00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Foundations podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I have on Jordan Horrock, who's one of the best dog trainers out there, and we're going to discuss why you shouldn't underestimate puppies, even though an awful lot of us do. This episode of Houndations is brought to you by Shields, which is the place to go if you need new dog training gear, leashes, bompers, crates, e callers, and just about anything and everything you need to have a better life with your sporting dog can be found in any one of their stores, and if you don't have one close, don't worry. You can check them out at shiels dot com. It's the dog days of May here at Meat Eater, and we've finally gone above Steve Vanella's head, who, by the way, is a huge cat person. Anyway, we've decided that it's time to celebrate our love of dogs, and this is going to be a fun one because now we're doing some full length interviews here in honor of that love of dogs, and I get to talk to my really good friend Jordan Horrock, who's just such an interesting trainer. He has a really soft style and it just works with a lot of dogs. He figures out how to get them to work for him. 00:01:20 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:01:20 Speaker 1: He's also got some serious accomplishments behind him, you know, national field trials. He owns two dog companies. One that you maybe have heard of is Cato Outdoors, which makes a really cool place board. He's just one of the best at explaining, you know, why he trains the way he does. He's also really good at getting puppies started the right way, and that is the bulk of what we're going to talk about in this episode. Jordan Horrock, it is a pleasure to see your smiling face and to UH to get you on this podcast. We are starting to do full length interviews and you are the first guest I reached out to UH to talk to about dogs because you're one of the most knowledgeable and interesting dog trainers out there. So thanks for coming on, buddy. 00:02:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, Tony, it's it's my pleasure. I'm excited to do this. 00:02:16 Speaker 1: So you and I, you and I go aways back. We met. We met down in Saint Louis for a Peeriana event a while back, and I watched you put on a demonstration with a springer. Then and it was an interesting thing to see sort of how you handle dogs, and we're going to get into this and how you approach dogs and your demeanor and everything. I really want to talk to you about that. But I remember thinking, this guy's vibe is different from a lot of a lot of the trainers that I had had exposure to. And there were all of these I don't remember how many people were there, probably two dozen or more at one point, and there were all these like rumblings in these whisperings about this you know, field National Field Trial Championship that you had just won, and how you had really sort of taken like the spaniel world by storm. And to me, you know, I didn't know anything about that. I was just watching you train. I was like, man, this guy's style is pretty cool, But can you give the listeners just like a little rundown on your history and how you got to be where you are as a pro trainer today. 00:03:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, So I think I took a different approach than a lot of people. I kind of lived in the trenches for probably almost a decade where I was just doing my own thing, reading books, watching videos every once in a while, and might get a little bit of help from somebody, but for the most part, I was just kind of doing my own thing. And I think that's probably resulted in me having a different approach than most people because I'm not really trying to copy anybody. And I also spent a long long time not caring what anybody thought. Like I didn't have a social media presence, I wasn't doing podcasts, like. It was just me and my dogs and me trying to figure out, like how to win a Nationals. And really that was what I was trying to do, like, and I told, like my wife knew, like that is the plan. I was trying to win a national. So for the first like five or six years, I didn't even run in trials. I just trained dogs, trying to figure out the game, trying to like figure out how to get the dogs to that level. And then twenty and fifteen, I actually fall of twenty fourteen, I started to run in trials and just in a couple of them. Twenty fifteen I placed third at the Nationals with the dog named Breeze, and then twenty and eighteen I won the Amateur Nationals with Breeze in the spring, and then in the fall I won the Open Nationals with a dog named Cato. After that, I started Cato Outdoors with the dog training platform. Some of your listeners may be familiar with those I still today own. I think we have like nine dogs here. We bring in like one or two at a time for training. My daughter helps me with those. Actually she does the majority of the training with them. I more help her and then so it's kind of gone back to almost being a hobby because Kate Outdoors with the platforms has taken so much time. But we we do one or two litters a year. We trained a couple of dogs that aren't ours, and then we spend a lot of time with our own dogs. So that's kind of and you know my approach as we get into this podcast, hopefully you can pull some of it out of me, but I try to take more of a I guess like a relationship based approach to dog trading. So instead of like X Y ZB, like we follow this process and you know, just check all the boxes, it's more of an individualized approach to each dog and more trying to figure out what makes them tick and like how can how can I develop them into what I want so that it looks different for every dog, but I would say like the over overarching principles stay the same, like connect with the dog, figure out what makes them tick, and then you know, work that into a final product. 00:05:54 Speaker 1: So you I mean, if you were to go out there right now and you know, just just contact pro trainers, you know, do a little Google search whatever in your area, I don't know what percentage of trainers you would contact who started with somebody else, went out and did their own thing and so so basically kind of studied under somebody who has established got enough experience until they felt like they could go do their thing and split out. I mean, that's like a very common trope in the dog training world, is right like you know you train, you know, I mean, it just it just is. But you didn't, you didn't go that route. And there's a really important distinction there, I think, and a lot of people will look at, you know, some of the trainers with a really good name behind a really good reputation, and there's almost like a formula for all dogs right if there, if they're a lab trainer or corner trainer whatever, where they're like, you know, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do that, and it's like a lot of people who will never get their hands on hundreds of dogs will look at that and go, I don't I don't really know how to follow that that program, and you know, it's not a style that's like you can absorb easily, and so they drop their dog off, it gets trained a certain way, it comes back. They don't, you know, follow all the same rules, there's some attrition whatever, Like it's kind of a it's a story that happens a lot. But your style is connect with the individual dog and develop that dog how it needs to be developed. 