E 159A. Retriever Training Fundamentals with Kevin Cheff (Part Two)

What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of Alone Ducks Gun Dog Chronicles very very. Part two with the Retriever Coach Kevin Shek coming at ya. In part one, go back and listen to it if you haven't. We're recovering, recovering, recovering fundamentals and mechanics of training your dog, coming off of a funning season, coming off of a winter slump in training and getting back into it. Part one was jam packed with information and we had to stop so that we had to do a part two. That was real how much we went over so part two is amazing. Cheating singles, live flyers, retired guns, triples, multiple marks, you know, the whole gamut is packed in part two so stay tuned but first do me a favor. If you enjoy the show, if you enjoy having your questions answered, jump on patreon.com forward slash loned-up outfitters, link is in the description. 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Listen to it all the way through and then pick back up with this episode, part two. Kevin Schaff is back. Thank you for taking time out of your day again, mister. I'm excited to completely, absolutely help everyone. We got great feedback on part one. So I guarantee feedback from part two will be the same. As always, you've got your notes. Let's jump right into it. Bingo, bango, bango. Kick us off, bud. Good morning, Bob. Good morning, Kevin. Thanks for having me back again. Yeah, we covered a lot of stuff in that last podcast and I still had a lot on my list. So we will dive into it. I think where we left off was we were talking about developing marking accuracy. So from there, we're going to jump into talking about multiples, making sure that your dog has confidence in their memory and that they understand the mechanics of doing a multiple and that you have the mechanics of doing a multiple down as well. So when I get into that, I typically want to start with marks that are wide open that don't have any factors in them. You don't want to tighten up the gun station so that there's concepts. You don't want to do any training in that department and you don't want to add things like stiff crosswinds, tricky entries or exits to a pond. You don't want to have changes in cover that are going to deflect your dog offline to the blind or terrain for that matter that your dog might square up and get offline to the mark. So you take the training out of these marking tests and just simply work on one facet of marking and that is memory development and you're looking to generate success because you want your dog to feel confident doing these multiples. There's always this, you know, there's always a little bit of uncertainty when it comes to picking up memory birds and the dogs might. Where is it exactly? I don't quite remember which way that was thrown. You know, these types of questions are going through their head. But if you give them some experience doing multiples where they have a lot of success, then you create confidence in their ability to do it. And when they're faced with more difficult multiples, they still feel up to the task. So that's what I want to do in these multiples. Open them up. I will probably do them as stand out to begin with. And again, it's, I need to practice the mechanics as well. You know, there may be some queuing that I need to do. It's about making sure that I've got the dog's spinal line correctly for each mark, making sure that as the dog is coming in with one bird, I'm getting that spine lined up for the next retrieve as they're sitting down. Once I've got their spine lined up, then I can take the bird. I'm watching their delivery, making sure that they're delivering the birds neatly and cleanly, addressing any problems there. And then I'm going through the mechanics of communicating. Okay, what's the next task? I've got to secondary select and tertiary select, meaning I'm going to tell them what bird they're going to pick up second. I'm going to tell them what bird they're going to pick up third. And so just going through those mechanics and making sure I've got it down and developing confidence in their head. Now, when I ship the dog off for those memory birds, there's enough information out there that the dog's going to be successful. I don't care if they end up on the right side of the gun or the wrong side of the gun. I simply want them to get out there to the destination and find that bird on their own without any interference from me. And when that happens, then they're going to feel good about themselves. I would say that. You're using white bumpers and short grass, just like you're doing with your singles and building that marking ability, you're simplifying by spreading them out. No factors, all that stuff. You could depending on where the dog is at in their training. So if you have a if you have a younger dog, a less experienced dog, having a white bumper visible on the ground can help foster the mechanics that I'm talking about. So the gun stations could be very short. Let's say if it's a younger inexperienced dog, let's keep them at 75, the marks at 75 yards or less, where the dog can sit online, look out at the gun station and then you're feeding the dog a little information, maybe pushing a little to the left or the right to try and get them targeting that bumper. And if there's a bumper there to see, they're going to see it and they're going to look at it and guess what they're going to do next? They're going to go straight to that bumper. They're not running at a gun. They're starting to understand or remember the mechanics of what that act is where I'm fussing with them a little bit to get them to look one side of the gun station or not. So yeah, it could be that situation or if I'm dealing with an all-age experienced dog, well, then I might not really care if the dog can see the bumper, the bird or not. And in all likelihood, I'm going to use birds. But even a dog at that stage, like the high levels, you'd allow them to backside? Yes, I would because this isn't another conversation, but if I'm going to handle a dog on a mark, it's because I feel that that handle is going to improve their performance in the future. Now, if there are no factors in the mark, in other words, there's nothing pushing the dog offline to the mark and there's no concepts in the mark. In other words, the dog's not going to fall into the trap of going back to an old fall, breaking down early or driving past something because there's something trying to keep it. Those things don't exist. Then I must be, if I did decide to handle the dog with the example that you gave, then I would simply be handling them because they didn't remember where the bird was and that's not going to make them better at remembering where the bird was. And so for that reason, I would not handle. There's no benefit to it. Okay. Would you have your bird thrower take a step or stand up or anything? I could. I might do that. I might do that. I might not. It just... What would be the benefit of allowing them to backside it? Just the ability of like, oh, snap, I messed up? Nope, not at all. The benefit of allowing them to backside it is without interference from me, I am not drawing away from the confidence that the dog's developing. In other words, the dog doesn't care if he goes to the left side or the right side of the gunner or the correct side or the wrong side of the gunner. If he gets to the area of the fall and I consider that the area of the fall, that entire area around the gun, if they get to the area of the fall and they problem-solve and they work it out and they do it themselves without any interference, then that's leading to what I talked about at the outside of this and that's confidence. They're not going to fail at finding the bird if they go to the incorrect side of the gun. They're certainly going to come up with it. If I don't blow a whistle, then I'm not pulling away from that confidence. That's the benefit of allowing them to do it themselves. Very good. Yeah. Those triples will be wide open. They'll be stand out to begin with. If I have dogs that are, well, in fact, it doesn't matter whether I have dogs that are more experienced or less experienced, those marks are going to be retired. I'm going to set up triples where they are, again, wide open. There's not going to be any factors in them, but I'm going to retire all of those gun stations, including, quite possibly, even the go bird. But the gun stations are not going to be hidden behind an object like hay bales or in a tree line. There is going to be a holding blind that's very conspicuous in the field. Yeah, just essentially that so that when I do a triple off of three retired guns, the dog can either A, see the holding blind from the line, so it has a little bit more information about where the destination is. Or let's say you have a field full of hay bales and you say, I'm just going to retire behind that hay bale. I get a little bit concerned about that because there are just too many options now as to where the destination might be. So I try to stay away from that kind of stuff. It's really keep the holding blind out in the field conspicuous. And so whether the dog can see it from the line or within 50 yards of the retrieve, they have enough information to get there successfully and come up with a bird. And again, it's just about developing confidence in memory and the ability to pick up birds that come from retired gun stations in a memory situation. In a given week, can I digress real quick and get, I don't think we've ever discussed this. In a given week, how often are you doing singles, multiple marks, boys and birds to develop memory and control at the line? I guess I probably err on the side if I do a lot more singles, but I see so much value in the multiples and know that I guess just answer the question before I give my answer. Yeah, you know, that's just such a huge topic, but I can tell you I can't I'm going to answer your question from a slightly different angle. With the students that I coach, I tell them on average to set up at least one wide open multiple with the characteristics that I just described at least once a week. So they are doing at least one multiple where I know they're going to be absolutely successful with where the dog is going to be actually successful. And that the whole reason for that is, and I discovered this, you know, when I was training and competing with dogs that if I constantly made the training difficult every day, if there was training in every set up, every marking set up, in other words, there were factors or there were concepts. What ended up happening is my dogs didn't have the confidence to put together a multiple when they went to an event. In other words, they had all the skills that they needed, you know, they could fight factors. They could they understood concepts. They knew how not to fall into traps, but they fell apart emotionally when they were faced with a multiple with all of these things. And