E 180. Kevin Cheff Answers Retriever Training Questions

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It's easy to pack, easy to store, keeps food dry, which foods an investment man that purine a baby, he ain't cheap anymore, so keep it dry, good, all that stuff, easy to pack, easy to store, the Gunner Kennel food crate sliding to the am's if you'd like to learn more. Alright, our number one asked question is revolving around force fetch. Whether your dog drops the bumper or duck at the edge of the water, or you've failed a few hunt tests because the dog monkeys with the birds or won't pick up a bird, let me help you help your dog. Bunch of different breeds, bunch of different personalities, start to finish teaching you how to do it, links in the description. Well, it's going on everybody and welcome to another episode. I am excited for this one when we rarely get to do the in person podcasts. And so it's such a pleasure to introduce Kevin Shaft, the retriever coach, he's been on, we were just we're talking, this is probably our fifth podcast and he's up here doing workshops across New York State and we finally got a chance to sit down, we had a beautiful dinner together, meet our family, and now we're up in the office if that's what you want to call the podcast room and we're going to sit down and do a Q&A answering your questions. Kevin, welcome to parish, New York, man, hey, thank you, I'm so excited to be here, it's a pleasure meeting you, finally, yeah, we said that it's like we already knew each other, but it was always over zoom or we're just over the phone. So this is a real pleasure, I appreciate you making the drive, very cool. Let's do a quick recap, if you haven't listened to his episodes, I'm going to ask Kevin to do, he just shook his head and go, you son of a gun, there's a million of them, give it to Google, Kevin Shaft, Lonex gun dog chronicles, but we'll tag him in, oh yeah, we'll put him in the show notes and take a gander at him, they're real good, we've got a lot of good feedback on him and you'll enjoy this one too, yep. So again, show notes will be our past episodes with Kevin, but let's talk about your workshops real quick. You just had one this weekend, what was it about and how did it go? So this workshop was a personalized training workshop where people send in a questionnaire before they arrive, I get to read up on what they're doing well, what they're not doing well, whether they're having problems, and I focus on their individual needs, their dogs needs, their needs and help them get better at the places where they're having trouble. And then of course, along the way, they're learning a little bit about concepts, they're learning a little bit about training approaches, philosophy, that sort of thing. And yeah, that's what we covered this week. So one of the things that I wanted to ask is with these workshops that you're doing, and we've had seminars too where people fill out these questionnaires and in their back yard and on their like home grounds, they and their dog are used to, the dog is at X place, right? This is what they're showing them in training, but then they come and see us, new property, new setups, what have you, and the classic, my dogs never done that before, or I'm not sure why this is happening now, occurs in me, slash you, we have to dissect, is there a breakdown in the training, like what's going on, and I was wondering if you see that a lot with these kind of scenarios? Yeah, absolutely. People will come to these areas where their dogs have never been on these grounds, or they're not familiar with them, they can get a little lost, they can encounter elements along the way that will throw another stick in the spoke, so to speak, because as the dogs doing these tests, and the handlers can be totally surprised by what's going on, but it's nothing related, they should be concerned about other than, hey, you need to get on more grounds and put your dog into positions where they're not familiar with territory. Do you think that they show up, we have, I would say, test wise dogs who when they get to a trial or a test to get squirrely, you know, a little overexcited, and then, you know, in training, they're diligent and solid, when they come to your seminars, do you think that they get a little wild hair in their ass and get a little overexcited because of more people, more dogs, all that? I think I see two things, one for sure, we do get to see the dogs that think they're at an event, and they're certainly going to show some of their true colors in terms of how excited they can get or out of control they can get. The other thing I get to see occasionally is a dog gets a little bit of stage fright, and then they're concerned, they're not relaxed, and again, the handlers are going, what's going on? You know, my dog's not behaving the way I typically see it behave, and that requires a little bit of a different approach trying to get these dogs to relax and feel okay in this environment. Yeah, I also think what I have seen is people, the people themselves are like, I'm being judged, I'm being watched by my peers, and they get way more nervous, and therefore it goes down the lead to the dog, but they're like, they're so clammy. I totally agree. I think that sometimes it's the handlers sending off some energy that makes the dog a little bit nervous. It's not the environment they're in, but the way the handlers is sending signals. So for someone who wants to come to one of your workshops, would you say that, well, I would just say like, what would you tell them? If they're listening now saying, I want to come to a workshop, how would they be old day three versus day one? Oh, definitely day one, they're going to be a little bit nervous, they're not going to know what to expect, and they also probably feel that they have something to prove or that they're being judged. And what the honest thing is, is I'm not judging any dog. My brain is totally on, I want to know exactly who you are, what your dogs like, and I'm trying to figure out how to make you better. I don't care where your dog is at, or what problem your dog is having, or you're having, let me help you. So come in with an open mind, come in with some trust, if you've signed up for the workshop, you obviously think that I have something to offer, and show me that you trust me, and listen to what I have to say, don't judge it, just digest it, and I'm not saying you have to follow everything I tell you to do, but definitely listen to it with an open mind, and see how maybe it can help you out. Absolutely. So this recent workshop that you did was very, it wasn't on a specific topic, it was they answered the questionnaire, and we're going to make it individualized per person slash dog. But what was the key thing that you saw was the main thing that people had or wanted to work on? Let's see, there was definitely some issues around the water that some dogs needed to work on. Nothing out of the ordinary, very textbook type things, like how do we get a dog to answer the water properly? How do we get a dog to exit the water properly? There was also some issues where dogs would be running blinds, and they would get into situations where they would get a control primarily sent, sent is one of the things that really affect dogs on blinds. And I think we're going to talk about that a little bit later tonight, but helping people understand how to set up training that allows you to put dog into situations where sent as a factor, and your dogs begin to exhibit those behaviors where they get out of control, and how to deal with that, and how often you should be putting your dog into those situations so that you have a dog that's under control when you go to an event. That was a big one. Everyone was communication online. Events are passed, or one, based on how well you can talk your dog into things. The higher levels of competition, whether you're running master or you're running knowledge stakes, are very complex. And being able to talk your dog into doing specific things, particularly when we're running triples and quads, which you don't see very often in training. Most people are doing doubles and singles. They get into those situations and say, don't know how to communicate with their dog, how to move with their dog, how to be patient with their dog. Teaching people how to do that is really important if you're going to get the most out of your dog. So at this workshop, that was one of those things that they all struggled with, but that was like the main thing. So when you're talking about the scent on a blind, how did you put these dogs in that predicament? What were the setups like to have it unravel so that you could go to these people on getting it rattled? Well, the ideal scenario is this. You want to set up a set of marks in a field. You don't want to put any of those gun stations or marks up against a tree line. You want to make sure the marks are in a field. The other thing is you'd like a field where the cover is a little taller, you know, interesting, a foot tall or maybe 12 to 14 inches, something like that. As the higher that cover is in the field, the closer it is to a dog's nose, you know, if you're getting drag back scent or the dog is running through an old fall area, all of a sudden that scent is right up there by their nose. And so what we would do is we would set up a set of marks. We would run the set of marks. We're not going to run any blinds with the marks, just get the marks done. And then we're going to take a quarter of a turn around the field. So if we were running from the west end of the field, we might move to the south of the north end of the field and then we would run blinds across and through the old fall areas, across the return lines through the area where the running mat was from the marking test. And in all of those areas, those dogs are going to come into contact with scent. And in the moment they do, then dogs start to exhibit the behaviors that get them into trouble. They don't stop on whistles. They auto-cast. They look around when they're sitting on the whistle rather than at you for direction. They pop. They freeze on casts. All of those things that cause problems. And that gives you an opportunity to address them right there in that moment. Your job is not to get your dog from point A to point B when you're running blind. Your dog is to capitalize on opportunities that are presented when your dog is on route. They don't stop on a whistle. You get an opportunity to make a correction. They auto-cast. You get an opportunity to make a correction. They freeze on a cast. You get an opportunity to make a correction. And if you present this training scenario on a regular basis, what you end up with is a dog that's fundamentally sound when you run a blind and you can get through just about any blind in an event. I mean, obviously there's other concepts that you have to teach the dog, but that's what we did. In this three-day workshop, it was three days, right? Yes, sir. How often are you putting these dogs in that situation so that those owners can be presented with this situation? I mean, are you doing it every day? No, because there's a lot to cover, usually, right? So my job is to show them somebody had sent in the questionnaire. Maybe there was a couple of them that had sent in the questionnaire and said, my dog's getting out of control and blinds when they get into scent or something like that. And I said, okay, let's show them how to teach their dog or how to set standards that will eliminate the problems that they're having. So we would do that once or twice and then we would move on to the... There was a lot of other things to cover. Sure. Hopefully, they got a little bit out of it and they were able to take it home and they're going to go and apply it and then they're going to come back in several months for another workshop. One of the hardest pieces of a vice, I can't give people. I can say it. You can say it. You can set it up in your workshop. But they still only have one, maybe two dogs. And so there is not much drag back. There is not, you know, in that fall area, there was only one duck landing there. And now we've got to kick them loose through that area. I mean, versus us where I've got 30 ducks landed in that similar area or I'll go to the training grounds that I'm lucky enough to train on the day after a hunt test. And I know exactly where all those marks were and we're kicking them loose through that. So I'm able to, I am able to tackle these situations head on and say, I can do this. How would you, because I'm lucky enough to deal with that and have that many dogs that are getting that sent it up area for that single dog or two dog owner? How are you going to try and make that