00:07:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, so, I don't. Actually people ask me like do you have like have you written a book on this, or like do you have documentation? And it kind of sinks, to be honest, because I can't. Really I really don't feel like I can write a book on it because every dog is so different. Like I don't like each session. I go into it with a little bit of a game plan on what I want to accomplish, but almost every session ends up taking a different turn at some point. And I would say, of the I think it kept track, but I would imagine I've trained one hundred and fifty to maybe two hundred dogs at this point, and I can honestly say, like, well, there's a bunch of overlap, Like, for sure, I'll do the same drills with a lot of dogs, but every single one of those dogs has taken a little bit of a different path to get to a finished product because they're all developing at different speeds. They all have different strengths, different weaknesses. I always like to I feel like my clients with people that I talk to, can most relate like when I connect it to humans. So when I relate or connect dog training to humans. I have four kids, and each one of them is very, very different. So if I were to pick up one book and on parenting or maybe on sports development with kids, there's no way that there's any one book out there that can address all four of my kids, because all four kids are so different from each other. Even though they're all siblings, they're still very, very different. I think dogs are the exact same way. And when we try to almost objectify them and say like almost like turn them into a robot, right, like, well, here's the process. First you do this, then you do this, then you do this. I think a lot of those systems. They have merit for sure, and there's some been some incredible dogs that have been trained through systems. So this isn't like this is I'm just contrasting. I'm not saying anybody anybody else is doing it. There's many ways to get to the end. My approach, though, is every dog is different and they all need something different at different times. So as a dog trainer, I feel like my responsibility is to be constantly problem solving and reading the dog and coming up with game plans on the fly in order to move the needle in the direction I want to go. 00:09:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, well, when when you talk about uh, you know, somebody who you know kind of offers up a formula right there there, there is merit to that, right, Here's how you social now, here's how you get the dog to you know, place or whatever your goal is. But there's also all these sort of intangibles like confidence and the dogs drive and how it's feeling that day, and you know whether it can work for you know, ten minutes or an hour. I mean, there's so much to the individual and I think that a lot of times. I mean, when you say that, it reminds me of my entire writing career has been pretty heavy on how to stuff, and I realize that you have to like tease out some kind of lesson in an article and just be like, here's how I hunt bucks in the cattails, because that's like that I have to narrow it down because otherwise, if you're like, how to kill mature bucks, it's like, well, in Pennsylvania or Florida or you know, North Dakota on public private how much time do you have, how much experience you start getting into it. And so what you're talking about is literally doing that work for yourself and going I have this kind of dog, and I'm learning about this dog as we train, and so yeah, there's some valuable lessons in that. You know, gunfire introduction system that this guy does, for sure, but my dogs a little more cagey or a little more of this or a little more of that, and so it has to be tweaked. And it's it's an important lesson for anyone listening to this who's not a professional trainer to go, Okay, like, there's there's something here that I can use for my dogs, because I'm in the same boat. 00:11:24 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So like if you were to go let's say you're having a problem with your computer. You can plug that like into Google Search. Like, hey, for some reason, you know, whatever is not happening, you plug it into Google. And computers are very repeatable, right, Like, they're all if it's a MAC, it's a mac. If it's if it's a PC, it's a PC. Like, but it's all very repeatable. With dogs, that's very different. So somebody asks me, like, hey, how should I introduce my dog to gunfire? Well, exactly what you said. Like, one dog, I think you could take them out to the firing range and blast over their head right from the start, and they're not going to care because that's their personality. Maybe it has a little bit to do with their environment, but largely that's their personality. The next dog, you know, here's a firecracker go off three blocks away, and it's gunshy for life because it's a completely different dog. So yeah, like, as we would, it would be so awesome if as dog owners we could just read a book and follow that process and have exactly what we wanted as a final result. But just like with parenting, there is no one book that if you read that book, you'll be the most amazing parent. There's also no one book that will tell you everything you need to know about dog training. I really think dog training is it's problem solving, it's thinking on your feet, it's reading the dog in front of you. And hopefully as we get into like puppy development here, which I think is the next kind of piece we talk about. I think puppy development and building a foundation where you're learning to communicate with that puppy as much as that puppy is learning to work with you. I think once once you have that foundation, it's amazing how it feeds into the more complex things with adult dogs. 00:13:08 Speaker 1: And that's what I want to talk to you about for sure, is I mean, there's a lot of stuff I want to get into, but I want to talk to you about puppies because you're running, or I shouldn't say running. You have a springer litter hanging out at your house currently, and you posted some stuff about you kind of built a little obstacle course for these puppies, and that is something that I really want to get into because I know you hear this. 00:13:32 Speaker 2: I hear this. 00:13:33 Speaker 1: People will get a puppy, you know that eight week old whatever comes home and you'll talk to them. They're out walking it whatever, getting a bunch attention, and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna start training it when it's three months or five months because it's not ready now. And I know that that's sort of an antiquated worldview on dogs, but it still exists. And even the people who are like, no, I'm gonna treat train from day one, I'm get that puppy to sit and start to stay and like start these little tiny lessons, they still often underestimate what puppies can do. And that I think your little Springer experiment was like a really kind of neat way to frame that up. 00:14:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll, yeah, let me get into that just a second before I do. I'm gonna I've thought about this a lot because like, puppies can do so many things. On the other hand, like so many puppies get burned out because they are taught too many things when they're young. So my theory or my philosophy on this is puppies have like incredible like resiliency and curiosity, like it's their formulative years or they're months when they're little, right, like just like a kid in the first ten years of their life is learning like more than they will probably in the rest of their life combined. I don't know that for sure, but I'm guessing that's probably true. The same thing for a puppy, Like the first handful of months in their life, they're probably going to learn more in that time than they do the rest of their life. So they have this they do have this huge capacity to learn at at the same time, no different than kids, they have a really short attention span. So I think that if we if we want to like just grind with that puppy where it's like you know we do we teach sit for a half hour a day, and we teach laid down, and and we do retrieves over and over and over again. I think if we're asking them to do unnatural things without a clear reward at the end, I think we can burn puppies out really really quickly. On the other hand, food is like food is this natural desire that every dog and every puppy has right like they're born with it and they'll have it for their entire life. So that's a great tool that we can use to give them longer lessons when they're when they're younger and I think we can do longer lessons when it's more like it's not even like a formal lesson, it's more just like a lifestyle thing. So so that obstacle course that you reference. I had seen some things kind of similar to this in the protection dog world with a lot of like malain laws and shepherds, and I thought it would be a cool thing to try with my spaniels. And I lay and in bed at night, we're having trouble shut and my brain down, like, oh, I should build I could build this thing. So I came up with this idea, a design in my head. My one of my sons who's sporteen, he's