E 178. The Saga of Field Trials

All right, it's D.T. systems dog tested and dog tough. You know, we like that dog in a baby. We've been using the H2O 1820. Over the last several months, we've been playing with this unit. Our friends at Standing Stone canals, Ethan and Kat. They've been using it for years and we've been playing with it. We really like it. I think for the dog trainer, the hunter and the guy or gal who's training their dog to get ready for dog season. We really enjoy the 1820 super reliable, super consistent, great unit for you and your dog's H2O 1820. Dog tested dog tough. Hashtag man's best kennel baby. That's gunner kennels. Man, let's talk about these crates because when it hits the fan, you want your dog protected. It's an investment emotionally and financially to keep your hunting buddy safe. If you'd like to get into a gunner kennel, slide into the DMs and we'll hook you up. But do your best friend a favor and keep him safe this duck season. Force fetch. What is it? It's super intimidating to so many people. Yet it's not that difficult. I built a step-by-step process that helps you understand it. You and your dog can be successful in it and it takes the intimidation away of the process so that you and your dog can get to your goals. That's what it's built for. Let me teach you how I do it so that you and your dog can do it. Different breeds, different personalities, problem solving, and more. Check it out, links in the description, the Force Fetch Course. Bebe. Nice. Yeah, man. I can Lizzy. My first qualified all-age dog felt good. Can you explain to everybody what a QAA is, what it means, what you had to do? Yeah. I feel like this is a good, yeah, well, Q&A. Yeah, what about a QAA? Q&A about the QAA. Yeah. What I kind of figured what we would do with this podcast is I'm first off, thank you to everyone from Instagram and Facebook that congratulated us and wished us well. There's a huge support system of friends and colleagues and what not and followers and listeners that track us and want us to be successful and it means a lot. We put a lot of work into all the dogs from our obedience dogs up to a dog like Lizzy to give the owners the best that we can make. Bring the best out of each dog. Whether it's some of them are capped at a lower grade ceiling and others are the possibilities are endless and I'm thankful to the owners who let me play with their dogs and figure it all out and build them. So thank you to everyone who did wish us luck and did congratulate us and that a bunch of you said I can't wait for the recap on the podcast. So this episode is the recap. But first, yeah, Cap, to answer your question, there's a difference between a hunt test and a field trial. A hunt test is what I've been used to for my career and that's pass and fail. So the judges are looking at each individual dog against a standard set by either AKC or the UKC and the dogs have to meet or exceed that standard to pass. There's critical faults that'll make you automatically fail. So for instance, in an AKC master test, if if you're running a blind and you say back and the dog doesn't go and kind of thinks for a second, you have to say back again and then they go, you're out. If they break in a master test, you're out. If they bobble on a blind in the first series and you kind of get some low scores, the judges most likely are going to let you keep playing to see what else, but you hammered the marks. Like everything else was really good, but you bobble the blind. They're probably going to let you keep playing to show them that either A. Yeah, that was a bobble. And the next two that you ran were bad to the bone. Cool. Or it's going to let you keep playing and go, no, this dog's blinds are no good. And it's not to the master level. It doesn't meet the standards or your marking ability. So it's against the standard. So you can bobble here. You can bobble there. But if your points add up, you're still in. Unless you have one of those critical faults like a break or a no go on a blind type of thing. So it's not necessary. So you're going and you're doing this task and you're running all these things with a dog, but it's you against the set of rules. Correct. Me and the dog get the set of to see if your dog can stack up. Right. Not necessarily like there's 20 trainers there. Yep. Nope. We're all ruined for each other. We're all ruined for everybody's dog to pass. And the judges are there to root for the dogs to pass. I mean, they're they're looking to make sure that everybody meets or exceeds the standard. But nobody wants to see a dog fail. Unless it needed to fail. But nobody's shooting for it. And judges are setting up tests to make sure that the quality of dog that passes is what a true junior senior or master hunter should be. A field trial is winter loose first place, second place, third place, fourth place. And then there are things called jams, which is judges award of