do you have a? I don't, but I don't have any dogs either. That's a fair point. Fair point. But yeah, like that's one thing I've done is they just run with a four wheeler. And so that's my mini excuse, but I would like to add a roting harness to my four wheeler or whatever, even on like the Sundays off, right? Where my employees can hook up four dogs to the roting harness and take them for a loop of the property and just give them something to do, you know, instead of just running around willy nilly. Yeah, for sure. Cool. All right. What else you got, brother? Well, let's get into some of the training that we're going to do. I think that's what a lot of people are looking to hear. Yeah. Yeah. You know, when I get started, first of all, I do a seven day training camp. Three of them actually in Mississippi every year. And people from the north, it's generally people from up north whose dogs have been off all winter. And these are the things that I cover. So it's not, this is not something I'm just pulling out of the air. These are really things that I do during that seven day training camp. The first thing that I want to do with those dogs when they come in is I want to tackle line mechanics. I want to make sure that I am setting good, you know, that in the dog's mind that there are good fundamentals, they have good fundamental standards. I'll get there eventually. So what is, what do we do to do that? And the first thing that I think about is talking to these people about making sure that they reinforce obedience going from the truck to the holding blind. Most of the training we're going to do is not very complex. So this is the time when you really want to tackle those issues. Set the standards right off the bat. Don't let your dog out of the truck and let them run willy nilly and then don't put them on a lead and don't have a holding blind set up and don't have them mad out. All those things, to be quite honest, is just being lazy. When you pay attention to the details, that's when you are gearing up for success. So getting your dog out of the truck, making sure that everything is making sure that you have a framework for everything and how your dog does it, you know, making sure that you've got your lead ready, that you're not going to let your dog just run off, that you're going to establish some standards, making sure that you're making corrections when it's necessary. It's not just enough to go through these things, but to make sure you're making the corrections when it's appropriate timing. So you're working on getting your dog to the holding blind and of course also getting your dog to the mat and take advantage of every opportunity to reinforce that standard. The next thing that I like to get into, one of the first things these guys are going to do is work on the wagon wheel drill. I want to make sure that the dog can pivot properly. Do I have the mechanics down properly? Am I asking the dog, am I communicating properly with my body and my voice? And is the dog doing it properly? It's not just enough for them to line their spine differently. They're not allowed to move forward when they do it because I don't want my dog to be a creeper. So if I ask the dog to pivot and they jump forward on me, I'm going to make a correction. This is all about establishing really high standards right from the start. I want to make sure that if I ask the dog to pivot in the opposite direction, that they know how to do that because that's not that easy. So getting to that wagon wheel drill and doing that, one of the first things I do. The next thing that I like to work on is refining targeting. And targeting is just the act of getting the dog to look in a specific direction, pushing or pulling the eyes in the head. You cannot do advanced training, whether you're talking about blinds or marks, if you can't read yourself, if you yourself cannot read where the dog is looking, or your dog doesn't know what to do with that communication, if they can't do it at a very refined level. So I have a drill. You can call wagon wheel drill a targeting and lining drill. This is just, you know, there's so many versions of those, but the one that I do and I just have a name for it, I call it the fan drill. And it's simply five white stakes with three white bumpers placed neatly at each stake and those stakes are five yards apart, four to five yards apart. And I start out about 10 yards from those stakes. And I line to the piles. And when I see that the dog is doing well, they look confident and I'm confident that I know where they're looking, I back up three yards. So if I was only 10 yards from the stakes, start now I'm 13 yards from the stake. And I just keep doing that till I'm 15 to 20 yards away from the stakes. And as you're backing up, those lines to those piles are getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And at some point, you're going to feel that you're struggling to know precisely where your dog is looking. And that's when you don't move any further. You need to refine your skills just as much as you're trying to refine your dog skills. And if your dog is looking a little unsure, you don't back up. You both got to be at a very high level before you move on. As I said earlier, it's not it's not good enough to just go through these drills. It's about setting really high standards. It's about really making sure you're looking at all the details. Because when you get done, sorry, sorry, go ahead Bob. Oh, no, I think that that's super cool. Go ahead with when it's done. And then I do have a question for corrections on them mislining it or like, yeah, to that way. Good idea. Yeah, just so that when it's done that your dog is by the time you're done this, you know, depending on how much training you get in and what period of time, I mean, if it takes you a week or two weeks or three weeks to get through this, let's call it pre-season training. By the time you get through it, your dog is fundamentally sound. They've got good skills. They're in good condition. You've got good skills. And now you're ready to get into more advanced training. So go ahead with your questions. Yeah. So, you know, for folks who've never done this drill, the fan drill, what are you doing, you know, as you line them up and you believe and they believe that they're going towards the right one with the white poles being that close to each other. It's easy for a dog to say, I'm holding this line and I'll go get that one. Yeah. How would you handle that? So there's a number of things that can happen when you're doing this drill. And again, my philosophy can be a little different than others. I first of all would say that in my mind, it's okay for, sorry, in my mind, we have to understand that it's okay for us to make mistakes and it's okay for the dog to make mistakes in this drill because it does get complex as you get further away. Gets harder and most people don't realize that wagon wheel or tight lining drills are very stressful for dogs. You can build up