really good in the wood shop, and I love giving in projects out there. So I just took a sheet of paper and scratched out like a really rough draw and told him to go to town with it. And like a couple hours later, he's got the thing halfway built and we had and I'm gonna my so my Instagram for my dogs is Juggernaut gun Dogs, and I'm going to make sure to like bookmark or save that video so it'll be the first thing on there. Because it's a little bit buried, right now. But when people watch this or listen to this, it'd be great if they could go check that video out. But I have the this obstacle course where the puppies come in and they they go across this piece of steel that has some holes in it, and then they go through a real small maze. Then they go through up onto a platform. Then they go through a bucket that has the bottom cut out of it, so it's like a tunnel. Then I have a broom that's upside down with bristles sticking up, so they've got to run through the bristles. Then there's a platform that swings, and then there's some rods they have to go through, and then some soda bottles hanging from the top, and then they jump over a little bit of a wall, and then they're at the end and there's the food. And so we built this thing. Obviously, it was way too long for a six week old or seven week old puppy, and I think we started it when they were like roughly six weeks old. And it was really cool, Tony, because we put them in at the very end and we had it backwards, so all they had to do is like go around one wall which was the maze. We have the maze like consolidated or reduced down to one wall. All they had to do is go through, like around one corner and they would have been at their food. So we set the puppies in and they started crying, like frustrated. They're like jumping up on the wall and like they had no they had absolutely no clue what to do, and all they had to do was just go around the corner and there was the food. They couldn't figure it out. And honestly, it was like a little bit tempting to help them out, you know, to go in there and like, hey, look, you know you just have to go this way. And I had the kids out there with me, and they were tempted, i think two to intervene. But we just stood there and watched. We didn't make a big deal about it. We didn't tell they were good puppies, and we didn't add any commotion or noise or anything. We just let them figure it out. And pretty soon one of them like went through backwards, like literally his butt went around the corner first, and then he was like, hey, what's going He turns around and like, oh, there's the food. Starts eating, and then here comes another one, and then pretty soon there was nine puppies originally in that litter, and I still have six of them here, but there were nine at that time. Pretty soon all nine of them come around the corner and they're chowing down on the food. And it was it was such a little thing, like if you were watching it, you're like, well, that was dumb, Like they just went around a corner. Right next speeding time, we did it again, and every single one of them, without without hesitation, we set them in there. They ran around the corner and started eating. So then we added another obstacle. I think they had to climb over the wall, which was a really low wall, and I was trying to be really aware of their joints. You know, with a little puppy mentally, they might want to do a lot more than what their body can can withstand. So those joints are really soft and forming. So everything in the obstacle course is designed to be really really low impact and not much elevation change because I don't really want them jumping down or jumping up on top of anything too much. So there's just a low wall at the end. We put that in there. It was funny. Some of them like actually just like ran into the wall, like just it's like a it's like a little newborn bird coming out of the nests, you know, like they have no no clue what their capacity is. And pretty soon they figured out like, oh, I can kind of climb over this wall. And we just every feeding time we would add roughly one more obstacle within that obstacle course, and they it was amazing because they took it all astride. Like I would put something in there, like the bucket. We cut the end out of this bucket, and I'm like, oh, that's going to throw some of them for a loop, right, Like that's a little bit of a scary thing to shoot, you know, to climb through this slippery bucket. And they didn't even hesitate. They just shot right through that thing. So by the end, we could set them down at the start of it and they would immediately run through that obstacle course because they knew there was food at the other end. We started putting the food at the other end while the puppies were running around, and the food was enclosed in a pen so they couldn't cheat and just go right to the food, and we started calling them back to the start of the obstacle course, so they had to go away from the food, like they had to listen to us, come away from the food twenty four feet because that's how long it is, and then go through the obstacle course and get the food. And at the start when we did that, a lot of those actually almost all those puppies were like they couldn't understand it, Like the food was right in front of their face, just on the other side of the fence, and they were just consumed with trying to get the food right there. So we didn't maybe have to pick them up and carry them to the end and then set them down and maybe one would follow along. But after like four or five sessions of that, we could put the food at the end and almost every one of those puppies would take off running on their own to go to the start, like we wouldn't even have to call them anymore. So we really like we talked. They learned some really complex behaviors there, like they learned to go away from a reward in order to get that reward, which is later on in training, Like that's a really big concept for a dog, like Okay, that's what I want, but the fastest way to get that is to go do a job first, so that that was a really big concept for them. They also like the fearlessness of going through that course is it was really really cool to see how like even there's like one or two puppies in that litter that were just a little bit more reserved, especially at the start, and after like a week or two of that, they were all the same. Like the ones that were more reserved, their confidence level was so high. The ones that had a lot of confidence initially, they it didn't it didn't deter them at all, Like I think it just built their confidence. So it's those puppies now are eleven weeks old. They'll be a little bit older by the time you release this audio, I think, but at eleven weeks it's funny. Yesterday I had a friend over and he hadn't been over since we had this litter. He had seen the video and he wanted to see them go through the obstacle course, which we stopped using the obstacle when they were about nine weeks old because they were they're starting to look for alternative ways to get through, like they were getting more creative, like maybe we can go over this instead of under, And I didn't want them to hurt themselves, but for the sake of entertainment, I we did this for my buddy yesterday, and it was like Kama Kazi's running through this thing, like instead of trying to go through the maze, like some of them were like going over the top of it, and they're trying to go over the bucket instead of through it. And so I'm like, Okay, well, we won't do that again because I don't want anybody to get hurt. But it was also cool to see how that lesson stuck. Like Springers, in my experience, are a little bit more reserved than a cocker would be. And these these puppies, like both parents are successful field trialbogs, and it's it is a nice breeding, but they're also i'd say just a little bit more cautious by nature, and these puppies like they're they're fearless, like they're slightly reckless, definitely fearless. So it's it's been a cool experiment. 