merit. Basically, a jam is a huge accomplishment, but you didn't place. So it's like you complete it. You had to complete the entire trial. So you made it all four series. Your dog did a very nice job. You just didn't get one through four. And so the judges are allowed to award this merit, judges award of merit, a jam to those dogs. They don't have to, but they can't. So you got a jam, you got a reserve jam, which again, I don't really know the reserve jam, difference between a regular jam. But if there's three jams, a reserve jam would be like your fifth place. So it'd be the closest to fourth and then fourth, third, second, first. And that's also how they award the ribbons. So let's say there's 10 dogs in your that ran the fourth series. They'll go, all right, the jams, you know, Kevin, you got a jam, Steve, you got a jam, Billy, you got a jam, Janet, you got a jam, everyone's clapping. All right, fourth place, Ryan, you get a fourth place, third place with Mary, second place with Donnie. And first place goes to remember. So you're like hanging on every like, okay, we do made it through the jams. We're in. All right, somebody else got fourth, you know, here we go. Third place, okay, I'm first or second. So that's pretty good. But so you at that point, you kind of like know that you you don't, I don't know, Jack. So great question. And I feel like that's going to come in my recap of like my quote unquote field trial if you'll let me kind of roll. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just so I'm just so in you're good. So in in the that's how they award it, right, wear it an A K C hunt test. It's just they list off everyone who passes starting from dog one to dog 66. So they just go in order on your dog number. In my career of running field trials, like my whole career, I'll kind of recap it because it really sets the tone. First one, I ran a lot of losing to go into a lot of losing. The first one I ran was with Memphis when she was like, maybe two or three. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't. I just knew that she marked really well and ran far. And I feel like that as I've kind of gotten into this, there's a lot of folks who haven't ran them. They're like, my dog loves to run long marks. It's going to be good at this. It's not that simple. So long story short, she bombed in the first series. I hung it up and built my business and focused on duck dogs and the A K C hunt test world. Junior senior master hunters fast forward. I didn't even touch another field trial until Idaho. Idaho master national was two years ago, two and a half. Yeah. So last year was 2022. So 2021, Idaho master nationals, like a week or two, probably two or three weeks later, me and Blaine go to an owner handler queue in Kentucky. So this is the second queue I've ever ran. Oh, and all right. Remind me, second queue I ever ran. Let me back pedal to the field trial explanation again, because I only kind of talked about the first or fourth place thing. There's a derby and a derby is dogs under two years old. Once they hit two years old, they age out. You're not allowed to run it. If it's two years old and three, two years and three days old, you're out. And it's typically 98% of time doubles, land and water for series. And they're hard. They're not just a hand thrown double in your backyard. These are monster doubles, land and water. Dogs need to stay in the water, swim far. I mean, it's hard. I've never ran one. Then you've got the queue and qualified all age basically stands for if you can do this. Okay, the queue, if you can do this, then you're eligible to go run and open and an open is for pros and amateurs to compete against each other, best of the best, best dog wins. The amateur is only amateurs are allowed to run. A pro could train your dog, but you have to run the dog. Again, they're all four series. They can have four marks. You know, it's just difficult and crazy good competition. I've never ran one of those either, but maybe it'd be fun to set that as a goal for next year or the following year. So when you see titles on a dog's pedigree, FC is a field champion. They have won and scored enough points in an open to become an FC. If you see AFC, that's amateur field champion, and they've won and scored enough points in the amateur. Now, I don't know the rules well enough because I'm not an amateurs. I never really care to care, but I think if an amateur wins the open, it becomes an FC. I'm not sure if there's a point thing for that either, but long story short, do your own Google research. Leave a comment in our comment section if I'm an idiot. And then so qualified all ages basically like young dogs that are looking to go run the open and amateur. And if you qualify, then you're qualified to run the all age stakes. So this is big dog stuff, but in terms of field trials, it's like senior hunter. So you got Derby. That's like your junior hunter. Qualified all