Build From Here
Build From Here
Focus on The Wins | Adam Goza
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Training a retriever is full of challenges, but Adam Goza’s story is proof that one small win can change everything. In this episode, we talk Chessies, breakthrough moments, Member Weekend, and learning to build confidence one step at a time.
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Welcome And Why Adam Matters
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Build From Here podcast. On this episode, I'm super excited to be introducing you to Cornerstone member Adam Goza. Adam has been with CGA for really a little while now, but he's um cool thing about Adam is he's lives pretty close to us. But what I love about Adam is he's just such a he's so hands-on in the community. He's always willing to lend a hand. He's always saying, look, what can I do to help be a part of this? How can I help? How can I help support what's going on with Cornerstone? I think a lot of that we'll probably talk about your story here in a minute, Adam, but I think a lot of that just comes from his experience so far in the community. But Adam, I've seen him take a dog that he was having some challenges with before Cornerstone, a chessie. We all know chessies can uh require a little bit of uh finessing. So for you chessy owners out there, I think you're gonna absolutely love this episode. Uh, but again, I also just want to just uh honor Adam for I remember him showed up to member weekend. We had a conversation before trying to figure out does it make sense to come on to member weekend with where they were at? And uh the answer was yes, as we talked back and forth. And Adam just pitched in, jumped in, really went 100% all the way in, which is you know a great attribute to have a life, especially if you're gonna be training dogs. You just want to go all in. And I would say that that um that word all in to me describes Adam. So uh without further ado, Adam, welcome aboard, man. How are you? So glad to have you here.
SPEAKER_01Man, it's great to be here and great to be a part of it and thoroughly enjoy our time that we have had with CGA and members weekend and everything we've been able to do. Um it's it's definitely a journey of of trials and tribulations, and I think most dog owners can understand that. Um, especially anybody who has a breed that is not the typical standard of what everybody thinks it should be. And uh chessies are definitely a challenge, along with I'm sure several anybody who has something other than a lab or even a lab and it's in its their cases and stuff. We've all got our challenges, period. Um, but it it's definitely been a trip for sure. But I've loved every minute of it.
SPEAKER_00Man, that's awesome to hear. And it's uh you're right. I mean, there is challenges along the way, and I think part of that comes from like the standard that we want to train to. You want to have a good dog. I I think a lot of people listening to this podcast, a lot of cornerstone members, or I would say the vast majority of cornerstone members, they they want more than just piecemealing a dog together. They want to have an outstanding hunting retriever. And a lot of them start with young dogs, some start with a little bit older dogs, but either way, the goal is an outstanding dog. And the truth is you're not going to get anything awesome in life without putting out work and probably facing some challenges along the way. So um I think you described that well. Before we dive into your story, uh like in in depth on the dogs training, just give me like a one-minute, two-minute where you're from, background so everybody can get to know you, and then we'll dive straight into the dogs.
Adam’s Outdoor Background And Roots
SPEAKER_01Um, so I grew up pretty much here in the northeast Alabama, DeCab County, for the ones that are from the area. Um my family's pretty much been in the outdoor realm since my conception or before. Um my dad's actually a um three-time IBO world champion, which is an archery um IBO and ASA um champion. His name's Larry Goza. And of course, I've got uncles that have have won Buckmasters multiple times for people who follow those realms and that kind of thing. But that's that's the realm I grew up in was bow hunting. Um, and then through that, of course, we wound up um dove hunting and and all that kind of stuff, and and that that was a big family to do really before even archery started. Um but I've I mean I've always loved being in the outdoors and hunting, and and I'd rather do that than most things. Like I'm I'm the weird guy that never played sports. Um I was on a team here or there, but I I didn't play football, I didn't play soccer, I didn't play baseball, I didn't do any of those things. Um I was homeschooled because um my dad shooting archery turnips professionally. We traveled so much that uh the legitimate reason they they homeschooled me and my sister was they went to jail for as much as we was out of town. Um so that was their reasoning behind it, but it it opened up so many worlds. I've I've been all over the country bow hunting and and fishing and and hunting all manner of stuff from mule deer and color uh mule deer and elk and bears in Colorado to alligators in South Alabama and all over the place.