00:24:03 Speaker 1: So there's like there's a whole bunch to unpack there. Uh. 00:24:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:24:08 Speaker 1: The first thing that I want to ask you about is did you see so you you started, you said you started from the end and tacked on obstacles once they figured it out because they have to learn that that reward is their first and so correct. Did you see them solving problems quicker once? You know, once they go around the first wall and they're like, okay, now the reward's here, and they started to sort of put the game together as you added like subsequent obstacles. Did they figure them out quicker? Like did you? Could you see it for sure? 00:24:37 Speaker 2: Yes? For sure? Like at the end, I was like, I don't even know what else to do because nothing bothers them anymore. Like yes, So once they've figured out the concept of like pushing through adversity to get a reward, it was like every time I added another piece to that, to that agility course or obstacle course, they were like, oh, yeah, we know what this is. Is like we just have to figure this thing out and then we get food at the end. 00:25:04 Speaker 1: So you you condition them to problem solve at six seven weeks old, saw it in real time where they were developing confidence around those problem solving skills and the other thing with that, you know, I mean the main lesson. I always think about this when you when you talked earlier about you know, people kind of like overtraining or asking too much of puppies when they you know, they're they're primed to learn, you know, in those formative weeks, months, whatever, But you can ask too much of them and overwhelm them. What I thought about there was, you know that, like, that's undoubtedly true, right like people, people ask too much of them. But at the same time, those puppies are learning a ton, whether you're teaching them or not, So they're learning the bad behaviors or they're learning how to problem solve and good behaviors like that. That learning is happening either way. But the way that dogs learn and with the way we train them, that obstacle course is like a perfect thing because you took the easiest part first, connected it to the reward, so you made it positive and said here's here at first is all you have to do for this reward. You figure that out, you get that reward that you want. So you're working dog, you're working for your reward. Here you go and then you tack on, now you daisy chain the next thing, and they go, okay, well I want that reward and I like working for it. So here I go and on down the line. And I always think about, you know, if you have a you know, like I have labs right now, I want them super steady, right, And so they have to learn to sit before anything, and then they have to learn to heal, they have to learn to stay, they have to learn to wait for you and be patient for that reward. But all of those behaviors start with that simple sit command that you start right away treat training on their pups, and you daisy chain on these extra things. And so what looks like a really nice, you know, controlled retrieving drill is a just a series of behaviors that you've asked of them, that you've connected to that reward and just made it progressively a little more complex. 00:27:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think like semantics or semantics, but if we could think about puppies as more like conditioning behaviors as opposed to training, I think we would be a lot better off. So if we can condition, then like, hey, when you do this, you get this, Okay, that's easy enough, right, Like simple concept. There's something in it for me. I always think back to when I brought home my first cocker I had. I had a lab when I was younger, but she was here. He was just like a rough, shooting dog, poorly trained, so I kind of skip over him my first spaniel, which would have been two thousand, like seven or two thousand and eight that I brought her home. I brought her home thinking I need to train this dog and make her great, and I started training, like right from the start, like you need to do this, and you need to do that, Like if you're going to be a great dog, you have to know this, you have to know that. So I started, I started training her rather than just trying to condition the behaviors that I want. So with that obstacle course, we didn't train them anything, like we didn't show them, We didn't show them anything. They figured it out on their own, but they they got the reward at the end, which was their meal. So we conditioned the behavior without making them do anything right, Like a lot of times when we teach a dog to sit, we'll make it sit and then we try to reward it. But if we could just condition that, hey, when you sit, you get a reward, I think we get a much better response. So like that obstacle course, it's kind of funny. I wish I had video of it. Like we had to board the ends up to it, because if we took the puppies out just to play with them, they would go over and like just crash the obstacle course on their own, like they would run through it. You'd see them looking out the top like they thought, well, maybe if I run through this thing, like the pot of gold will magically appear at the end. Right, they're offering the behavior. Literally, we would have like something blocking the end and they would like knock it over or push it to the side because they wanted it to the obstacle course so badly, not because I don't think, because they love the obstacle course, but because they love the food that they thought the obstacle course created. So it was a conditioned condition simply by feeding them breakfast at the end, not trained. 00:29:25 Speaker 1: Right, So I guess, I guess I need you to clarify something. Then I'm trying to like work this out in my brain because let's say, let's use like jumping up on like you take a puppy, I don't know, ten week old puppy, twelve weeks old puppy, and it starts jumping up on people for attention, and our natural reaction is that happens, and we want to correct them and take that away from them. But conditioning a dog to walk up and sit and wait for somebody to come to their level is a positive thing. And so a lot of the ways that we look at this, it's sort of the difference between a positive and a negative interaction, right Or you're trying to make that so that dog gives you a positive behavior and gets its reward instead of does this thing that's going to be a negative and you and you would train that dog maybe to not jump up on people by correcting it, or you could train that dog to offer you a positive behavior and it gets the reward of somebody coming down to its level. Is that super confusing? 00:30:25 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Well, so if you think about jumping, like, jumping on somebody is something the dog wants to do on its own, right, Like, you don't have to encourage it, especially if it's a cocker. They are the absolute worst. But they like, that's a behavior we want them to stop doing, not a behavior that we want them to do. Sitting would be a behavior that we want them to do, not something we want them to stop doing right, So if if you were to use a negative for jumping, like okay, if it causes them to stop jumping, great, But like retrieving and sit like these are all like unnatural behaviors that we're trying to get them to do, not to stop, but to get to do. So if we try to put a bunch of pressure and like formal training on that, we can burn them out from it really really quickly. Like retrieving is it's the low hanging fruit. Like there are a bunch of really really well bred hunting dogs that frankly do not like to retrieve the majority of the time. I think that's because owners brought them home as little puppies and just started chucking stuff for him. And eventually that puppy was like, you know what, Like retrieving kind of sucks, Like it never ends, you keep throwing stuff for me. It's no different than youth sports. Like there's a lot of kids out there that the parents are like, oh, he's eight years old and he loves it. Like he loves it, you know, he wants to go to all these practices and he loves that. I'm driving him halfway across the country to play a soccer game or a baseball game. He loves it. He loves it, and then one day they're like, yeah, I don't know what happened to Johnny, but like he just doesn't love baseball anymore, Like, well, yeah, because it was the like it was something he was enjoying, and then you just did so much of it that it just became like one day he woke up and his eyes opened and was like, I don't really like doing this. I think retrieving for