Build From Here
Build From Here
They Said His Dog Would Never Hunt… What Happened Next Is Incredible | Chad Duckworth
From the very beginning of Cornerstone, Chad Duckworth has been part of the CGA family. In this episode, Chad shares one of the most powerful DIY retriever journeys we’ve ever featured—starting with his first dog, Moose, who was once labeled “not cut out” for gun-dog work after a rough pro-training experience. But instead of giving up, Chad rolled up his sleeves, trusted the process, and trained Moose himself through CGA—turning that dog into a steady, reliable hunting partner who accompanied him on countless incredible days in the field.
Chad opens up about the highs, the heartbreak, and the unforgettable final hunt Moose made by his side. He then walks us through the new chapter with his pup, Winnie—a young, driven retriever whose journey has been built slowly, intentionally, and the right way. From foundational obedience to first hunts, swan retrieves, road trips, chapter meetups, and the lessons learned between dogs one and two… this episode is packed with wisdom for any handler who wants to build something special with their dog.
Whether you’re just starting out, rebuilding a dog, or navigating the roller coaster of training your first retriever, Chad’s story will remind you why the journey matters, why patience pays off, and why doing it yourself creates a bond unlike anything else.
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Welcome to the Build from Here podcast on this episode. I'm really excited to be introducing you to a longtime CDO member. I was looking back today, and uh Chad Duckworth has been with us since pretty much the beginning, November 7th, which I believe would have been the launch day in uh November back in the day uh from Founders Club Friends and Family. So way back in the day, and he's been with us since uh since then, and it's this is gonna be an amazing story. He's uh really, even when he first got into Cornerstone, his story turned out to be really amazing on how he was able to take his dog and turn it into something facing pretty big challenges. Uh, but you know, I haven't gone in depth on the rest of the story, so I'm excited to get to hear that for myself and share that with you. Uh, but it's always a great honor to bring people on, especially those that have believed in us from the very beginning. And if you you believed in us back in basically when it was day one. So uh that means so much to have you on here, Chad. And just welcome aboard, Chad. How are you?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, sir. Good to be with you. It's an honor, man. Honor to have an invite even so beautiful day here in Missouri and got to shoot some ducks today and now talk dogs with you. So it doesn't get much better.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's a pretty good day, man. And it's uh it's an honor to have you on here. And uh how'd you how'd your hunt go? What did y'all uh did you hunt a slough, river, what what kind of hunting did you do today?
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, we've got uh like a little local lake. So I don't know if you're familiar with how Missouri works. Most of its public lands, the WMAs, you have to draw in and uh had a late night at work last night and didn't feel like driving that far, so just hit up a little local spot and got lucky they were there.
SPEAKER_04:Wow. Yeah. You and your current pup, what's uh what's your current pup's name? Uh Winnie. Winnie? How did Winnie do any uh big retrieves, simple retrieves? Did you drop them in the decoys?
SPEAKER_01:Uh you know, most of them were pretty simple, so nothing too too difficult. One blind, but it was in the decoys about 40 yards, so not too bad.
SPEAKER_04:Nice. Well, I guess that's a veteran hunter for you. Just drop them right there, right in front of me.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome. Some would say I'm just too picky. I let them get too close and I probably waste a lot of good opportunities.
SPEAKER_04:So no, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, Chad, um, let's go way back. I want to let people know a little more about you kind of before we even dive into the dogs. I want to go back to maybe your hometown where you grew up, and then let's get into how you fell in love with hunting and and how that became a part of your life.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Yeah. So I'm Chad Duckworth from about an hour south of St. Louis, little town called Hillsboro, Missouri. Uh, growing up. Didn't really have uh, you know, a dad that hunted or anything like that, but my parents split when I was pretty young, and when my mom was working, we would go with my grandpa, and he took us trout fishing quite a bit. So that was really my introduction to the outdoors was fly fishing through Missouri and grew probably 13, 14, my older brother took me deer hunting for the first time, shot a doe, and I was hooked on deer hunting ever since then. So it was probably mid-20s before I even thought about duck hunting. Oh really? Wow. Yep, and my last dog, Moose, is actually what started that craze, so it's not a huge history on duck hunting, but it's a pretty big fire now.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I bet. And I love the the other history too, any outdoor stuff. I mean, we all get to share that. Um fly I, you know, I've been into fly fishing a l a little bit, haven't done too much. I've been fortunate to fish in in the Smoky Mountains a bit. Um, haven't done any out west. Did you do any big fly fishing trips, or were y'all doing all local? And was it for you said it was for trout, so I guess you guys have some trout up that way. Um creeks or lakes, or how does it work up there?
SPEAKER_01:Missouri's kind of weird in that sense too. We have uh I think four stocked rivers in Missouri where the MDC goes and they'll kind of raise them up and release them into these rivers. So I've never gone out west. I really want to. And then uh, like you said, I I know Arkansas has some cool spots and then the smokies. So never branched out, but I want to. Someday.
SPEAKER_04:What was uh what was one of your first big memories fly fishing? Anything that stands out? You say it was your granddad that took you on on the fly fishing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, probably the you know, my best memory with my grandpa is uh one of the spots we go to. It's called Bennett Springs, and it's got a little spillway on it, and I can remember being like 10 years old, way too small to be out on that spillway, but he took me out there. I had the waders that were way too big, and he's kind of holding on to my vest, and I just remember fishing there. Probably didn't even catch a fish, but just being able to go out where you know the grownups were was cool.