simply because they didn't get enough experience with success to feel that they could do it. And that's why I tell my students, oops, I'm sorry about that. That's why I tell my students, you know, when I'm giving them their weekly training plan or their biweekly training plan, do make sure you get in one or two wide open triples. They could be the marks could be 300 yards, but I want to make sure that they're so wide open, they're not going to end up falling into some trap. The holding blinds are very conspicuous. So there and there's no nothing else really in the field that they might go, oh, is the gunner retired behind that? I want them to be to confidently when they go out there with it within 50 or 100 yards, they go, there's a holding blind. That's the destination. That's where I'm going. I don't care if they go to the right side or the wrong side of the holding blind. As long as they get to the destination and they run around till they find the bird, they don't care whether or not they went to the right side or the wrong side of the gun. They don't care if their line was a little left or right and I don't either quite frankly. I'm not trying to teach them to hold a straight line in this particular test. And that goes a long way to getting those dogs to be successful at events. So in a given week, one confident building triple. Yeah. A lot of singles. Yes and no. Can I jump in and ask a question here. Kevin, you had mentioned like a weekly by weekly training plan sort of deal that you'll put together for some of your students. And I think Bob's trying to get an understanding of what a week actually looks like. What can we take a quick side step here and what does a week look like for a high level dog? Yeah. Yeah. Because I know what Bob's week would look like, right? And maybe we can talk about that too. But like Kevin, what would you suggest a training schedule look like for someone in a weekly setup? Okay. We're talking about probably a dog that's beyond transition work here. Yep. Yeah. Like I guess if I have a master level dog and so like they're coming back out of hunting season, whatever, what would you say we ought to be doing? Yeah. So in my mind, I have a very long list of things that we have to cycle through repeatedly, right? It's teaching a dog to fight factors, whether it's teaching the dog concepts, whether it's there's a long list of those things. And also there's the blind department as well where we've got to cycle through a bunch of things there. And then I also think about doing the maintenance items like this, this what I just described with the wide open triples would be a maintenance item. And as you guys know, whenever you do training in one department, it deteriorates the dog's skills in another department. In other words, if I work on check down birds a number of times in a row, that may cause my punch birds to deteriorate. If I do keyhole blinds, that causes dogs casting to deteriorate. They end up digging back or scalloping on their cast. So I need to get to the field and do wide open blinds where I can allow the dog to get offline. So coming around to your question now, whenever I'm setting up that two week training plan with my students, I have a running list of what they did in the last two weeks and the two weeks before that. And I look at, okay, what did I cover in the last two weeks in the two weeks previous that? What didn't I cover? So I've got to make sure that I get to those things. And then I also ask myself in the previous two weeks with the training that I did, what areas would have deteriorated because of the training that I did? Like I just said, if I did keyhole blinds, if I focused on keyhole blinds, then I know my dog's casting is going to deteriorate. I'm going to see more digging back and I need to get to something where I'm allowing the dog to get offline. So that will be prescribed into the training as well. That's sort of the best description I give of it. I'm constantly analyzing what we've done and what did I create? What do we work on next? It's the same idea. But to go back to the multiples and singles, just because I don't know if we clarified, for one, we're doing at least once a week, a wide open triple, not crazy factors, not tricking them, nothing crazy. That's right. So how are we balancing singles, multiples throughout the week? Well again, it's identifying, one of the points that I've gotten to in the last conversation was it's identifying where I'm seeing weaknesses as well. So if I'm seeing a lot of head swinging, then I know I need to get back to doing more singles, wide open things. Of course, you're going to do a lot of singles to foster marking accuracy. There's just so many things to cycle through, but you're doing a lot of singles to foster marking accuracy. The people that are working all age, they have to do multiples. If you're going to work on certain concepts in training, it has to be part of a multiple. But I'm going to give you one example where you can work a multiple, but still work on singles. So let's say I'm doing a check down bird. It's going to get a little complex, but I don't lose people. If I'm working on a check down bird, and I have, in order to do a check down bird in my mind, which I just did a whole thing on check down birds. I did a blog post on my website, and people want to check it out on check down birds. But if you throw a check down bird set up, you want to get into secondary selection, which is telling your dog which bird they're going to pick up second, which requires you to throw a triple. So now we've got this triple set up. The dog goes and gets the go bird, and now your job as a handler is to tell the dog to pick up the next shortest bird in the test second, which will be the check down bird. So let's say I do pick up that check down bird. The dog gets that out of the way. There's still one more bird to pick up. Well, in my mind, there is no value in sending the dog for that third bird as part of a triple or very little value. In fact, there's risk, there's the risk that you could, that the dog could have difficulty with it, and that you might cause accuracy and confidence to deteriorate. So instead of sending the dog to pick up that third bird, re-throw it as a single. So just to walk people through that again, I threw the triple, long bird, check down bird, go bird. Dog goes and gets the go bird, comes back, now I want to work on secondary selection and picking up a check down bird. I go ahead and do that. And rather than picking up that third bird after you've picked up the second bird, just go ahead and re-throw it as a single. And I do that with different tests where if I want to throw a triple in order to create a concept, I don't necessarily pick it up as a triple. And that way, I'm again, managing confidence and managing marking accuracy. Cool. That's awesome. That's a great tip. Markhead down Kevin Owens. Good job. All right, let's get back into it. I'm sorry to digress, but I just wanted to hear your opinion on how often to be focusing on singles and marking accuracy and confidence mixed with adding the concepts and difficulties of multiples and what we have to teach when we're teaching multiples. Yeah, I'm just, when, just to give a little bit more information on that, and I know we're kind of getting off topic, but if I'm working on a particular concept, let's say, I'm going to use the check down bird concept again, I'm going to probably hit it two to three times in a two week period. That's all I want to do. I don't want to do it any more than that really because I can get out of balance very quickly, if I don't remember what I said, where if you do too much of something or sorry, whenever you train on one thing, it causes something else to deteriorate. That is a fact. So you don't want to overdo anything. You don't want to try and perfect anything. Say, like you're saying, oh, my dog's still having trouble with check numbers. I'm going to keep going at it. Stop. Go work on something else. Let that simmer for a little bit. Come back and work on it some more later. But during that time, that two week period, I'm evaluating confidence, accuracy, head swinging, line manners, all of these more fundamental things in my dog. And that's what's telling me, do I need to do more singles? Do I need to open things up? Do I need to shorten things up so that I can just work on these line manners that are getting out of hand? You know, some short walking singles. That's what's telling me whether or not I need to do more singles or more, or I can go ahead and push the envelope a little bit and do more conceptual marking. That's how I put that. Awesome. Thank you. So we talked about the wide open triples, stand out versus retired. So the dogs are going to get a diet of that and during this time period. And then after that, I want to get back to some ABCD drills. People are not familiar with what an ABCD drill is. It's a marking test where you have four to five marks that are very tight. In other words, the lines to the birds might, the line to a longer bird might skim the back side of a shorter bird. There may be two birds that are directly in line with each other in the test. There may be a mama, papa situation in the test. You can use your imagination to set these up, but they're not long. They're always short. I would say the longest mark would be less than 200 yards. And... Selfish plug. I did a YouTube video on the ABCD drill. Two different styles. One with me running a dog and one with me whiteboarding it. So... Awesome. I want to see that. Yeah, check it out. Okay. Cool. Go on. I'm not sure if you have any different configurations and ideas. The shortest bird might be 40 or 50 yards. They do not need to be long. This is a drill like scenario. Remember ABCD drill. And drills are typically short. All I'm doing with that. More often than not, all of the marks in an ABC drill are singles. They're not thrown as multiples. We want the dog to generally be successful. They might have a little trouble here and there, but anything that comes up will more than likely be getting gunner help involved or something like that. And it's just getting the dog comfortable with these really tight situations. Most of these master level tests and all age field trial tests are very tight. All the birds are thrown in a bird basket, as I like to say. And so the ABCD drill is designed to get the dogs comfortable with that and give them some experience with that. So they're probably going to get two or three of those during this timeframe. And the next area that I want to talk about is flyers. You know, a lot of people don't train with flyers, but I think if you're going to compete, you have to. You really, the flyer just adds a whole element that you can't create any other way other than to put a flyer in the test. There are ways to make it a little more cost effective with flyers by simulating the flyer or hooding them, which I highly suggest. If you've got a dog or two, you probably don't