a puppy can be the same way. Like, for sure, some of them will survive, Like there's some of them that will just never grow tired of retrieving. But there's a bunch of them that if you do it too much, they eventually open their eyes and say, every time I bring this back, you just chuck it for me again. You know, I'm just gonna stop that, like the love is gone. And I also think that translates like into sitting. You see people that are just constantly sit, sit, sit, sit, And I think eventually the dogs like, you know what, you tell me to sit all the time, there's nothing in it for me, Like I don't get rewarded for it half the time you told me to sit, and then you forget you told me to sit, you walk away, and I just self release, and like it becomes so mundane and repetitive that the puppy, just like you start seeing like a begrudging sit right like they're oh, you tell them to sit, and they like slowly put their butt down because there's no there's no like drive or desire to do something quickly. It's more just like, yeah, I'll do it because I have to. And and frankly like I hate that, Like I want a puppy and an adult dog that's like like totally in tune with me, making eye contact and is like asking what's next, what's next? Like what what do you want to do next? What do you want to do next? Because that's the type of just like with youth sports, the kid that's hungry to learn, he may not be the best athlete, but if he's hungry to learn, he's gonna learn much more quickly than the kid that maybe knows everything and is a good athlete, but he's apathetic. So I want the puppy that has desire and like heart and wants to please way more than I want the puppy that knows everything but doesn't give a rip. And I believe in many cases how we develop them as puppies results in either having that apathetic or that that eager adult dog. So condition more than training. 00:34:17 Speaker 1: I could not agree with you more. In fact, I wish my wife was listening to this uh with youth sports analogy there, because that shit is bananas around here? 00:34:26 Speaker 2: Yes, the same here. 00:34:27 Speaker 1: Oh my god, dude, crazy Uh. I think I think there's a really good point that the retrieving, like overdoing the retrieves that you talked about. I think the easiest way to make that relatable to people, because you're so right, is like, what what is just absolute punishment for us as humans? It's generally doing the same thing over and over over addition, no variation, no mystery, no challenge. Like I when I was in college, I worked at IBM down in Rochester, uh, polishing discs for computers. That was hard me and my buddies. It was a great job to pay for school, but it was like you want to put rocks in your pockets and wade into the river and end it all, man was You'd load up these things, put them in this machine, run it for like fifteen minutes, pull them out and you'd test every like fifth batch or whatever, and it was the same thing for twelve hours a day, pure torture. And so when you talk about retrieves and you think, oh, that's a that's a dog, that is a retriever, that's all it wants to do, it's like when you start that dog on that path right away and it's we're going to the yard and we're going to throw the pumper the same way every time, over and over. And then you start to notice they start to drift off and sniff stuff and they don't want to bring it back right away. They're getting bored, like they've had too much of the same thing. You know, you need a new environment. You need to dial it back. You know, Docin talks about that a lot, like always keep them wanting more. And if that's a puppy and two retrieves is awesome and three would be a little bit too much, Like you got to stop that too, and you have to have to learn your individual dog that way. And I always think about that, like, you know, people people will say to me all the time, you have my dream job, because they think I just hunt and fish all the time for my job. But I'm like, I have burned myself and I love to hunt fish, but I have burned myself right to the ground in both categories a million times by just having to go too much for my job. And I know that's like a first problem and a dumb thing to bitch about. But when you've when you've done it, you go, okay, like I get this. And so you think about a dog that's super excited about something, you can you can put that dog in a bad place with that in a way that it might never shake that off the rest of its life. 00:36:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, So I always try to think about what am I trying to accomplish here in any session? Right, So if I'm going to throw a retrieve for a dog, why am I throwing that retrieve? Then I'll ask client. When I used to have more clients coming here, I would they would throw something for their dog, Like why did you throw that? Well, because I wanted him to retrieve it? Yeah, but like what were you what were you know? He retrieves? So like, what were you trying to accomplish with that retrieve? And most of the time, like most people can't give a good answer for it. So if you know the dog will retrieve, like, use it sparingly. You don't have to check it all the time, you know. We don't want to just have to go out and do a bunch of worthless to retrieves, Like use those retrieves to accomplish something. So if I'm going to throw a retrieve for an adult dog, it's gonna be for probably one of roughly three reasons. One of them would be because I want them to work on their marking. So it's going to be a really difficult retrieve, like lots of transitions or distance or maybe both of those things. So we're doing a complex retrieve to work on marketing. That would be one reason. Another would be as a reward. So because I built up that retrieve drive when they were young, I can use that retrieve as a reward when they're older. So like you gave me a behavior, Okay, here's a retrieve in order to mark or reward that behavior. And then the probably the third reason that I would do retrieves with an adult dog would just be if I was working on steadiness. So like maybe if I had a dog that was having breaking issues and well, yeah, we gotta throw some retrieves in order to focus on the breaking. If I was doing that, I wouldn't be combining. I would be focusing just on the breaking though, right I wouldn't be giving a long complex retrieve. If what I was actually working on was breaking, it would probably be a ten yard retrieve. So there's really little effort for the dog because we're not focusing on the retrieve. Again, we're just focusing on the steadiness. So my sessions with adult dogs, if retrieving is going to be a part of it, those would be my reasons for it. I'm not just going to go out in the yard and just start throwing retrieves for a dog. Going to be exceptions for that. It can be a good way to get some exercise. Usually the exercise is kind of a byproduct, though, while I'm working on something else. To me, just going out and throwing a bunch of retrieves just to get a dog in shape probably isn't the best way to do it. If I back that up, if I'm doing retrieves for a puppy, I'm not working on complexity at all. Like I want them to be successful every single time, so they're a puppy's not going to get a one hundred yard retrieve with three factors, and like it's just not going to happen, Like it's going to be a really easy retrieve in a hallway or in a room without any distractions. They're going to be able to see it. I'm not going to restrain them. I'm not going to ask them to be steady. I'm not gonna ask for a good delivery. All I'm trying to do with a puppy is build the retrieve drive so it's something that they really really want. So if I keep that in mind, that all I'm focusing on is getting a retrieve drive up, then it gives me a really clear picture, Like all I want to do is get that dog really really excited, make a couple of retrieves, get him excited again, and then put the dummy away because next time I bring it out, he's going to be more like hungry for it. Right. But if I if I give that puppy like you said, if I give him five retrieves or even three retrieves and at the end he runs out and sniffs it and then he picks his head up and looks around because he's looking for something else to do, Like I actually had a counterproductive training session at that point because instead of building