SPEAKER_04:Man, that's pretty cool right there. So fast forwarding a little bit, deer hunting. Um what so you said who who took you on your first deer hunting? Or you you just started going deer hunting, you just uh were attracted to it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, my older brother, he's uh he's about fifteen years older than me. Oh wow. So yeah, he was an adult when he took me, but he took me deer hunting for the first time for youth opener, and I shot a doe that day, and then he bought me my first bow actually, and took me to Texas hog hunting, and I was hooked on bow hunting ever since. I'm a huge bow hunter. It's a little bit worse these days because it's hard for me to give up time with the dog. I'd rather go sit with her and shoot some ducks. So but any chance I get I go out.
SPEAKER_04:You know, bow hunting is something I want to get more into. I've got a great bow. It's an older bow, bow tech, but it's uh yeah, I've only killed one or I've recovered one deer with a bow. I I should say that. Uh it's a lot harder, man, than it than it looks. It's uh it's quite the challenge. For sure, man.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's a lot of fun. That's part, it's I kind of relate it to you know, training dogs. It's a lot of work, but that reward is just so cool. And getting a deer in, you know, within that 30, 40 yard range, there's no no bigger feeling, no crazier uh adrenaline rush to me. So I don't know, man.
SPEAKER_04:It just it gets me every time. I was able to go on a hunt. Um, I guess it was two years ago. My wife and I took her boat hunting and we had a ground blind out. Uh we were fortunate enough. We didn't, I didn't shoot the deer. I don't know how. I mean, she's cool with all that, but she probably doesn't want to see it happen. It was kind of a smaller buck, came out anyway, so we let him go, but he was just out there at like 10 or 12 yards and we're just sitting there, just sitting all still. I don't know how he's not how he doesn't know we're here. Uh, but sure enough, he didn't. He kind of wandered on out there and it was but if he was a big buck, I would have definitely shot. I would definitely shot him in front of her. I would have had to just look, we're gonna have to do this.
SPEAKER_01:So I always tell tell uh my fiance when we go out, I say, I'm gonna shoot the first doe that walks up and it never fails. You know, it's just so cool watching them in their natural habitat and they have no idea that you're there. It's just pretty surreal, cool to watch.
SPEAKER_04:Man, so makes me want to get out there this evening. Um, okay, so where did the where did the whole duck hunting come in? How you said the dog, maybe so the dog is what led you to dogs or duck hunting or both?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So honestly, bought my first house and I had a in a prior relationship, she had a dog and she wasn't willing to move into the house without bringing her dog. And I'm like, well, if you're bringing your dog, I'm gonna get my own dog and growing up, uh I don't remember I think as a kid my dad had taken us on like a horseback ride one time, and the people that had the horses had beagles. So for the longest time I always wanted a beagle. But something I had worked at an outdoor store when we bought that house, and I think there was a flyer up at the front that said lab puppies for sale and ended up buying the puppy, so he was he was the last one.
SPEAKER_04:Oh really? Oh man, it's crazy how that happens.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So you got him as a puppy. What um so you just decided to get a puppy and now you're like, now, now what?
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah. At that point, I'd I'd never duck hunted, never bird hunted outside of dove hunting. Uh bought the puppy, started training them, and had every intent on taking them duck hunting, and that was really my intro to the to the sport. Wow.
SPEAKER_04:I like that. So you you're like, I got this dog, I know that it can hunt. It's got the potential. It's a lab, it's gonna be able to do the job, so maybe I need to get into it. So what's the story in his name was Moose, correct? That's correct, yeah. What's the story on Moose? Where did you go once you got your puppy? What happened then?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so Funk Moose was I guess before that, so I decided I wanted a lab, and I got on, I was on a Facebook page called uh The Sitka Gear Fanatics. Posted on there, posted on there asking about labs and whatnot, and a friend Ted Wells, I haven't seen the for a long time, but he used to run the page. He made a post similar to uh you know SOK Dog or Bust, something like that, and introduced me to the Southern Oak Kennel Society, so joined there, bugged Barton probably for months about getting a puppy, and you know how he is with his waiting lists, and like any anybody with their first dog, you know, you're not patient. So I bought the first one I found on that flyer at work, and from there we brought him home, bugged Barton for months on different questions with training, uh, what to do with them, and probably threw way too many marks for him at first, but he was he was crazy about picking them up, not so crazy about sitting still before it.
SPEAKER_04:So there's nothing wrong with that. That's good. You got him fired up, he was all excited. Uh where where did y'all go from in there? So you kind of got him fired up with bumpers, you're gunko. I guess in your mind you're thinking, how fast can I train this dog so that I can go duck hunting with it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. So we're probably a couple couple months into uh owning Moose, and there was a gentleman, Cody Belanger, he's out of Louisiana, used to do a weekly segment. I can't remember what it was called exactly, but it was I know the dog's name was Jazzy, I believe. And he would bring this puppy in every week and he would kind of show what he's working on, and from there I would just do or replicate what training scenarios he would uh suggest. And uh probably about six months old, took Moose and dropped him off with a trainer down in Mississippi. Was that kind of always the plan for you or uh probab I would say yeah, just because I had no, you know no inclination on what to do with training and I knew I wanted a gun dog and just didn't know how to do it. So dropped him off there. Uh you know I always tell people it's one of the hardest things you'll do is dropping off your dog, and nobody believes it, but I was that guy that you know it's a it's a dog, you know, but you dropped him off, it's awfully hard to drive away that first time. So you're not wrong. But from there, uh I think he was with them for a month, maybe two months, and just couldn't hold up to the pressure. They were more of an American style training and he didn't do good with uh specifically I think Force Fetch was the problem. So they ended up saying, you know, it's probably best for him to come home. Uh he probably wouldn't be a good gun dog, but he would make a good house pet, and uh if if I wanted, they would sell me another puppy.
SPEAKER_04:So okay, yeah. How did that uh how was it a phone call? How did that feel? I guess after the fact, you're like, man, my plans are shooting.