a lot of anxiety in a very short period of time doing them. And instead of moving the needle forward and getting better, your dog is actually getting worse if you put too much pressure on the dog. So getting to your question, whenever I'm teaching somebody how to do this drill, if you send your dog toward a certain pile and your dog ends up lining to a different pile, more often than not, I'm going to tell that person to let the dog go get the bumper. Even if they deliberately blow off the, like, well, let's not get there yet. Okay, go ahead. When that happens, then you have to make an assessment before you move on. You have to ask yourself, did I know exactly where that dog was looking? Did I do, sometimes the dog is kind of looking somewhere, but they're also looking somewhere else. Did I do a good job of communicating and convincing that dog where they really needed to go? Should I have simplified sooner? So I think I ask myself those questions before I jump to any conclusions, right? And I think it's important to try again. And I might even try a third time and I'll ask myself, do I need to simplify? Or is this dog, after, you know, two or three times when this is happening, now you get a much better idea of why it's happening. And you can ask yourself, okay, is this dog deliberately avoiding going to that pile? And then of course, there are other questions you have to ask yourself is why did something happen that's causing the dog to avoid that pile? But if there's nothing really that you believe is causing the dog to go to a different pile, I certainly don't believe that pressure will solve the problem because pressure in that environment generally just causes things to go poorly after that. We're essentially asking the dog to line right back or almost very close back to where they shouldn't go. In other words, if the dog is going to a stake that's only 10 or 15 degrees off of where I'd ask them to go, they're only four or five yards apart, remember? If I make a correction on route to that one stake where they shouldn't have been going, it's going to affect where they go on stakes that are adjacent to it. So correction is not just something I don't do in that room. Do not even know here. I wouldn't say no here. I would say no, no here. I'm talking about collar corrections or any kind of physical correction. My first instinct is always to simplify. Maybe I need to toss a bumper to the pile. Maybe I need to move up a little bit. A lot of times when you take that approach rather than saying that I'm going to enforce something, you get ahead a lot more quickly at the end of the day. You just work out whatever problem it was. You just give the dog the right answer essentially. You beg them to do it. Once they do it for you, they go, oh, you know what? That's what you want to be to do. I'm okay with that. Then you're moving forward. Very cool. But yeah, there are times when I just see the dog, they're going toward the stake that you sent them for. All of a sudden they change direction. I say, no, I'm going to go get that. That's the if I can get a sit out, if I can hauler sit before they get to it and they stop, I will probably stop them. I will almost definitely simplify at that point, which means just moving up a little bit and resetting and lining them again and more often than not, resolves the issue. The next thing that I'm going to do is evaluate fundamental standards in the field. Now I'm still really working in the yard, but everything we've done up to this point is really getting to the mat and what's going on on the mat. Now I need to start to check out, okay, how well is my dog stopping in the field? Is my dog going? Is my dog under control? Are they casting relatively well and redefining those things? So my next drill that I like to do is scattered bumper drill, which is a seven pile drill. It's in the yard. There are seven piles that are equally spaced and they just to kind of give people a mental picture, there are piles at 9, 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, and 3 o'clock. The long piles which start on the outside are 40 yards, the short piles are 20 yards and they're staggered, so it's 40, 20, 40, 20, 40, 20, around the clock. So just again, 9 o'clock would be 40 yards, 10 o'clock would be 20 yards, 11 o'clock would be 40 yards, 12 o'clock would be 20 yards, keep going around. So they're all staggered. It kind of looks like half of a two tiered wagon wheel drill where the short piles are 20 yards, the long piles are 40 yards. And more often than not, I will be putting birds on the short stations and bumpers on the long stations. I do that because I want to make sure that I have the same level of control around a bird that I'm going to have around a bumper. It's just they're two totally different animals, right? And in this drill, I will begin with doing just a little lining, targeting and lining. I want to make sure that my dog will, again, pivot and target and line to a station. And once they're doing that well, they look fundamentally sound there. Oh, and by the way, during that period of time, I'm probably also going to assess delivery. You know, is the dog the bumper to hand correctly? You know, are they messing with the bird? Are they putting it down on the return? Are they not sitting down when they come into my side? When I take the bird, are they lowering their head? Are they turning their head away? Are they hanging onto the bird? Are they not releasing it? Are they trying to knit feathers out of it when I get rid of it? So I want to make sure that I'm addressing any bird handling issues. And then I'm also going to, as I said, I'm going to do some lining to some of the short piles and stopping and casting to some of the longer piles. Generally, I'm asking for an angle back cast. I'm not doing that necessarily to check to see if they'll cast. What I'm doing is I'm checking to see if they'll stop crisply to a whistle. So it's not just good enough to run the drill. You really have to, again, pay attention to the details. I'm asking you to, when you blow your whistle, evaluate how your dog reacts to that whistle. And there are four components to every stop and sit that you've got to pay attention to. Is my dog putting the brakes on? If they're not, make a correction. Is my dog spinning around 180 degrees to face me squarely? If they're not, you should make a correction and tell them to straighten up. Is my dog planting his buddy immediately? If they're not, make a correction. And lastly, once your dog is doing all that stuff, the next thing you're going to evaluate, are they looking at me? Or is your dog looking at the pile of birds on the ground? Or looking over the shoulder to see what pile they're going to run to next? Because if they are doing that, you need to make a correction. This is where you want to establish a really high... Describe what those corrections would be like. Sure. If I blow the whistle and the dog doesn't put the brakes on immediately, I'm going to press