ages like your senior hunter. Master hunter is like your open and amateur all age. Crazy to think that I've worked for 13 years training dogs and professionally for like nine. And I I still have in those folks's eyes a senior hunter. It's pretty eye opening, but pretty cool. All right. So let's get back into my story as like dabbling in this field trial world, right? So me and Blaine and a couple buddies Jeff and Austin drawn a blank on his name went to Kentucky. It's owner handler queue. So what that means is you got to own the dog. It can't be me bringing Ben's dog hunter. I don't own hunter. I can't run hunter in an owner handler queue. I can run Memphis and I could run crews. I co-owned crews. She's my dog. Mama crew in about 14 other dogs and fairness. You do have a sled dog team. Yeah, we could run the I did a rod Andy. You could have tried to run Andy. I would love to run Andy and a grouse walking trial. Like a that would be sick. I didn't even know they had those. Oh, she'd clean house. And by that, I mean, probably get laughed at. But that's okay. For me, she's the best dog. All right. Here we go. So Memphis and crews. This is the second queue I've ran. Technically, I would say even the first because the first one we didn't even we picked up one bird. Like Memphis didn't even get to run it. She picked up one bird and had no clue where the other two were. So first series of that queue. It was a triple on land. Long bird was eating their butts. Man, front footed it. And what I mean by front footed is she ran a direct B line and put her two paws on that duck and picked it up. Bunch of other dogs were fading towards one of the other gunners and, you know, just hacking it up or having to be handled. Crews made a mistake, went to the other gun. I stopped her, gave one cast and she ran straight to that bird and picked it up. No other handles just like, oh, my bad. I remember where to go. Boom. Nailed it. No hunt. Nailed it. So cool. They get call back to the second. And now again, I've never done this. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I'm nervous. It can be like butt-pucker. You can't use hang on tight. Hope they see them work on making sure the dog season like, but soon as you say their name, they've got to do the work. Second series was a land blind. The land blind was like 300 plus yard and they had to run past the live flyer crate with a duck in it. Okay, so now there's no gun stations out there. There's no gunners. There's nobody standing out there, but they've got orange crates right next to the line to the blind. Full of ducks. That's a, that's a serious factor. And Miss Crews, little known fact, knows how to open those sons of guns. Get out. Oh, man. On a live flyer day, she would be digging at them to get that door to slide open. She freaking loves, like goes as if you're a on crack coat. Know that. Oh, yeah, dude. She just eyes roll back in her head and she's just like, live bird right here in this box. I can get them all. And so she'll like scratch at them and dig at it and has popped it open. So I'm like, well, cruise is out. She's just going to run a beautiful blind until she hits that crane go. Hey, yeah, 20 of them. Let me get them all. Exactly. Nope. Both of them smoke it. Really? Yep. That's, that's almost too bad because it would have been a good story. Can you imagine being an extremely, yeah, somewhat that would have been pretty funny for everybody else. Be like, he and the dog just let it's $50 and ducks go. Yeah, more than that. So smoke it. So I'm sitting there going, you know, I don't know where I'm watching every dog run. I know Memphis did really well. I know cruise handled, but I feel pretty good that we're like doing well. I don't know. I'm in first or second or third. I just know we're doing well. So when I would pull Memphis out, the whole gallery would come and watch the gallery, meaning everyone there running their dog and family and whatever. They'd all come and watch and blame goes, you know why you're drawing a crowd. I go, no, I didn't even pay attention. I was so nervous. My pants. Let's be honest, everyone. I was pooping my pants zipper down. He goes, it's because you and Memphis are probably in first place. Yeah, exactly. Okay. On accident, accident happening. So now it's like, I wish he didn't even tell me we go to run the water blind. That's the third series. Memphis smokes a water blind. Cruise kind of hacked it up, but finished strong. So like the first few casts were choppy and then held down the shore, you know, line to the blind, got out, ran, and picked it up. So I'm like, ah, she's probably out. Again, this is not past fail at a hunt test. She to smoked it. It was good enough to pass a hunt test, but when you're going against everybody else is blind. If someone too whistled it and the dog did perfect, you know, take a, you can do good, but good isn't good enough. You got to be the best. Just trying to paint