happen for them? Well, I make a couple of comments. One, you've got to find a training group. You know, you, you don't have to train with a training group all the time, but there's certain things that, that become very hard to accomplish on your own. So if you have to do a little driving once or twice a week to find situations like that, that's just one of the sacrifices you have to make. If you can't, I mean, set up your marking test at the very minimum. You can dump a dump of a bag of birds on the ground in the fall area. You can pluck birds, or sorry, pluck feathers out of a bird in the fall area. When you get done, you can walk around extensively in these fall areas because it's not just birds and it's foot sent to you can leave a holding blind out in the field from your marking test or a winger or something, you know, something that would look like where a gun station would have been. So just these little things can certainly make a difference. Yeah. That'd be the same advice I'd give is like, look where the wind is, which way is the wind blowing? And I'm going to have my stuff set up so that I can purposefully put that dog in a situation where they're running past an area where I have plucked feathers and strewn them about or take a duck on like a string and just sling that sucker around on a string through the grass. So that's getting set in this big area. It's like kind of the only way you can do it. I mean, totally agree. It's hard. Training alone is hard. It is. Especially if you want to get to the higher levels. Yes, definitely. Yeah. The best advice you gave was the groups, find a retriever training group and get with them and then connect and click with a few of those people and have them be your group plus. You all can trade training grounds getting your dog in different places. Training groups are not just there to train with, but to share resources, definitely. Yeah. And it's always nice to collaborate ahead of time and say, hey, I would like to work on this. What would you like to work on? Maybe we can figure out how we can help each other out with what we need. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Yes. Let's get off this topic for a second and I do want to dive into what we are kind of talking about at dinner, just us all getting to know each other more and have our listeners get to know you a little bit more. Led. Hmm. You thought I was going to say Bismuth? I switched it up on you. Hey, get you and your buddies prepared for doxies and just like you're preparing your dog, seven and a half by ten. Go to the Clay Bird Course, go to Sporting Clay Course, get right so that you can knock more birds down with that Bismuth, this duck season. 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 balanced with this product that Purina provides called Fort-a-Flor. 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 ass and they're rattling around on the trailer and sometimes their stomachs can get a little upset from stress, movement, anything that Fort-a-Flor 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 Fort-a-Flor, boom. So before you took a hiatus from training dogs and now you train people to train dogs, how long were you a trainer and how did you get in the game? I got my first dog in 1996 and trained it as an amateur and had other dogs along the way until 2000 and then it was asked by a professional if I wanted to come and be as assistant. And I took them up on the offer and spent a couple of years there and then decided that I wanted to try to do it on my own. It was that simple. I mean it was definitely some things along the way that it helped me make those decisions to do it. I'm not sure it's for everybody because as you know, you're going to be working 16-hour days, 365 days a year and there's not a lot of glamour to it and there's a lot of pressure to it. But I have no regrets. I love training dogs. That's pretty much how we got there. Did you dabble in the hunt test world? Did you do it? Oh, did you? Yes. I started up in the hunt test world. HRC hunt test. Okay. I had a hunting machine with a champion title on and I took him to a grand. I had some other dogs when I first started as a pro that I ran HRC tests with and took the grand and that sort of thing. Cool. So you had to go from Canada to the grand in America? Yes. I don't know. At first off, I've never been to a grand. So take that for what it's worth. But like are there Canadians that come down and run our master national? I would. I don't know that the answer that I would assume yes, but I know that HRC tests are international. So there are HRC tests in Canada. There are HRC tests in the US obviously and the grand has been held in Canada on more than one occasion and it's not like there's a Canadian HRC test and a US HRC tests are all together. Interesting. So the AKC is the American Kennel Club. The CKC is the Canadian Kennel Club. So your hunt test, were you running the UKC? The UKC across the board. Oh, okay. I'm learning new things every day. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So where did you run the grand at? One was in Illinois and one was in Memphis, I remember correctly, and that's not music say, right? That's Nashville. It's a city. Not sure. Memphis is not. I don't know. I don't know the answer. Again, I don't run HRC, but man, that's super cool. I didn't know that. I thought you just dabbled in the bird, not dabble. I thought you just did field trials, and that was how you got in. The pro that I worked with, he was all field trials. So once I turned pro, started working for him, I was primarily focused on field trial. But even after I left him, I still did some hunt test stuff for about a year or two. Okay. What was it like, I get asked this a lot because I've last year in this year, I've done more field trials just because they've been fun to me, and I've got dogs that have been doing all right at them, and what was it like for you going that route, going the route to field trials? It was a huge leap, very intimidating. When I first started out training retrievers, especially working for this other pro, I mean just a ton of stuff to learn, and I didn't learn a fraction of what I needed to know in that time. I mean, you do a lot of learning when you're actually training dogs yourself. I got the basics. I understood sort of the mechanics of it, and the textbook, the textbook side of it. I didn't know anything about the art of dog training at that point. And of course, I thought I knew things one day, and then the next day I didn't think I knew anything, which is what I think a lot of people feel when they're training dogs. They feel like they know everything one minute, and then the next minute the rug gets pulled up from under them, and they question if they actually know anything. I feel you there. Yeah. It was hard, but I would say it intrigued me. I loved the challenge of it. That was, you know, I just loved the challenge of it, and it just carried me through my ears. Still scared of me there. I loved the challenge of training a retriever for whatever level. It doesn't matter to me. Yeah. What has been fun for me the last summer and the summer has been the mentality change. It's also been the hardest thing to get used to. Is the mentality change of passing and winning. So the mentality change of winning feels really, really, really, really good. But you'll go with, you know, go to a trial with a dog that's very, very good, and I can get them through any weekend hunt test all day, unless they break. But I mean, they're just, they're in it, and they might make little mistakes, but you're handling them, you're a handler. I can get them through it, and we get another pass and another pass and another pass. And then you go to the trial and you're like, damn, that was a good blind and a good blind. And then they're not called back. And you're like, must not have been that good of a blind or whatever, you know, the mark was just it hunted a little bit and you're like, you know, and now that I've ran, however many I've ran, it's like, you almost can't hunt for a bird. They've got to be that precise to be in the, if you want to win, like, I'm not going, I don't, I don't want to say it's not sounding like a dink. I'm not trying to just go to the next series. I want to go to win and the minute on the first bird down on the go bird and they hunt for 20 seconds, you're like, well, there you go. You're probably out, dude. It's just a totally diverse, like, at the hunt is you're like, totally fine, picked it up. All right, go get this one. 100 for 20 seconds. Cool. Got it. Go to get this one. 100 for 20 seconds. We got all three birds clean. 100 intelligently. Did a nice job. You're doing a nice job and the best job. Yeah, that's definitely the case, you know, you're ranked, I mean, if there's 40 dogs in a trial or 60 dogs in a trial or 120 dogs in a trial, because I've been in those two, there's only four places at the end of the day. And then you just have a limited amount of time to sort through them. So they're going to rank them. And if you don't make the cut, you don't make the cut, but the thing I would say is, whether your dog hunts or not, don't ever judge your dog, leave that up to the judges. Every time you send for bird, whether it's a blind or a mark, your job is to get the best you can under that dog, because at the end of the day, even though they had that 20 second hunt or maybe even a little bit of a ranging hunt, it might not matter when it comes to back as long as you get a call back to the next series, you're still in the trial. You're still in the trial. Yeah, it's just, I'm personally thinking back to a trial a few weeks ago, where two of my dogs ran pretty dang good blinds all day, master tasks would have been like the real deal were good. And we didn't get call back. And after I dissected it, it was how they got off the point. It was, you know, technically a cash refusal, second stop, cash them in the water, he gets in the water and he finishes beautifully, but that one instant, you know, and that's what they weren't looking for that. And he was out. And, you know, it's been a transition because for the last 10 years of my career, it's been passed. I'll get them through it, walk away with an 80, 90, 100% pass rate every weekend. And now it's like, there can only be one winner, exactly. It's a totally different bill. Yeah, it's, it puts a lot more pressure on you for sure, you know, as a pro. Yeah, it's a, it's a different, different game, but I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it because I feel like at least in the Q level, I've got five to six dogs that on any given day could do it. Whether they do or not on that day, I don't know, but they compete against each other in training where it's like, man, three, four, five days in a row this month, that dog's been so consistent and just getting it. It's been fun. It's been a really neat transition in my career to, not transition. I mean, I'm not doing the other stuff, but new challenge, new challenge. I needed a new challenge, for sure. That was fun. Kav, you want to jump, like you want to jump into some Q and A's? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. We'll get the boring. I have other questions too, but we'll get a couple Q and A's done. Sounds good. Yeah. We had, excuse me, a bunch of good ones come in from our Patreon. So thank you to everybody for that Patreon.com. For slash on low dot com for this. Also we're giving away a free hunt, coming up soon. Week. When this comes out, it'll be roughly around that time. That's going to be awesome. Sharon, one of our Patreon friends, Sharon wrote in and asked what the longest distance someone can expect on a watermark or blind. What might you actually be facing a Master Taster at Derby? What distance is? So those are two, two different deals. Well, it's, yeah, no, it's a good question, but so, like, we'll answer each. Sure. Because the Master Taster all answer that one and you go into the Derby one? Sure. I've never had a Derby. Okay. Have you? Many. Yeah. So you answered that one in the Derby man. Yeah. There's a rule you can read the rule book. I'm not as fluent with the rule book, but I want to say that it's like under 100 yards on water. Maybe it's 120, but I think lands 120 or 150 waters 120 or 100 yards. So you're going to have anything in that realm. So you're going to probably have one long bird and two shorter birds. It also could be a double on water. I'm never really concerned about the long water one. I'm always concerned about the splash bird in my face and I'm sitting still through a big splash. So when folks ask about distances on water, I just look at it and say, your dog will probably if done well will have the guts to go and do that. It's the splash bird after running another series or two before that where they're getting all jacked up and jazzed and they've got to sit through a 90 yard one, a 70 yard one and then oh, here comes one and it's 20 feet away and they've got to sit through that. That's the one you got to worry more about. And then the concepts that we would see at the master test would be down the shores. So a dog that has the ability and the training to stay in the water and not get out and run. And then typically in the master test, we're going to see stay off the point, not get on the point. So if there's fingers of land, the dog should not be sucked towards the land and then they should stay in the water and have the guts to go and do that. That's probably what you would see under 120 yards look up the rule book. I probably should know it off the top of my head, but I don't stress the suck. But that would be my thought. And Derby's are a totally different deal. Yeah, definitely. Anything goes in a field trial, basically. So distance is not something that I would think too much about in terms of how far can it be. I mean, any mark could be under 400 yards. This means it's going to be a 400 yard swim. That's very unlikely. In fact, I would be shocked if I ever saw one. But this swim could be at least 200 yards, you know. And it's if you're asking how far does my knee, my dog need to swim, I would say that you should be your dog should be comfortable swimming up 250 yards in the water. But that doesn't mean you rush out there and you get your, you know, you throw a 250 yard mark for your dog to see if it can swim out there. That's not how it works. You build your dog up to that. You dogs aren't born with courage. You help them feel confident about swimming there. A lot of the watermarks we do are designed to help them feel really good about it, you know, and not intimidated for sure to push them out there. One of the things that I focused on when probably in the last three years with the young ones that I've been developing is anytime, they're not anytime, most times when they're getting a watermark, it's to the end of the pond. So there's no cheating singles. There's no, I'm just, I'm closing my eyes thinking of the ponds that I train on. And it's like, I'm looking at the most black, like you're saying, confidence building. He doesn't have, he or she doesn't have to make major decisions. They just have to go and feel okay about going all the way to the end. There's not enough suction to get in and out or anything like that. They just have to feel good about going to the end. And if they can do that, then the next pond will be a little bit bigger and they go to the end of that and they get a little bigger and they go to the end of that. That kind of guts and muscle memory of swim to the end of the pond and feel really cool that they can get there is kind of the goal for me versus getting halfway there going. I haven't found it yet. I'm in the middle of no man's land in this pond and now I'm getting scared at dad so you don't want that. Yeah, I totally agree with you there. I'm, when I'm training a dog for water work, I think about probably three or four different things that I'm focusing on. One is entries, which usually refers to cheating singles. I'm thinking about egg exits where I'm teaching dogs to get out of the pond in the correct place and the other area that I'm working on a lot is confidence and when I'm working on confidence, I'm not working on an entry into a lawn or an exit out of the pond. I don't need to put pressure on the dog when I'm asking them to swim a distance that might be pushing their limits. I want to create confidence if it's a courage swim, I'm not going to put any complexity into that. It's about building them up. Yeah, exactly. It's not saying I'm not doing the other things. I'm just not combining them. I'm just not combining them. Yeah. It's just strictly go feel good about yourself and then be rewarded at the end. I'm looking for success. Yeah. And another thing I will definitely, if I start to see that dog get half way or maybe even three quarters of the way through that big swim and they start looking around and you can see it kind of confidence dipping. I'm throwing another bird or bumper, I'm driving them out there or giving them a target to look at. Did you ever do that? I'm just going to add to that is that when I'm doing watermarks with the young dogs, it's all big white bumpers in the water. I want the dog to have a target out there that's going to draw them out there that's front let. Behind me, it's beaming on the bumper. The bumper looks like a big target out there as I'm building that dog up to do that stuff. I want something to draw them out there to sit for them to be able to be swimming out there and go, yep, I see where I'm going. I got this. There's no question. I know what I'm doing. But if it's a bird that's sinking low in the water and they're not quite sure where they're going in and they're also faced with a pond that can be intimidating, look wise. And the distance of the swim can be intimidating. That's not a good situation. Right. But that would be, if I were to do that, let's just use that example. If we threw a duck in the water because I would say the example I would give is, it's a young enough dog where I can't stop him on a whistle and cast him back in if they tried to cheat all the way around or something after doing a big swim. If I don't have that skill set in and I'm, well, if this is the real example, I'm using a big white bumper and I'm not using a duck. And so all those things are now kabboshed. But I have had instances where there's some lily pads or enough vegetation in the throw gets caught by the wind and it's drag backs and I thank you. He just tapped his nose. I'm like, I'm not certain. Thank you. Drag back. You can just say it. You know, you can interrupt me. I've been in, I've been training in Northern Ontario when I was doing that. I mean, we had a lot of lily pads and ever going in the pond and so now the ducks on the way out there. It's good. And all of a sudden, there's drag back from other birds, sure, those lily pads. If anything, it can hit the fan. When it hits the fan, that's when I've got my helper to help that dog. And typically the pro tip here would be if you've got your bumper in the water, throw one, have your bird, throw a throw one on land in line with that bumper and the dog if you will. Okay. If everybody's unless you're driving envision what I'm doing here. So that dog sees this extra mark like the fireman drill and it keeps driving. But in between where that bumper was landing on land and that dog is where it's going to run into the bumper that's in the water picking up when I'm putting down what else. She has another one. Didn't she? Or no? Nope. All right. Go on to the next one. Uh, our dear friend Caleb says congrats again, a puppy in October. How do you do water intro when it's getting chilly? A little chilly. Pups going to be a small monster lander. You don't. Yeah. That's my opinion. Kevin's been here. The other Kevin just busts and balls, but the small monster lander could have gone to lab bud. Um, no. Well, well, how cold is cold Caleb and I just, I mean, well, the other thing is October. If you're in the question, if it's Caleb, if you're questioning it, then it's too cold. Yeah. That's probably the right answer. Can I add a little to that? Yeah. Absolutely. I don't think there's any need to rush introducing a dog to water at all. If you don't introduce your dog to water to the six months old, that's perfectly fine. Don't think you're losing it. The worst thing you can do is put your dog in a situation where they're going to be intimidated, where they're going to dip into something that they've never dipped into before and feel uncomfortable. I want their first experiences to be absolutely awesome because I don't want to create a situation where a dog ulps and has an aversion to water. And if I had to wait two months or three months to get that done, no harm, no foul, that dog is going to advance very quickly once you can get into water. So my question to add on to your answer would be, what are you doing in the meantime to make sure that once you get to water, it's ready for it. It's on the marks. Thank you. Yeah. A little bit more. Build retrieved drives so that because I would say I've had plenty of six, eight month old puppies that roll into my program that weren't introduced to water. And by God, it is a pain in the butt on my end because, you know, it just, it just is, you know, they've only had land. And so when they put their feet in and they start to lose that buoyancy, they don't have the guts to go for it. So I feel Caleb's question, I feel for him because it's, it's a real concern. I don't want my dog to be afraid of the water and I want the water. Your point is valid. Build that retrieved drive. Make sure that he or she lives for that task because that love is going to overcome the nerves that it might take for a seven month old puppy to go swim. Yeah. I remember one dog in particular, a black cloud I had very early on. And she was never that excited about getting into the water, but I never forced the issue of my own dog. I was a pro at the time, but she was my own dog. And I had been cautioned in the same way I'm cautioning everybody else here. Don't ask your dog to do something that they're uncomfortable with with respect to the water. And I waited until she finally jumped in on her own. She was six months old. I didn't throw bumpers out there trying to coerce her into it. I just waited until the one day she was saw the other dogs playing out there and she's like, I'm going to get in it. That dog went on to be a field champion, a field champion, an amateur field champion in Canadian field champion, amateur field champion, finished U.S. and Canadian nationals. It was absolutely fine. But what if I hadn't waited until she was ready, but she still be that same dog? What if she had developed an aversion to water because I forced the issue early unnecessarily? Don't do it. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. We've got plenty of videos on the old YouTubes of my main, my main don'ts. All right. So I'll rip through them real quick, but like that, my main don'ts is cold water. Don't pick them up and carry them in because the first thing they're going to do is get in the water and swim back to shore. And now their experience is going back to shore, not going out into the water, weighed in there with them. Don't go to a river where there's current and they get swept away. And don't go to a big lake, like I'm thinking of Lake Ontario or an ocean, a beach where there's waves crashing and it's loud and scary. It's gentle entry, nice and warm, cool, calm, comfortable, and they feel really good about themselves. Those are my main, my main thoughts. I would say anything, dad, just avoid areas where there's a lot of cover. Like if you got tall cat tails or there's a lot of cover growing in the water, it's going to probably cause them to splash and get a little bit nervous so they can't see the shorelines. Clean shorelines are really nice. Good point. Cool. Monica has an interesting question about horse fetch dogs. Would you happen to have any advice about introducing them to retrieving different objects, not necessarily hunting related stuff? So I'm going to add to this question. She joined our Patreon and our horse fetch course and she's doing, gosh, she's going to hate me for forgiveness. A border collie and some sort of bulldog breed. I don't, you're looking at me as well. No, I don't know. I'm drawing it in. It's like a, it's some bully breed, a pit bull or some bully breed. She loves training and wants to do different, I don't know, obedient stuff where they have to go and grab things and bring them to her. And so she's been like super good about following how I do it and they've had ups and downs and they're pretty much through it now. And so my guess is, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's bad. It's not like I'm wooden nor will I ever force that to bulldog. I'm proud of her for trying it. She had a bulldog that would retrieve. Yeah, but I didn't force it. It's kind of cool. So getting them to do it with different objects. You're asking me whether we need to. Well, I think she has to for the sports that she wants to play with them. Got you. I mean, I don't have a problem with it. I mean, if a dog will, you can force fetch dogs, pick up a bird, you can force fish and pick up a bumblebee, you can force them to catch up a wooden doll. I mean, there's absolutely no problem with it in my book, whatever you got to do. Yeah. So what I thought is 100%, you're just going to reintroduce that new object. So