the button and blow the whistle again simultaneously. I'm going to press the button a second. Sorry. I'm going to press the button and blow the whistle again simultaneously. I didn't press the button the first time. I'm going to run through that again to make sure I'm clear. If I blow the whistle and the dog doesn't stop, the next thing I do, I'm going to do is press the button and blow the whistle again simultaneously. And I have to get that done before the dog completes the task. If I'm late and I correct the dog after the fact, there's no way for the dog to improve. They're not inspired to improve. In fact, they may be even discouraged from stopping because you've corrected them after they stopped. So make sure that you evaluate quickly and get the correction in with another whistle as soon as you can. If they didn't turn around completely, if they sat and they were only turned halfway around, the way you should address that situation is you should first press the button. And then bow and you can either double tap the whistle or say here. And as soon as they straighten up, pop yourself up and say, sit, the timing of the correction is important. You want to correct the dog when they're doing the wrong thing and that's there. They haven't turned fully. So correct first and sandwich very tightly to that. All the other things, bowing, saying here, double tapping the whistle. And as soon as they straighten up, say, sit, don't correct them after they do it. You know, some people have this habit of bowing and saying here and then saying, sit and pressing the button. Well, now you've just corrected them for doing the right thing. So make sure your timing is correct with that correction. If they don't plant, if they don't put their butt down, you know, maybe they put the brakes on and they turn around, but they don't put their butt on the ground. I'm going to blow another whistle and press the button simultaneously. And lastly, if that dog is looking around, I'm going to make a lower level neck correction. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to blow the whistle. And for all the all of you out there that are listening to this and say, well, my dog does that on the blind. When I'm handling them, that's how it should be addressed. When a dog is looking around, they're essentially out of control. They're saying, I don't need you anymore. I've got this. I'm going to figure it out myself. And that's not the right way to do it. I mean, we just, you just don't have control of the dog when they respond that way to a whistle. So again, it's a lower level momentary correction. And when you press that button, they're immediately going to look back to you. I guarantee it every time. If they look away again, make another momentary correction. Eventually, they're going to stop doing it. Your timing has to be spot on with that correction, though. If you press the button after the dog looks back at you accidentally, now you're going to discourage them from looking at you. They're going to want to look away from you because looking at you came with a consequence. So make sure your correction is timed appropriately. I think that kind of covers the four things that I'm looking to correct. And it's just, again, I'm just going to state it again. It's very important that you're not just running the drill. These are the things you're actually out there training on. My goal is not to get my dog to the pile. My goal is to sharpen up those fundamentals. The next thing that I want to look at is the fundamentals of going. Is the dog going when I say back? Is there any hesitation to go? If you said back and your dog doesn't go anywhere from your side, then you should make a force correction at your side. If you blow a whistle when the dog's in the drill, the dog stops, and then you put your arm up to give them a cast, and they don't go anywhere, which is called freezing on the cast, then you should make a force correction. Or if your dog pops, you should make a force correction. Again, we just want to establish really high standards when it comes to going and stopping. Obedience, delivery, pivoting, targeting, lining, all of those things before we get into advanced training. In case people are not sure how to correct for those things, if your dog no-goes, then you should press the button, take three or four big steps forward, aggressive steps forward because you're trying to create some momentum toward the retreat. Say here at the same time, and then put your hand in and send right away. I don't care where the dog is looking at that point. I don't care what pile they go to. I simply want to send the message that this fundamental failure of not going is not an option, and there's a consequence for it, so that when you put your hand in and say back, they know what to do. If they pop, it's very straightforward, it's button first, sandwich very tightly together with an arm up and haul her back. Again, you want to correct them first because that's the naughty behavior, then show them the way out of trouble, and I don't care where they go. All they have to do is go. They have to go make a retreat somewhere. If they freeze on the cast, my arm is already up because I've given them a cast. I'm not going to bring my arm down. It's going to stay up. I'm just going to press the button, making a momentary correction. I'm going to step laterally, and I'm going to haul her back. I'm going to show that dog that I'm only going to give them the cast once, and that if they choose to give me a cast refusal, there's going to be a consequence for it. There is no doubt that those dogs can see you when they're only 15 to 20 yards from you. If you're giving the dog a cast and they aren't going in all likelihood, they just don't like what you're asking them to do. Maybe you're casting them away from a pile of birds toward a pile of uppers, and they're going, sorry, Bob, I don't think so. It's very important that you remind your dog that when you put your arm up, it's an order. It's a command. I have no choice but to go. I like it. I can already, the wheels in my head are turning on the dogs that are going to, like, the whole crew is going to go through this trail the rest of this week and next week. Cool. Love it. Do it. It's one of my favorite drills. Just allows you to address so many things. I would like to mention, though, that if I have a dog that has a loopy sit or I see that the sit is, the poor sit is chronic, then I'm going to get out of this drill really quick and I'm going to get back to stop and sit to the pile. I have a whole routine for that. I don't know if it's necessary to go through it. I have a post on my Facebook page, I think, from recently where I talked very extensively on stop and sit to the pile. There's diagrams, there's videos, there's instructions, so I would just suggest that you go to my Facebook page and find it there. Or my website as well. I believe there's a blog post on my website that goes through all the very same things, so you'll