that picture for everyone. Like you can show up and crush it and not crush it enough. You can feel so good about what you and your dog did. And if 10 other dogs did it better, you're out. And it's not cause you did poorly. You just didn't do well enough. So I ended up walking away with a third place and a jam with cruise. So Memphis got third. Cruise got a jam in my true first cue technically second. Thought amazing fast forward, you know, probably in other two years, right? Cause last summer I kind of took a sting at it, a run at it because of COVID and master nationals. I wasn't going to master nationals in Oregon. And so I had Memphis Hunter, Lizzie, Aries, when five dogs, I think. Hmm, there's man. Hey, did you know that bismuth weighs more than steel? It's kind of a little brainer, but maybe you didn't know that little fun fact. So what that means is you can shoot a smaller size than if you were to be shooting steel. So for instance, let's say you shot three inch threes, which I used to shoot before I shot bismuth. I now shoot fives. That means you've got more BBs in each shell going down range that packs the same or more punch. So more BBs down range means more likelihood of hitting the duck. And with that bismuth, more likely that that duck is going down better than door now. You and your dog get the retrieve bangle, bangle, bongo, bismuth. I can't. Hey, it's not only the food that fuels the truck of lone duck, but we also worry about that gut health. Sometimes the dogs get a little bit of rumbling in the tummies. And I like to help them out get all balance with this product that Purina provides called four to four. Basically a probiotic. And you sprinkle a little bit of these pouches on the dog's food. So for instance, if I'm driving to a hunt test and they're rattling around on the trailer and you know, sometimes their stomachs can get a little upset from stress, movement, anything that four to four can really help bounce them out, get them back to feeling good and get ready to run. So check it out, it's Purina's four to four. Boom. Test the shop if I kostenlose and bring your business ID erfolgreich in the world. I'm going to get to Lizzie because we're going to end up running out of time if I dig grass on every cue, but Quinn's getting fourths like repeatedly. Aries got a jam. Lizzie got a reserve jam. I'm basically going to every field trial and placing and getting jams with two of the five dogs I'm running. And pretty quickly, I realized that Memphis was getting too old and sore to be doing this kind of pounding. So I think after the first one, she stopped running and it was just Hunter, Lizzie, Aries, and Quinn. Side note is, I'm doing master national this year. As of today, yes. If she comes up lame or is too sore to do it, I'll pull her. But as of now, she signed up and continue. So like I said, I'm going to these things that I'm not going on the door. I'm in the final four. I'm getting it. But I'm getting a, I wouldn't say frustrated because a lot of people worked their whole training career to get a ribbon, let alone a first place. And so I'm not, I'm not trying to be arrogant. I'm just as a competitor. And I hope you look at me as a competitor. Like my competitive spirit says pulls a Ricky Bobby. If you ain't first your last. And so it's like, I was really proud of that first third place. I was really proud of that fourth place with Quinn. I was really proud of Lizzie and Aries' jams. Now I want to win. I'm there. These dogs are there. I want to win. I'm tired of getting something other than first place. And if you get first or second place in a queue, you become qualified all age. So that little QAA at the end of their pedigree or like their, you know, registered name. So it'd be like LoneDucks, Queen of Graceland. That's Memphis. It'd be LoneDucks, Queen of Graceland, M-H-Q-A-A. So I still have not done it. So this year, the first trial I ran when came into heat. I ran Boogie, Connor, Lizzie. Boogie went to the second series and went out on the land blind. Connor went to the water blind in the third series and went out on the water blind. And Lizzie got third. And again, I'm knocking on the door. And actually, I thought plus a few other pros were there. And they're like, man, you got first or second. Like she stomped it good for you. So I'm like, wow, I did it. I freaking allowed myself to believe it before they handed out ribbons. And sure of shit, they said third place and Lizzie's name. And I was like, I thought I had it. And so I like that at that point was the highest I got, or well, Memphis got a third, but Lizzie got a third. Like what I felt like I just had it. And then they just barely took it away. So about two or three weeks later, we run another one. We went down to Pennsylvania. And I had Quinn, Boogie, Connor, and Lizzie. Everybody but Lizzie went out in the first series. They could not dig out the short, retired gun. And I think they