SPEAKER_00So it's all right. Well, I gotta ask now, what what was your um what was your most memorable um hunt as far as bow hunting goes?
A Close Range Black Bear Story
SPEAKER_00I know we're into ducks and stuff, but we gotta hear this.
SPEAKER_01As far as bow hunting, when I was 15 years old, me and my dad had messed up. It was the first year that we ever actually missed opening day of dove season, which is a big family tradition for us. Um but he had booked a hunt wrong. We were in Crawford, Colorado. We'd climbed up on this ridge and we were in choke cherry thickets. So for anybody who's in those areas, you know how thick those can be. Um and we could see maybe 10, 15 yards in what we were in, not very far. We was kind of meandering our way back down to the truck down the ridge. We hit a big open patch, and it was roughly 15 foot around it. And uh, I seen my dad go, oh, he ranged it, he goes 53 yards, oh yes, no, oh, no, stop. And I'm like, I don't, I can just hear something running, and I'm like, we're gonna die. So he had loaded his bow, of course, has rangefinder in his hand. I had my bow, I loaded it and drew back and just put my bow on. Oh and so whatever come through that opening, if he said, Oh crap, it wasn't something I wanted to deal with, and a streak of black hit that opening and puffed up, and I hit the trigger, and it was a black bear. And I double-lunged it and it shot 30 feet up a tree in uh roughly two seconds, just boom, right up the base of a quakey tree. And I don't know, maybe four or five hours later we finally got it out of the woods after chasing it through that stuff. And I double-lunged it with the first shot. Or well, I caught a lung, maybe not double-lunged it, but uh it was not a huge bear. It caught our wind, and in hindsight, being 2020, it had no idea we were there, but it scared the crap out of both of us in the moment because we thought we were being charged. And uh it it was a funny situation, but I mean it it it was still fun.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's amazing. So we go from archery and bears and life on the road to where you're at now.
Why He Chose A Chessie
SPEAKER_00Um so fast forward in life, you've settled down. It sounds like you've got uh wonderful wife, three kids, and now you've got yourself a dog. How did you choose a Chessie? What led you to choose the Chesapeake Bay retriever?
SPEAKER_01Oddly enough, a lot of research. I had actually never heard of a Chesapeake Bay retriever up until about two, two and a half years ago. Um I grew up, we had a lot of setters and we had some some cockers. Um, and then I had the odd pointer and stuff too. Um, but I had an English cocker for a while that oddly enough for his breed, he was very protective of my daughters. We had some we lived in an area that was a little bit wasn't always rough, but it it we had the odd thing that would come in and out, somebody come in the driveway and act act a little fool or or whatever. And we had an old man, he lived back in behind us, and he was just odd's the easiest way to put it. And he was the girls were out in the front yard playing, and Shelby had stepped back in the house, my wife. And Trace, our little English cocker, this you know, 25 pounds of fury, would not let this man out of the truck. Like he was up on the side of his truck barking his full head off um and wouldn't let him out. Wow because the girls were outside and there wasn't an adult present. And then as soon as Shelby walked out and and hollered at him, he'd come up on the porch and was fine.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01But that was an odd thing for his breed. Um sadly he got run over because we lived too close to the road, and that was a big moment for us. Um, and I've kind of stepped away from dogs after a couple of situations like that for a while. But um, when me and my wife moved from that area, I told her, I said, Look, I want a dog, but I I want to train it right. And I had been around labs and had mixed breed labs over the years and that kind of thing. Nothing ever that was truly purebred, papers and that kind of thing, and and well bred. But I started researching because I wanted something that could possibly have that characteristic, but also was still good enough to hunt and and do that kind of thing because I I didn't want trying to force the the square peg through the round hole kind of situation. And through that research, I come across the Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and I'm like they have the look and build of a lab, a little bit stockier for the most part, but when you really look into them, they've got a lot of the characteristics that I was looking for. They're more of a one-family dog, typically. Um, if you there's workarounds to a lot of things, like that they can be very particular about who they're around and and not be very open to more people. That's a real easy fix. As they're young, you make sure you socialize crap out of them because if you don't, they might bite somebody. But yeah, that that's that's it, that's in your hands as far as the trainer. Yeah, yeah. Um so I started looking and I I found a a breeder who was in South Carolina. It's uh upstakes chess piece, is who I got her from. And a guy's name was Carson. And we messaged back and forth and and talked, and then when I went up there to get her, I I drove six hours to go pick her up. Wow. And uh we stood there in his driveway and talked um denominational and biblical stuff for an hour of while I was sitting there picking her up. He's like, Man, if if I don't see you again on here on this earth, I'll I'll see you in the next one. It's like sound good to me, man. Yeah. So that's cool. I've I sent him a bunch of the pictures of that we got back from Members Weekend and stuff. He's like, d do you care if I post these? I'm like, yeah, post them, man. It's like that that's one of your pups. So you if you want to show her off, you show her off. Wow. So but she's been great. Um a lot of the weird characteristics that people hear about Chessie, she has a lot of them. The smile and and the weird temperaments. She can't stand for things to change in the yard. Like if we move stuff around, she'll go out, she'll see it, she'll bark, like alert us that something has moved, and then go on about her business. Umirks. Uh she's just funny like that.