need more than three or four. Hopefully you can keep them around at home somehow. And that, you know, with hooding them, you can reuse them repeatedly. So, and you can just simulate the flyer situation with real birds. And at any rate, what I'm talking about just doesn't apply to pre-season training. It applies throughout a dog's training career. As far as I'm concerned, how you use the flyer in a test can really be the difference between using it effectively and using it to almost as it would almost be detrimental to the dog's development. I guess there's a few things that go on when I'm thinking about using a flyer. And I want to use my flyer in these tests, by the way. I want to make sure that the flyer is not on the short gun station almost ever. I mean, I do put it there occasionally, but not very often. And when I am using the flyer, I don't like to just give it away to the dog. In other words, I'm not going to allow the dog to get the flyer without having to do some work to get that flyer. So that would mean that I could use the flyer in a variety of different ways. And they're all designed to create discipline around the flyer. Remember dogs think of flyers like, you know, heroin to a drug addict almost, you know, they got to have those flyers. They love them. So they're itching form. Yeah. And when they see them, the wheels come off a lot of times. So what you want to do is instill in your dog some composure when they see them, you know, give them, make them feel like they need to be composed or disciplined when they have flyers in their tests. And I do that by doing a few things. One, they could be a poison bird in a three-peat situation, which we'll get into three pizza people don't know what they are. We'll talk about them later on, but they could the flyer could be a poison bird in a three-peat. So now their dog's going to get to watch the flyer, but they have to do three blinds before they get the flyer or it could be an out of order flyer in a marking test. In other words, I may throw a triple or a double or a triple, but the flyer is not going to be the go bird. In fact, the flyer may be the third bird that they pick up in a test and they have to pick up a check down bird that's just off the flyer station and the dogs have to be disciplined enough to say, yes, I will, Bob, I'm going to go get that check down bird. Even though I see that flyer station over there and I want it, I'm going to go get it for you. So in other words, you're asking the dog to be disciplined about how they're going to how and when they're going to pick it up. Another way to use a flyer in a way that creates discipline is put factors on road to that flyer. I've seen trainers do this where they throw a flyer in the test and there's factors in the mark, that flyer mark, and they let the dog get, they lower their standard and let the dog get away with giving into those factors. So I will put the flyer where maybe it's a cheating single across the corner of a pond on a long entry on a corner of a pond and the dogs are, they just want that flyer. They're going to run around that pond. And now you're presented with this opportunity to not only potentially get a correction and for cheating, but you're also telling the dog, hey, just because it's a flyer doesn't give you license to lose your head here. So those are the types of things that I'm going to build into my test when it comes to the flyer. So I'm going to use my flyers, but as I go forward with these marking tests and these blind drills, I'm going to be using that flyer and making sure that my dog feels that it needs to be composed and disciplined when it comes to flyers. And that doesn't just apply here, but I'm going to use, that's my philosophy when it comes to using flyers. We share the same philosophy. Good. How often are you using flyers weekly, biweekly? So again, my students and I also train, I also get out to train once a week with some of my students here, but I'm encouraging them to put the flyer in every test they can and they're hooding the flyer. So they've got that option. You know, that's the beauty of hooding flyers is that you can use them over and over again. And so the dogs are just becoming accustomed to them. And when they go to the hunt test or the field trial, their brain doesn't blow up because, oh my God, there's a flyer. Well, they see it every day. So yeah, I'm just worth throwing them. That's my instructions. Put the flyer in every test that you can. I dig it. I, yeah, it takes a little extra work, but it actually, once you get the hang of it, it doesn't create that much more work and you don't need a shooter. That's the other beauty of hooding is that the other beauty of putting the bird is that you don't need a shooter. Anybody can throw a flyer or toss or can throw a flyer and you can, I do like to use a shotgun because you want to simulate the same sound. So you're, it's a little extra cost there. We've having to shoot off a live round, but you're not shooting the bird. So as long as your person is educated on how to, that's throwing the flyers, educated on how to use a gun and you've got, you know, somebody can sew some hoods together for you and you're off to the races with that. The next area of training that we're going to work on is simple watermarks. So even before I get into cheating singles, I just want to do some simple watermarks where they're not very long, probably 75 yards or, you know, in that area, less than 100 yards. Let's call it less than 100 yards. There's not going to be any tricky entries. I'm not asking the doctor to negotiate the corner of a pond. There's no angle exits. I just really want to get the dog back in the water doing some marks, feeling good about themselves, feeling good about the water. That's it. You know, so again, two or three tests of this. And as well, if I've got a more experienced dog, those, those marks may be retired. I may retire them. And again, because there's no training in them, in other words, I'm not asking the dog to fight any factors. There's no concepts because they're wide open. You can throw them as a multiple and the dog's going to have success at doing that multiple or you can do them retired. And the dogs, you know, as long as there's conspicuous holding blind and they're not very long, the dog's going to have, again, have some success. We're just building confidence, getting them ready for the more difficult work that we're going to get into. Very cool. Moving on from that, I, the next drill that I like to do, even before cheating singles is, is an angle exit drill. And basically it's, it's a very simple drill where you're working along a, a levy, a gunner is throwing a, a bumper and down the shore. And the swim might only be 30, 30 yards. It's not, it's not very long. I'm all, what I want to do is get right back to just one single component of the mark. And that's the, the angle exit. And that the, what I'm trying to do is instill a standard in the dog's mind that when there is an angle exit component to a mark, they must swim to the bird. They can't get out before they get to the bird. It's hard to describe what that looks like for people that don't understand it. But when you're approaching a shoreline at 90 degrees or the dog is approaching a shoreline perpendicular to the line of the shoreline, there really is no factor that's pulling the dog left or right. But if you angle to that shoreline, now the, as they approach the shoreline, the shoreline is drawing the dog into it. And so they may not want to swim all the way to the bird. And in this particular drill, the dog is being told that they must swim all the way to the bird, that they can't get out of the pond early. If they, you know, initially there's just some handling that's going on to tell them that they've got to swim down to the bird. There might be some attrition where I'm stopping the dog, calling them back a few yards and handling again. But at some point that's going to graduate to correction. You know, if I show the dog the standard I'm looking for, but they insist on lowering the standard, there's probably going to be some indirect pressure corrections and I'm going to handle the dog down the shore. And I'm going to repeat that mark until they do it right. And then once the dog is doing that right, then the gunner is going to move down the levee a little further so that the swim is a little longer. And we're going to repeat this, we're going to do it all over again. We're going to throw a mark down the levee, send the dog. They're going to, they're going to be faced with the same things. But because the swim is a little longer, they're probably going to fall into the same traps again. And I'm going to repeat that until the dog does it right, handle it the same way, move the gunner down and do it again. And I'm not going to get through all of that in one single lesson in all likelihood. That's going to take several lessons to move down the shore. So initially the first retrieve might only be 30 or 40 yards. The last retrieve might be 75 to 100 yards. So that the dogs learn what the standard is. And then if I feel I need to, I'm going to go to another location and repeat the whole lesson and repeat the same thing until I put the dog in that situation in a cold situation like that and they demonstrate that they can angle out of the pond every time. No questions asked. They understand the standard. They're ready to meet it. Now I'm off to the races. That's just one component of watermarks that a dog has to do well. One question I have to paint the picture for folks is where is this bumper or bird landing on the levee? How far do they have to get out and fold their angle to pick it up? So the bumper is on the levee which there's a number of things that are important when you're setting this up. One the water has to be deep as the dog approaches the levee. You don't want a very shallow, slow drop off next to the levee because the dog's feet will be on the bottom before they're even close to the shore. They don't want that to happen. So when the dog is in the water swimming and they're going to be swimming until they almost get to the levee. That's why I like to use the levee. There's no cover on the levee. It's probably a mode grass or a road so that when the dog comes out of the water, they can immediately spot the bumper. They might not be able to see it from the water and ideally they can't see it when they're swimming in the water. We want them to use their head to fight that factor. Unless it's a young dog, a dog that has never done the work before or the dog is repeatedly failing and they just can't seem to grasp the concept. Then the bumper comes down to the edge of the water. The white bumper comes down to the edge of the water where they can see it the whole way. I'll give them a little bit more information to help them understand what we're truly trying to accomplish here. If the dog understands that, then the bumper's up on the levee so they can't see it when they're swimming