find it in either place. Trying to fix a loopy or chronically poor sit in that kind of drill, in the scattered bumper drill, is just going to mess up your drill and probably mess up other things, so you want to get back to something that's simpler. The last thing that I'm going to do in the scattered bumper drill is discipline casting, and that is just casting the dog around the drill with bumpers. I'll switch everything to bumpers at that point, I'm probably not going to do discipline casting with birds, but I'll send the dog to one pile and let them pick up a bumper and then I'll stop them and handle them to another pile. Again, they have to respond with the same level of execution to those fundamental orders, like they did when they didn't have a bumper in their mouth. In other words, if I blow a whistle, they got to stop crisply. If I put my arm up and I tell them to go in a certain direction and they choose opportunity, again, to establish very high standards for fundamentals. One of the things we're going to be doing when we move forward from this drill at some point is a swim by review of some sort and I want to review discipline casting on land before I take it to water. I want to deal with any issues that can come up with discipline casting here when they've got their feet on terraforma. I think it's important that you cover that. You're doing redoing swim by with even the most advanced dogs, right? Absolutely. I don't do the entire swim by it. It's basically a swim by review, which I'll go through in a minute as to how I do it. I think reviewing a swim by with every dog on your truck or whether you're an amateur and you've only got one or two dogs, reviewing your swim by at least once a year is a must as far as I'm concerned. The best time to review it is in the spring. Remember, they've been out of the water for several months in all likelihood. They're going to have some very poor responses to discipline castings, maybe some poor responses to stopping and treading water. You want to make sure that all those issues are worked out before you get into advanced training. You want to make sure they understand how to do a swim by because you're going to need that tool in your toolbox. You want it to be very fresh in your dog's mind when you get into advanced training. It happens relatively painlessly when you're doing advanced training. We'll get to that in a minute. There's one more thing I want to mention on the scatter bumper drill. You're basically reviewing casting. You can, in the scatter bumper drill, the drill allows you to review angle back casting, angle in casting, over casting, those types of things. I'm certainly not going to correct a dog that doesn't take the cast correctly, but just getting those wraps in helps you, I guess, habituate your dog to generally casting in the right direction. From there, basically, I'm moving on to... The next thing I want to do, any questions before I move on, Bob? No, I dig it. No? Okay. The next thing I'm going to review is stopping on the whistle and the water. I don't want to review my swim by until I'm sure that I've got a dog that stops really well in the water. You just can't do advanced training without a really good stall in the water. In an ideal world, you would be able to find a piece of water that's only 10 or 15 yards wide, and you would put a pile on the other side of that piece of water, and you would send your dog for a couple of bumpers. After that, you would start checking the stall. What does a good stall look like? As soon as you blow the whistle, the dog immediately spins around and faces you, and they look at you, and they tread water. That means they're not drifting laterally or drifting in toward you, or even auto casting. By the way, I didn't mention auto casting in the previous drill of a scatter bumper drill, but auto casting, which is the act of turning and going before you've given the dog a cast, is something that needs to be addressed. A dog is out of control if they're auto casting, and you should press a button to say, sit. If they're drifting laterally, I just try and talk them through it. I'm basically just calmly saying, sit, or if they're drifting in toward me, I'm just calmly saying, sit. If eventually they just continue to drift and they get to a shoreline somewhere, then probably when their feet touch the bottom, I'm going to say, sit and make a correction, and then I'm going to handle them back up in the pond and stop them again and start all over, just working on the stall. Now you can't hold them in that stall indefinitely, even if they're not stalling well, you've got to release them and let them relax because it can be a pretty stressful ask for a dog. But again, you're not just trying to get through this drill. You want to make sure that you're not moving on until that stall looks perfect. And I will even go so far as to ask the dog to stall on the return with a bumper from the pile. That means that when I blow that whisk, when they're on the return and I blow that whistle, they start pushing back on the water. In all likelihood, they're not going to. They're probably going to keep swimming toward you. And I want you to picture, what does that mean? Why are we working on it? We're doing that because you're only ever going to ask your dog to do discipline casting with a bumper when they're on the return back from a retrieve. They've got a bird in their mouth and suddenly they're trying to land grab on the return and you want them to swim a little further and you ask them to stop and they say, Bob, I don't need to stop. I'm just going to keep going. Do you really want to work on it when you're trying to do advanced training or do you want to get it fixed right here in this little drill where you get lots of reps in, easily make corrections if you need to. Talk your dog through it because you're nice and close to them. That's the place to do it. That's where you do things so you don't create problems in the real world. That's right. That's a point that I'd like to maybe hit home as we're talking about this. As we're reviewing all these drills that the dog already has an understanding on, what it's alleviating is stress out in the field when we're working on the more advanced stuff that's already difficult. If you're trying to tackle a loopy sit and you're pushing the button for a loopy sit on a really challenging blind that's already difficult, you're going to create more problems. More problems is the right word, but difficulty on yourself, difficulty on the dog, mentally on the dog, stress on you when if you take the time now to make the little things right and work on each of these things, these different facets of land first, get to water, crisp it up there, it's going to make them going out into the field even more fun for the both of you. Absolutely. I mean, you just nailed it on the head as far as I'm concerned. I can just think back to all those, I've been in that position where I made bad decisions and I tried to