SPEAKER_00That's pretty cool, man. So you got it for the family, and kind really it sounded like a protective dog was important to your family, protect the girls, protect the family, but also you wanted to have the ability to have a hunting dog.
Past Training Mistakes And Gun Shyness
SPEAKER_00What was your experience training dogs up until this point? Uh you said you said something that I thought was important. You said you really wanted to do it right this time.
SPEAKER_01So, my experience with training dogs with Trace, our original English cocker, my dad had gotten his mother, um, Bella, and we didn't know anything about training dogs whatsoever at all. But somehow, by the grace of God, my dad got lucky, it's all can be. He took that dog prior to dove season and he would sit out in our field, and as the birds and stuff would flock in, because we plant and and we keep everything situated, and he would just sit there and get excited and point at birds and get her to look at the birds coming in. And then he'd play fetch with her in the yard. And then he went to Tennessee on a paid hunt for a uh it was kind of a mediocre dove field. I think he shot two times with a 410. She was gun shy or greenish, very scared, wanted to stay underneath his chair the whole time. But he had a bird fly over and he shot and winged it, and they walked out to go get it. And as they walked out to go get it, that bird got up and fluttered and couldn't hardly fly. Well, Bella took off and got it. From that point forward, she was gung-ho, she's going to get in every bird no matter if she hurt a shot. She's still that way. And almost eight years old now. So my theory was if it worked for her, it'd work for her son. I tried to do the same theory that I heard my dad talk about and seen him do with Bella, and and I skipped the part where I went to a crappy field and shot and wounded a bird. Opening day of dove season in our field, we've probably got 30 guns as far as far as people out there, and that's where I tried to take him. And I think a combined throughout the people, there was 300 birds killed that day. It was like a really, really good dove hunt. Needless to say, he was wt by the end of the day. And if you even walked out with a gun, he went and hid. Couldn't stand a gun from that point forward. Ivy. So he became the pet and he loved my girls to death, and that was perfectly okay as far as that goes,
YouTube Advice And E Collar Risks
SPEAKER_01but uh I I didn't have my hunt buddy that I wanted sit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um we've and I I tried with a couple of other dogs and and just things didn't work out or life didn't work out in general, and a lot of where I started trying to get my information was watching YouTube's it you can somebody there's somebody watching this right now that say, oh no, that's what I'm doing. You can get a lot of good information off of YouTube, but you never get it in the order you need it. Because the importance of beginning with the basics and obedience and having an expectation with a pup from the day it comes home on is so revolutionary and and finding it out through cornerstone and listening to y'all's podcasts and stuff when I I did start kind of looking into the the cornerstone stuff. That's what I did with Ivy. I when I first got her, I couldn't afford to get the whole program. And I listened to the lab and I listened to Build From Here and I tried to cherry pick every little bit of tidbit information I could get out of those two podcasts, along with if you don't mind me name dropping before I do as far as uh the other two. Yeah. Um Lone Duck and uh Standing Zone, which standing zone is more your pointers and and doing your upland style hunting information. Um which is because I had a pointer at the time. Uh but I just you get lots of information, but when you're trying to take a 10-minute video and learn how to collar condition a dog, you're gonna mess something up. That that's something you need way more guidance on than a 10-minute YouTube video. Yeah. Um there's we have people in our community here at every what once a week, maybe less, uh talking about e-callers. And they're a great tool, but you gotta use them right. And they're I've speaking from experience, you can burn a dog on one and and make them hard to ever control correctly if you do it wrong. Right. And I'm a proponent of I am bad about doing things wrong because especially with e-collars, you don't have that that connection to the dog. If you get frustrated, you're like, oh, doing little whoop.