SPEAKER_01:It's you know, it's pretty brutal hearing that because you get so excited, you know, you have this dog that you're in love with, and all you want to do is go hunt with them, and you're already in this stressful situation where they're away from you, and you know, a lot of trainers and you probably know this if you're training dogs, like you can't text them every day and get pictures and get updates like that, so you just spend all this time waiting, hoping for good news, and then when you get news, it's hey, they're not gonna cut it. But thankfully for me, like in the middle of him being out at the trainer, you guys had released Cornerstone and uh I'd already bought it, bought in. I was watching all the videos, trying to put a game plan together of you know, where am I gonna start when he comes home? And so it wasn't very long after that uh I knew we were gonna give it a go on our own.
SPEAKER_04:So nice. So you were kind of determined, you're like, I mean, because it sounds like before he ever went, like the you knew this dog was gung-ko about retrieving, like, love to do it. So probably hear that news, you're starting to question, like, well, what on earth happened here?
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah. Very much so as I knew he had the desire to retrieve. He loved birds. I had shown him, you know, duck wings and stuff like that as a puppy. So I knew he could do it, just didn't know probably how long of a journey it was gonna be.
SPEAKER_04:So Yeah, yeah, yeah. That story is similar to our first dog, except our dog was there for the full time, you know, five and a half months, and uh then got it back only to find out that you know the dog was messed up with force fetch and just didn't wasn't excited anymore. Uh but like you said, you're not you're typically not gonna get a lot of updates when the dog's away. And sometimes no news is good news and you don't want to be a bother. So when we go get the dog, we we waded into it. Uh that's good on the trainer. At least they told you, like, hey, look, you need to come get the dog. That would have been nice if that would have happened to us sooner rather than later. Uh, but yeah, it didn't. So when you got when you went and picked Moose up, so you had had cornerstone while he was there, so I guess immediately you decided, hey, I'm gonna give this a shot myself. Might as well got the videos. What tell me what happened next with with Mr. Moose?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we got him home, and I think we spent like the next week, we just kind of let him relax and re-acclimate to being home. But shortly after that next week, started straight into doing the fetch hold release program, and honestly, he never skipped a beat. Uh I like it was just so simple. You you see all these stories of how hard it is to even get him to take the bumper at first, and we just never experienced that. Wow. And uh honestly never had a problem with them dropping birds, just worked through the uh the full fetch hold release program, and once we got through that, man, it was game on.
SPEAKER_04:Wow. Dude, that is awesome. So you probably got him back like, man, I don't know what you said about this dog. Like, we good. Just picked up. So there was so it was pretty much maybe Moose just won't miss you. He just wanted to be back with you. Yeah, you hear stories all the time. Some dogs just don't do good in those situations. So it's never a tougher environment, too. You know, I'm sure Moose was comfortable in your home, had his own spot and everything, and then it goes off to boot camp, basically, has a kennel and is around other dogs, probably barking and all that. So the environment's definitely not the same as being at home. For sure. So you jumped in right there, picked up how did the rest of the training go? What was some of the big highlight moments for you with Moose?
SPEAKER_01:Man, the training went it's at least it felt like it went so easily for us, and we breezed through it. But a lot of that was probably me rushing through too, because he was a great he was a great gun dog for me. He just wasn't as fine-tuned as what you would like to see. More on the steadiness, or uh we you know, you saw him out at some of the SOK summits. Like he would whine if he was in big groups, and that would probably be like our major holdback was steadiness and whining. But we worked through the whining, we got rid of that, and then Wow, wow, that's great. His steadiness was always a little iffy. Barton used to give me trouble because we'd always have him on a pinch collar, and he would usually try and break on the first one, and he learned he couldn't do that, and then the rest of the hunt he was good to go.
SPEAKER_04:So that's awesome. Yeah, well, he just sounds like he was fired up, man. That's uh that's a pretty cool story. I'm sorry that happened, but I can't I guess I'm kind of glad it happened at the same time that you got him back and was able to to turn him into something. I remember we did a video with you back in the day. Uh kind of you were one of the first success stories. Hey, you know, we had this dog, the trainer said it's not gonna work out, gonna be a pet at best, and transformed from that into uh a duck hunting dog that you that you could take hunting with you. So that's uh how how long did you have him this? How you hunted him for quite a few seasons, if I rem if I remember correctly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he lived he was eight. And yeah, he ended up having myocardiopathy, I think. So he basically we were out hunting one day, and it was honestly one of our best hunts ever together. We shot uh Wow, we were close to uh a four-man of ducks, and then we shot like six big honkers, and we don't ever shoot geese, so it's one of our best days together that it ended really poorly. He he passed actually as we were hunting, so Really?
SPEAKER_04:Man, that's tough.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But he got to go out doing what he loved, so it's hard to be mad at that.
SPEAKER_04:It's hard to be mad at sad, but it's also like, yeah, wow, did it for you because he loved you and he loved the hunt. That's pretty powerful. Yeah, hey, sorry, I got a little the puppy's getting wrestless. Well, so you lost Moose at a tragic hunt there, but kind of epic epically tragic, I guess you could say. Um then then what happened next? So you now you're on to your your next dog. Um, where did you get your next dog? What uh what's the story here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so after Moose passed, took probably uh you know two, three months off, and uh didn't know if I was ever gonna get another one, honestly, just because it was like you said, it was pretty tragic. Just your best blood goes out that way, and didn't know if I could handle that again. But didn't take long, and I was shooting a message to Barton. It I've known for a long time that that's where the next dog was coming from. So I shot him a message and said, Hey, no rush, but when you get something, I'm I'm ready. So Wow. I think uh I don't know if he had one ready then, but it wasn't long after he he shot me a message and the rest is history.