fix these things in advanced training or I just said to myself, you know what, that's going to take too much time. I don't have time for that. At the end of the day, all it did was create a bunch of problems that maybe I never fixed or maybe took me a lot longer to fix than would have if I'd just done things the right way. Yeah, I totally 100% agree with you. What you got next? Okay, moving on, we're going to, after we get that stall solidified, we know we've got a good fundamental standard there, the next thing I'm going to do is a swim by review. And it's not, I'm not actually setting up the full swim by. I basically look for places on a pond where I can ask the dog to do a swim by. And initially I want those swim by events to be pretty short, like maybe 15 yards. You know, the dog picks up a retrieve and then I'm asking him to swim to an exit point that's only 15 yards away. That means that wherever they pick up the retrieve, they can look across the water and see the exit point. They're not guessing at it. There's actually a shoreline they can see that they need to swim to. So what I do is I stand near the corner of the pond and I toss a bumper across the corner. So I'm setting up a little cheating single, it's just me and the dog. And I toss that bumper across the corner and I send them for it. And if they try to run around the corner, I'm going to stop them and handle them into the water. And eventually that's going to turn into, if you continue to do that, I'm going to stop you. I'm going to make an indirect pressure correction and I'm going to handle you into the water. So I'm sort of killing two birds with one stone doing this drill. I'm getting a little de-cheating in, but I'm also going to ask the dog to do a swim by. So once they get across the corner and they pick up the bumper, that bumper is going to be up on land by the way. I'm going to blow a whistle. Of course, the first thing I'm going to do is make sure that that sit is crisp. My goal is not to get the dog to the end of the pond. Every time I ask that dog to do something, it's my job to make sure that they execute that skill perfectly. I'm going to address any fundamental failures to stop. Once they're sitting, I'm going to give them a verbal overcast toward the exit. And I'm just going to address any behavior that comes up the way I wouldn't a swim by. In other words, if the dog chooses to come straight toward me instead of take the swim by, I'm going to blow another whistle. And again, the first thing I'm going to do is evaluate that stop. If they're into water swimming and they choose not to stop, I don't care about the swim by anymore. All I care about is that stall. Once I've got the stall worked out, then I can go back to working on the swim by. But if they do stop, then I'm just going to reissue the cast and it's going to be verbal. The default, when you're asking a dog to do discipline casting, the default is always with voice as far as I'm concerned. I might drop the voice if I feel that things are happening, the demand I drop the voice, but that shouldn't be your first instinct. You should always be using your voice when you're handling your dog with something in their mouth. If they take the cast, great. If they continue to come in at some point, they're probably going to land on the shore. I'm going to say sit and make a correction. I'm going to handle them back out in the water. Then I'm going to stop them and I'm going to keep handling them toward the exit. We're going to keep going through that cycle until they get to the exit. Before they get to the exit though, I'm going to run around the end of the pond, make sure I'm there to greet the dog and reassure that it's okay for them to get out there. Very relaxed attitude. Give them a fun retreat. I'm going to go back around and I'm going to repeat that same swim by again until they can do it perfectly. In other words, they basically don't cheat the corner. When I blow that whistle, they stop. When I give them the over, they look across that piece of water, jump in and swim to the exit. Then I'm going to go do that in probably three to five more places, different places. I'm going to go ahead. That's one of the things I'd like to maybe touch on and ask your opinion. When I'm doing something like that myself. I'm not on this drill. By the way, I'm using my hands and gestures and now you can't see me so I probably can relax my gestures. When I'm working on something like this in a drill state or even in more advanced training and I see a dog that wants to beach early, when they're younger, I'm going to coach them through it when they're a little bit older. I'm going to say, okay, bud, you think getting out there is a good idea? Cool. Let them get out. I'll make my correction. Then I make them do a big swim by just to re- I make them work harder than they would have if they just did it right. Does that make sense? I think we typically do most trainers, but typically ask them to swim past where the normal exit would be. Just to reinforce the behavior you're looking for, get that point across. I agree with you. There's just, depending on the age and experience level of the dog, depending on how recently I've visited this particular concept that I'm working on, the level of responsibility that I ask the dog to assume is going to change. If I have a young inexperienced dog or a dog that hasn't visited this concept recently, then I'm going to tend to be more of a teacher. I'm not going to just throw them, I'm not going to start making corrections right away necessarily. I'm going to stop them. I'm going to give them more information. I might be helpful, different things. Just give them another cast. If I have a dog that's experienced or that has been visiting this particular concept recently, then I may go so far as to say, if you choose to make that decision, shame on you, there's a consequence for it. Without first telling them to do it differently. In other words, if I throw that cheating single across the corner and experienced recently, a dog that's experienced and has recently covered this, chooses to cheat, I'm likely going to stop the dog, make a correction and handle them into the water. First, right off the bat. What I'm doing is I'm saying to the dog, it is your responsibility to make good decisions. I'm not going to spoon feed you and remind you all the time to do these things correctly. But I want to be clear that there was training, that there was teaching, that there was handholding leading up to this point. I had covered it recently. I don't care if the dog is six years old and you haven't done cheating singles for six months or four months, then I think you need to be a little bit of a teacher to start with. I agree. I call them bad life choices. Bad life choices, yeah. If they know and they're in the game and you laid it out very well and eloquently, if I know in my heart that they're just making a bad life choice, I've already coached you. I've already showed you the right