lost 19 or so dogs in the first series because of that one bird just kicked their butt and Lizzie front, but it it. I mean, stepped on the flyer, stepped on the short, retired gun, punched out, picked up the long bird, bingo, bingo, bongo, three whistle, the land blind, which honestly wasn't a very hard land blind. A lot of dogs, I think everybody did well on it. Actually, I don't think anybody like botched it. It was not bad. Third series was a tough water blind. She's pounding it. And I'm saying pounding it. You had to do about a 60 yard run, get in the water, get onto a point back in the water, swim down the shore, through a channel, and then run about 120 yards and pick up your bird. So she's doing everything perfect. Gets out is running a straight line towards the frickin bird. And I thought she was on it. She put her face down on the ground like in depth perception at that distance. It's like she's there. She was not there. And I'm I mean, I what I didn't look away, but all of a sudden it was like split second. She's 10 15 feet to the right. I'm like tweet. I thought you were there. Cast her over. She was probably 20 yard short. Maybe broke down in drag back. Who knows? But she was short. But at that distance, she just she wasn't there yet. But all of a sudden, she's like, oh, she's gone tweet. Cast her over tweet. Cast her over tweet. Cast her over on the bird. So she took every cast. It wasn't a complete screw up. But I'm thinking damn, I just left room for somebody else to slide on it. So I watch a bunch of other dogs. Everybody does pretty good. Some of them botched it up and they're out. Go to the fourth series. And I think they took nine dogs to the fourth series. Water triple and shoot man. I think I was the second to last dog or third to last dog to run. Maybe second to last dog to run. So I'm watching every single dog. What are they doing? Where are they failing? Where are they succeeding? My buddy Sean Hager, who works for Stephen Derns, he's made 40 plus qualified all age dogs. I respect the heck out of them. And he's got a dog named Finn that owns it. Absolutely pounds it. But then when you start seeing a bunch of black dogs, you're like, well, did Finn do a good water blind? What did Finn do in the first series? I'm trying to replay all these dogs I've watched. So I don't know what he did. But all I know is in the fourth series, he came out of the water, ran right to the burden. It's like, okay. So Finn did it. He had another dog and I forget that dog's name. Man, I don't know. And he did a good job. I think he hunted the long bird a little bit, but but picked it up nice. Sean Sims, who's like well known in the field trial game for kicking butt with golden retrievers, taking young dogs and developing really, really strong young dogs. He's there. And he's got maybe two or three dogs in there too. And they're like, they're just making little bobbles, but they're doing well, little bobble here, little bobble there. I'm like, all right. So I know Sean's probably in first. Sean's probably in second, excuse me, Sean Hager, first, probably second, Sean Sims in third. I don't know where Lizzie's at, but she comes up to the line and goes, wow, wow, I mean, didn't deviate from the line to the bird. And I got off the line. I'm like, my part is pounding. You got to do the honor and you're not allowed to talk to the dog on the honor. So I'm like, don't break, baby, don't break. You know, all these things after doing so good could go so wrong. And it just was an amazing feeling, but I don't know what place she's in at all. Like one through four. I know she's in one through four. Got to be everybody. Like of the nine dogs, I think only two Lizzie include Lizzie and Finn stepped on all those birds. So it's me and Lizzie first or second. So you can kind of have a, but I thought that in the one three weeks before you kind of be smart, right? Well, I just mean like you can kind of tell like, well, you weren't nine. Oh, yeah, when you weren't, you know, whatever, like you kind of have a good, I knew I was in one through four. I mean, there was no, no doubt in my mind one through four, but, you know, I don't know until they start handing them out. So they start with the jams and big shout out to my friend, Beth, Beth and her dog, Peewee. And we've had her girlfriend Molly. Oh, yeah. One's been on the podcast. That's a good dog name. It's a great dog name. Semi-related to Prairie. Same. So Prairie's grandpa and Peewee's dad are the same dog. Got to name's Hammer and Hank. But long story short, Peewee got a jam. It was best first, like, going all the way through a field trial, going to the fourth series, doing well in the fourth series and he got a jam. So I was super proud to like be there and a part of that. Yeah, that rules. Yeah. Epic. She was like, see, it's just an amazing feeling. Like we pour our hearts and souls into working like daylight till dark, doing this and to