SPEAKER_04:So man, that's awesome. What was the kind of the deciding factor for you? I know you said you're kind of up in the air, and do I want to go through this again? I think a lot of people maybe listening to this too, have experiences with their dog. They're they're dogless right now, they don't know if they want to do it again. Why why did you decide, hey, I'm you know, I do need another dog, I'm I'm gonna go forward with this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for me, man, it's my biggest hobby. Uh I love training with the puppies, love bringing them up. Probably more so than the hunting part. But for me, I I come home from work and that's the first thing I want to do. That's my release. I relax doing that, and wow. That was the probably the the biggest deciding factor is just having the the camaraderie with the puppy.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, the journey is rewarding, man. It really is. And you know, especially with your story going from the dog that said wouldn't turn out, now you've got the dog that did turn out. Um that's a pretty amazing thing when you're able to take uh a young puppy and then turn it into something. I I I agree. I've it's hard to beat that. Um man, that's such a rewarding journey. So with this puppy, you started Cornerstone again, I guess. It's lifetime access, you bought it the best time, founder, founding club member. Um how's the journey been thus far? How old, how old is Winnie currently?
SPEAKER_01:Oh she's right at, I think 14, 15 months old.
SPEAKER_04:So perfect age. Perfect age.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we picked her up, so I left her with Barton, I think, until she was 10 or 11 weeks old. Just uh didn't want to mess with the crate training and potty training, to be honest. I understand that. Uh had him keep her that for that part, but we picked her up and started right into the 52 plus 2.0 and followed it week by week. Honestly, I knew she wouldn't be ready to hunt that first season, so I took it really slow. My favorite, favorite part is gonna be the complete opposite of what most people say, but I love the obedience part of training, so I really dove hard and you know the sit and steadiness and all of that, heal. And part of that was fueled by Moose's you know, not lack, but he just wasn't as tip top in that. And I knew I wanted this puppy to be better. So and she's so far and it's hard to beat that.
SPEAKER_04:It yeah. What um said the big thing, why is it your favorite because that was one of your challenges, or is it your favorite just because you like the connection you're building with a dog?
SPEAKER_01:A lot of it for me is I think you see a lot more light bulbs in that part of the training. It's just and it probably is only because you see so many of them so quick, but it's so fun to take a a young puppy and put them on sit, and I can walk away, and then if they get up, you put them back, and they learn really quick that if I stay here, he's gonna come back and I'm gonna get the reward. And it's just so cool. You can literally see it click for them, and I love that part.
SPEAKER_04:It's one of my favorites too, um, for a lot of reasons. I like what it does for you in the future too. That what and a lot of people don't realize this, and maybe you were able to see a better picture of it since it was, you know, your second time through. The the stuff you're doing in that section, those light bulb moments you just talked about, you will see the same light bulbs happen later, but on a greater scale because you did the good work in the earlier stage. And for me, I I love how like it's so crazy how week three or week 10 or week 12 will actually directly tie back to week 30, week 46, week 43, somewhere right in there. There's different things that parallel and there's a direct line and connection that when you bring it back in, it's amazing at like how the dog clicks, whether you're doing remote marks, whether you're doing the pull push drill, working on recall, whistle stop, all of that casting, it's amazing how all that ties back in. And it all comes in those first 16, 17 weeks, all that ties and builds that really to me makes the dog. For sure.
SPEAKER_01:100%. Yeah, I mean, if you think about a general retrieve and you break it down in the different sections of a retrieve, all it is is your basic obedience combined together to a certain extent. So and it's just cool to break it down and this this puppy's the complete opposite of Moose so far. She hasn't I don't think she's ever broken on a any retrieve. But I'm probably jinxing myself hugely right now. But she's just polar opposite so far. But when you say her name, man, she goes.
SPEAKER_04:Oh man, that's what it's about right there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. It makes it so much more fun. When you watch your dog pick up ducks, it's fun. But when you're the one that releases them to go get it, it just it heightens that fun so much more for everybody, everybody in the blind, because there's just so much control, and I think people like to see that.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah. It sounds like y'all have got a good team dynamic, a good team partnership. So would you say that it was a r a good thing that you guys so you recognize, hey, we're probably not gonna be ready to hunt the dog at this stage. So we're gonna take our time going through that. Do you feel that that helped you and and Winnie a lot?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. I and I knew going into it, I I told my fiance, Caitlin, I said, you know, I don't care if it takes two years, but I want this dog to be fully ready to go. I don't want to have the same scenario as with Moose. And she had kind of hunted with him a few times, so she knew, like, she knew his different quirks and she understood, so she's been on board and she helps all the time. She takes her to uh a weekly training. She got her uh canine good citizen. I saw that on Facebook.
SPEAKER_04:That's last week. So wow. Yeah. So she's involved in the training as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. She got she likes doing it. She said she wants the she wants Winnie to listen to her too, so it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_04:Well helps out a lot. What did she I so what did she think about this whole the whole cornerstone process? So does she go along in the videos with you and do some of the weeks as well, or or how did that how does that dynamic work? Do you all sit down and do it together? What does that look like for you guys?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so my process while going through 52 Plus would uh like the night before, I would watch a video, kind of put together my game plan, and then the next day I would work it into my day. I'm lucky uh I work for Union Pacific as a conductor and pretty low seniority, so I don't have to w go in until uh later in the day generally, and it works out for me because I can train her throughout the day, and then as I go to work, she is you usually coming home and she can pick up and she probably doesn't go as crazy as I do, but she'll train her a few times throughout the night and get her lined out.
SPEAKER_04:That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Y'all just had a recent hunt. Um what were you able to take your pup with you on this to the on the swan hunts?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We went out to Utah. We did a it was like a 20-hour drive. We did it throughout the night with we had two dogs. It was brutal, but it was worth it. We we got out there and we went out on the first hunt, the first morning. We both had swan tags and we both shot our swans.