way. Then it's going to be a bad life choice and now I'm going to hold you to a higher standard. One question I have to dive into this a little bit deeper on your cheating singles, you would handle the dog back into the water. You would rather handle them and give them the answer, then call them back and re-send, maybe throw again and re-send. So you would opt to handle? Yeah, I'd probably really like to speak to that and I am going to, hopefully we have enough time here, I am going to go over cheating singles themselves. Okay. So if we can hold off on that question, but just remind me about, then I'll be happy to talk about my philosophy a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Okay. That's what, yeah, I want to hear your philosophy on that. So keep on rolling, baby. Okay. So the, so when we're doing that swim by review, as I mentioned at the outset, that bumper is thrown across the corner up on land. And the reason why I do that is because I know that's the easiest place for the dog to get stopped once they make the retrieve. The next thing I'm going to do, once they're doing that well, and maybe even before that, I want to start to stretch out the length of the swim by. So I'm going to continue to throw that bumper across the corner, but I'm going to look to stretch out the length of that swim by. So instead of it being 15 yards, I mean, it could be upwards of, you know, 25 to 30 yards is what I'd be looking to get them to do. Now once they're doing that, that well, then instead of throwing that bumper up on land, I'm going to throw it in the water. I'm going to let the dog retrieve the bumper in the water. And as soon as they grab, grab it in the water, then I'm going to blow my whistle and ask them to stop. The reason why I do that is I want to make sure that that dog will stop with a bumper in its mouth when they're swimming in the water and they're on the return from a retreat. Because that's going to be, that really is what a real life situation is going to be a, sorry, what it's really going to look like. And then once they're stopping and treading water, and again, that is what you're going to focus on until the standard is there. I don't care about the swim by, swim by is just, it's nice to get done, but that stall is the most important thing because you can't do advanced training without a good stall. Once the stall is right, then I'm going to ask them to do the swim by. And then if I have an opportunity, I'm going to ask the dog to do a swim by that also involves a reentry into another piece of water. And then finally, the last swim by that Alaska dog to do is a swim by that they perform in a piece of water that's beyond another piece of water that's in front of me. That didn't sound right, but I want to sort of give people a visual here. Imagine you have a pond that has a spit of land that runs parallel to the shore you're standing on. In other words, you're looking across a piece of water, then you're looking across a spit of land, and then you're looking out at more water. I'm going to throw that bumper across the first piece of water over top of the spit of land into the second piece of water. I'm going to send the dog to retrieve it. That bumper's in the water out there. Once the dog picks it up, then I'm going to ask them to do a swim by parallel to that spit of land that's in the water. Now everybody doesn't have access to water like that, but if I have it, I'm certainly going to do it. I want the further the dog is away from you, the more they're going to want to land grab and swim in toward you. So just taking advantage of opportunities where you can reinforce the swim by in situations that are progressively getting more difficult and leading your dog to doing these things right without being too painful, then that's what you're looking to do. And this usually will take place over the course of maybe three or four lessons. You're not going to get through all of these in one single lesson. You might only get through the first swim by in the first lesson because maybe you've got to repeat it three or four times, and then you're done. You always want to quit your training session before your dog is physically, mentally, or emotionally exhausted. So I'm paying very close attention to those things before they're physically, mentally, or emotionally exhausted. I don't need to create stress, unnecessary stress. So I will quit and come back later, whether it's a second lesson in the day or tomorrow or a couple of days from now. You want to keep those lessons pretty close together because that's the only way these dogs carry what they've learned from one lesson to the next. If you wait a week or two, you're starting back at square one as far as I can start. Yeah, I dig it. Okay. So that's pretty much swim by. Any questions on that? I don't. I think it's great. And I'm about to be a week away from a new property I'm training on in the south. And that is, I already had it planned out that we did a lot of the land stuff here. Next is I'm going back and revisiting water work. I know that there are a few that need a little bit of oomph to get back in the water and just like all these tips and tricks or stuff. I'm literally living it out because a lot of my big dogs have been home since October. And so this is very fresh and exactly the things that I'm thinking about in my head so that I don't go out and do the sexy stuff. I want to make it right. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So just when you do this stuff, you'll start doing your advanced dog training. You'll just say, wow, this is just relatively painless. This is just great. Or maybe they do fall into a trap, but getting them out of that trap is relatively painless. And that's the beauty of doing this stuff. And just one other thing I'd like to mention in case people are not getting the right mental picture here, this isn't how I do swim by. This is how I do a swim by review. This assumes that these dogs have already done swim by. So if you haven't done swim by, you need to cover swim by before you do this. Great point. Yeah. Okay. More to cover. I want to, if you can, like to keep moving. Yeah, keep rolling. Now I want to talk a little bit about field training. We haven't talked about marking or anything like that. We're going to get back to some of the cheating singles and stuff, but I think it's important to remember that we just can't jump back up in the field and do the marks that we were doing when we left off. Again, no matter how experienced or old the dog is, we need to make sure that we're covering the fundamentals. And what does that mean? That means we're looking at line mechanics and the behavior the dog has when they get to line and making sure that we're addressing any substandard behavior. Is your dog creeping? Is your dog making noise? Is your dog standing up? Is your dog not coming in and getting its butt sitting down quickly? And you pivot in a marking situation. Is the dog stepping forward? And so I'm looking. I'm