drive, that shows me at the end there, I just took a tiny bit of desire away from that dog. So it was a bad session. So yeah, like I guess like making sure that we're thinking about what are we conditioning here? Like are we making the dog hate what they're doing? Are we just like reinforcing that we're a bit of a jerk and a hard ass and we're gonna make you do whatever we want? Or in that session, are we making that want it more? And are we making them like have heart and desire for it? And I think that's I mean, like when we think about our own lives, if we go to a job and we have somebody that just makes us do stuff and they're yelling at us all the time and like they're holding our feet to the fire and like making it miserable. Like man, like, yeah, we may do the job, but like we all know, like the desire isn't there and the drive isn't there, we're doing it out of obligation, and like obligation in that way, like it sucks, frankly, where on the flip side, if like we're doing something because we want to do it. Like maybe even if it's a job where we're paid like by commission or by effort, there's a lot more heart and desire and like we're gonna work harder and we're gonna want to do it more. And same for a dog, like if we can keep that desire and they know that, like you know, I want that so bad, and I know, like it's a little bit about them, like they know they're going to get a reward at the end, Like there's just there's more passionate to me, that's a lot more fun to train a dog like that, And it's it's honestly just a lot more fun to train period when it's there's there's more psychology and less just like do it my way. 00:42:10 Speaker 1: Less brute force, right, I mean, yeah, that's that's one of the things. You know, people ask me a lot, you know, why labs versus something else right now in my life, And I'm like, man if I get the right lab and and I manage that retrieving desire, I have a built in reward for almost everything we're going to do for that dog's entire life. So it actually not only does it make it more fun, I think just like to train them, but it also makes it just easier. And I know, don't We don't really talk about that a lot out in the dog space. You know, people kind of get married to a breathe. They fall in love with the wire hairs or the whatever, and they're like, that's my dog forever. And I look at it and I go, you know, you're not thinking about am like, how could of a trainer? I like, can I handle that breed or that specific bloodline or is it kind of got a little more horsepower than I can handle or is it going to be more challenging. And I'm like, man, I want a dog that's easy to train, because I'm not a professional trainer. And so if I have a dog that lives and breeds, retrieves, and I don't burn that out of them for the rest of their life, I can train around that whether you know, like you said, you're getting them a little exercise while you're doing it up at the lake and you're making them work on steadiness or whatever. That reward is just built in so that dog is going to show up and want to work as long as you don't push it too far. 00:43:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, and right, so retriever retrieve Great Spaniels saying thing like, I think most breeds, most of them have some desire to retrieve, and you can you can nurture that and like build that drive up. But if you have a dog that doesn't have retrieve drive, and maybe maybe it's an English pointer, like retrieving isn't ever going to be a part of that dog's life. I know some of them do retrieve, but maybe you have one that you that's like not really in the cards for that dog. That doesn't mean you still can't find something that makes that dog tick and use that right Like again, for a puppy, food makes pretty much every puppy tick. I mean, I know some have more food drive than others, but they all eat at some point. So that's one birds. You know, using birds as a paycheck like that can be for an adult dog, that can be a really really great tool. I don't like to use birds with young dogs because I feel like that's like Candora's box. Once you once you introduce birds to that puppy, it's really really hard to go back, And so I kind of wait till I have a foundation and have my other stuff done with that dog before I start introducing birds to them, which might be like eight, nine or ten months old. Some people introduce them a lot earlier. I get that, but again, I'm we just have to find like what makes that dog tick and what do they want to work for, and then let's use that to our advantage. So I'm gonna can I go back to like the little puppy stage real quick, because I think this is kind of cool. Okay, So we put all these sprayer puppies through this obstacle course. They learned that if they listened to us and came to the other end, then they could go through the course and the food was there. So they're like learning to show restraint and to listen to us a little bit, even though like their primitive desire for food was like on high at that point. So one of the puppies in that litter, we named him Scuffy, mostly because like he doesn't give a rip about anything, Like he's like the one that just Scuffy is like the perfect name for him. And my older son Brett, who built the obstacle course, he kind of like snuck this. It's a long story and I won't give it here, but he kind of snuck the puppy away from me and somehow, like somehow the puppy is it right now, I don't really even know how it happened, but so he's been working like in order to like plant his flag on that puppy. He's like doing all the work with it. Like I come inside and there's Scuffy hanging out with him, like it's Scuffy, Scuffy, Scuffy, and he's totally making it so like I have no recourse to get Scuffy from him, and I get it, like it's you're keeping this. Hey. It's one hundred percent manipulative on his part, and I'm a little proud that he's so good at it. But so he's so kato outdoors. The cato boards, the platform that I make and sell, we obviously use those a lot for training. So he started going out into the dog room and training Scuffy with a cato board and the way that I do it, and he's he's doing what I told him, Like he just stands in front of the cato board, no commands, has a piece of kibble, not even like a special tree, just like piece of Brina dog food in his hand. And when Scuffy would stand or like when he would just touch the platform, Brett would give him a piece of kibble, no command, just just marking the behavior right. And within like two session and Scuffy was jumping on the platform and Brett would give him a piece of kibble. Hadn't used the command, just had condition to behavior, and then he started waiting till Scuffy put his butt down and then he would give him a piece of kibble, and he did. I think he did four sessions like that, so no force, no verbal commands like one, just conditioning and behavior. When you do this, like here comes a mana from heaven, like here, here's your piece of kibble. Right. I was out in the dog room with a friend and I had a catero board. I think probably Brett had left a cato board in the middle of the floor, and I let all the puppies out, and we had all nine of them here at the time because they were this was still they were like nine weeks old at the time. And I was talking to my buddy and I turned around and looked, and there's Scuffy in the middle of the floor, sitting on the cato board, just staring at me, and all all eight of the other puppies are milling around and sniffing and because none of them had been none of them had gone through this process yet. But Scuffy was I wish, like I don't have a video out there, but Scuffy is just sitting there, chest out as proud as can be, just staring at me like I'm doing it. I'm doing it, like when's the treat come? When's the treat come? And I contrast that to my early dogs, where I'm like forcing them to sit, and I'm you know, pushing their butt down and sit, sit, sit, pushing the butt down, and they're fighting against me, and eventually they do it like just like not a fun process and frankly, not a good product at the end of that process. And then I can compare that to Scuffy who's trained by a fourteen year old kid who's like doesn't really know what he's doing, but he kind of knows the basics. And now here's a puppy that's like eagerly offering the behavior on his