SPEAKER_04:So really it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01:Did uh Winnie pick up the swans? How did that was she able to go on the hunt? Yep. Yeah, she was out there with us. She went and uh she drug it back to us. Uh big she got it back to like the dry area and she struggled. She was just kind of dragging it by the neck, but didn't give her too much opportunity to really play with it, honestly. So Yeah. But they're big. I don't know if I don't know honestly if she'd be able to pick it up or not if she tried.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's a big bird. I mean, you think about a big goose, those are a challenge. How much does Winnie weigh? Oh, I think she's sitting right at 50 pounds.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. Right now.
SPEAKER_01:So she's got some heart in her then. It's like she's got some fire.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. She's a little she's a little ball of fire, man. She's not scared of anything. Wow.
SPEAKER_04:So so going through the course, did you complete the entire course before taking um Winnie hunting, or did you get somewhere past that week 36 mark 36 mark before your guys' first hunt? And what what was y'all's first hunt?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we made it all the way through the program, but uh this past I think spring, we sent Winnie with Wally for a month. So that helped quite a bit. When we got her back from Wally, she was pretty much all the way through uh you know past week 36 for sure. But we went back, started uh about from the time when we sent her off and just trained all the way in through the end of uh 52 plus.
SPEAKER_04:So nice nice. You got a little momentum base, like a steroid shot ready to go. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It was I think she was uh she was with them for a month or so, month and a half, maybe. We uh I'm a big uh I like e-collars when we hunt, just uh where we hunt, we have a lot of roads that go by and yeah, just gives me that fail-proof system.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, those dogs are precious, man, and they're that that tension, you know, not to say your dog's not gonna listen, but I think having that collar on them in that environment makes I think I've seen for a lot of handlers, especially in that environment, like you just you you handle the dog different. You're not if you're starting to panic, you know, it's funny, you train the dog, and we should talk about this real quick, because dogs are very distinct in the way they learn. So your tones, your inflections, when you're training, you're probably laid back, relax. If you're in that environment, as long as you maintain that tone, that's great, your dog's gonna listen. But when you start playing in your head, oh my gosh, what if my dog runs over there and now you start to communicate more frantically than you normally would, your dog stops listening as well because you're not communicating the way you trained your dog. You're communicating in a more panic, frantic voice. And because they're distinct in the way they learn, sometimes they don't listen. So I think sometimes just even having that colour on allows you to handle and train the way you normally would, vice versa, if there wasn't any, you know, if there wasn't any danger.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I agree 100%. Um she's the complete, again, complete opposite of Moose. Moose with his collar, you know, I used to have to always hold it because I was worried he was gonna break. And that was probably my fault because I was always nervous, so he was always high strung.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Whereas she's kind of she's the complete opposite, and we make an effort to make sure that we're not nervous or try not to be nervous with her.
SPEAKER_04:So And she does good, she's usually pretty calm, so you learn a lot with your first one, and especially, you know, your first one where you're gunko and you're rushing through everything to get through it so you can go hunt. A lot of times that causes some problems. Uh, I did a recent um Cornerstone Gun Dog Academy podcast where we kind of where we talked about this, you know, how to know if your dog's ready to hunt. And you said something earlier, and you said you really wanted to make sure you did it right. You wanted to take your time this time, really take your time with the dog. And uh you a lot of you one thing you you said, you talked about you know hunting boots, maybe some challenges you're creating as you rush through the process. And a lot of people don't think about that. They think, uh, my dog can do the task, right? But it's not just can they do the task? Can they do the task efficiently, effectively every single time? And if they can, that's that's great. And can they do it under the pressure of the hunt with a gunfire and you know, the birds coming in and the calling and all of this to where, you know, there's a different level of intensity in the air when you're sitting in a duck blind than when you're just training in a in a field working your dog. So can your dog handle all of that? Um, so it sounds like you did a really good job taking your time to do that. That way, you know, I'm glad you didn't settle right there. A lot of people, maybe you did with the first one, you just got so excited, you push it out maybe a little earlier than it should. And that can create longer-term challenges to where, as you said, you're constantly battling that steadiness. Now it sounds like with Miss Winnie, doesn't sound like you're gonna have any issues with that. You've got a dog that you can count on in the field because you slowed down, you did it right, and you know, you built built the process out the right way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. And there's still, you know, we've only, I think the most people we've had in a hunt with her so far is two people at once. So, as you know, the more people you add, the more guns it's gonna get more high energy, which will probably encourage breaking. But if I'm then you know the more people, honestly, I I'm the type of guy I don't care if I shoot a gun a single time in a hunt if I can watch my dog work. So I'm kind of excited for us to get in a bigger group and I can just focus on running her.
SPEAKER_04:So but I'm sure that'll come up as soon. The all season just started there recently in Missouri, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, it just opened uh a couple weeks ago, and then we actually had a split. Our split was when we were out in Utah, so timed that well. That's nice. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_04:I think we're three weeks in, so how many birds and this is now is this Winnie's first season right now? So this would be our first season. Um her first hunt was it opening day? Did y'all go opening day? What was that like?
SPEAKER_01:First hunt, like first official hunt was teal hunting. Okay, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Me and Caitlin, we took her teal hunting up in northern Missouri. We had one big ball of teal come in. It was probably 20 teal, 10 feet out in front of us, and we both of us unloaded and we shot uh three teal.