have a goal in your head and like to hit it. There's nothing like it. So they go through the jams. They say fourth place. And I think Sean got fourth. No, no, I don't know who got fourth. But there was a lady there with a golden retriever that got a placement. And they say Sean Hager's name. Then they say Sean Hager's name. And I'm like holy scht. Lizzy got first. And it was like I was shaking like a adrenaline, nerves, shock, couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that a, you know, a second place would have been amazing. Would have been the highest I've done would have still been qualified all age. And I would have been respect, like I would respect that. I would have respected it a ton. Lizzy got first. And so out of 37 or 39 dogs that ran the queue, she beat them all. We beat them all. And it was a different feeling than passing the master national is a different and passing the master national is an amazing feeling. But to go there and over the course of like, I've always had this like imposter syndrome or like, I don't know, I want to say so sound like a toolbox. But you know, I'll get ragged on for being on YouTube and Instagram and podcast and people don't necessarily or my competitors and peers, some of them don't look at me like the real deal. And I'm not saying I am. I'm just saying this to me, this accolade proves that whoever can hit this is like, damn, you did a good job. You can't fake that. You can't fake it. And sometimes people on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube can fake it. They can do it with one dog and look really good with one dog or they can do it with three dogs and look really good with three dogs. This is this is one of those moments where it's like, to all those people who said I couldn't, to all those folks who thought I was just an Instagram schmo. There you go. Me and Lizzy did it. And I trained Lizzy since she was six months old. Nobody else touched her. Nobody else did anything. I call her conditioner. I force that shirt. I did her tea pattern. I taught her run blinds. I taught her to run water blinds. I taught her to pick up a triple. I can look in the mirror and not brag about. I'm not bragging about it. It's like, I feel like I'm allowed to be proud because I may go another three years without having a dog get there to first place. I might get a bunch of thirds and fours and jams, but it takes a real dog to go and win one. And so I'm going to enjoy it for a second. And I'm going to be proud to call Lizzy one of the dogs on my truck and one that I've built from the ground up. And so one of the things I want to do, and I'll let you start asking me some questions before we've got to go, is I want to give a shout out to Lizzy's owner, Elizabeth. She's from Virginia, frickin' sweetest woman in the world. She didn't haunt. She didn't haunt shop guns. I had trained obedience for her and her siblings, a group of dogs down in Charleston, and then she gets Lizzy. And it's like, well, just do her obedience. And I'm like, oh, Lizzy's powder grease pretty stacked. You want to do, you know, teach her some stuff. Yeah, go for it. And she gets a junior hunter. And she's like, this is kind of cool. Like, what's a junior hunter? And I explain it. And she's still, and I'm not bellittering, be littling Elizabeth. She just didn't know. So this woman is like investing in me and her dog. And the only thing she cares about is, is Lizzy having fun. To answer it. You watch that dog run and you, you know, you bet your bottom dollar, dude. Every day he comes out ready to go having fun and is good at it. So she passed every junior test. She passed every senior test. She passed every master test. She's failed one. I just looked her up. She's passed 10 master hunter tests. She failed one. And it was this spring on an en route diversion bird, poison bird on the way to a blind in the third series after being clean the whole time. Like a little bit tricky, if you will, that's the only one she's ever fed. She's going to the master national this year. She's gotten a reserve jam, a third place, and now a win in four trials. She's ran four, maybe five trials and has crushed this dog is consistent, smart, hard working, excellent marking, trainable and kudos to Elizabeth or allowing Lizzy to reach her potential. And I don't know where that potential is going to end. I hope it's not yet. I hope it's not QAA master national play. And that's it because she could do a lot of cool stuff in her career. And she loves going to work every day. But big kudos to Elizabeth. And thanks to her for letting me do this with her dog because it's it's super, super cool. A lot of people she's a good luck time for you. She's bad at the bone. So a lot of people ask Lizzy's pedigree. So I'm going to read that to you real quick. So the sire, the dad is sick them on a chicken, master hunter, master national and qualified all age twice. So QA2, that means you've