own and not just offering the behavior, but he's offering it while there's eight puppies screwing around around him, which is like a huge distraction. And it's also a great contrast to show that like, yeah, he's not doing it naturally, because the natural thing to do would be to screw around with those other eight puppies, right, Like, those eight puppies are showing like this is like just natural behavior. Scuffy with four sessions is showing like a conditioned behavior and he's doing it of his own accord without any verbal command or physical correction or anything like that. And that to me, like, that's the seed right there that will make Scuffy a great dog someday and will make him really really fun to train, because Scuffy has learned if I offer a behavior, I can get what I want. And I think that's a great thing. Like if Scuffy learns to offer what I want in order to get what he wants, Like, isn't that like that's a good relationship, I think, And I can use that to my advantage for the life of that dog. 00:49:55 Speaker 1: Well, there's there's a lot there, and it so your your son hit that he's hitting the window of where treat training with puppies is really effective because that's the that's the reward that matters to them the most. You know, later you'll transition him to praise and some other stuff, and it you know, you're not going to be carrying around a handful of kibble forever to train that dog. But in that moment when they're young like that, and that's you know, you hear, you hear differing opinions on treat training, but there's like sort of a general consensus that young puppies eight weeks to you know, I don't know what age you'd get, you know, I'm talking about when people get them home. Yeah, it's it is just the move to do. And you think about so that placeboard training, So you're cato boards for people who don't know they're a placeboard. They're an elevated platform, a nice surface on it that's not slippery. What are they about? Four inches tall? 00:50:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, three and a half inches three and a. 00:50:49 Speaker 1: Half inches tall, So they are I always say that a placeboard is like it's it's like debt or pregnant. You're either on or not. You either are you aren't. So a dog on that on those placeboards, they're either fully on it and they've placed themselves or not. You know, if you use a dog better or something like that, they'll start to cheat off it and lay on the floor and keep a toe on it or whatever. But a good placeboard doesn't allow them to do that. And that's that's what you're talking about here, and those placeboards when they learn that as puppies, and he's you know, that pup's offering up that behavior for that reward on there, and he's learned that that is the place that he gets his reward and a lot of the good stuff originates around him being on there. That's going to you know, feed into like hand signal training later because you can send him to the placeboard or two place boards. Steadiness. It's a huge deal. So if you're working a duck dog or you want a dog in the house that doesn't run to everybody who shows up at the front door, and all of that you're talking about in four sessions by your teenage son with very you know, no heavy handedness, just just a little bit of like a reward for doing the right thing or the thing that he wants is going to set the stage for behaviors through training much later in life that would be harder to train later without that foundation, for sure. And it's just a simple, relatively simple thing that's going to feed positively throughout that dog's life. In ways, it's just like a general dog behavior in the house, but also for training and the ability to ask more out of that dog later. 00:52:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. It's just a tool, but it is a tool that makes life way way easier. Like thinking about Scuffy, thinking about my early dogs. I taught them all to sit in front of me. This is before I use place boards, way before cato boards. I teach them to sit in front of me. And when I asked them to sit at a distance, like, they couldn't do it. It was too much pressure, like they wanted to come in by my feet and then sit down, and it took. Like that dog Breeze that I won the Amateur Nationals with, I remember having some very tough sessions with her when she was about a year old, because I was trying to get her to sit twenty yards or thirty yards in front of me, and she wanted to just kind of come slinking back in and sit at my feet, and it took way too much work in creativity to fix that issue. Now I think about Scuffy at nine weeks old, he's going ten feet away from me and sitting already, And you're one hundred percent right, we'll be able to use that to teach him to sit at fifty yards and teach him to sit when he flushes a bird, or if he's going to be a duck dog, like hey, it's okay to sit in a blind ten yards away from me, or direction like we'll use it to teach directional stuff for blinds or even quartering through a field. But all of it is because he wants to go to it, because we've conditioned that behavior, like he knows it's a positive thing. The treats I used to be in the camp that like, hey, this is supposed to be a badass hunting dog. I don't really understand how giving it a treat like those things seeing like at odds with each other, like treats and a badass hunting dog. No, No, treats are for like lap dogs. I've changed on that drastically because I found with treats, I can do much longer sessions and I can ask for more repetition because the dog has way more dry I'm never gonna burn it out from treats, you know, especially if I'm using their meal for that. So I can I can do much longer sessions and I'm teaching them the concept of a behavior for a reward. Today, the reward is a piece of kibble. As they get older, you know, we start saying good at the same time we give them the kibble. Some people will use a clicker for that. We can start to charge the word good, or we can charge the click on a clicker. So eventually, when I say good, they associate they they're subconsciously associating the word good with the taste of a piece of kibble, even though later on that piece of kibble isn't even there. And that's concept of the clicker as well. And then later even later on from that, the reward is going to become that piece of kibble. So, yeah, you did what I asked you to do fifty yards away, all right, I'm going to throw the tennis ball. The tennis ball is, you know, the big piece of kibble. You get to go make that retrieve and come in and I tell you you're a good dog. But the foundation of offering a behavior in order to get a reward like that's getting established at such a young age. And that concept, like if I get in a dog that's say a year and a half old, and they've only ever been made to do things, they don't necessarily naturally understand that they can offer a behavior in order to get something from me, and you have to teach them that. And as they get older that can be a harder and harder concept for them to learn. But if we can take that little puppy and like lay that foundation early on, like they never forget that, that goes with them for life. And I I think you've seen, like when you've spent time with me, like training dogs doesn't have to be a bunch of yelling and yanking on a leash and being frustrated and veins popping, and like it can actually be just like a relaxing, enjoyable thing to do, and the dog has to have a good foundation in order to do that. But like once you have it, it's fun. Like I'm a little bit on like this campaign, I guess, like get people to do like just go out and have fun with your dog, and like it doesn't have to be like this intimidating thing and you don't have to be a hard ass. It's gonna really like force the dog to do things, Like you guys can just kind of go out and learn together, like just control the paycheck, you know, make sure your timing is good and that you reward them when you see the behavior that you want. But like, as long as you control the paycheck, you don't have to get all worked up when you're training, Like it can just be a good, relaxing, enjoyable experience for you and the. 00:56:58 Speaker 1: Dog, right And that I mean when you when you talk about you know, treat training an eight week old puppy or however old they are, I mean