SPEAKER_00And look, everybody says they're not gonna do that, right? I mean, we all know, oh, I'll never do that. Okay. It really does take a lot of discipline to handle it right. And I I'm not saying everybody does that, but odds are odds are you're gonna hit that button at the wrong time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you hit it at the wrong time with the wrong level combined, depends on the dog. You may have just hurt yourself pretty bad.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. The the relationship between the handler and his dog is probably the A number one most important thing. Everything else is teaching, and and they're no different than your kids if if a person who's who's raising kids and that kind of thing. It's the same thing with the dog, especially young pups and on up. The mentality behind them. Um dogs, if you listen to all the science behind everything, and I'm sure you know this, um, for every one year is give or take a seven years for a dog. If you figure that in mentality blocks, if you take a year old dog and expect him to be perfect going out hunting the first time, imagine taking your seven-year-old child and expecting perfection. You can do it with a lot of training. But you gotta do it right. And if you just go out there and and don't expect there to be hiccups, you can get disappointed. And that's what we're trying to do is not leave room for disappointment. Um I I think CGA blocks everything out in such a way that doing it step by step, you don't leave room for disappointments. You you leave room that you know that there's going to be some hiccups here and there. And that's why we have the communities and and the retriever connect and and and that kind of thing to be able to, when we have a problem, reach out to other people.
Members Weekend Breakthroughs In Training
SPEAKER_01Because when you're in the trenches, sometimes you get frustrated and you can't focus on you've you've gotten a text message from me, it's like, man, I hit a wall, I don't know what's happened, and and I don't know what to do right before Members Weekend. I got to Members Weekend, I talked to a couple people, I went down there by the pond, and we were having an issue with lining memories. Terrible. She'd go out to the bumper, she'd sniff it, she'd come back to me. She wouldn't pick it up. And something about being there, she it finally clicked. Seeing other dogs do it and still having a little bit of hiccups with live birds, but I've been working on that and trying to make it fun and that kind of thing. Um but or not live birds, but dead birds. Um, because feathers in her mouth is a little bit weird, but it's it's one of those learning things. She is a little over a year, uh about a year and three months. Wow. So she's still young. Um I'm hoping to hunt her this season, but I'm not gonna put a bunch of pressure where I'm got huge, huge high expectations. I I want her to have as much training as possible to do it right. One of the biggest things from from Members Weekend is is the the aspect of training the dog in front of you. I I got a lot of of insight from from uh Mr. Marty, Mr. Chris, uh, Mr. Kevin, just to name a few, and there's so many other people that if I try to name drop all of them, I'm gonna be wrong, period. Um and I'm gonna leave somebody out, and I'm not meaning to. Um but they helped me realize, you know, I'm gonna have different challenges because I have a chessie. They're headstrong, they're all kind of of goofy as far as different aspects. And my biggest takeaway from them is is they're more of a they want to be equal to you. Like in a sense, like you've got to almost earn their respect to to move them in a direction and it's uh annoying at times, I'll just be honest. But uh it's worth it because I I don't know that I've had a bond with a dog um tighter than what I've got with this one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's it.