but as soon as they get out, it's visible and they can grab it. I don't want them, I don't want to handle them down the shore and they do all that work or I do all that work and they get out and then they can't find the bumper because then they're like, well, I want to give them a, I want to help them understand why it was handling the down the shore. If they do all that work for me and then they get there and they don't find the bumper, they're not going to have enough information to connect the dog to say, oh, I get it. I know why Kevin was handling me down the shore. He wanted me to swim to the bumper. If he gets out of the pond and there's no bumper there, they don't have that information. That's right. This is the idea of hard to get to easy to find. Exactly. The dog is very challenged to get to the bumper but when they get there, they need to be rewarded quickly. Yep. I'll always have the gunner place a bumper where I expect it to land before they throw. If that bumper has a bad bounce, there's one there for the dog to find. I have the gunner mark the location with a piece of ribbon before we start so that that bumper is going back in the same place every time we repeat it. I want that bumper to be in the same place. In fact, I'll mark all three locations where the bumper is going to fall down that levee before we even start. There are three components to every watermark generally, an entry, an exit, and a swim. This is the first component that I want the dog to learn before I go any further. The exit part learning that they must swim to the bird. Set that standard before you get into any advanced training. The next area of training is going to be cheating singles. That's the entry part. Now we're going to move on to teaching the dog that they must enter the water where the line to the retrieve demands they enter the water. Initially, I'm going to start relatively close to the water. I'm going to say within 20 or 30 yards. I would like to be backed up about that far. I'm going to probably be pretty close to the corner of a pond somewhere. It's probably going to be a square entry into the pond. In other words, the shoreline that the dog is running at the line to the mark is perpendicular to the shoreline that the dog is going to be entering the pond on. I'm going to throw that cheating single and if the dog opts to not get in the water, I'm going to stop and handle them initially. I'm going to repeat it. If they choose to cheat again, I'm going to stop, correct, and handle. I know a lot of people out there will have the philosophy or they follow this process where they pick the dog up or pick the dog up with the correction. It's not an option for me. I'm simply going to stop and handle or stop correct and handle. Stop the dog. Tell them to stop doing what they're doing, correct them, tell them that there's a consequence for doing what they're doing, and then handle. Show them the way out of trouble immediately. That's what helps them connect the dogs and understand what the right response should have been. There's no confusion that way. Then the next situation that I'm going to create with cheating singles is a long entry. Now I'm talking between 50 and probably 75 or maybe even 100-yard entry into the pond. Still a square entry, but it's going to be near the corner. Dogs going to have to make a decision. Am I going to get in the pond and do this or am I going to run around? The longer the entry, the more enticing it is to run around and you're going to handle the situation the same way. Let me ask you a question on stopping and handling them into the water. I always have the philosophy of allowing the dog to make a decision so that it's black and white when I make a correction. Stopping and handling, I will recall and resend at times as they're more advanced, but we won't get into that debate I guess for the moment. But I want them to, if I've got the corner of the pond, I want them to actually fully commit to going around the corner of the pond. Stop them out. When I do handle, I'll recall around the corner of the pond, sit them and handle them back into the pond. Is that the same methodology you would use or would you stop them and give them an over to jump in or do you stop them before they even get around the corner? If the dog does get around the corner, I'm going to call back to a point where I can get a handle into the water. Let me actually start over a little bit because it's probably going to depend on whether we have an angle entry or a square entry. If I have a square entry and the dog darts around the corner and they get into a position where they're almost past the water and I can't get a decent handle into the pond, then there's definitely going to be a call back. But if I have a situation where I get the dog stopped, even though it might be a little late, I'm probably going to handle from that position, handle the dog from that position. If I can get the dog into the water and there's still a reasonable swim involved. My question is, I like to make it black and white. I allow the dog to make that full decision of cheating. What I'm maybe not understanding or just with clarification is, if you notice that the dog is making a decision to cheat, you're handling before they actually do the act of fully doing it. However, for me, in order to stop and handle, I've got to be sure that the dog is committed to cheating. Sometimes I can see that the dog is committed to cheating before they fully run around the pond. I would also say that even if the dog looks like they're going to cheat, but they still have an opportunity to make a better decision, I'm going to let them continue. I'm going to let that develop and give them that opportunity. In other words, if you have a long entry and they leave the mat and they're going toward the retrieving, you can see all of a sudden they're clearly offline to the water and they're on a trajectory to run around. Yet there's still time for them to evaluate the situation and go, wait a second, this is a bad decision. I need to bear toward the water and jump in. I'm going to let that situation develop until they get to the point where I can say, there's no more time, the dog doesn't have time to make the decision to jump in, then I'm going to blow my whistle and address the situation in a way that's appropriate. Do I let them run around? Generally no. Call back. Once I clearly see that the dog has made the decision to run around, then I'm going to stop and handle or stop correct and handle. That's just the way I do it. Do I think there's one set way that you actually have to do this? Absolutely not. I think your approach and my approach are very similar and I think we're going to have the same outcomes. Yeah, I do think they're similar. I guess my thought is let them understand that going all around. I don't let them get all the way to the bird or anything like that. I'm just saying it's very black and white if I let them go just a little bit further. What I find is as I train more amateur folks, they want to stop and give the dog the answer too soon. That's how the dog too soon so that the dog doesn't actually say, well, I don't think the dog fully grasped that they were trying to cheat or not. It's like they didn't even let the dog do it or the correction, whatever that correction may be, is too early and so the dog is like, well, why am I getting corrected? I hadn't done anything wrong yet. We knew that they were going to do it wrong, but I'm not sure that the dog understands well, it's because you ran around the corner. Now I got you. I'd like to expand on that a little bit because every cheating single is a little bit different. My thought process probably isn't that I'm, first of all, yes, amateurs do, not amateurs. Let's just say some people do handle too soon. The dog has clearly not even made the decision yet or it's a situation where the dog still had time to make a good decision and we didn't allow them to do it or the dog hasn't even shown that they're going to cheat and they're like saying, well, I'm going to handle before the dog even has a chance to cheat. Here's what I think is very important. If I'm anticipating correcting the dog for a cheat that will, depending on the situation, I may feel that it is safer to allow the dog to get around the corner of the pond and make a correction there as opposed to making a correction on the approach to the water. Again, this is getting a little bit off topic, but these are really important things. What happens at times is we actually teach the dog to cheat or we teach them to avoid the water simply because they are anticipating pressure around the water. Depending on where you make those corrections, especially if you consistently have bad timing with your corrections, the dog is going to learn to associate pressure with a particular situation or place, which in this case would be near the water. Dogs start to avoid the water not because they're cheating, but because they anticipate pressure around the water or they associate the water with pressure. This is a complex conversation, but if I have a cheating single, that's not the case. If I have a cheating single and I feel that making a correction could lead to a misunderstanding of why the pressure was applied or it could lead the dog to avoiding the water because of pressure that was applied not because there was a swim involved, well, I am going to time the correction a little bit differently. The correction is not happening in front of the water. In other words, on the approach to the water. If you see the dog is cheating and they're still on the approach to the water, they're still on the approach to the water, especially in a long entry situation. When faced with another long entry situation, they may run away from the water or be scared of getting close to the water because they're anticipating a correction near the water. Allowing the line to the retrieve to develop a little more, in other words, let them get around the pond a little further and make your correction there so that it's not on the approach to the water. This really comes to mind on long entries can alleviate that problem where the dog starts to associate pressure with the approach to water. But every cheating single is a little bit different. I'm going to give you one other situation I see comes up with cheating singles, which concerns me. That is where people set up a cheating single if you can picture like there might be a small bay that the dog has to run toward and get in on the approach to a big piece of water. Let's say there's a larger piece of water, but on the approach to it, there's a smaller bay that if the dog gets in the bay, they would be getting in the water sooner. If they go around it, they would be getting in a little later, but there's still a big swim involved. Can you picture that, Bob? Do I need to describe it again? I think I see it, but I got you. Yeah, just think about, if you can picture it, it's a smaller bay. You want the