there's two things going on there, right, Like you don't they don't care about praise yet really like they don't care about you in a way they will later. Uh. That's like the reward that you can give them essentially, And it's so important because you know, like I know Doc pushes this a lot too, where when you have that kibble in your hand and you take a puppy that you would generally say has no attention span whatsoever, you can get that puppy to focus on you by just letting them smell that kibble in your hand, in your fist, and it changes the entirety of that little training session. And it might be like a fifteen twenty thirty second deal, but now you have that dog's attention because you have what it wants, and so I always look at that and go, man, you know the coolest thing about you know, like hunting with a bird dog for me or having a bird dog is just that relationship when we figure it out. We're working together for birds, and I can walk into a cattail, sew or whatever, and that dog is going to lead me. Instead of me being like we walk this way, then we walk that way where I can just be like, okay, you work into the wind, we'll figure this out. I'm following you. And there's a teamwork aspect where they're checking back if they get too far out, or there's just like that relationship and the earlier that starts where it's not like I'm forcing you out of fear to do something, but you're offering me up something because you want to please me because it results in you getting a reward. When you established that early on, that team aspect comes into play in a way where you don't need to be nearly as heavy handed later because that dog's already conditioned to like, well, we're together in this and he has what I want, I have what he wants. Let's make this work. 00:58:48 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I don't know your story like early dogs as well if I don't mine, of course, well, like I can contrast it real easily with that first dog I had where I just tried to well, actually my lab and my first cocker, where I just tried to make them do it my way, and I had so many control issues with them in the field, and like they were unreliable. We still shot, like we killed lots of birds, no doubt, but it was always a little bit stressful. And if I lost sight of them, like they were probably gone at that point, they're gonna be way too far. Like they were, they would take advantage of me very very quickly. And when I contrast that with dogs today, like half the time now I'm doing things to get the dogs to run bigger as opposed to run smaller because they want they typically want to be a little bit closer to me, just because there's no there's no resentment, and I don't think they feel competition with me either, Like it feels like it's much and I mean feeling whatever that is, but like it feels like it's much more of a teamwork experience as opposed to that dog being a tool that I'm just using it as and as an object almost. 01:00:02 Speaker 1: Right, I mean I kind of see it. Uh, you know, I'm sure you've seen this. I'm sure people listening to this have have been through this a lot, maybe with their dogs or their buddies dogs. But you can see, you know, you take you take dogs out pheasant hunting, and you know, some of them are like, I'm going to get mine with or without you, Like they're just like they don't have that connection, and they're like that that is something I want so bad that I'm going to take it, regardless of how you're gonna light me up with an e caller or whatever, like I have to go do this mindless whatever. And then you have other dogs that are like I understand, like if you let them out of the truck and they're going nuts, but they're like, I'm waiting for him to walk in with me, and this whole thing happens together. And I just don't think I mean, that's that starts at as soon as you bring them home, puppy and with those puppies, and if you underestimate what those puppies are capable of and you don't work with them in that capacity right away, you're gonna miss those windows and that's going to just ripple through your relationship with that dog throughout its entire life, and probably not in a positive way. 01:01:07 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so look like I mean, if we boil it right down, you're bringing home an eight week old puppy. Look for behaviors you can condition, Like, don't get all obsessed with I've got to have a formal training session. Like no, it's like just look for me. So I'm gonna do Yes, I'm going to do placeboard training early on short sessions though I don't need to do this for twenty minutes a day. I need to do it like three times a week, for like two minutes at a time, Like just short. I can condition a behavior with them running into a crate just by taking a couple pieces of kibble and luring them to the front of the crate and tossing the kibble in. You know what, I'm That was a real simple thing, But I'm conditioning them to go into the crate because they're associating it with a good thing. I can, on the flip side of that, when I'm letting them out of the crate, I can make sure that I wait until they're not barking and carrying on and then I open the crate. Like a lot of people make these little mistakes early on because they think they'll fix it later. But if you have an eight week old puppy that's barking and it's create, and you go over and open up that crate because the puppy is barking or just because it's time to let the puppy out, you're conditioning a behavior. Like you are going to have a one year old dog that is barking and it's great because it wants out. So for me, like if an eight week old puppy is barking and it's great, I'm going to go stand there and I'm going to get that puppy to be quiet, even for twenty seconds, and then I'm going to open the crate because I'm conditioning behavior. So I think, don't underestimate what a puppy is learning. They're being conditioned all the time, and you can use that to your advantage. But on the flip side, don't get obsessed with a bunch of long sessions teaching formal things because you run you run a really higher risk of making them apathetic as they get older, and we don't want that like we want to dog that's eager and hungry to learn and has drive and desire by the time it grows up. 01:03:06 Speaker 1: I love it, buddy. I'm going to have you on here again. At some point. We're going to dive deep into place training and some other stuff and talking about some of the ways you work with adult dogs. Let everybody know where they can find your stuff out there. They can watch you on social wherever you're at out there. 01:03:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so I am on social now A decade later. Kto Outdoors KTO is felled c A t O so kto Outdoors. If you go on Instagram or Facebook or kto outdoors dot com, that's where, like any content content that's related to Placeport training most it's going on to the kto Outdoors stuff. Juggernaut gun Dogs, which that's a great word that never knew that people would actually maybe be looking it up someday. J U G G E r n A U t so Juggernaut gun Dogs. That's more like my hobby, so like photography maybe whatever, Like follow both of them because I do put content on both, but more training stuff is going to be on k too Outdoors, so that yeah, and if you want to like, get in touch with me. I am. It's me and one guy. So if you send a message through my social media, it's gonna come to me and I will do my best to help you. 01:04:22 Speaker 1: Awesome. I appreciate it. Brother, Thanks for coming on. 01:04:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Tony, have a good one. 01:04:29 Speaker 1: That's it for this show. We're still going to be celebrating dog Week all week. You can come back for more interviews here, more houndations, episodes of all styles. You can head over to the meeteater dot com check out a bunch of articles on dogs, or if you're sick of dogs you want to hear about something else. We put up new articles and new films all the time. If you want to, you know, live a little vicariously through us. Mark Kenyon just dropped a really interesting show on blacktails in Alaska. It's really cool to check out. All of that stuff is over at the medeater dot com. Go give it a listen, go give it a look, check it out, and as always, thank you so much for your support.