SPEAKER_00So you were so one of the kind of things that we kind of talked about there is you wanted to do it right this time. You had had some past experiences that went wrong, and then before Cornerstone, you were watching YouTube and basically pulling from every resource you could get your hands on, but it just it didn't seem to I guess cut the mustard. It wasn't working to the level that you were hoping. It's not that it wasn't working, it just wasn't working to the level that you wanted it to. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Obedience wise, I could get it out to sit, lay down, maybe go get a ball and bring it back to me, but it it's been able to send one to place or um do lining memories or or for Remote march that was well beyond anything I could figure out how to train. I had no ability to gauge anything by it. I had nobody that I could talk to to go, hey, this is what I'm doing, this is how it's going. What am I doing wrong, or what am I doing right, or how where do I go from here?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um because So, how did you feel when you came into Cornerstone having those experiences, being unsure of what to do next, and then going from basically having to just guess and hope it was going to work out to like having this structure?
Structure Support And The Cornerstone Difference
SPEAKER_00Obviously, you saw it from the outside, but hey, let's just be real. Like looking on it from the outside, you know, it seems like you were interested in cornerstone, but that the price up front at the time didn't fit. Y'all had a lot going on. Yeah. But also, even in the back of your mind, you're like, can this be worth it? Oh, yeah. I'm sure you were asking that question.
SPEAKER_01A lot of people do. And my wife was like, Adam, you you have done stuff like this in the past. We've looked in the program and not dog training, but other things. It's like every one of them has been a scam. And honestly, I it was a shot in the dark whether it was or not. And if anybody who is sitting here going, oh, this is this is too good to be true, it looks like it on the surface. But I will tell you right now, there was a hiccup when I bought this program. We we got I got the retriever school that's the little few-week program to begin with, and that that helped me tremendously with Ivy and was night and day different. And then I decided I was going to get the full program. And Shelby had bought it for uh right before Christmas, and that was kind of my Christmas present from her. And uh right around Thanksgiving, because there was a Thanksgiving sale. And she had a hiccup with it going through, and within the hour when she sent an email, I got a phone call from Josh saying, Hey man, here here's what it's happening, it's on my end, and he walked me through it and will just welcome me by just calling me. No other place, period, are you going to have the guy that that's on all the videos calling you personally to figure out the problem. And I've talked to you multiple times when I've had problems or shot you text messages and you've called me or emailed me or somebody has reached out to me because it's real. And that that's the thing. Y'all want to help and want to see people succeed instead of oh, I got my money, let me go on down the road. And and that that's awesome in and of itself. Um so many other things that I have seen, it it's like, eh, here's the money, here's some videos, good luck. But we've got the of course the app, we've got the whole community. If you're on the Facebook, I know originally it was Facebook, so I I wasn't a part of all that to begin with. I I was lucky enough to join when the app was awesome. Uh, because I've I've heard horror stories of some of the first ones. Um but and and the uh the the AI thing we have now. Yeah, the coach. We've got the coach. The coach being able to ask and then it help it get it to help you make lesson planners is awesome. Um, and what little bit of questions and and even to I have asked kit specific questions to chessies and it give me answers related to, hey, if you have a chess, you might want to try it this way. Which I think is pretty cool because it's like, hey, you're gonna have different challenges. Try this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Sit. Yeah, we put a lot of work into that. Um still, I guess we could still call it in beta. We're we're kind of getting ready to just uh open the doors on that and let the let it fly. But you know, when we figured out we could do stuff like that, uh I mean we've been kind of thinking about something like that for a long time, and we put a lot of work into that side and anything without we can do to help people, that's that's our goal. So I guess so. What you're saying is when you came in, you know, maybe you you got even more than you even thought you were gonna get, which is that's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01And and just just the support system and then going to members weekend and making so many contacts and and what I'm gonna say is is lifelong friends is I mean, because it it it was an experience like I've never had when it came to anything like that. Being around surrounded by like-minded people, um, that's all there just just to see the dogs succeed was awesome. Like yeah, we uh we we were there there might have been like competitism just just having fun back and forth, but it wasn't malicious in in any way, shape, or form. It was a t embedderment of the animals uh in in and of itself and the handlers too. Um so it it was a a tremendously fun time.