evaluating all this stuff and that's stuff that I want to get on top of right now before I get into more advanced training situations. I think that it's easiest to do this by starting out with some walking singles. And maybe before I get into that, because we're going to cover a couple of things at the same time here. The other thing that I want to make sure is that I'm helping my dog mark very accurately. They're going to be a little rusty. They probably haven't had much marking all winter. And I want to make sure that my dog goes relatively straight, that they know precisely where the mark is in the fall area. They're not running around covering both sides of the gun and expanding their hunt in terrible ways. So marking accuracy is very important. Edeline, mechanics and behavior. And I'm going to address that by starting with some walking singles. They don't have to be long. They could be 35 yards long on a mode grass. Why do I want to do that? Because I can get so many reps in in a single training session. Reps are important in order to foster good habits and in order to address any bad behaviors that come out. So walking singles to start relatively short, they could get longer as time goes on. Again, because we're trying to develop marking accuracy, but we could do some walking singles up to 75, 100 yards. It would be nice. It could be just somebody riding around on a four-wheeler. Throwing big white bumpers on a mode lawn would be ideal. Because every time we throw that big white bumper, and you've heard me talk about this before about, but every time we throw that big white bumper on a mode lawn, that's a bad dog is doing everything it needs to do to do a mark the best way it can. And that's going straight to the retrieve, not having a hunt, learning where things are relative to the gun station, and patterning their behavior to do these things over and over and over again the same way. They're not running at the gun. They're not breaking down early. They're not having a big, expansive hunt. Patterning behavior is so important. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do singles off of multiple guns. Let's say we have three gun stations out in the field. Those gun stations will be very white apart. More often than not for me, it's going to be the staggered triple. Again, which you've heard me talk about, but it's going to be very white open, nothing tight. That's a long gun up the center, a medium distance gun on one side of the test, a short gun on the other side of the test. And the first thing I'm going to start with is that long single up the center. What am I doing? I'm trying to teach that dog to come up and look for the longest gun in the field. I'm trying to teach that dog to be prepared to do a long single first so that I'm counter acting the desired head swing. I'm going to send them pretty quick too for that long single, so I'm heading off head swinging. And they're going to get a good diet of that until I know that field that I've given the dogs enough marks. This kind of marking could go on for a week of training. And it's really just helping these dogs do this stuff right. Because when it comes to advanced training, if they don't mark accurately, that's what generally leads them to getting into trouble or even failing a hunt test or field trial, they've got to be able to mark aggregate. This is one of the fundamentals of marking as far as I'm concerned. Are you still doing short grass when you go to your... No, no. At that point... You're back to cover and... I'm probably... But not a lot of cover. Like I, again, I'm still trying to foster habits that I want in the dog. So relatively short cover, don't put the birds in dirty places, keep the location of the fall relatively clean and inviting, I guess I should say. Don't stand the gunner on a mound and throw the bird to the bottom of the hill, so to speak. Because those are the kinds of things that lead a dog to overrunning a mark, running to the top of the hill. They don't find the bird at the top of the hill. They're running both sides of the gun trying to find it, expanding their hunt. And what are you doing? You're creating a habit that you really don't want. I'm not saying that we don't do those things in training. This just isn't the right time for it. Correct. The next thing I'm going to do is some simple retired guns. I call them walkaways. The gun stations are only 75 yards from the dog. I'm going to have the gunner retiring in a number of different ways. They could be retiring behind a holding blind, a mound, a bush, an umbrella, a gilly blanket. Any way that I can imagine that a gunner might be retired. There will always be a target, a white bumper, or previously staged white bumper in the area. I'm sure there's a target in the fall area that the dog can see. That is something that the gunner will throw a bumper to if I have to stage it. In other words, if the gunner can throw a bumper and it's going to be visible to the dog, I don't need to worry about staging a bumper to make sure that there's one there to see. But if I'm concerned that the dog's not going to see the bumper that's throwing, laying on the ground, then I'm going to stage a bumper out there to make sure there's one to see. The gunner will always be about 7 to 10 paces from the holding blind or wherever it is they're going to retire. All I want to do is remind the dogs what the mechanics of a retired gun is. The gunner is going to be in position ready to throw. They're going to shoot and throw the mark, which is going to be a big white bumper. It's going to be about one and a half times the distance of a bird throw. And the gunner is going to walk back to the holding blind. And many times more often than not, that dog is going to turn to the gun and watch them walk back to the holding blind and hide. And then what that does is it gives me an opportunity to work on the mechanics of targeting the mark again. I can use push pull techniques by tapping my leg or shuffling my feet to feed the dog information to look back at the white bumper that's sitting on the ground. And all I'm doing is really practicing those mechanics. This is the same way I do this with a young puppy that's going to be doing retired guns at 8 months old. But what I know as a trainer is the things that got me where I wanted to be with a dog are the things that I can go back to to create the same habits or skills that got me where I wanted to be in the first place. And that's why I go back to this stuff. And I'm going to do several sessions of these kinds of marks. I'll have three gun stations probably set up in the field each time. They're not close together. They've got to be relatively far apart. And I want to get the reps in. So it doesn't mean you need three gunners because you're only going to do singles, but you're going to do three singles. The gunner can move from station to station, retire them in different ways. And foster the mechanics of doing a retired gun mark. And once they've