dog to get in. If they deviate around it and keep going, they're still going to get in the water, but they're just getting in the water a little bit later, and then they have a big swim that they're faced with that they're going to do. That cheating single really concerns me because what if you think about the picture that the dog is looking at and what's going through their head in that moment is this. They see the little bay. They decide to run around it. And now their next thought is, well, I just need to go a little bit further, and then I'm going to jump in and I'm going to make this big swim to go get that bird. And people go, oh, wait, people don't see that. They're not seeing what the dog is seeing, and they're not looking at the decision that the dog is about to make next. They're thinking about the decision the dog just made a moment to go, which was to run around the little cove, but that's gone now. Now the dog is in what the thought in the dog's mind is, is I'm about to jump in and make a big swim here to go get that bird. But people don't see that and they stop and they correct the dog or they stop and call the dog back with a correction. They stop and call the dog back. Well, let's just think about what just happened. The dog was about to make a decision to get into a bigger piece of water and make a big swim. What message are you sending that dog potentially sending that dog in that moment? Do you think they're thinking, I just cheated around that little cove? Or are you thinking, are they thinking, man, I just got corrected when I was running toward that big piece of water? That is a poorly set up cheating single. If you have that cheating single set up, simply stop and handle if you want to, or don't set it up at all. I just don't, I don't like it because of the potential outcome there. You can do a better job at setting up cheating singles. Yeah, it's not black and white. I feel like the analogy I would use is people who handle too much on blinds and don't let the dog carry casts. If you're chopping up a blind, it's like tweet. Okay, I guess that was wrong. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. What the hell? Where do you want me to go? All of a sudden you sap all that confidence away. If going around the bay, cheating around the bay is wrong, and then I try and go fat and go out to bigger water and oh shit, that's wrong. What is correct here? And so now you're correcting a dog to look out and go big. Then I'm going to have anything to do with that. That's trouble. Exactly. And so you've just created a gray area of lack of confidence and they're going to not want to make a decision to be cautious to make decisions. Yeah, to me, you need to just simplify and make it way easier on a dog than you're going to put them in that predicament. Yeah, you've got to be looking at the big picture. I mean, you've got to look, you know, if you can't see the forest for the trees, right, then you're going to get into trouble. You are going to get into trouble because that's what's happening. So, okay, got a little bit off track, but I just want to bring that up. So we had the long entry cheating singles, which we're going to handle in the same fashion. And we're going to get into some angle entry cheating singles. And of course, I'm going to be backed up on those as well. You know, there's this progression. Square entries close, square entries backed up, angle entries backed up. And if as you're approaching an angle entry, as a dog is approaching an angle entry, they're more tempted to allow the shoreline to lead them down the shore. If they're doing that, I'm going to stop and handle or stop correct and handle. I'm not going to call back. You will not find me calling a dog back to the line very often for a cheat. And I try to discourage people from doing it because there's just too much potential for the dog to misunderstand what the correction was about. My philosophy is stop the dog, tell them, stop doing what you're doing. There's a consequence for doing what you're doing. This is the way out of trouble. When you pick a dog up, you're taking the third part out of that equation. And now there's opportunity for the dog to go, well, what did I do wrong? Maybe they start to think different things about what they did wrong. It could be a complete misinterpretation. Too much danger. Typically, if I call back, I'm going to re-throw the bird. I think that's a very good philosophy. There's a few things to come to mind if I'm going to call back. It's certainly going to simplify dramatically. Knowing the bird is a very, very good option, which I go to most of the time. The other thing is if I'm calling all the way back to the line, there's a good chance I'm not going to use a correction. Thirdly, that dog has to have had a great deal of experience with a particular situation first. And I know that they're already educated. So there's going to be no misunderstanding or very little chance that there's going to be a misunderstanding of what the pickup was for and how to make better decisions later. If you picked up with a correction and then you failed to get the proper response after that correction, look up. You are going down a bad road. Good insight. Okay. Where were we? Oh, cheating. Yeah, so the angle entry is still long, long backed up angle entries. And then one of the last ones I'm going to get to are re-entries where a cheat is involved. So the dog, there may be no cheat on the initial entry to get in the water, to get to the point where they get out, and then they're faced with another sort of tricky re-entry. Because a dog's momentum is down as they're coming out of the water, because you know, the swim tires them out. They're not moving very quickly. Now they have more opportunity to make a bad decision, which a lot of times they will. And so you'll get the opportunity to stop, correct, and handle into the water. The final one that I'll get to is an unconventional cheating single. What that looks like is, you know, when we set up a traditional cheating single, let's just talk about a traditional cheating single. If the dog is going to cheat by going to the right, we typically throw the mark to the left. Picture a picture, just picture a cheating single, a long entry cheating single, for instance, think of where you're placing the bird so that they just have to get in the corner of the pond and parallel the shore and make the swim. Traditionally, we would throw the bird in the direction that if the dog was making the right decision about getting in, they would also be going to the correct side of the gun. No, that's not a good way to put it. But traditionally, well, yeah, so if they did cheat, they would potentially be taking a line that would carry them to the incorrect side of the gun. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. So if we're standing looking at a pond and if the dog cheats, it would go to the right side and go around the bank to the right, you want to have your bird thrower on the opposite side of the bank throwing right to left. Exactly. If the dog's going to cheat by going to the right, the bird is going to be thrown to the left. That would be a conventional or traditional cheating single. Picture that very same cheating single. The bird's landing in the exact same place. But now we're throwing the bird the opposite way so that if the dog cheats, they're still going to be on the correct side of the gun station, but they're running around the water essentially. There are times when you're going to be at a hunt test or field trial where a judge is going to set something like that. It's an unconventional cheating single cheating situation. And for whatever reason, sometimes dogs just feel that it's okay. They can be spot on when you throw a conventional cheating single, a traditional cheating single. They do it right every time. But throw that bird the other way. And all of a sudden the dog goes, I've just feel comfortable running around the water. And I just want to make sure that I've reviewed that so that the dog understands that even in those situations, they're still must get in the waters from to the bird. So that's sort of my, the way I run through cheating singles. The next test that I'm going to do involves some concept. Now, just thinking about our progression on the water, we started with the angle exit drill. We started to get out of the water properly. Then we taught the dog, the next thing was cheating singles. We taught them how it was necessary to get in the water properly. Now we're going to start to work on some swims, making sure the dog understands they have to make the swim to the bird. And we're going to do that with some down in the shore marks. So that will involve some angle exits and will also involve making a swim. And we will also throw some concept in there by putting two gunners on the same shore. It's a two down, what's called tradition, it called a two down the shore. Two gunners on the same shoreline. And they're spaced far enough apart that there won't be any confusion about whether they're landing at the foot of the long gun or the short gun. I want some separation between those guns. And the dog is approaching the shoreline at an angle to get those birds. The gunner will be throwing the bird down the shoreline away from you. They won't be throwing the bird down the shoreline toward you. But definitely going to throw the bird down the shoreline away from you so that as the dogs approaching the gun station, they have to swim by it and angle out of the pond past the gun station. And I'm working on two things here. One, teaching the dog that they have to make the swims. In other words, you can't get out of the pond halfway down the pond and then run down the rest of the way to get the bird. Two, I'm teaching the dog. I'm going to make sure I maintain my standard in terms of angling out of the pond. I'm not going to let the dog get out of the pond until they're at the bird, just like I did in my angle exit drill. And three, we're going to work on the concept of it's not appropriate to return to the old fall to try and find another bird. That's why there are two gunners on the same shore. And you send the dog for the longer mark of the two as the dog swimming by the shorter gun station. There's the possibility the dog might say, you know what? I don't feel like doing that extra work to swim down and towards to get that long mark. Maybe I can find another one here and you're simply going to stop and handle and that's going to, you know, you're going to teach the dog that that's just not an option. You got to keep going. You got to make this. You get, there's no other bird there. You're not allowed to go there. Just keep going. So they will get a diet of two down the shores and then that kind of completes your marking training on the water. I would also say that after you get done this work, the angle exit drills, the cheating singles, the two down the shores, what's happening to your dog's confidence on the