SPEAKER_00Man, I you know, I love that. You know, really the three things we do in the cornerstone community, we do three things connect, share, and grow, and I think what you just said embodies that. Now, from coming in from where you were before, you know, trying to get your dog to where you want it, unsure, how did things feel when you basically after you've been in the program a little bit? Like you all of a sudden the first thing is your eyes are open, it's like, whoa, I'm sure it was a little overwhelming. You get in the the full program, you're like, okay, there's a lot here. Then you kind of get in the the swing of things. How did your like day-to-day change from what you were doing to what you have now been doing for a little while
Week By Week Progress Without Rushing
SPEAKER_00now?
SPEAKER_01It it gave me a direction, like um to begin with when I first brought her home, it was, you know, working on a box for a place. I mean, eight-week-old puppy, and I've I've got videos of where I was sending her to a box for place and then throwing a little duck toy and having her come get it, which was way too much for that age, but she was doing it and doing it well. And I thought I was doing something special, and I'm I'm glad I got cornerstone when I did quit quit quit messing up. Not only do two or three of those, but but still, she was very smart for her her age, or at least what I considered smart. Um, but it it gave me a structure, it gave me a plan. And I'm the kind of person that that's what I kind of need if I don't have a direction and I'm just left to my own devices, nothing ever gets done. Um a lot of times.
SPEAKER_00Well, like like many of us, yeah, having a plan is a game changer. Um it's a game changer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and it the uh the week by week processes and and stuff like that is nice to have. And I had the wrong mentality looking at them at the beginning, and I I think me and a couple other people kind of realize that at members' weekend. It's like, oh, I'm on week twenty-eight, or I'm on week this, or I'm on week that. It's like, yeah, that's the week you're working on learning. It it's not what you're learning, it's it's it's what you know, and and it's it it's a marathon, not a sprint. If you're on week twenty-eight and you've been on it for a couple weeks, week twenty-eight, I'm just using pulling a number out when I say week twenty-eight. Um there's some introductions of skills there, and then there's going over skills that you already know. It's like you're developing the skills you've learned and you're introducing new things that that you're in in a flow. The whole 52 week is is a flow of stuff, but it doesn't mean you have to do it in a week.
SPEAKER_00Right, right.
SPEAKER_01And it there's people who go through it faster than a week. There's people who take three months on one week and and that's fine. But it's all in what you want your dog to be able to do. Um, and I've I think it's an awesome program.
SPEAKER_00Man, we appreciate that. And we're we're just glad you're part of it. It's uh it's cool to hear that you you went from basically what a lot of people do. I think this is super relatable, um, bouncing around, using YouTube. And and look, we all use YouTube. It's fantastic, it's a great resource. Uh but we've got these creatures that they, you know, if you want the best outcome, you're you're gonna do more. It's like, right, if you're just getting into something, a lot of times like we we're we don't qualify ourselves to get deep into it. Maybe you're learning a sport, golf. Well, you're gonna start on YouTube 100%. But if you get if you fall in love with it, you're probably gonna go deeper. Now, the only caveat is at least in golf, like there the timing doesn't matter as much. The timing does matter for a dog. The earlier you can get on the right track, the better. So, I mean, if you've if you've got this dog and it you didn't just wander into it and you've planned to get this dog, you should plan to see it through and and to see it be the best that it can be. It's a step-by-step deal. And then when you get through there, like you said, that was a very that's a golden nugget. You said it's not about uh, you know, what uh what you're learning, you know, it's not about what you've learned. No, you said it's not about what you're learning, it's about what you've already learned. The key is you've already learned it, you've retained it, you've gained that information, and now you've got that and you can carry forward. That's pretty that's a glad we pulled that one out of the podcast. I think that was a golden nugget, man. That's good stuff.
SPEAKER_01It it may not be much of one to some people because there's there's some people that probably quoted that to me a million times, and I it just didn't retain it, but it I remember we've we was going over the the standards at members weekend, and I went with the intention I wanted to run her in Huntable, and I got there and realized real quick she wasn't a huntable in any way, shape, or form. I was like, maybe I can run her in family, and there were certain aspects I just I I knew she was going to fail, and then rather than run them, I'm like, I don't want to get her discouraged by not being able to do something. So there was stuff that I didn't, and uh the the thing I liked about the standards is is of course you have the the gold, silver, and bronze, but anything below that is in progress. And in reality, even if you're you're silver, your bronze, your gold, it doesn't matter. You're still in a process. There are in in progress. And that's the way we should always be.