SPEAKER_04:So that's pretty good. I mean, when they come in like that, that I don't know, something about teal just are are challenging for me. I don't know. I get so excited because they're just so sporadic until the first shot, then they all go up. So three fell, then uh Winnie sat steady, I imagine. So did you work Winnie? Did your fiance work Winnie, or how did that how'd that go?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I worked her, and so that hunt was actually good for us because it showed one of our uh areas we needed to work on. She she was so focused on looking at me that she missed two of those marks, and so she ended up, we ran them as blinds, they weren't very far away, obviously, but she picked them up, came home, and uh the next month, one of our main things we would do if I was getting ready to go to work, put her in a blind next to the house, and I would be behind it where she couldn't see me, shoot the launcher off, and she learned to look out ahead of her pretty quick.
SPEAKER_04:So that's nice. Yeah, some that's good that you learned that on that opening morning.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was glad we learned it there instead of big ducks.
SPEAKER_04:So what's been y'all's greatest um moment so far? So this is all relatively new for Winnie, three weeks in uh on hunting. I mean, my gosh, she's getting a lot of experience in the first three weeks, going from till, uh, well, early till, so I guess a little more than three weeks when you count that. Maybe you had a couple of weeks there. Then you had three weeks of current hunting, and you've also took this took a big road trip all the way to Utah and then to a swan. So what was the swan the highlight? What's uh been the highlight moment for Winnie thus far this season?
SPEAKER_01:Oh man. It's it's pretty early, but so far I would say uh opening our opening day hunt for big ducks. It was myself and another guy, and we shot a two-man over, and part of that we had a lot of teal come in, and we were shooting you know three and four ducks at a time and dropping them, and she's just rock steady and she marked them. So hunting-wise, that's probably my favorite memory so far. Man, that's great. What about training? Training. Uh when we were in Utah, we went to four different national parks and we would get them out and walk them with us, and just had a ton of people commend us on how good they were. Really? Wow. That would probably be my favorite part.
SPEAKER_04:Random we all had a group of people or just random strangers just seeing your dog listening well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just random strangers at the park. Wow. It's that's probably why I like the obedience so much, is it's pretty cool taking your dogs out in public and people aren't you know used to seeing dogs act that way.
SPEAKER_04:So makes it a little fun. Yeah, it definitely does. And it's uh yeah, that's what I always tell a lot of the members, especially as they're coming in, like, hey, you know, one day you're gonna get out there and people are gonna see your dog, and they're like, hey, who did you send that dog off to? You know, how did you get, you know, who trained your dog? That's a big question. Because when you see a dog at that level, you're okay, clearly someone that knows what they're doing did it. And then you could tell them, hey, I did that myself. They're like, how hey, are you a dog trainer? Like, well, kind of. Uh I'm my I trained my own dogs. It's uh I always love those conversations, man. It's uh it's so cool to see that happen. For sure.
SPEAKER_01:If you have 30 minutes a day, and it doesn't like we used to do five-minute sessions of obedience outside, and if you can give 30 minutes a day doing that, you can have one really good dog.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, it doesn't take much, it just hyper focused, doing it right, that goes a long way. What um now with Winnie, completely opposite of Moose, what would you say one of your biggest challenges has been with Winnie thus far that maybe you were able to navigate? Is there any big challenges that y'all faced that y'all been able to navigate through?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so far uh hunting wise, I would say the marking early on, but it wasn't you know, it was really only one hunt, and a big part of that, as you know, is they gotta learn they hear the ducks and they gotta look for them. And so we haven't had a big uh too many hunts yet, so no real pool of experience to kind of have anything go too bad, really. That's good. But give me one second, my other dog here's whining. I'm in the kennel this morning.
SPEAKER_04:No worries.
SPEAKER_01:I get a little anxious around this time it's dinner time.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, I bet. Sorry about that. No worries.
SPEAKER_04:So no uh so no issues on the hunt. What about um any challenges in training or it's been kind of smooth selling? This has just been a breeze.
SPEAKER_01:Early on I got worried. I know I I texted you as we were going through uh some of the fetch hold release stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Can you hear me? I can hear it, yep. Oh, I sorry, I thought I lost you.
SPEAKER_01:Going through the fetch hold release stuff, I got a little worried, but that is kind of what initiated me talking to Wally, and then right before she left, honestly, she started doing a lot better, but uh other than that, man, it's just the normal stuff, and I was worried my work schedule's not the greatest and panicked a little bit, but if you stick the course with that 52 plus, man, it's it's really good. So just gotta have faith.
SPEAKER_02:Slowly but surely.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, man, it does take faith. It's uh there's days and it sounds like you you've got it figured out as far as that the right mentality, uh just taking it slow, taking it easy, and you know, not panicking. You know, the biggest, the worst thing you can do is panic. Um if you panic, you can make some bad decisions, but just realizing that if you trust the process, it's gonna work out. I think that's some of the biggest, that's one of the biggest things I would encourage people that are listening to this, just hey, trust the process. It's gonna work out. Um I mean it has for thousands of other people, so odds are it's like the odds are in your favor if you if you trust the process. The only way they're not in your favor is if you um if you start to veer and start to panic, and then you start making rash decisions that can lead to uh you know, whatever the result may be, but it's probably not gonna be the same result, right? There's a recipe here, if you follow the recipe, it it works.