water and marking accuracy on the water, especially if there's been some correction involved or potentially even a lot of correction involved. I think it's going to get shakier. It is. Absolutely. You know, so when the dog is faced with situations where it has to mark on the water, there's going to be a lack of confidence and especially when it comes to multiple situations that confidence is going to deteriorate even further. So once you get done this training, what do you need to go back and do? What we talked about singles and watermarks that don't have any training in them. In other words, square entries, square exits, open up the marks, just let them go out there and get some birds on the water where they can't fail. Don't set up training situations. And that will restore confidence in the ability to, it will restore confidence and a comfort, you know, a level of comfort that you want around the water. These have to be comfortable around the water. A lot of times in my experience, the dogs that aren't successful around the water, again, they may have all the skills and understand the standards they need in order to do marks right, but they fail at watermarks because they don't have the confidence to do them. And so balance and training in this department is so, so, so important. Knowing that I've done all this training, you know, if I'm taught, if I've covered this stuff with, with dogs or my clients, hey, it's time to get back to the water and let's just do some fun, simple, no watermarks to keep these dogs, keep that really important aspect of watermarks up, up to shape. Let's, let's get them confident. All right. Now we're getting into blinds, field blinds, that sort of thing. The first thing I'm going to start off with is just simple land blinds. There's not going to be any, you know, I'm not going to throw concepts in there like diversions, poison birds, dry pops, marks. I'm not going to do blinds across the marks initially. Simply going to be, hey, let's go to the field. We're going to set up three or four blinds. There's not going to be a lot of training in them. Just a relatively flat field, no major winds, no cover changes. Let's just get these dogs running and let's make sure that the corridor is large. There's going to be no keyholes in the situation. I want the dogs to be able to travel, have to get some momentum going, and also by allowing them to get well offline to the blind, opening up the corridor of the blind. Now when you stop them and ask them to change direction, they really have to do it. They have to not only change direction initially, but they have to maintain that direction change. So you're checking to see whether or not your dog is handling well. That's it. And if they're not handling well, then it means you need to do a little teaching at this point. You need to stop and handle again really quick. Once you see that dog start to dig back, you need to stop and handle again real quickly. And just get that dog changing direction. You're also checking to see, are they meeting my standards in terms of stopping and going? When I blow the whistle, are they stopping crisply? Do I need to make corrections? Do I need to get back to the citrol? When I put my arm up and I cast them and I know they can see me, are they going? Do I need to make some force corrections? Are they popping? Do I need to make some force corrections? They're giving the dog just a little experience with that and checking those things, making sure they're changing direction appropriately. It's a good thing to do next. Following that, then we're going to get into, we could get into some, you know, there's no particular order now, but there's four or five areas that we're going to cover. And one of them is shoreline water blinds. That's got to be a staple of your training, but it's the first water blind you're going to cover coming back to the water, are shoreline water blinds. We want the dog to do a water blind where they're traveling immediately adjacent to the shoreline. You know, I'm talking three or four yards away from the shoreline, no more than five. If they're beyond that, then they're not doing a shoreline blind anymore and you're not getting the training that you need. You want to make sure that the dog is disciplined enough to parallel the shoreline, be close to it, but not feel like they are so comfortable that they just want to grab it all the time. Every time you handle them to tighten up to it, they say, oh, permission to get out and they just go hard lateral and get out. That's no good. You need to do this training so that they are balanced enough to say, I can be comfortable enough to be close to this shoreline, but I'm disciplined enough not to grab for it at every opportunity. So that might mean three or four shoreline water blinds that really you've got to evaluate your dog's behavior. And then get through a few of those. Once you see that the dog has that mindset, then we can move on, but that's the very first thing. And by the way, shoreline water blinds need to be a staple if you're training. You're doing them all the time. Anyway, they're just something that we see all the time at events. Field trials, hunt tests. There's going to be a shoreline water blind 75% of the time, at least. Exactly. I couldn't agree more. One thing I kind of was on my phone looking real quick to refresh my memory on your sit drill. I think we talked about it in the part one. I think you referred people to it. Do you mind just taking five minutes and digressing on the sit drill because I feel like sitting on the whistle is probably one of the biggest things I see people fail at hunt tests where the dog just gets looper and looper and out of control and looking around and going more independent. And so if we can give them a five-minute spiel and then you can just redirect them again to where to find it and more in depth that we work with. When you have a poor sit, whether, and I think I mentioned in the last podcast, but I'm going to mention again, there are four components to a good sit. Putting the brakes on, spinning around completely to face you squarely, putting their butt on the ground and looking at you until you get them information, four components. So every time I blow a whistle, I'm evaluating what that looks like, what my dog looks like. And if I see a loopy sit, for sure, I'm going to go to the, I'm going to revisit my sit in a drill-like environment. Or if I'm making corrections for the other behaviors and it's not getting better or their dogs continue to make the same mistakes, I'm going back to review the sit in the yard. So you just can't correct over and over again on cold blinds or in other drills for this stuff. You're going to mess your dog up. It's guaranteed. Stop. Don't be so lazy that you're not willing to say, I shouldn't be doing any more cold blinds until I get this cleaned up in the yard. Shame on you if you are. So if I recognize that I've got a problem, now I've got to go back and review some things. First thing I want to review is, is my dog, sorry, the first thing I want to review is the sit at my side. So I'm going to put the dog on a lead. I'm going to have the e-collar. The lead is going to be attached potentially to a pinch collar or a flat collar, but not the e-collar. Let's just be clear on that. And I'm going to be walking along with the dog at a brisk pace and then I'm suddenly going to stop until the dog to sit. And in that moment, I've got to evaluate how quick was the sit. And I'm only really working on one component of those four things. There were four things I mentioned a moment ago, but I'm only working on one component. What is that? Getting the butt on the ground quickly. I want to see expediency, urgency. If the dog just was sort of lackadaisical and said, yeah, I'll sit, but I'm going to do it on my own terms and you didn't recognize it. This is where it comes to paying attention to the details where it's really important. If you didn't recognize it and you didn't get a correction or two or three in before your dog got its butt on the ground, you've missed a really good opportunity. And essentially you're never going to get to where you want to be if you don't get it there. You've got to start there. So review that. The next step would be walking along at heel with your dog, saying sit, but you yourself should take an extra step. That's called a rolling stop. All I'm doing is increasing the level of difficulty a little bit and evaluating the same thing and making the same corrections. By the way, the corrections are always momentary in nature. I'm using a momentary button or I'm using the continuous button, but in a momentary fashion. I'm going to say sit and rapid succession, making multiple corrections until the dog gets its butt on the ground. I might only have time for one. I might have time for three. Just depends how quickly the dog is getting its butt on the ground. I'm also using the lead to steer the dog and give them some direction as to what the right response is because a lot of times dogs that have loopy sits don't really know what the correct response is. Maybe you didn't do your basic obedience properly. Maybe you didn't do your color conditioning properly. Maybe you didn't recognize these things and teach your dog what the right response needed to be. So using the lead, pulling it back and down toward the tail, snatching that lead at the same time you're making those corrections is important. Rolling stop, like I said, you're taking that extra step, evaluating the same things, making the same corrections. You got that down. Your standard's coming up. You've got it perfect. You move on to the next step. That's a remote sit. I sit the dog six feet from me. They're on the lead again. I call them to me. They're halfway to me, which is almost as soon as you say here, I'm going to say sit. I have to evaluate what the quality of the sit is in that moment. Again, make corrections. If the dog isn't sitting crisply, I'm snatching up on the lead and that's why the dog can only be six feet from you, not 12 feet from you, not 10 feet from you. You don't have physical control of the dog if the dog's beyond six feet. There are some other things you need to do with your hands to keep that lead short, but that's the process. Six feet from you, call the dog to you, say sit, evaluate the performance, make a correction. Again, you're still only working on the one component, getting your dog to get their butt on the ground quickly. If once the dog meets the standard in that department, now I can go back to the pilework. But I've got to establish getting the butt on the ground quickly first in that obedience part. When I do sit to the pile, before I start, I'm going to put a bumper on the ground, throw a bumper on the ground about three or four feet from me, a yard or two, let's say. I'm going to stand right next to the bumper. The dog is going to be through it, just to make sure I said that correctly. Remember on the ground, the dog is a yard