Focus On Wins And Build Momentum
SPEAKER_01And it's it's um you know the the takeaway for members weekend for me and my wife was uh oh oh we uttered it so many times. It is uh focus on the wins. If you're if you've had a bad week of training, but you got one good retrieve out of a whole week, awesome. Focus on that win. Build from there. If you've had a great week of training, build from there. And and it applies to life too. I I mean we can all get down in the dumps and be upset that we didn't they put mayonnaise on our burger and we ordered it without, but hey, at least we got a burger that day. Yeah. 100%. It's we can get frustrated with all we want at the dogs, but they're trying to learn it just like we're trying to teach them. And I don't speak dog, they don't speak English, so we gotta figure it out together.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome, man. That is a great target, is focusing on the wins. I mean, you you learn so much, but like you said, that positive mentality, it's so easy to focus on the negative because we're always trying to get these things to work together. And you can focus on what's not working or you can focus on what is working. And what you find is that when you shift that focus to what is working, um, you see more of that, and therefore you start to get better results. And you're more fun to be around, right? If if you're all the time thinking about things that make you grumpy, uh yeah, people aren't gonna want to hang around you. Same with your dog. If all you do is focus on being critical, my dog's not this, my dog's not that, it's not doing this right. Your dog's gonna feel that. And and probably even more than we can feel, they're very in tune with the emotion of things. So when you focus on, man, you know what? That was really cool how my dog was fired up about that right there. Yeah, maybe it did this or that, but what it did right there, like I want more of that. It transforms everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And like one of her favorite things at Members Weekend that like she got the most fired up about was the water retrieve. So there's a couple times I'd go down to the pond in between breaks and throw some retrieves for her. Threw in one time and the retrieve wasn't but I don't know, 10 yards off the bank into the water. She ran to the other end of the pond, jumped in from there to swim to it because she wanted a longer swim.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But she was fired up.
SPEAKER_00That's what you're looking for. You want them to be excited about it. Because you can take that and you can harness it and mold it into something. No. If the dog is disengaged and doesn't want to be there, that's a lot harder to engage them there. So I can't I can't believe we're already up on time. Uh we will ask kind of land the plane on these last couple of questions, um, and then we'll have to do another. How does it feel now knowing that you what you're doing is working? You've already seen the results, you're on the right track. How has your confidence changed? How is your is your approach to training changed any, or uh really your mentality, how you feel about things? I would love to just know how it has changed from where you were.
The Fetch Breakthrough Using High Value Drive
SPEAKER_01The mentality of of of it was like for instance, before Cornerstone, something like fetch hold release no idea how to make it work. And it it it's I I mean a plethora of of information out there, and a lot of it not really all that great, but or at least in my experience what I found. But Cornerstones was was awesome and a lot of people struggle with it. But you gotta find the way to present it just right for your dog to understand it and the weird tidbit with her, and I know this is off the subject or off the wall. It took me shooting a squirrel in the yard, and because she wanted it so bad, she took it from my hand to break through that wall of when I say fetch, grab it. But it was that size, that thing, and that's that's what broke through the wall. It was that little bit of something finding what she wanted bad enough to get it when I said fetch and then build from that.
SPEAKER_00Um before you go any further, I gotta hit on that too. That is a great piece of information. I don't know that the squirrel is the answer for everybody, but what the the princip the principle behind that is you went and found what your dog needed and you communicated to it where it was at at the time and you got breakthrough. That component is so crucial. I see so many times I was like watching uh, I was watching, what was this movie? Oh, Ant's Life or Bug's Life, Bug's Life the other night with the kids. And there is this scene where the ants are walking and all of a sudden a leaf falls over in their path, and they're like, oh my gosh, we can't go for it. We don't know what to do. There, there's something in our way. We're stuck, and the line jams up, and then this other ant comes on and says, Hey, um, let me help you walk around this leaf. Like it's it's gonna be okay. You're gonna make it through when they walk you right around that leaf. Exactly. Thinking outside the box all the time. The key is you just find that path, that groove with the dog you have, as you said, the dog in front of you. Uh so man, I love that you were able to instead of be frustrated and just keep hitting. A lot of times we just try to force a square peg through a round hole. We say, Well, if my dog's not doing this, it's just not, I'm gonna force it. You better do this. Instead, you're like, you know what, we're just gonna pop a squirrel and see what the dog thinks about that because the dog loves the squirrel. But what you found is what the dog loves, and that's that's golden. No.