SPEAKER_02:For sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's it's so easy to get caught up in watching social media posts, and you see, like anything else, you only see the success stories on there. And so if you start comparing your story to their story, it can snowball really quick where you start to think you're behind when really you're never behind. You're just where you are. Your story is where it's at. So just take your time, have fun is like the biggest part. Have fun, because that's what it's supposed to be. But don't pressure the dog so much because you want to be where someone else is that you skip steps and forget where you're at.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and a lot of people do, they don't want to talk about the challenges or the problems. We tend to like to do that because that's what people are gonna face. Um, and the reality is we want to show that. Now, for you, let's let's I'm trying to remember back on our message back and forth. So you did run into the little roadblock at fetch hold and release. I think a lot of people do that. Um there's a lot of reasons. Up until this point, you know, a lot of the stuff you can slide by in, and I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean like some sometimes the hill, the place, the recall, a lot of that's supernatural. But when it comes to, and now we're getting a formal, you're gonna need to hold on to this and you're gonna need to put it in my hand and all of those mechanics that go along with it. If there's any barriers there, maybe if there's any timing issues as the trainer on when you're rewarding versus when you're or marking the behavior, that's where I think a lot of that comes in at. What uh what was the challenge to share with everybody, with you, with your pup, uh winning there as y'all got the fetch hold and released? Were you having trouble getting the initial fetch down, or was it kind of more of just a dropping issue? What kind of challenge were y'all were y'all facing? I would love to unpack that a little bit since since we're talking about the reality of of training, let's let's rip the band-aid off. Let's go, let's get to the brutal reality and and share with everybody. That's what everybody wants to hear, anyways. For sure, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think our major holdup was in the first week, we were uh, you know, I would throw, we had the lane and we would throw the dummy, and she would go out, she sometimes would pick it up and sometimes she wouldn't. And that is really what kind of started to uh get me in my panic, I guess. But it was literally, you know, she wouldn't pick it up sometimes, and I immediately I was messaging you and Wally both looking for advice, and something in me was like, you know, I have a chance I was gonna go work out of town for a little bit. So I'm like, you know, would you be willing to take her? And he said yes, and by the end of that next week, she was already, I know, I think I sent you a message like she was just doing it perfectly for that stage, and it's like, well, you know, I'm still I'm going out of town, let's see what Wally does. And he honestly, you know, he's so good at what he does. He definitely had her far advanced than what I would have been able to, but I think if I would have just been patient and followed that plan, it would have all worked out fine because she was by the end of that second week, she was so good, like she was already doing what you know most dogs will through the fetch hold release. It's just we didn't take time to, you know, work through heel, like you said, or on place and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah. What do you think the panic was? You're just like worried, I don't want to make a mistake here. Like we've come this far, we've crushed all this other stuff, and you know, we didn't want to make is that it or was there anything in particular that stood out?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think honestly, I just knew my work schedule and I was worried about falling so far behind that she wouldn't be ready for this year. And uh, just didn't want to chance that. And I knew I knew we wanted to have her trained with an e-collar or trained to use an e-collar, and I'm not brave enough to do that, so I knew we had to send her off anyway.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, so just two for one right there worked out. That's nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's how I justified it was you know, I'm gonna have someone do that anyway. I might as well have them uh the same way as you know, the crate training and potty training. Have uh poor Barton and Wally handle all the Oh, that's cool.
SPEAKER_04:That's cool. I you know, I think uh I hope that encourages a lot of people that are uh listening to this as we you know there's times where we're gonna face those challenges or you know, whatever it may be. And it and sometimes it's external, like you were saying, it happens to be, hey, my work schedule is gonna get crazy. Sometimes it's internal. Um, like, uh oh, I don't know if I got what it takes to this part of it, but whatever it is, you like you said, if you trust the process, you end up getting there. And it sounds like Winnie was able to straighten it out, and then it all worked out in in the end for you, anyways. Um, once you got her back, as y'all are going through, was there any like standout moments? Do you think just overall the process was easier with Winnie because you kind of nailed that foundation versus like Moose kind of always wanting to break? I know that hinders some of the training as you go forward because it if you're having to constantly no, no, no, don't break, then it's kind of sometimes getting in the way of some of the other stuff you're doing. But was there any like standout highlight moments through training through the rest of the 52 plus that um that stood out to you as like, oh man, this is this is cool. Like maybe you did something that you hadn't done before with Mr. Moose.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Man, so her blind work is really good. So we struggled for a little bit on blinds, if uh I don't know what you call it, but she didn't want to look straight ahead. And so we started doing the three-point drill, and once it clicked to her, I just put the white poles out and she learned to look straight ahead. And just watching how hard she would take off, that was kind of the moment where I knew that she was gonna be pretty good because once she locks in and she takes off, she's got a lot of go and she goes pretty hard. So I just knew at that moment, like she could be the worst marker in the world. But if I know where the duck went, she's gonna take off in that direction.
SPEAKER_04:So oh, that's awesome. Man, sounds like you've got a really good dog. I I can't wait. Hopefully, we'll get to see this dog in person, maybe at Summit or Member Week or something like that. Or if you guys with y'all's chapter up there, if y'all pull off, get an event going, maybe I'll I'll run up there and see what's going on. I I look forward to seeing you guys um work in person. Yeah. Sounds like you'll get a good dog. Yeah. How's the chapter experience been for you thus far? I know y'all have done a couple of uh, if I remember correctly, a couple live meetings.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we did it kind of backwards. Our first we had a get together. So it was me, Zach, uh, Sand and I. Oh, so y'all have done an in-person meetup already. Yeah. Nice, nice. And then uh Ryan, uh his last name's I'm forgetting it right now, but he's got an SOK dog. And we all got together. We went to uh Bush Wildlife, it's uh kind of a well-known dog training area up in St. Louis, and we got together and did some drills together, and it's been pretty cool. I struggled for a long time with moose. The only I I drove down to Mississippi so many times because I wanted to get a group training session in with them, because that's really where all of our downfalls would kind of start showing. Uh, you know, I could train him at home and he would be steady, quiet, but you put him with 20 other dogs, and that's where you can really start to showcase his you know flaws. So Yeah. Reveals it very quickly. I tried for a long time, and the only groups really up here that get together are kind of HRC based, and it's just not really what I wanted. I want to have all the dogs out at the same time. We're all running the same thing. It just make the dogs kind of sit and watch, and so getting the uh chapter finally gives me something in this area where that's gonna be, you know, we're not getting together to do HRC stuff, we're kind of working on CGA stuff, and that's what I want to do. So it's been pretty cool. That's awesome. Zach's really cool, he's really knowledgeable, so it's really cool to get together with him, and you know, we put together different stuff that one training day, and he had a lot of cool ideas, so it's always good to get out and have a fresh sense of something to work on.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah, man. I love Zach. I remember the if I remember I don't it wasn't the first member weekend, but whenever it was one of his first member weekends, him and Ted, Ted was a little pup at the time, wasn't even in the gun dog stuff yet. Uh I think he you know was barely doing like some of the obedience, and I remember uh he just came up and Zach was intense. He's like, I've got these qu what do I do here? What do I do here? And then by the next member weekend, he came back and he had implemented all that and had finished out the course, and Ted just turned into a beast, beast of a dog.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Caitlin loved Ted. She went with me that day. We had the train day, and she was in love with him. He was a really cool dog. He is really obedient too.