whatever it's going to be, you know, so you see that people make their dogs carry a beer or a hammer or whatever, maybe in your competition or yeah, you're just going to show them, show them again, make it become a norm. And then I might apply that stem if I need to, but I bet at once they kind of figure it out that that command that was once for this and this and this turns into this new object. It'll just, it becomes universal. I'm trying, there's a training term I can't, it's on the tip of my tongue, but I agree. And the other thing I would add to it is, you'd like to make it a bit of a game beforehand, like engage, prey drive, so to speak, if, you know, lack of a better object, you said can of beer. If you want them to pick up a can of beer, well, then treat it like a toy, toss that can of beer. But, yeah, I was, but another one, you know, toss it around, get the dog excited about chasing and get the prey drive involved and they're going to pick it up, you know, just because they want to, because they're excited about it first, yes, that's, that's making them do it. I don't think you should make a dog pick up anything first. They should be excited about picking it up and we don't make it up, pick it up, we, we teach them to pick it up and we teach them to hold it and then we enforce it with pressure. Correct. That would be a generalizing, that's the word I was using. We're generalizing that command for other objects than what we originally taught them to do it with. Yes. Would you say it's kind of like, you know, I, I teach my dog to jump up in place on the tailgate of my truck, but I also use that to jump up on my couch on my bed, which you're going to tell me I shouldn't do anyways, but point being like on the dog stand, onto the, whatever, it's jump up onto this. Sure. Yep. Or dog hunting wise, you're on a, a momar stand, but then I didn't bring my momar stand and I've got a muskrat, a legit muskrat hut in a swamp. We've done that. We've done that. Or a stump, you know, that is now your spot that you have to set. And when you bring me back a bird, you know, to jump back on that muskrat hut or stump. Yeah. We're just generalizing it. So I'm not going to force them onto the muskrat hut, like I would in May, the obedience forcing to place or kennel, you just, hey, buddy, come here, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, and then after five times, he goes, hmm, I understand, put two of the two together and they get it. Yeah. Generalizing the command. Eric Milson had a couple questions here, um, bend to your workshop, shout out to the Kevin chef workshops, baby. Yeah. Woo. After transitions completed, how should an amateur develop a two and two week and four week training program that's balanced out with marks and drills and how often do you do concepts and training versus wide open marks and simple blinds to balance a dog out with some very detailed. Can you ask very detailed? No, slow down. Yes. Slow down. My own brain. After transitions completed and how should an amateur develop a two week and four week training program that's balanced with marks and drills, okay? Okay. Kevin's running it down to smart. He's way smart. Yeah. We don't do that. We just repeat it 17 times, uh, and then how often do you do concepts and training versus wide open marks and simple blinds? Okay. That's a lot to unpack. Yeah. That's like a podcast. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Yeah. That is a podcast. It's a good question. After transition to me, I'll ask you this, but to me, that means coming off a tea pattern, coming off a swim by learning pattern blinds, learning, learning big dog stuff, if you will. Right? To me, a transition dog is not really running blinds, but they are sort of and, but they should be steady. They're done with force fads. They're picking up good confidence singles. Now they're starting to learn how to handle. Yeah. I think, uh, when I think of a post transition dog, they have, if we want to get down to skills, they've got basic handling skills. They in the field, they can stop crisply on a whistle in the field. They can take a cast in a general direction. Uh, they understand to go. They can do the same on water. They, they tread water very well. They're willing to look at you and wait for direction that the fundamentally, they're sound in the field. The basis is all about making these dogs fundamentally sound in the yard. The transition is about making these dogs fundamentally sound in the field. And now we're at that point where we can start to work on concepts. We can start to work on teaching these dogs to fight, uh, standards and, um, sorry, not fight standards, but maintain standards in the field. Yeah. So there's a lot of drill work that went into that and some of it, um, a lot of you should know. And I think there's more. It takes more than just, hey, let's get through the double T or the single T and swim by and we're ready to go. That's not the case. I think it takes more than that. But at any rate, you know, where we're at and, um, we're talking about marks and drills. I think it was a marks and blinds. It doesn't matter. Marks and blinds. Yeah. Concepts versus doing things that are more, uh, are more relaxing. So to speak. Mm-hmm. So at that stage, we're probably trying to teach the dog more about some standards. We're talking about, if we're talking about water, we're talking about teaching these dogs to get in the water correctly, cheating singles, teaching dogs to get out of the water correctly. That would be two down the shores in a drill that I do is called the angle exit drill, teaching dogs where to get out of the water. Those are all about standards. We're beginning to teach the dog how to fight it across wind on a mark or blind. We're also beginning to teach those dog concepts, primarily a punch bird concept or not to return to an old fall. Those are all things that we think about teaching a dog at that stage. And ideally, if we have a two week training plan, let's just talk about two weeks instead of four weeks in that two weeks, we won't want to theme the training a little bit, meaning if I'm going to train three days a week or four days a week, I want to cover that particular concept or that particular standard that I'm training grain about three times. So if I'm going to do a punch bird over the course of two weeks, I would like to do a three times. If I'm going to work on cheating singles, I would like to do it about three times. If I would like to do a shoreline water blind, I would like to do it three times. And by the way, not all in that two weeks, all those things, not all those things. I'm just saying there's a lot of things I got to train. I'm just saying just to specify the first two weeks isn't all these things that I want. So maybe let's make it a little bit clear. Let's say we train two, one, he's three or four days. You tell me. I think most people are going to go three days. Okay. Let's say we train three days a week. How many setups are we going to do in a single day, two or three? I think most people are going to say they would do three. Okay. So we have in a, in one week, we've got three days, we're going to train three times. That's nine setups per week. So we've got a total of 18 setups. Let's just say 15 to 18 setups for a nice number. Yeah. I'm going to mark that down on paper 15 slots, 15 to 18 slots. I want to work on shoreline blinds. I'm going to plug shoreline blinds into three of those 18 slots. I want to work on cheating singles. I'm going to plug that into three of those 18 slots. I'm burning up slots as I do this. Sure. Okay. So I might pick three or four different things that I'm going to train on. But this person here, Eric, who's very smart, says, Kevin, what do I, do I need to do wide open triples? And I think what Eric's really saying is, how do I balance this out? I'm asking my dog to do these things that are mentally taxing. We might be making corrections. So they're emotionally taxing. They might be big swims or something that's physically taxing. So all of these things are draining the dog's energy resources and momentum, confidence, all of those things are starting to deteriorate. We might have used up 12 or 9 to 12 slots. Now we've got to start thinking about plugging things in there that are going to keep the dog confident, keep the dog's momentum up. And that's where we get into opening up the marks without putting things into them where the dog has to fight a factor like make a decision to enter upon correctly or fight a crosswind. We don't put them in a situation where they might switch or go back to an old fall. That's why we're opening them up. We don't do a water blind next to a shoreline where they might be tempted to land grab on the water blind. We do them just across a small piece of water with no shorelines on either side of the water blind. We do things that take the training of the marks to the blinds so that they can feel like they can do things so that they do feel capable in their confidence is going therapy. You can call them therapy marks, you can call them therapy blinds, but I think people get to that stage of training, especially at the all age level, and they forget that they have to do them. They forget that they constantly have to monitor body language and how the dog is feeling. That's so important if we want to keep these dogs happy, you know, trained yet wanting more. I got this. Yeah. That was, we had a podcast with Clark Kennington years ago now, and we were talking about the Super Retriever series and the Super Retriever series is so, to me, like looking at it, it's stressful. There's so much that those dogs have to do and accomplish and think about and mark and it's just bananas. And one of the things that he brought up from doing it is back in the day, he drilled a lot. There was pressure involved. There was this and that and all these things added up into a overthinker of a dog. As he developed as a trainer, the more dogs that he had worked through that were comfortable, them being comfortable, those were the ones that were being more consistent and winning. So I feel like that exactly what you just described to him, have your list, plug in the training sessions that are going to be mentally taxing, doesn't have to be pressure related when we say pressure, we don't necessarily mean you're pushing a button on the E-collar. We mean mental pressure. Hey, I've got to think here, I see a corner of a pond and I've got a decision to make. In that dog's brain, that's stress, that's pressure, that's a decision. And if they make the wrong one, they know that that's not a good one, but they still make it sometimes or they make the right decision. But in that moment, they're still thinking a lot. So that balancing act of maybe a therapy marks or therapy blinds where they just, I don't really have to think, I'm just looking across a pond that's 30 yards and I got to get out there and swim across it and all of a sudden there I am and then maybe a 50 yard run afterwards and they turn around, they don't have to think about cheating because blatantly obviously get back in all of a sudden you're balancing act of you're down the shore, you're too down the shore concept that you have been plugging in over the last two weeks. You get a little relaxation and they feel good about this decision today. And then you see when you go back and visit on your third session of your two down the shore, they feel more comfortable, comfort. I'm okay with pressure, mental pressure, mental stress and challenging them, but I do feel like maybe I look at my sessions where it's like two things might be mentally stressful. One's going to be more of a gimme or two are going to be a gimme for this dog and one's going to be a little bit tougher and like that to me is how I'm trying to create that comfort zone of just go feel good about yourself on something. Yeah, I totally agree. And there are certain things that I feel they've got to have more easy than hard, like if we're talking about a water blind, I think for every hard water blind you do, you should be thinking about three or four easy water blinds. Those things that dogs are really intimidated by do more easy than hard. And then the other thing I would add is, you know, so we talked about a two week training plan. And as Eric planned, he said, what about four weeks? When you finish or you're approaching, finishing that two weeks, your next two week training plan doesn't cover the same things because there's just too many things to cover. That's where you're, you need to track things. What did I cover in the last two weeks? Well, in the next two weeks, I've got to cover different things to make sure I'm hitting everything. If I did down the shore marks, I'm not going