Obedience & Gundog Training

Obedience Training

We provide full-time general obedience training for select retrievers and flushers. Our goal is to create a calm, reliable companion both at home and out on a run.

What We Train:

• Food & kennel discipline
• Door manners
• Sit command
• Place command
• Kennel command
• Walking politely on lead
• Human and dog socialization
• Most important: recommendations for you to ensure training does not revert

Note: we do not work with aggressive dogs. Our socialization work is preventative, not corrective. 

Full-Time Training Format:

• Training six days a week, Monday through Saturday
• Sunday pickup and dropoff
  

Payment: $1,900/mo

• Deposit: Half of your first month’s payment locks in your start date
• Remainder due at drop-off
• Subsequent months due at the start of each 4-week cycle

Gundog Training

Gundog training with us begins with a conversation. We’ll help determine the best program for your goals — whether that’s a dependable hunting dog or a Hunt Test competitor. We look forward to hearing from you to discuss your retriever or flusher in depth!

What We Train:

Every gundog completes the obedience work laid out above alongside table work (hold conditioning, force fetch) before moving into the field portion. While hunt tests provide a schema to grade young dogs, we shift some of the requirements a bit earlier in a dog's life than they do. For example, a dog is not required to be steady at all in a started hunt test (retrieving or flushing). While a young dog that completes our started retriever program won't be perfectly steady (fully steadying a young dog too early can lead to confidence issues), a started dog that leaves us will be steady for the vast majority of single marks as we would not want to hunt with a dog of any level who is not controllable. Thus, our definitions are as follows:

For Retrievers	For Flushers
Started Single retrieves (marks) out to 100 yards in land and water Returns all fowl to hand Experienced with lots of gunfire Experience riding in a Polaris, running out a blind, etc. Mostly steady	Junior Roughly quarter the field Confident being shot over and moves immediately to the fall Returns all fowl close to hand Experience riding in a Polaris, running out a blind, etc. Not steady
Seasoned (in addition to Started) Double marks out to 100 yards in land and water Short blind retrieves in land and water General proficiency with 3-handed casting (left, right, back) Very steady	Senior (in addition to Junior) Tighter quartering on the turn whistle with guiding hand signals Short blind retrieves in land and water Decent proficiency with 3-handed casting (left, right, back) Beginning steadiness after the flush
Finished (in addition to Seasoned) Triple marks or more out past 100 yards in land and water Advanced lining/de-cheating Proficiency with 5-handed casting (left, back left, back, back right, right) Extremely steady	Master (in addition to Senior) Tight quartering, hunts the field with vigor through scent and sight Blind retrieves in land and water out to 100 yards Proficiency with 3-handed casting Steady to send (through flush and shot)

A Note On Collar Usage:

• The dreaded e-collar sparks massive debate. We do use an e-collar here at our kennel, but not with every dog. Many trainers have e-collar usage as fundamental to their training programs, but the error in that thinking is that every dog coming through must then adhere to the standard American program.
• British Labradors (those actually in the UK, not just the imports to the US) are trained 100% without a collar. Have they really just not discovered the e-collar yet? Of course not. The answer is that the dogs they have selected for breeding generation after generation were trained without it. To insert the tool now would introduce a new variable that their breeding selection process is not yet tuned for. It would be possible, but it would not be an easy adoption, either for the handlers or for the dogs. We are not saying that an individual dog could or couldn't handle it, but that the entire pedigree that came before it has never seen it, so the century-old genetic profile of each dog was created without collar usage.
• On the other hand, collar usage in the US is ubiquitous. Many pedigrees here have collar usage on every dog as far back as you can see. What does this mean for the hard-charging American Labrador that you send to us? It means that because the decision to breed that litter was based on success of the parents (for whom training included collar usage), the skew is such that training a descendent of those dogs without a collar is likely to be extremely difficult. The genetic profile itself dictates that the puppy will be more unlikely to succeed unless the same tools are used in training. This and other training and behavioral items, literally by definition, are what creates breeding lines.
• All this to say, we allow the dog to dictate its need or lack thereof for collar usage. We need to understand the history of the line, as well as the dog's many characteristics (primarily biddability), to determine if a collar will be right for that dog. No dog trained by us is thrown into a one-size-fits-all program.

Full-Time Training Format:

• Training six days a week, Monday through Saturday
• Sunday pickup and dropoff
  

Payment: $1,900/mo

• Deposit: Half of your first month’s payment locks in your start date
• Remainder due at drop-off
• Subsequent months due at the start of each 4-week cycle

Requirements (Obedience & Gundog)

Should your dog not meet the requirements above, please feel free to inquire about our assisted-DIY program through a membership at The Gundog Club. The link is below.