or two away from the bumper. I'm right next to the bumper. I'm going to tell the dog to fetch, throw my arm down toward the bird and say fetch. Almost as soon as I say fetch, I'm going to say sit. It's going to be fetch, sit. Now your dog has to respond to that command. Because you're right next to the bumper, it's awfully enticing for the dog not to sit, but because you're right next to the bumper, you also have maximum control. You're right in the situation. You can get the standard to where you want it. If the dog didn't sit, I'm going to be going sit, sit, sit every time I do, I'm making a correction. Now I'm never making a correction the first time I say sit. I'm only following up with more commands and corrections if the dog isn't meeting the standard. Let the dog show you that they're not making a standard and then make the correction. But your evaluation has to be quick. Even if the dog picked up the bumper, I'm still going to keep making those corrections until they get their butt on the ground. The only thing that's going to turn the pressure off is getting their butt off the ground, not getting the bumper. Then if they didn't meet the standard, I'm just going to keep repeating that until they do. And they will get it. They'll get it pretty quickly. They're going to be listening. What you're doing is you're teaching these dogs to listen attentively for the command no matter what they're doing, whether they're walking, whether they're you're walking, whether they're close to a bumper or a bird. That's what you do. If you need to do it with birds, do it with birds as well, maybe birds are a problem. Then I go to my pile work where I have a pile of bumpers 20 to 25 yards from the dog. And I don't stand beside the dog. I stand adjacent to the line of travel that the dog will be running on to the pile. But by placing myself a little closer to the pile, the dog is not just approaching the pile when I send them to it. They're approaching me as well. So I can use my presence to affect my dog's performance and get that sit to a standard that I want. Everything is verbal to I'm not using a whistle. It's all purple. I'm just saying sit. I'm not screaming it. I'm not begging this dog to sit. I'm just saying it in a conversation tone. Sit. I'm teaching that dog to listen attentively for that command. That's what's important. Evaluating the quality of the reaction to that command and making corrections before the dog completes the task is important. Making sure you don't make corrections after the dog completes the task is important. I see people do that all the time for whatever reason. They're just like, I just got to get one more in to get my point across, even though the dog has already completed the task. Mistake because we're trying to teach the dog to beat the next correction that's coming. There's nowhere for the dog to improve. No way for the dog to improve once they have their butt on the ground. It's over. They've improved as much as they possibly can. Don't correct them after they complete the task. Just to wrap it up quickly, that sit when I ask the dog to sit on route to the pile, initially it happens very close to their starting position because that's when things are simplest. There's less momentum. The dog hasn't built up any momentum and they're furthest away from the pile. That's the easiest place for them to meet the standard. Once they're meeting the standard there, then I make it progressively more difficult by asking the dog to stop closer and closer to the pile. But I break it down a lot because that level of difficulty can change dramatically very quickly. If you're too quick, they might not be able to meet the standard. They might not ever be able to meet the standard. Or if you don't get the standard to where it needs to be and you move on to the next step, you probably won't ever meet the standard. People rush through this. They're just trying to get through the drill rather than say, I'm not going to set a goal here. I'm not trying to get through this in three days. My goal is to make sure every step of the way the dog is meeting the standard before I move to the next one. Very good. There's again, several more steps, but you can find all that information on my website, on my blog. I believe that is the title of the blog. It doesn't have anything to do with stop and sit to the pile. It's the amateur advantage part two, I believe. The amateur advantage part two, where all the information about how to run through that drill is there. If you join Fetch, which is my online digital training platform, everything, all of the steps that I talked about are there. Just one last thing. I review that entire process with the whistle after I've done it verbally. Very good. Thank you. Where were we at? We were talking about... You just completed cheating singles. Shading singles. No. We talked about two down the shores. We talked about simple land blinds. We talked about shoreline water blinds. We've covered a boatload. A boatload. I know. I don't think we've gone too good. We're good. We're good. Cool. We talked about shoreline water blinds, making sure that our dogs feeling disciplined about not land grabbing, but comfortable enough to be close to that shoreline. The next thing I want to do are water blinds with simple re-entries. What does a simple re-entry look like? Well, a simple re-entry certainly isn't putting the dog on a point and asking him to come off a point. That's not a simple. That's a complex re-entry because you have factors involved that are drawing the dog offline. Simply making the re-entry might not be good enough. It can get the dog into trouble. I'm looking for situations where the dog swims across a piece of water. They get up on a piece of land. Then there's only one decision to make and that is to keep going. There isn't a decision to make as far as am I going to run down this piece of land or am I going to get in the water? That doesn't exist. It's simply, am I going to keep going? I will in all likelihood, send those re-entries as well at some point. Maybe the first one, there won't be any sent there, but I can tell you very quickly I'm going to get into pulling some feathers out, dragging some birds around on those re-entries because that's one of the elements that will get you every time is sent on a re-entry. Throw some sent down for sure. I'd like to see those dogs coming off that scented piece of land in one cast with voice. I'm going to use my voice when I'm giving a cast because I need to inject momentum into the situation. There's certainly reasons they're not to keep going. If they're coming off of that piece of land with one cast, my dog is meeting the standard and I can move on. Moving along, the next thing I'm going to do is look at running some blinds across my marks. The reason why we're doing that is to inject sent into our blinds. We have covered a lot of things up to this point in terms of making sure that our dog has good fundamental standards. I'm talking about stopping and going. The dog understands they must stop. The dog understands they must go. We covered that in a scattered bumper drill. We've covered that in some simple blinds. But now we're going to add an element that tends to cause those two things to deteriorate. The easiest way to do that to inject sent into your blinds is to run blinds across a previously run set of marks. Run your marks, run all your dogs, and then move your running mat at least a quarter of a turn around the field. If you're running from the west end, run from the south to the north end. If you ran your marks from the west end, run your blinds from the south to the north end. Run across where your running mat was. Run through the old falls. Run across the return lines, especially if you have some taller standing cover. This is a great place to do this kind of training because taller standing cover holds sent much better than a mode lawn. What's going to happen is you're going to see those standards with fundamentals deteriorate. You're going to see sloppy sits. You're going to see freezing on cast. Perhaps you might even see popping. These are your opportunities to make sure your element, you elevate the standard for fundamentals again in a field like setting where there's an element like sent that causes those things to deteriorate before you get into more advanced training. The only two more things to cover here, but oh, I've already covered that one. One more thing to cover here. The last thing that I'll cover is three peeps with diversions. Again, those are blinds. Typically, we'll set up three blinds in a field and there will be a diversion of some sort. Again, this depends on the level of experience the dog has. Obviously, if this is the dog's first season, they might not have any experience with this at all and it'll be inappropriate. We're talking about dogs that have more experience. We're going to put three blinds out in the field. Each successive blind will be slightly longer than the previous one and the lines to the blinds will crisscross each other. It might be hard for people to see this, but at any rate, there will be a diversion like a mark, a gunner sitting in the field, a poison bird, a dry pop. These are all blind concepts that judges are constantly using in all age stakes, master level hunt tests. We just want to review that stuff. The reason why we're reviewing it is we want the dog. This is a drill-like scenario where we want the dog to understand the mechanics and the language that we're going to use when these situations come up. Also to reinforce fundamental, again, you throw a diversion into the test. What happens? The sits deteriorate. The dog might start popping. Who knows? But at any rate, this is pretty much the last part of what I cover. I'm coming off of the break. It's a lot of work, isn't it? Hold on. I'm about to have a dog puked in my house. Get outside. Come on. I was there. I think that's a ton of great information. We're going to do two quick questions that came in through our Patreon, the Londock Patreon, to ask you real quick. One of them is, do you have any books that back in the day you found love with and helped you get to the next level? Of course, there are a ton of books out there that will tell you how to train a retrivial, the step-by-step process, or a ton of videos out there. One of my favorite books when I got into the sport, and I still think that many of the things that are in it still apply today is called training and campaigning retrievers. It was by Jack Gualtney Jr., which I know is available in Amazon and probably in other places. It's a subtitle was The Principles and Practice. It was more a philosophical discussion about training retrievers. I absolutely loved that book. I still think that, as I said, many of the things that are in that book, even though it was written so long ago, many of the things in that book still apply today. If you want to have a good read, it's not a big book. It's a paperback. It's a really good