to do them in the following two weeks. I've got to do something different. Anyway, that's all I could have done. That's good. My last piece, I had this conversation with the awesome lady at the hunt test this weekend. Long story short, her son bought a puppy from us. It's their first duck dog for a family. I think he was like 15 or 16 when they got it. He trained it all himself. Mom and dad would go through a mark form, great freaking family. She found love with training with her son and his dog. She bought her softly dog. Now they're a mother son team going out to hunt test together. Super cool. She did not pass this weekend. I kind of went up to her. We sat. We asked. I kind of busted chops a little bit, relaxed her a little bit and said, here's what I saw. Here's what I think you should work on and she made a comment about balancing the dog's attitude. I'd like your opinion. If he's feeling stress or pressure, his ears go back. He does this. He does that. It would be sad. We do a lot more fun stuff to try and balance it out. I could be wrong, but I'm looking at the long game. If I have a dog and I trust the process, because I've done this a lot and I've done it with a lot of dogs, I feel like I trust my process and how I treat dogs and the timing of my corrections and all these things, that I'm not looking for next week to be better. I'm looking at five months from now to be better. What does that dog look like two months from now running blinds first next week? If he's not feeling fully confident today, that doesn't mean that today I have to do stuff that pumps him all the way up and get some right back right this moment and that makes me feel better about myself and he feels better about himself. I'm okay with using opportunities to teach him if he's blatantly giving me the middle finger to maybe he doesn't look super fun for a week or two weeks, but then all of a sudden he starts going, boy, I'm starting to understand that there are consequences to my actions and that there are rules about how to be handled and all of a sudden I, because I trust the process, I see that confidence flick so he may not be pumped about it for the first two weeks or three weeks, but then all of a sudden he goes, I've got it. If I sit quick, if I look at her, if I take the correct cast, I get what I want. I get that bumper or that duck and all of a sudden you see that momentum change of and confidence pick back up so you have to trust the process that with what you just described with Eric's two week question and giving some therapy things and bouncing act of teaching, I'm okay with a session where they go, that dog looks like, I'm not sure of myself. It's okay. Did he learn something? Did you learn something? Did you fair and how you handled it? Cool, because tomorrow you're going to address it or three days from now you're going to address it again and see if you learned and then a month from now and by the way next spring when you're trying again at a senior test, where is he at? Probably more confident, probably looking the way you want him to look, but he's doing it how you want him to do it, it's a long game, we're not trying to get there in two weeks. Yeah, I agree with you on that. You and I have a little bit more experience than the average person, so we do trust the process because we've seen the process work. But some of the things I would share is that number one, this sport that we're participating in, whether it's huntister or field trials, is in essence in a lot of ways a huge obedience competition. Yeah. Right. We want dogs not just to retrieve, but we want them to do it in a certain way and when we're doing a blind retrieve, that is all about control. When we want them to hold the line for certain reasons, without getting into two deep into the weeds here, that is all about making the dog, making discipline decisions. And the reason why they do that is one, because we show them two, because we're fair, three, because we say if you don't do it the way I want you to do it, there's a consequence for it. And so we can expect that dogs are not going to be thrilled every day about what we're asking them to do or what we require them to do. But once they understand that there's a standard that they must maintain, then they settle into that and go, oh, okay, if I sit quickly to the whistle, as you said, I don't get corrected. If I get in the water where I'm supposed to, I don't get corrected. If I take a cast in the right direction, I don't get corrected. Once they understand the standards, and we've been fair about teaching it to them, because we would always show them first. We wouldn't correct them the first time or maybe the first several times they go to cheat around a piece of water, they don't take a cast. We're going to use a trition, we're going to handle them, we're going to do all these things. We're going to make sure we put the bumper in the water where they can see it. There's some teaching that goes on first. We're fair, and when they decide not to meet the standard, when we have been completely fair, then we do legitimately have a reason to make a correction, and I think dogs understand that. And once you make several corrections, they say, you know what, it's just easier to be comfortable. And you know what, I'm just going to do it that way, and it just requires a little extra work, but it's not uncomfortable. Correct. And then you see that light bulb, and then you see that light bulb, and then the ears go back the way you want, you know, the owner wants it to look, like it's okay to be uncomfortable. One of our buddies Ethan, we were talking about him at dinner tonight, he made a comment about stress, and if you want your muscles to grow, if you want to be a better runner, if you want to be a better lifter, if you want to be a better athlete, we often put ourselves and our muscles in stress, and you're stretching them and you're pushing them and breaking them down a little bit. If you do too much, you're going to pull something, you're going to get injured. If you don't do any, then you don't grow. You don't get better at your sport, you don't get bigger and stronger and faster. So there's that balancing act of doing just enough pulling and stretching and breaking down and rebuilding and allowing that opportunity to rebuild, and then you get a little stronger and then a little bit more, and then you give it time and it'll grow again, and it's not overnight. You're not going to have a dog that's running blind, it's overnight, it's just, I did a deep pattern, it should run blinds, that's not hard work. Should we move on? I would just like to add one more thing to this, because I think just to make sure people have some context and perspective here, I've said that it's okay to make corrections on dog that we've been fair with, we've shown, and the one last thing everybody has to remember is that if we do use pressure to insist on a standard, if we make a couple of corrections and we don't see the right response, then it's time to pull back and say, okay, either A, this dog doesn't understand, B, I'm not communicating effectively, C, I need to simplify more or something like that, because that dog is not understanding. I do not need a bigger stick when an appropriate stick isn't working. Great point. And that's the only thing I would add to that. That's an awesome addition. All right, check out LoanDuckOutfitters.com. We've got gear, we've got upcoming greetings, you can see all the dogs in our breeding program. If you're interested in getting yourself into a LoanDuck dog, this is where you can learn more. Check it out at LoanDuckOutfitters.com. All right, Kevin, give it to us. Eric Nilsen again, in teaching swim by, if you could discuss some comment pitfalls that we may experience and try to avoid, and how do you know when swim by is truly complete? And do you revisit it each year as a two-nub? Okay, I'm going to jump in here. The biggest pitfall that I see people fall into is not working hard enough or long enough on a perfect stall or sit in the water if people don't know what a stall is. That is the most important skill that your dog will get out of the swim by is the stall. You cannot do advanced training without a great stall in the water. That's, I don't even want to say anything else because I think that is the most important part of swim by. What was the second part of Eric's question? It was a couple of two tree partners. See, the tough part here is I'm also a bad reader, Eric, so don't feel bad like I'm sitting this poorly, but comment pitfalls and then how do you know when you're totally done? Totally. And then also do you revisit it annually as like a LoanDuck right? Just to add a little bit more to the stall. It is a perfect stall just so everybody has a good image in your head. When you blow whistle, the dog spins around immediately on that whistle, spins around immediately on that whistle. They do not drift laterally, meaning to the left or right, they don't drift in toward you. They hold their position in the water for the most part and their eyes are on you and they're comfortable doing it. Those are all the components of a good stall. If you're moving on saying, that's good enough, the dog's not quite stopping, maybe he's not casting. Maybe they'll only hold it for a couple of seconds. You are doing yourself a great disservice. Okay. So the question was, when do you feel you're done? I want to make sure that when the dog will get from one end of the pond to the other when you're asking him to do the swim by one or two cast, it doesn't have to be perfect. But I also want to make sure that along the way that I'm getting some appropriate responses to maybe some corrections that I'm making, like if the dog is doing a swim by and they look over at me and I see them look over at me, well, that's essentially a pop. They're questioning, do I have to keep going? If I make a force correction, do they react appropriately to that force correction? In other words, if they look at me and I press the button and I haul or over, do they pick up a little bit of speed, look toward the exit and go forward. That's telling me that yes, they understand how to react to pressure. If I make a correction because I blow whistle and they don't stop and I blow another whistle and make a correction, sorry. If I blow whistle and they don't stop and I blow another whistle and I make a correction and they stop and they hold their position, yes, that's another good box you can check off. Thirdly, I want my dogs to be able to pick up a bumper from the back pile and when they start to return back to me in the water, that would be the center pile, when they start to return back to me and I blow whistle, they push back on the water and go into a stall and then I can give them an overcast toward the exit and they take it. I'm there. But the most important part of that and what I was saying was they push back on the water and go into a stall. If they don't put the brakes on and just continue to swim in toward me, I'm not finished. Because in a real life scenario when I'm asking dogs to do a swim by, they will be on return from a watermark and that's what they will need to do. They will need to respond to a whistle as they're swimming toward me. They will need to put the brakes on, go into a stall and then I can ask them to do an over. That's the point at which I feel I'm done swim by. But there's always the swim by review after that still must be done. And then the last question was, and then I'll let you just spot a box and you probably have some information. Last question was, do I review it annually? Yes. Every year in the spring, it's the first thing I do when I get back into the water is this one by review. Yeah. And we reviewed that in, I think our last podcast together when I was out of last winter, like the winter break, you know, we did a full deal podcast, check it out in the show notes. Yep. Very, really on that. The only thing I would add, you hit everything now on the head for me as well. The only thing I would add is I want to, I want to be able to give an over a let, let's just say left over dog takes my leftover, gets out of the pond, gets his bumper. I'm going to again cast him left over and he runs away from the pond on land. I want to be able to stop him and I want to give him a right over and he makes a b line and jumps back in the water how I want him to the same reasons of what you said of stopping in the water and being able to cast on the return, remember you were saying send the back pile and stop him and he back pedals and treads and then you can cast, it's the same reason. If they go to cheat a bank on a return from a marker of blind, I want to be able to stop them and get and almost as soon as they hear that