SPEAKER_01That was the the tidbit. And it's like it's it was the we keep talking, train the dog in front of you and and figure out what what you're you're looking for. It's like she chases squirrel every morning when we walk out. Let's see if that works. And it did for me. I'm not saying that works for everybody by any means, but that was my little weird quirk. There's a couple people that laughed at that short members weekend too, but yeah, it's what got us got us past that wall.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, that's awesome. So you uh it sounds like to me that you're you're able to take and learn. I think you're committed on a deeper level than just doing I'm just it's not I'm just checking off week one, week three, week ten. You're committed to learning the concepts that we teach and then applying them. Yeah. And that clear, that's clear that maybe from whereas before you were just trying to pick up what people were saying, doing the best that you could with what was given, but it wasn't necessarily taking you on a journey that was going to give you as a trainer the outcome that you needed. It was more of just, hey, here's how to do this, and you get your dog to do XYZ. Cool. Yeah, great. That's definitely a different approach as you're transforming yourself as the dog's trainer and handler.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And and building that relationship between me and my dog of knowing what she needs to understand the situation. Um, and that's the the ultimate goal, is to have that understanding with your dog to be able to teach it. Because ultimately when we're out in the field, we're partners. Uh, we're we're not I mean, I I I look forward to that first duck or goose or whatever the first animal is that she brings back to me. I'll probably cry, I'll just be honest. But I'm I'm looking forward to it and I hope it's this year, but if it's not until next year, okay. I still got time with my dog between now and then. Wow, no big deal. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Man, well, Adam, I this has been a great episode. That was a hilarious story. I absolutely I'm just glad you're on this, man. I'm glad you're part of the community. Uh let me let me ask you this kind of as we settle, because you hit on one thing.
Patience Partnership And Final Takeaways
SPEAKER_00How would you say your your guys' relationship, you and your dog's relationship has transformed? What's been like the one nugget that you've learned that's helped you all? Because it sounds to me like maybe your relationship has grown a lot, like you, you and your dog have a bond maybe you didn't have before.
SPEAKER_01Um the biggest thing that it has taught me is when we're out there in a field and and I'm trying to teach her XYZ and she's not picking it up, and I'm I'm ready to beat my head against the wall. It's not her fault. I have days where I go out and I deal with I uh deal with customers and I come home mad at the world and don't want to deal with anything, and and no matter what you say, I'm not gonna listen. And there's days that I wake up that way. Dogs are the same way. If it's if I go out and she don't want to do retrieves, okay, well let's go for a walk. Let's just have fun for a little bit, and then later on you'll be ready to go and that'll be fine. We've got time. And it before it was you need to learn this the way I'm trying to tell you right now. And sometimes that just don't work. And that that that's that's the aspect of of that, and that that's you could go off on all kind of tangents there, but I'll I'll keep it to a minimum when not. But I've I've thoroughly enjoyed Cornerstone because it has kept me from becoming a different kind of handler than than that.
SPEAKER_00So I've I've enjoyed that aspect. Oh man, that is awesome, Adam. I appreciate you so much for taking your time to jump on this podcast and share your story and continue your journey and continue your story with the cornerstone. Um, I just want to commend you too for committing to that growth. And that's the big thing. Look, if anybody's out here listening to this podcast, it you know, if you keep doing the same thing, you're not gonna get the results that you want, right? If right, you've got to change something to get the results that you're looking for. So if you're not satisfied or happy with where you're at, just make a change. And I think in your case, getting, I would say maybe the number one thing is being connected with other people that are going on the same journey that are aspiring to something greater has been a huge thing for you. And so I just want to commend you on on your step in the right direction. And uh, we appreciate you, Adam, and look forward to seeing you on this journey and seeing you and your pup continue to grow as you train.