got a second or two firsts or whatever. Like you can't get second and second and be QA2. It's two firsts or a second and a first type of deal. If I'm correct with that, then her mother is red gates mac and cheese. Awesome. Master hunter. Bread by our good friend, Lyle Steinman. He's been on the podcast like three or four times. And just a badass little black dog man. She had one litter. I don't know if we're going to have another. I guess if I get overwhelming, I want a Lizzy puppy requests, maybe Elizabeth and I can sit down and contemplate doing that. It's not it wasn't not really Elizabeth's goal to do it. Her first litter had like four or something four or five. And so I don't know if she will. But if you want a Lizzy puppy, I guess I would say hit me up in the DMs and be willing to put money down to make Elizabeth feel like it's the real deal and just not a bunch of, you know, high fives and wouldn't that be cool? Yeah, exactly. Like you actually got a want one and be ready for one for her to jump in. I would say burst like that would be cool. Sign me up. And then when I call you, you're like, no, I'm out. I found one in the newspaper. All right, head over to loanduckoutfitters.com. Anything you need to get you and your dog ready for duck season, whether it be more bumpers and new e-collar, some launchers, the dummy launchers by DT, wingers, anything you can think of, you can find it loanduckoutfitters.com to get you and your dog ready for duck season, baby. All right, I'm going to let you write off some questions. We got about 11 more minutes until we got to jump on our Patreon happy hour, which quick shout out patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfiters. You've got about two weeks until we announce the winner of the all-inclusive, almost all-inclusive duck hunt trip with me, cabin and other Patreon people. Anyone who's a Patreon member can, it is automatically entered to win. For as little as five bucks a month, you get one-on-one help from me. You get entered to win this hunt. You get some gear giveaways. You get happy hour, beers, me answering questions, all that jazz. Join the community patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfiters. All right, Kevin, ask away with some, you had asked me via the chat about hunting with Elizabeth, so didn't you go hunting with Elizabeth one time? I mentioned she's not really much about hunter, but she came up to hang out for a couple days. Yeah. So basically what happens with Lizzie is Elizabeth will take her home for the winter. Oh, I kind of digress too. So pre-lizzy, never hunted. Host Lizzie, she joined a hunting club where she can quail hunt and pheasant hunt and tower shoots and really plays. Good for her. Yep. Learned how to shoot shotguns, all that jazz and has taken Lizzie on all those kind of hunts and like cleaned the place up. Like people were like, oh my god, like a pleasant dog. He's like, yeah, I don't know. It's freaking hilarious. So super cool that Lizzie has introduced her into the hunting world and firearm world. But basically she drops her off in the spring time and or our winter trip and Lizzie stays with me throughout the year and then goes home for hunting season and winter break in holidays. And so and she doesn't live close to me like seven eight hours. So it's not like she can just bop up here for a weekend and hang out or bop up here on a Tuesday after work and see her dog. She's trusting that I'm taking care of her. She's trusting that I'm training her and like until this summer had never even seen a hunt test. So all these accolades that Lizzie has accumulated just sound cool. She doesn't know what they are, how hard they are or what other dogs are running it and whatnot. So she so up up until this summer. Correct. So this July she hauled butt up here and got to watch Lizzie run in a master test. Absolutely had the time of her life. Like so proud of her little dog. Just the coolest thing to share. Again, it opened up the world to her and freaking bad ass to to show her what her dog is capable of and even as I'm saying that it means she doesn't even understand the cue, right? Like the the fourth series Longbird was 360 yards. That's up three and a half football fields through a pond to go and get and she stepped on it after picking up two other birds. And so like, you know, to go and watch your dog compete like that is super cool. And anybody who maybe sends their dog to a trainer should think about, you know, go and watch them do their thing. It proves that the guy or gal who's training your dog is doing their job. But it's also like you should be proud of that damn dog. They're working hard every day. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. So really neat. But anyways, you asked about Elizabeth Hunt and I'm digressing all over the board. But Elizabeth one fall came to pick up Lizzie and it was deer season. And I've got a big stand where two people can hunt out of it. So I'm like, Hey, I want to go drink two beers and sit till dark. And she's like, I would love to. All right, we're going to go do it. I mean, it's it's like a 500 yard walk for my house. Maybe maybe further like it's my backfield back corner. So, you know, we get done training. Had a great day and we go, we like, we packed a couple snackies and we just kind of sat in the stand, be assing and I ended up getting a dough. And she was there for me with it and was like, this is cat. You came over and we like cleaned it and put her in. She's hanging out with us while we're doing this stuff. And she hadn't ever done it before. She like, this is the greatest weekend ever. She came up for like a weekend vacation and got a full full tour of. Yeah. Got a full experience training dogs hunt and deer and hanging out at Londa Shata. We're all inclusive here. You know, always brings me a little moon. I think Andy ate one of the dog toys that she brought to Andy shredded one of Lizzie's toys. So, you know, just a amazing person, amazing dog and amazing accomplishment that I'm very proud to have earned. You know, it'll go down as one of the more memorable things I've done in my career. I would say Ember passing the first master national. I mean, Memphis did too, but I was so stressed out about Ember and, you know, like let's say Memphis had to run at 5 p.m. the night before. Ember was in the holding bind ready to go and they called it until the next day. So, I didn't even get a chance to celebrate Memphis passing because I had to like literally sleep on it until the next, yeah, stress over it and stress over it. So, that was an unbelievable feeling and an accomplishment. This would be, this would, this would top that, this would top that for me. So, I hope to do it more. I hope that the dogs that I have in the kennel and training are up for it. I got a bunch of young dogs that, you know, weave bread that are in for the long haul to try and reach this accomplishment. And I hope more people like Elizabeth that maybe want this master hunter qualified all age goal. I hope they come to me and trust that over the course of a couple years can build them a dog of this caliber like Elizabeth trusted me. So, bad to the bone. Thank you all for listening. Thank you all for supporting, you know, me as a person, me as a trainer, me as the guy, you know, who helps you out on this podcast and on Instagram and YouTube. I appreciate it. More than you all know, I'm glad to be able to help. I'm glad that the stuff we put out there is helpful to help you and your dog reach your goals because I know when I started, I leaned on people and back then we didn't have Patreon back then YouTube really didn't exist. So, those DVDs and books and and retriever clubs. And we just, you know, I just appreciate you all tuning in supporting us. With that being said, we're going to sign off, go and jump on our Patreon happy hour and enjoy the evening with our friends over there. If you're interested, like I said, there'll be a link in the description, but we'd love to have you join our Patreon. If you enjoy this show, jump on there, support us, we support you. Anyway, I can help you. You know, I will. Thank you all for your continued support and tuning in. Kev, we'll see you on the happy hour in three minutes. Cheers. Here's buddy. All right, it's that cable gang, baby. They got everything you need. American made and great dude who does what we do with the dog, man. He's always up in the uplands working as pointing dogs. You're looking for all the stuff you need to build your horse Dutch cable. If you have roting harnesses and you want new stuff for that, tie out and chain gangs, check them out at cable gangs on Instagram. Boom. Hey, do me a solid. If you enjoy this show, if you enjoy our Instagram, if we've helped you at all, join patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfiters. If you do it before September of 2023, you're going to enter to win a hunt with me and Kevin and a bunch of other Patreon members. Down in Missouri, we're going to smack some ducks, have some fun, do a seminar with our dogs and have a great time. But jump into patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfiters, links in the description and join the community that helps me help you help your dog. Hey listeners, Nick Larson here, host of the Bird Shop Podcast. As fans of this show, you may be interested in the conversations on the Bird Shop Podcast where we discuss all things upland hunting from upland birds in their habitat and conservation to the shotguns, bird dogs and gear used to pursue them. Whether you're a seasoned upland hunter or just getting started and wanting to learn more, I interview a wide range of guests each with their own unique perspective and valuable experience to share. If you're on a hunt for more upland hunting conversation, please consider subscribing to the Bird Shop Podcast today.