whistle, they go, my bad, I should have gotten back in the water and I can get that cast and they sploosh back in the water. To me that is a huge part of that cheating singles and the concept of being in the water is a good place and or if we're doing a two down the shore and they get out, we don't need to get into this but if they get out early and I've tried to show them and have shown them in the past and I've taught and taught and taught, I'm going to let them make that mistake. You want to get out, go ahead, see how it goes for you and if I haven't properly done for me that piece of swim by where they understand to get back in the water, I give that cast back into the water on that two down the shore, they're going to run the bank or have four paws in the water but not really in the water, that kind of crap. If I cash you into the water, you sploosh back into the water and go from there. That would be my only addition is all the things he said and then my last piece is when they are out of the water, I can cast them in the water, they jump in and swim all the way across the swim by pond. Good addition. Yeah, I think that's a good point. We had a good question coming through Instagram from Amy Dunne asking to please explain the different levels of the retriever coach workshops. Oh. Okay. Well, there are six different workshops that I offer. The most popular one is the personalized training workshop which I mentioned earlier. Everybody fills out a questionnaire, tells me what their strengths and weaknesses are and we really focus on them. I do a fundamentals or what most people think of as a basic workshop, walking you right through everything from tree training, through force fetch, force to a pile, three-handed casting, advanced tea, those types of things. We do an intermediate skill building workshop which is how you take those skills that your dog learned in the yard to the field. How do you transition to the field? So we cover a bunch of drill work and some marking scenarios that will help you prepare your dog for the field, making sure that your fundamentals are sound in the field as well. I do a water training workshop, I do a blind training workshop. In the last one I do is one where I help people who are running hunt tests who want to transition to maybe running a qualifying, covering things that you need to, where you need to fill in the gaps so to speak, that would help you make that transition to the field trial world. That's pretty, there's a lot too though, that's pretty thorough. Well Amy, sounds like you could be at every single one for the next two years. I do them all, you know, and people, different people will, are interesting different ones. Absolutely. That's pretty cool. Now I wrote a note down to add to Amy's question and it said, and your fetch program. So Kevin created an online training program as well. If someone were to want to dive into that, how in depth is that, where are you at with that? Thank you for asking. The fetch program is something that I have been working on since 2014, believe it or not. I had this idea that I wanted to create an app that would help people train a retriever. And over the years it's developed into, which I launched actually just this past February. It is all of the fundamental training and all of the intermediate training mapped out in about 30 plus modules where every module has a what you need to know section and a procedure section. It is a step by step how to in the procedure section, but the what you need to know section is, you know, these are the things you need to think about before you're starting. This is what can happen when you do this drill. And these things happen. This is how you should react because that's what people need to know, you need to know why you're doing it. What can happen and how to react correct that's in what you need to know section. It's all written instruction, diagrams, videos to get you through through those things. It's also an advanced training program where we're I'm covering marking concepts like punch birch, check down birds, equidistant marking, ABCD drills, cheating singles, my angle exit drill. There's a whole bunch of myriad of drills and marking material or again, it's covered in video diagrams and information, written information that you can cover, how you run it, what can happen, how you should react, those types of things. I do a webinar once a month where I cover different topics. I do two live Q&As a month where you can send your question just like you've done here. Listen in to other people's questions, get more about the philosophy of training, the how-tos of training. And then I also do training tips on a regular basis. And I know that's a lot, but finally the best part is, I think, is you get access to me. And you have a problem where you're covering the material and it's not working. You get to say, hey, Kevin, you through the platform, you get to ask me a question, Kevin, I've done A, B, and C, but it's not working. What do I need to do? Or I need help figuring out what my training program should look like or whatever, I'm here to help you. You've got me at your disposal to ask questions, very cool. So it's a system. It's not just a training program, it's a complete system to help you be a retriever trainer yourself. Very cool. Yeah, that's pretty, the workshops are super in depth, man, that's being, my biggest thing is, I do very similar with our Patreon. So people can send videos, I can help them and whatever. But there is still invaluable resource of you sitting there with me and my dog. In live action, try this, try this, move here, move there. Did you see this? How did the dog react to that? So I think people who can afford it or are near it or whatever can get to one of these workshops or seminars, that is invaluable and will give you plenty of things to work on as well. But in the meantime, if not, these online programs are the real deal. Can I measure one more thing? Sure. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, right. Um, I just like to mention that, you know, enrollment for the fetch program is, it's only open for a couple of weeks, a few times here, really, yeah, it's not open all the time. You can only get in during certain periods. Our next enrollment period is coming up, I think the beginning of October, probably around the first of October. Okay. And so keep your eyes open. If you're interested, go to www.retrievercoach.com and click on the fetch tab. So maybe what we can do, again, in our show notes is if you can look that up and send that to us because we've got like two weeks until this layer, I think we'll put it in the show notes so that if someone wants to jump in, they'll have it there and all it and can do it. How's it going? Thank you. Cool. All right. Let's do like two or three more quickies. Or I may, I'm happy fun. I'm happy fun. There is no question. So I'm not in. I'm not saying once, but Matt Michael had a question. Matt Michael. Two first names. Oh, that might be his last. I don't know. I didn't ask him. That wasn't part of the question. He has a small gun dog, Kennell, and recently he's getting into AKC testing. He's curious about the best prep that you can do for master tests. Yeah, he's pointed at me. I'm stretching out the best prep. Really going to hurt yourself thinking about this one. Yeah. I'm just thinking it's not about the prep. It's not a quick tip. It's making sure that your dogs are underwhelmed at the event. So make sure that the things you're doing in training, the challenges, the difficulty of your training is harder than what they'll see at the event. So when they get to the event, you and your dogs feel like they've got it, right? So it's like the kid who is 15 playing basketball with the 18-year-olds. And he's 18, he's going to be kicking all the other 18-year-olds butts because he's been doing it for years. So if you think about that as your training setups, you're not looking at a master test like I described in, I think, Sharon's question of the distance of March. Yeah. Oh, I checked this box. He can do a 110-yard watermark. I checked this box. He can run a down the shore blind. It's putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, good obedience in the holding blind, good obedience on the line, sitting and honoring. Those are like the simplest things, the simplest, yeah, but there's how people lose. Yep. I don't want it to be me. Yeah. Those are things we can work on every day all day. Having your dog have a very good comfortability in the concepts they're going to see. I mean, we kind of, there's another question that might pop up whether Mike haven't asked that or not is the poison birds, and you had said, you know, in the years I did cues, I had never seen a poison bird or maybe once, right? You know, whether I see it or not on this weekend's master test, my dogs should be prepared for go get one bird, you know, see three birds fall, go get one, no off, run a blind, then pick up the other two. It happens, and that's the point of the being underwhelmed. I don't want it to go over the test and go, we've never done that, they've done that twice. So they should be very well versed and mature in that stuff. One of the things I notice when I come up and do some training stuff with you is that a lot of times there's really no difference between what's the dog see at a master test and a regular day training the fields. There's really no difference so that you just get up to the line and you do your thing. Yeah, but I would, there is, there is no, I understand, my setups are way harder than what they're going to see at the weekend test. That's why I'm saying the underwhelmed. So whatever I'm teaching, the concepts I'm teaching, I'm also another thing and then Kevin wants to jump in is my setups, like what I'm training on today was not a master test. I didn't go to my field today and go, we're going to do a walk up and a long bird and a short bird. It had nothing to do with what I'm not training for a master test, I'm training the dog. We ran tight behind the gun today, we ran through old falls today, we, I mean, those are the concepts we ran blinds under the arcs. Those are concepts that I was teaching today, but they weren't in a triple and two blinds. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Yeah, it does. So that would be my advice, train above what you're going to see, make sure your dog is super confident and you're super confident in that concepts that they'll see. Go ahead and head to it. I agree with you like in the lead up to that sort of maybe week before the event time, you know, as I said, you've got your two week training, training plans, you're putting them together, you're making sure you're flowing through all of the things you need to cover. But as I'm approaching that week before the event, I want to make sure that my number of things are happening to one that marking accuracy is the top priority. Because as you said, if you go to the field trial and know we're not talking about a field trial, but it's very similar when you go to hunt test, if my dog is not marking accurately, I'm going to have a hunt. So that could be a problem. So I want to make sure that I'm doing a lot of singles and maybe some marking drills to make sure that my dog is marking accurately and that I'm not focusing on the line to the retrieve so much during that week before the event. So in other words, I'm not going to do cheating singles. I'm not going to do making sure the dogs fighting a wind on the way out to mark because when I start focusing on the line to the retrieve, the dogs stop marking. They're thinking about every step they take as opposed to getting to the destination and finding the bird precisely where they think it is. So singles without a lot of factors in them. I'm also thinking about I want the dogs to be confident putting a multiple together. So I am going to be throwing some multiples, but they're going to be wide open so I don't have any concepts in there. Again, I want the dog to be falling into traps like switching and going back to an old fault all because they don't want them concerned about those types of things. I should have done that training two weeks ago or three weeks ago. I want them looking at a triple, seeing a triple being thrown and feeling like I got this. I can put together a triple. And the other thing is by running those triples, you are practicing the mechanics of making sure your dog sees all the birds by moving around when you need to. You're also making sure that your dog is comfortable with those mechanics and they're not jumping out ahead of you because as you pointed out, a dog has to be solid on the line. They can't be moving forward. And when you start finding out not one bird, not two