book. It's one I'd recommend. How about you? Very cool. These are the only books I read as a kid. I was not a big reader, so I think everyone would understand that the books that I did choose to read revolved around dogs. I loved reading Robert Milner's book, British Lab, Methodologies, and makes a very good duck dog and easy to read and fun to read. As far as accomplishing high-level stuff, I don't really remember it being like that, but it was methodologies on memory and duck dogginess and relationship between a human and a dog and how the dogs understand things. I love all of Mike Lardy's stuff. It's very high level. When I first started out, if I had read that first, I don't think I would have been able to put two and two together. DVDs like Chris Aiken's Duck Dog Basics, that shows you how to force fetch and do heel work, and it was simple. Everyone can understand it. He's pretty entertaining. Hour and 20-minute DVD. That was great. Then as my skill level and understanding of what dogs learn and understand, I liked Mike Lardy's. It's a multi-DVD set, but also has the training book with it as well. Then an old school book that was really good. Remember Dobs? It was like Trichronics came out with a book, and it looked like an encyclopedia. That was like a good, simple book. I read that one cover to cover. Man, I read Tom Dokins, Retriever Training book. Another one that I read that was very good at getting me started was Dale Walters' book. I don't remember the title of it, but he was one of the, I think he was one of the first that put words into a book that could help you get started. I'm not sure that the content hasn't developed so much more in the way we train Retriever today. I'll tell you what. It's my very first dog that was one of the very first books I ever read. My dog was very excited to come out and do the drill work and the yard work simply because of the principles that he had in that book. I loved it. Yeah, absolutely. I just think that a lot of the books back then, and I think this is why it's so important that we have podcasts now and YouTube and your course and our course and Tom Dickenharry's course is now, everyone can be so much more of a sponge. They can see it in person in essence, and then they have the ability to contact us and talk to us. When I bought Mike Lardy's book in DVD, there's no way in how I thought, boy, let me just call Mr. Lardy up and pick his brain because my dog's not doing it like his dog is. Well, now we have these like the fetch program or our Patreon where people can say, hey, for $35 or $200 or whatever the cost is, they can take the person that they like to learn from and now get a consultation with them that back when I was doing it, you just watched it and hoped your dog did it like that. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's unreal. Those were some of the books that I liked. Another question that came in is a person that's looking at buying a started dog and the process of buying a started dog and what the transition should be from trainer to the new owner. Would you like me to kind of take the reins for a second and get your... Yeah, I would because I think you might have more experience than I do in that department. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I sell several dogs a year and I think and even just having a dog that we train, that owner's transition is huge. The dog listens to us and does what we ask it, but then teaching the owner how to maintain and grow the relationship, not let things slide, whatever the case may be. So I think having a good relationship with who you're buying it from, giving that person and dog the time to learn. So don't go on a Friday at five o'clock by the dog and leave. You need to get there at Friday morning, train Saturday morning, train Sunday morning and leave or whatever the case may be so that you have multiple different startups, multiple different chances to work on obedience, multiple different chances to see the dog make mistakes and have that person help you understand how to get out of those mistakes. Everyone can do an hour long session with you and the dog does things perfectly and then you go home and shit hits the fan. So I also probably wouldn't buy a dog without putting my hands and eyes on it either. I mean, I will if it's from someone I trust, but even people I trust, I've gotten burned on buying dogs from them. So they'll send me a video. It's like, oh, it looks like a good little dog. I'll be able to build this. And then you get in it, hates water, scared of water and you know, rips birds to shreds and it's like son of a bee, you know, that's not good. That's not good. Right. So I think having a lot of trust in who you're buying it from and then spending the time with that person to teach you everything. And then when you get the dog home, don't throw them into balls to the walls, the sexy stuff. Take them back a little bit. Work on the mechanics. Work on the fundamentals that piece two parts here he's talked about so that you're building that relationship with the dog. Go at anything else you'd like to add to that? Well, I had a question for you. Do you do you allow that person to once they take a dog home? Do they have a period of time to look at the dog or how do you feel about that? And that was always a tough one for me. Yeah, that's a tough one for me too. Usually I'll allow like a two week period and that's it. Because any longer than that, I feel like now what if the dog jumps out of the bed of their truck and gets hurt? What if there's a lot that can go on and I want them to take the dog to the vet immediately and I will have taken the dog to the vet to clear it. But I want them to take the dog to the vet so their vet feels good about it and they feel good about its help. And so that needs to happen within the first week of them owning it. They need to, you know, if it's going in their home, which I try and only sell dogs that are going to be house pet, hunting dogs, not stuck in a kennel or breeding females, I don't deal with that. I want them to make sure that they're doing things right in the house and if there's any major problems we address it. But I think any longer than two weeks is no good and I wouldn't just say like you own it now. Don't call me. They should have, unless they live across the country or something crazy, they should be able to come back and revisit training with me and I answer their phone calls and walk them through troubleshooting. Yeah, I agree. I think for me when I would sell a dog, you know, there was, I think in two weeks, within two weeks, you should have a pretty good idea of what you got and as the seller, I was always concerned that what kind of training are they doing? I mean, they're training philosophies and my training philosophies or approaches could be completely different and it doesn't take very long to start to mess things up. So you said that the handlers should spend at least two days with you. I think they should spend at least a week with you in order to, yeah, if possible. I mean, they're going to spend a fair chunk of change to buy this dog and you want to know that the person that's buying this dog really needs to know what's this dog's personality? How do we deal with situations that come up? What's the language that we use to communicate with this dog? What experiences does this dog have? Where do I need to continue development from? So I don't think, you know, it's very hard to do that. It's one day, I think it's a huge mistake, two days. It's really questionable whether they can get all of that learning in. So yeah, try to spend a little bit more time if you can for sure. Yeah, I think that's the only time line. I think people have to understand too that whether we're talking about a troop in my eyes, a started dog is a dog that's ready to hunt through collar conditioning, four-spatch study, long singles, simple doubles, boats, blinds, live birds, dead birds, gunfire. They're ready to hunt. They're not a six-month-old puppy that's had obedience. That's not a started dog in my eyes. A started dog is ready to go hunting. That doesn't mean that they're ready to go run blinds. That doesn't mean that they're doing cheating singles and, you know, steady and honoring another dog on its first hunt and doing all these more advanced things. And so, studying the dog up for success, which if you have the time to learn from the person you're buying it from, is key. To know truly where the dog is at and then where you can go next and have a game plan for that next is great. Kevin, I appreciate you being on our show. You know, again, taking the time out to educate other people is huge. Give everybody another touch where they can find you and your course and we'll have to set up another one in the next couple of months, brother. Absolutely. And Joy, I love you guys. You guys do a great job here. I only hear good things about what you guys, you know, you're, there are so many people out there that are starving for information about training dogs. They want it so bad and you guys do a great service for people out there. So thank you for doing that. I think this is how we get people in the sport. We keep them in the sport. We help people be competitive. The stuff is so, so, so important if we're going to continue to grow the sport. I can be found at the retrievercoach.com. That's my website. I also have a Facebook page, the retriever coach, Instagram as well. But there's so much going on on that website. I have a number of different programs. One is I do seminars and workshops all over the country doing 30 plus a year right now as almost as many as I can get in the calendar is full. And on top of that, we just launched our new training platform, which is called Fetch. And that is a complete training system. It's not just the information you need to train your dog like the videos, the diagrams and written instruction. It is complete support where I am there to answer your questions, help you deal with any issues that come up. You have access to me when you sign up for this monthly subscription plan or an annual subscription plan to fetch. That's what people need is the ability to reach out and ask questions and help with problem solving and steer people away from trouble. And outside of that, if somebody wants more information, they can reach out to me at support at the retrievercoach.com. And again, that email address is support at the retrievercoach.com or the retrievercoach.com. You're easy to find, brother. Just Google me. You'll find me. Yeah. I dig it. Well, thank you so much again for taking time. I hope that we can make some summer plans happen. I think we should be able to do that. And as always, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in and your support. If you guys didn't listen, we wouldn't be doing it. So thank you. Make sure you're subscribed and leaving a comment if you enjoyed these episodes. So thank you guys. Kevin Owens, thank you. Kevin Schaff, thank you. Thank you. .