targeted the mark, what are they going to do? They're going to run straight to it and pick it up. So again, you're still fostering marking accuracy as well. That's super cool. It's a great idea to revisit all this. It's mechanics. Good mechanics. Mechanics is the one thing. You know, we're reviewing three things when we go through all this stuff at the beginning of the season. It's fundamentals, mechanics, and standards. All right. So we just covered a boatload of information and we decided that this needs to be a two parter. Kevin has died. We've got to digest this. And so in the next episode, you better stay tuned. We're going to review cheating singles, water work, flyers, everything else that we need to get these dogs back in shape, back working with us before we go into the crazy sexy stuff as I referred to it earlier. So stay tuned for next episode. But Kevin, real quick, give everybody another taste of your Fetch program and where they can find it. Yeah. Thank you. The Fetch program can be found on my website, www.spertrudercoach.com. But I really want to tell people what makes it different from a lot of other programs. Of course, in the past, we've been able to access videos and books and they've been great. I mean, I can't even imagine what I would have done without the likes of Mike Lardy and Rex Carr and so many others. I think of some of the great books. I read Dale Walters and anyway. But there was a couple of shortcomings and that was one big one was that I didn't have anybody to go to other than some training partners when I had a problem. And sometimes I didn't always get the best advice. And sometimes the training problem was just a little more complicated than the average person could deal with. So the things that are different about Fetch are this, essentially as you're going through the program and in the platform, you're going to find videos that accompany 30 modules of training that cover everything from tree training, all the way to coal blinds, like I said, introduction to coal blinds. There's videos, written instructions, diagrams. That's the regular stuff that you'll find. But I think what you'll also find in that material is that here's what to do if this happens, which you often don't find. If you have this problem, do this or make sure you're looking for this and this is how you deal with that. So there's a lot of that in the material that's there. But let's say you come up against something that you don't understand how to do or probably you don't know how to address or you've read it and it's just not quite making sense to you because that can happen to you. We all learn a little bit differently. That's when you've got access to me. You can message me through the platform, you can email me directly and say, hey Kevin, I'm having trouble here. Can you help me up? And that's when I come into the picture and say, yeah, sure, let's talk about it. Let's see what's going on. Let me give you some answers that you're looking for. And on top of that, there's a lot of continuing education that's going on. So we are doing a webinar every month covering different topics that are going to complement the material that's already in the platform. So we're going to focus a lot on marking developments and on so many other things. I don't even know where to start in those webinars. Also we're going to be sending out training tips very regularly. In fact, I sent out my second one today and it's up there for our current fetch members. And again, it's just going to really focus on the things that are post problems to people when they're not aware of them, when they're training their dog or running their dog or just on just training information in general. It's about continuing education and turning amateur trainers into skilled, knowledgeable trainers and handlers. That's really what it's about. And on top of that, we have a fetch Facebook page where people can meet other fetch members. They can collaborate, helping each other with resources if they can ask questions if they want, share their success stories. And that's been fun. I've been on there chatting with people and commenting. So just a lot of things going on in that program. And you can access the program by signing up for a membership. It's a monthly membership. It's the fees paid monthly. It gives you access to all this and to me. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Pretty full on-compassing. Oh, yes. One more thing. There's no risk. If you sign up and you decide after looking at it for 10 days that it's not for you, you get your money back. So that's, go ahead and check it out. Look at it. See if you like it. Don't get your money back. Come on. No, I dig it, man. I think it's a great resource. And like I said in the beginning of the show, people now are so fortunate compared to even five years ago. It just wasn't out there. YouTube was just starting and they weren't, you know, the material wasn't there. And now they have it at their fingertips and can watch it and then literally go and apply it out into the field. So I think it's an amazing thing that you built. I'd love to, you know, look it over even more. And I'm excited for episode two of this segment because this is the time that this needs to come out. It's going to motivate everybody to work on the fundamentals, work on the mechanics. Let's get it going. So stay tuned for the next portion of this episode of taking it even further. And Kevin, thank you so much for joining. Real quick, I do think you had a timeline though on this fetch course. So tell everybody like you can't wait six months for it. So now I've got a timeline. Yeah. So enrollment is only open until March the 1st. It opened a little less than a week ago. We had great response, great sign up numbers of sign ups. And yeah, we closed the enrollment on March 1st. And the reason for that is simply the onboarding process is take some work to get everybody onboarded properly. And also there's going to be a flow to all of that additional training material that's coming out. It's going to come at people in sort of a chronological order. And then we will reopen fetch. Right now we're talking sometime in June or July for enrollment again. We haven't said an exact date, but you can always go to the website to find out when fetch will open again. But even if your dog's not quite ready to join fetch right now, there's so much learning that's going to go on with all this additional stuff that we're providing. That's what's going to turn you into a real trainer. It's not just a science, as I say, it's, and as many people say, it's an art and understanding the philosophy behind all this stuff we do is just, it's so incredibly important. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for your time. I always appreciate speaking with you, learning from you. And I will see you for next week's episode, brother. Yeah. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Kevin. I enjoy it. I really enjoy doing this. Thank you. Cheers. .