birds, but three birds, you're liable to see something that you want to address in terms of behavior on the mat. I want them to be solid on the mat. I want them to feel comfortable putting together multiple and want them to be marking accurately. Those are the things I think about in terms of marking. I don't know if they want to cover blinds as well, but I think they just need to sit down when you blow the whistle and go to general vicinity when you cast them in that general vicinity. And so I would speak to I would add what I would do. It would be one blinds across the marks because I want to make sure those dogs are under control and sent and in situations where they are likely to get out of control around the holding blind in the field, you know. And I would say throw yourself, I call it a handler blind, at least once every couple of weeks and probably right before the trial, throw yourself, make sure you set yourself up a blind where you have to negotiate a tight corridor so that you are forcing yourself to blow whistles when you need to. You're not losing the dog behind a mound or a hay bell or behind some bushes. Practice that. You don't run that for your dog. You run that for yourself. Yeah. That's a good point. And I think a line time, you know, for someone like this who's just getting into it without overrunning your dogs and putting them into a test-wise situations, I think you have to buck up and do it too and get comfortable and get those nerves out and get comfortable doing it. Yeah. Speaking of poison birds, in field trial, Jordan asks, in field trial training, how often should I run poison birds? My dog's two and a half and ran one in a qual. And we, so we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier and Kevin mentioned it back in the day. Never saw it. That's interesting. But I hear they're becoming more, more commonplace these days. They're more trendy. They could be trendy for the last cue that Kevin has ran. I have not. I don't know. I think every, you have to look at every dog as an individual when it comes to poison birds. Some dogs are very attracted to them. Others are not. And if you run too many of them, it can cause them to start to abandon marks or overrun check-down birds and that sort of thing. So you've really got to ask yourself, does my dog need another poison bird before you start running them? And when I'm doing poison birds, I like to do them in a three-peat scenario where you set up one mark and you do three separate blinds that are run from different locations. You're sort of criss-crossing the lines adjacent to the poison bird and you're just teaching them the communication that goes into running a poison bird. Like no dead bird here and then you point them in the direction of the blind. So to speak and then run the blind and then you move a little and you run another blind in the very same fashion. You throw, re-throw the poison bird, use the communication you do no dead bird here and you point them at the blind. It's a different blind and you run it and you do that three times. And again, it's about gauging how much your dog needs it. Obviously, the closer the poison bird is to you, the easier it is, the further the poison bird is out there and the tighter it is, the harder it is to get past those poison birds. So that's all I can add to that. Yeah. My buddies and I talk every day. I've got two other trainers that every single day all day long, we're talking to each other, motivating each other, busing each other's chops, all that stuff. And this has been a discussion, especially leaning up towards Master National where I think this year they're going to, I personally think they're going to throw everything in the kitchen sink at us. I think they're all talking about cutting numbers. I think they're all talking about AKC making it more difficult on us to uphold a standard and da-da-da-da. So what are we going to see? I think we're going to see some sort of poison bird or some sort of triple where we have to pick up a bird, gnome off the other two, run a blind and pick up the other two. I think we're going to see a lot of it. I have two boys that are think for themselves first, very confident, hard driving and I think they're going to need, even though they do it really well in training, I'm not going to get lax on practicing that poison bird. I have one female that's a little bit softer and when I say no bird here, she can kind of like go, dang, okay, I got to run a blind. As soon as I kick her loose, she gets back into her groove and runs a beautiful blind and all is good, but you can see her go, dang, I kind of wanted that thing and then we're often running. To your point, she doesn't need as many maybe as those boys do. She's well versed in them, but I don't want that attitude. I got to bounce it a little bit more. I've got an older chesapeake. That dog needs way more fun stuff and less no birds, you know, and then when I see it at Master National, I'm going to hope that she listens to me type of deal. But if I do that in training, then all the fun of training is going to be taken out and her attitude is going to go down there for her marking ability is going to go down. Her work ethic to get in the water where she belongs goes down, those kind of, that kind of dog. So I've got to bounce her attitude old man who's in the downstairs right now. She understands it, but she doesn't train like the other ones. She's rusty. I probably got to repractice that with her. So each individual dog, I'm thinking about it. But for at least for me with Master Nationals, it's in the back of my head. As with me playing in the queue game, I just hope that what I've been doing, these dogs hold lives. If I were to see it in the queue, I'd be okay. I think if I don't know the answer, if I was only a field trial trainer, I don't know. I just, I make my bread and brother run a master's test and then we're just having fun doing that's cute stuff. I think you're the way you're talking about it makes perfect sense. I don't think a field trial trainer would change what you do. Okay. To do. That makes you feel better. All right. What else? You're treating every dog as an individual and that's what we're supposed to do. Yeah. Which is hard to do sometimes. It is. And the moment going, oh, I want to run my dog on that when it's really the wrong thing to do. Yes. That would be an honor piece of advice which we talked about earlier of training groups. Just because they're doing that with your training group doesn't mean you and your dog have to do it. You can manage the situation and do it a little differently to make you and your dog successful. Well, she got put. So last one here is from the outskirts. What should I do for a dog that has a very sloppy hold but knows the fetch command? Go ahead. Have it answer that. Go for a sloppy hold. I mean, I think when people say sloppy hold what they're saying is my dogs on a return and they drop the bird and then they put their nose on it and it's like they're having a hard time picking it up or they get to the edge of the water and then they spit it out and they shake off or they always look like they're adjusting their hold on the return. It's stuff like that. All those dogs are doing is delaying the process of bringing the bird back to you. They are not having a hard time holding that bird. They are or bumper or bumper. They're simply delaying delivering that bird. If it's a bird, it's because they want to keep it. It's a source of food. I was like, we're putting a stake in their mouth every day and they're just, we're saying, but don't chew it. It's mine. And they're going, how can I get this bird? Same with the bumper. It could be the other reason why they might be delaying bringing it back is they wanted to delay the process of getting on to the next part of the training test, whatever that is. That's what I was thinking. It's like a pressure related work ethic, right? So let's not look at it from a hold problem standpoint. Let's look at it from an obedient standpoint where the dog's just laying coming back to you. If they are putting the bird down or they're dropping it and they're mucking around with it, press the button and say here, it's that simple. If you up your standard in terms of how you require them to get back to you once they've got to the retrieve and demand that they come back as quickly and as without delay, you're going to start to see them not drop that bumper anymore, that bird anymore. That's my, that's my two cents. That's a hundred percent, my two cents. I would imagine we're seeing it, for me, I see it more with the bumpers. I'm going to dissect it a little more because that's what we're here for. I think that they're all bumpers are created in equal, they're not equal. I have some that are three dollars that poor work ethic dog with a mediocre hold that's thinking if the faster I get back to them, the faster I got to go to another one, is that kind of what you're thinking too? Right. So they'll, it'll be sliding out of their mouth and they'll just allow it to slide out of their mouth and as soon as it falls on the ground to poop, they're grabbing it because they know better, right? If, like, you could possibly spend $12 and get a really good bumper or $30 and get the gunner bumper, shout out to our podcast sponsor, right? And all of a sudden because of how that bumper is shaped and the ability to grip it takes it away, sometimes I'm going to digress big time for it sometimes I think we could create a problem when maybe there isn't one. So if I'm con it, like, let's take your advice, for example, same advice I'd give someone indirect pressure here every time they drop that bird or bumper, I'm going to give it the not a fetch command or hold it's here that could create other problems when maybe if we did something else such as like a, I mean, this isn't the real answer like it's it's a, it's a cop out it's a little bit of a bandaid, but if you've got the $3 bumpers that are super slippery and you've got this deal with this dog, maybe a different bumper might help you. If it doesn't, then we need to go back and revisit. I also think that so many folks that come to our seminars don't actually have a good forest fetch base, they think they do, but they don't. Not to my standard at least, they better not drop it. If they do, it's getting picked up real quick. So I think you have to make sure that we're looking in the mirror and saying what are my standards? How am I, how am I, how are me and my dog as a team on this, like aspects of our training? If you think it's an 80 out of 100, well, I can tell you right now that 80 out of 100 isn't good enough in my book. No, that's not how you, it was good enough for my high school career, but not here in dog training. Yeah, that would have made the fridge in our house. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, mom and dad would have been proud to sell me, but to me, like, okay, let's use that as an analogy. I understood that getting the bare minimum was going to get my stuff on the fridge when Kelly's getting a 95 and it's like, well, you know, you could have gotten a 98, Cal, you know? So if that dog understands that, giving me a 80 back in therapy here, this is like digging deep roots. But the point I'm trying to make is if that, if that dog understands that, if I give you 80% and that's good enough to get belly rubs and pats on the back, then he's only going to give you 80%. If you hold him to a higher standard, which Kevin alluded to in direct pressure of a little here with some stem and all of a sudden that dog picks it up and delivered beautifully to hand, now you understand that the dog does understand that the fast drag it back to with less sloppiness, nothing bad happens and life is all good again. These are all things, but I would, I would revisit and think internally and internally on how your force fetch went. I would think about what bumpers you're using because if they're the cheapos, you could be an easy fix. If you still have that problem, then I would do indirect pressure and I would make it less fun to be dropping and playing with that bumper or duck on the way back. That's kind of like that. Anything you want to jump in on that aspect, a little bit of polishing on my answer. So if that dog is coming back and they're sloppiness hold and they drop it on the ground and you make a correction and you say here and they leave the bumper behind, don't worry about it. You don't, that dog does not need to go back and pick up that bumper. The lesson they need to learn in that moment is that they only have a limited amount of time to get back to you and so that, or let me back up a little bit, if you stop the dog because they drop it and then you cast them back out at it and