SPEAKER_04:So that's the mark of a cornerstone dog. You gotta have that obedience. That's uh that's what we're after. And nothing else matters if your dog if your dog's not gonna be obedient. Uh yeah, you if your dog can do a 200-yard retrieve, that's great. But can your dog be obedient around family members and in the house and and all that? That that's what to me matters the most. And it seems what I have found is that people that get that right, the whole 200 yard stuff takes care of itself. It becomes easy, versus it more of a challenge if, you know, like you said, if you break down the retrieve, um, it's all going to be an obedience thing to some degree anyway. Yeah. For sure. What are you guys looking forward to as y'all's next step on season? Kind of a this being your second dog, you've gone through the program twice, or you went through the original cornerstone and now you've gone through the the 52, the step-by-step courses. Um, what what are you thinking through as you're going on hunts? Or is your main task right now preserving the foundation and the training you've built through the hunt? Talk, let's uh for newbies out there, people that are just thinking or getting ready to hunt their dogs, let's share some advice. I know you've got some good tips on that. What are what are your focus points when you're out there hunting?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Biggest piece of advice uh set some goals. You know, have a foundation of what you want to accomplish for the season. And for me, this season was uh steadiness is at the top 100%. I'm not gonna let her get away with it. She hasn't challenged it yet, but I want to maintain that steadiness. It's so key to the safety of the dog. It's so much more fun, and uh I'm just not willing to negotiate on that one with her. So that was my number one goal. Um on top of that, I think uh I'd have to look back. I think I said a hundred hundred retrieves was my goal for the year. Um if we don't get that, we don't get it. But my I just want to put her on birds more than anything so she can kind of learn that game. But and then I think one of my other goals, I wanna I want to get at least one hunt where there's another dog and have that. So but that's uh it's a pretty pretty short goal list for me this year, but really just honing in on the steadiness part.
SPEAKER_04:I like it, man. Yeah, having those goals, having something to shoot for keeps you on track and it it keeps you honest, keeps you honest with your dog. If you don't have goals, you're just gonna settle for whatever happens. Um but creating those goals helps you get to where you need to go with the dog, for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I I had known that from you know, from Moose was you get uh on that slippery slope of, well, he broke the, you know, he brought the duck back, and before you know it, they do it once, they'll do it for the rest of their life if they want. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, if you can mitigate that from the very first time and basically preemptively prevent that, especially in their first season, oh man, that helps a lot. You know, a lot of people you just want to be on top of the problem as it happens or before it happens. If you can do that, you're gonna get much better results as far as not having to work through challenge. It doesn't mean you can't work through it, but it sounds like you're doing everything right. You're kind of you're very much on top of it, you're preventing some of these challenges from arising so that by the next couple of seasons, your first season is a training season anyways, these next couple of seasons after this, you're gonna have a dog that just works like a machine and it's just gonna be ch one after another, just the way it's supposed to be. So good on you, man, for putting in the work the right way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, hey, it was made easy through uh your program. It's it's it's almost foolproof, you know. There's obviously you can you can obviously do stuff to hinder the program, but if you just stay calm and follow that outline, it's really tough to go wrong.
SPEAKER_04:So I agree with that, man. Well, is there you know, we're I can't even believe it. I just looked at the time, we're coming up on time here. Uh maybe we should do a postseason winnie update. Did we get did we achieve those goals? That would be a fun little episode to do. Um maybe we should do that. We'll we'll try to set that up. Um, but as we as we kind of wrap up here, and is there any last things that you would like to share with anybody? Um, maybe a piece of advice you would wish someone would have shared with you or just whatever's on your mind here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I would say uh don't get caught up in being so perfect that you forget to have fun with your dog. Because one day that dog's not gonna be with you anymore, and you'll have all you're gonna have is your memories with them. So make sure you have fun. Stay uh, you know, stay the course. You've got plenty of time, they'll get there eventually. So that's my my one takeaway from everything, just have fun.
SPEAKER_04:That's good, man. I like it. I like it. I wouldn't uh wouldn't change a thing you said about that. And man, again, it's been an honor to have you on, and just thank you for staying with us and supporting us, right? You stayed true with Cornerstone since the beginning, and that's uh that's saying something that you've stuck around with us this long, and that just means a lot. And we're glad you're here and glad you're working with Winnie and excited for yours and uh Winnie's and your fiance's adventures moving forward. Can't wait to see how things continue to go. Yeah, like I said, the honor's all mine.
SPEAKER_01:There's not a better group of people out there than uh the CGA family, so wouldn't want to do it with anybody else. Appreciate everything you guys have done for us for through both documents. You guys were there for uh some really tough times through Moose, so appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to the Build From Here Podcast. To learn more about retriever training or our podcast, visit Cornerstone Gun Dog Academy.com slash podcast.