say fetch, now the message is confusing because your message was supposed to be, hey, you only have a limited amount of time to get back to me and if you ask them to go get it, now you're saying, no, no, you don't have a limited amount of time. Go back there and pick that up. It can be confusing. So as you alluded to in one of our other conversations earlier, it's a process in order to get these dogs to come back quickly with a bumper without dropping it or the bird without dropping it. The moment they drop it and you press the button and you say here because they're probably going to stop and pick it up or want to mess around with it if it's a bird. What they learn in that specific moment is they don't have time to do that. They get back to you, good dog, put them up. You walk out and pick up the bumper, have the dog pick up, or sorry, have the bird tour pick up the bird and it's done and now you move on to the next day and hopefully maybe you might have to make another correction, maybe you don't, but one of the things that dog is thinking about on that next retrieve is I don't have time to muck around. I need to make sure that I'm holding firmly on this thing and I'll put the bird down to the bumper to adjust my hold because I don't have time for it and it's going to end up costing me correction. Yeah, or what they want is the bird, right? They can cause them to the bird in their mouth. So that can go sideways on you. This happened to me the other day and actually one of my employees was asking why I did it. It's the exact scenario, dogs dinking around, he understands what I'm asking of it and so I said here and push the button and he went, wow, spit the bumper out or excuse me, it was a duck, spit the duck out and started coming to me. For me, we can write wrong or indifferent. I did intermittent here, bump, here, bump, here, bump all the way back to me. He's the type of dog that would rather goof off than try hard, right? He likes to do it, he's happy, but he doesn't take life too seriously. And so in that moment, I thought and felt just like what you're saying, the faster you get back to me, the better. It should be with the bird, but in that instance, it wasn't and I didn't, to your point, I didn't say go fat or anything, no, get in here now, quit screwing around. I did not make him go and get it, but I did re-throw one. He hauled butt to that mark, he marked it better than any of the other birds he had worked because he would just run around and hunt, but he's just running around, gets the bird, this next one, hauled butt, picked it up and came back perfect. I don't know if it stuck, but this is why I did it. He understood that there are consequences to dinkin' around. Next day, he did the same thing, but that's the kind of guy he is, he just would have made it take more than one examining moment for this dog to get the message and same with whoever's listening. It's going to take maybe more than one instance, but the point is, I wasn't worried about the fact at that point, I wasn't worried about any of it. He weren't worried about the delivery because this was an obedience issue. It wasn't a fetch or a hold issue, the dog simply wasn't coming back when it should have been screwing around, it's going around, it can bite you in the butt. But if it bites you in the butt, that means your force fetch was not as thorough as it needed to be. Can you describe what you mean by if it bites you in the butt, yeah, please? Okay, so you do another retrieve, as you said. You didn't ask the dog to pick up the one that it dropped, but you go ahead and you do another retrieve and the dog goes out there, maybe finds it, but it doesn't go. Or doesn't go. But let's, let's, let's another scenario, we come back to that one, sure. Dog goes out there, but won't pick it up, okay, because it's associating a correction with the bird or the bumper. So now it's going, I'm not going to go near that because I can get into trouble. Correct. So what do you do in that moment? You force fetch the dog, we're going to assume you did a good job at force fetching the dog, the dog's wires are just crossed. So you stop the dog and you get your butt out there to the bird or the bumper. You don't try and handle the situation where, from where you're running from, that's correct. You get yourself right out there to where the dog and the bumper is, because when you're there, you have complete control of the situation. You walk over to where that bumper or bird is with your dog. The dog may be sitting a few yards from it, that's what's ideal, dog sitting a few yards from it. And you throw your arm down toward the bumper and press the button and say, fetch, it's a nick fetch, the dog refused to pick up the retrieve. It's a forced retrieve at this point, but at least your rate out there where the dog is and the bumper is, so you can control the situation. And if the dog doesn't respond appropriately then, then it's time to simplify, pick up the bird, throw it on the ground, then go nick fetch. You cannot stop correcting it because the dog will must understand that the only way to turn off the pressures to respond appropriately to it and that is to pick up the bird. And we could go further. But I don't think it's necessary. But those are the things that... Those are the things that can happen. Those are the things that... But that's why we do force fetch. And we definitely want to simplify those situations by getting out there to make sure that we get a proper response very quickly. We don't need this to turn into a 10 correction deal. We need to nip it in the bud right there in one second, don't be lazy. And have it be black and white. And have it be black and white. Because let's say, for instance, your 100 yards away, dog drops it. And now it's hunting. I just did air quotes. Climbing, you say fetch and it's going, oh crap, I've got to fetch it, but it can't find it right away. And you're neck in and you're fetching and that's inappropriate. The reason Kevin is saying to run out there and be with the dog is so that you and the dog know where that bumper or duck is for that dog to have a timely correction and be able to turn it off immediately and succeed immediately. You want clarity. You want clarity. If you were to do it at a distance, you and that dog wouldn't be able to deliver clarity and then it becomes a complete cluster. And I see that... I've seen it enough where it's like, oh run out there, get out there, get out there, get out there. Go ahead. I'd just like to give one one hurl out there for everybody. In the past year, I have changed the way that I deal with situations that are not going well out in the field dramatically. If I make a couple of corrections and I continue to get cast or fuseless or something like this is happening that we just described, I am getting out there in a field very quickly. I want to be five to 10 yards from that dog. If I've made a couple of corrections and I'm not getting cast or the dog is not doing something that I need them to do, I don't want to keep priling pressure on that dog. I don't want to keep getting refusals to do what I'm asking to do. And there's something that happens when you walk out in the field. Everything stops. There's a moment, there's some time that lapses while you're walking out there where the dog gets a chance to compose itself, to regroup. You get a chance to compose yourself and regroup and think about the situation that's going on and how, what are the different ways I can deal with this matter right in this moment so that you're not shooting from the hip and potentially creating another problem. And I can guarantee you that when you walk out there and you are only five to 10 yards from the dog and you deal with whatever situation is going on, you're almost 99% of the time going to get the right outcome. And then they are successful. They're successful and they're not coming back from it going, oh my God, what just happened? I have to think of us being out there. They go, oh crap, he will come out. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the amount of control you have when you get out there is incredible. Yeah. The amount of the ability just to get the situation to happen. That's what I love about it. I put into practice for the last year and I can tell you the results are unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I think that you made a bunch of comments about getting composure and all that. I 100% agree, but I also think that they see me coming and go, I better think here. Yeah. Absolutely. I better think here because it's not 150 yards away. It's now in my face and then they literally go, oh, you meant that way. Yeah. I'll go that way. But you say it all the time of like distance erodes control. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you shorten that and simplify, Uncle Bob means business. He's coming out here. And it's not just me. Yeah. And I don't mean it like I'm going out there and really intimidating them. But sometimes it can be that way. Or other times it's like, he did come out here and you didn't just go halfway. He didn't just walk out 50 yards. It's a dog's 50 yards from me. Walk out 40 yards. It's a dog's 250 yards from me. Walk out 240. I'm serious. Yeah. Change is the game. Change is game. Yeah. You made a comment earlier. It's an art. It's not a book, even though there are books. It's not a fetch program or a Patreon. These are all resources to help get you where you need to go. But like this little instance that we just had an awesome 10 minute discussion on. We asked about sloppy people. Like sloppy people. Like sloppy people. A dog and our very thorough 17, just different examples of what could do it does like it. And most people don't have to deal with it's that rarity. But there are instances that this stuff happens and that's the art. And if you've never been put in that position, you're going to go, I don't know what to do. And maybe you heard this and go, I have a little tool in the tool about to try it. It's an art, not a science. It's a feel. It's a body language thing. It's your body language. It's your energy. It's their energy. It's manipulating us. I feel like we're very manipulative in how we train. We can manipulate them by upping our voice and talking in a higher pitch voice. It can be. Not really mad, but I can sound mad and all of a sudden I get that change. Hey, the dog and my voice changes again. How do you blow the whistle? Yep. All of these things are just tweaking and shaping and molding and all of a sudden that dog starts doing the things you want. And like I said, it's trusting the process that it doesn't have to look perfect today. But what does it look like a month from now, a little bit better, and then three months from now. And what do you want to look like when it's five years from now? These are what we're building towards. So anything you'd like to touch on or add or no, I think we've done a good job covering a lot of things here tonight. I think it's been fun. It's been really fun. It was fun having you in person, my friend. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for spending time with me and Kevin and Kevin's family down there. And thanks for sharing your knowledge and insight to the people who listened to this podcast. I think you're going on two years of our most downloaded episodes. My buddy, you're the most popular podcast. People love them. Yeah. You have to feel good about that, bud. So thank you for being a part of our community and the people who listened to us. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to spend time with you guys. Absolutely. And everyone who tunes in sincere from Kevin and Kevin and myself, thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of all this. And we'll see you in the next episode. 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 with pointing dogs. You're looking for all the stuff you need to build your horse fetch cable. If you have roading harnesses and you want new stuff for that, tie outs and chain gangs, check them out at cable gangs on Instagram, boom. Hey, join our community. If you enjoy the show, if you enjoy our YouTube, if you enjoy Instagram, it's like buy and mean Kevin a beer. Join patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters, the link is in the description. Click that link, join the community. We've got tons of great videos, tons of great content and you can ask me more questions. So join it, enjoy it. We did it for you and you're helping us produce a show. So thank you so much to that community, get in, get out, let's roll patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters. Hey listeners, Nick Larson here, host of the Bird Shop Podcast. 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