Gundog Nation
A show to bring together gundog enthusiasts, trainers, and handlers with discussion focused on all breeds and styles of gundogs.
Gundog Nation
Gundog Nation #003: Josh Parvin, Cornerstone Gundog Academy
What happens when a deer hunter trades antlers for feathers and takes on the world of duck hunting? Join us as we sit down with Josh Parvin, a dedicated outdoorsman and dog enthusiast, who shares his transformative journey from deer hunting to duck hunting, inspired by an unforgettable outing with his father. Learn how this passion led him to build a community around gundog enthusiasts and encourage young people to embrace the sport. Josh recounts the early trials and triumphs of training his first duck dog, which ultimately propelled him and his father into the world of dog training and starting Cornerstone Gundog Academy.
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I'm happily honored to be with a special guest I have tonight, and also a friend, mr Josh Parvin. Josh, you wear a lot of hats, but I think I know what your biggest hat is. Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Well, I would be happy to. And before we kind of dive in, I would just like to say it's an honor to be on your podcast. It's an honor to get to talk with you. We've been talking a lot over the last while now and just to hear your passion for the outdoors and specifically for people and their dogs is very encouraging and inspires me. So it's just an honor to be here and I love what you're doing Gundog Nation. I love how you're inspiring community and inspiring people together and to connect. So I just wanted to say that before we go any further, yes, and just for new listeners too.
Speaker 1:Thank you, josh. I very much appreciate that. One of the things we've done and Josh and I have talked about this a lot, he already knows, but we're trying to my goal is to bring a community of people together that are enthusiasts and love gundogs, and not just. You know Josh and I are both retriever guys, but I've been exposed to lots of other breeds over the years hunting, and not just retrievers, the pointing dogs, flushing dogs, you know coon dogs. I'm going to have the world championship coon dog person on here next episode. And you know we want to encourage young people to start participating. We want to keep our sport alive. We want to preserve our heritage and get more young people involved. You know I've got four kids. One of them kind of likes well, two of them like dogs. None of them hunt with dogs and it kills me. Hey, you know they're independent, they have their own brains and I can't I can't make them do that. So maybe I can't get my kids, maybe I can encourage some other kids to get into it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome anyway josh, I'll let you take over yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, for those that don't know, uh, I'll give you a little just background, I guess. And then kind of how I kind of got started on a duck hunt. Okay, I was a deer hunter and love deer hunting Might. In fact, my dad is who got me into the deer hunting and hunting in general, the first I all my outdoor experiences are first with him and he's the one that got me out there. Well, he got me on a duck hunt because he he had an invite and we talked about it before and he said you know, I don't know how much we'll like it, but we'll go, and you know, because it could be cold and all that. And we're already battling the cold, as deer hunters say, this is before sitka came along and all that. So we were just, we were just trying to survive out there, even though I know people think alab may not be that cold, but the humidity will chill you to your bones when you get a cold day. So it's, uh, it's pretty serious. But anyways, we we went on our first duck hunt and I fell in love with the sport of duck hunting and my dad, um fell in love with the dogs, cause he was already a dog guy. Uh, he had beagle background and all that and so, and I was really young at the time. So I'm saying yes to everything, I'm on board with it all and that's kind of what got us into duck dogs. So we got our first duck dog and I was gung-ho. I was eating and consuming everything you could waterfowl, watching all the YouTubes, reading as much as I could. It was a little bit different online back in the day. It was kind of harder to find information when I was kind of getting into it. So there's also a lot of TV involved at the time, because TV was kind of a bigger thing instead of just single individual content creation. But, um, you know, I I fell in love with it and we just we just ate it up and that's what, long story short, led us to. The passion, the desire, the love of it is what led us to what we do now and our first dog.
Speaker 2:We did what we thought everybody was supposed to do and send it off to a trainer, and I didn't even really think about training my dog myself at the time. It was just something like well, hey, let's go to the trainer. That's what my dad was saying and I'm on board, I'm saying yes, like I said, like it all sounds good to me. I didn't even know what a bumper was. Okay, so a dog training dummy. My dad showed me that thing that for the first time. I was like, well, what is that? He's like that's a dog training dummy.
Speaker 2:Went a little bit haywire, you know. He told me when we first got this dog I was real happy. You know, it was in the home, is a beautiful puppy, we're doing all the fun stuff. He's like well, we're gonna have to send it off for five months. That's kind of a long time to be without my dog. But he convinced us, the family, like it'll be okay and, um, I agreed and we talked about it and I was on board.
Speaker 2:We went and dropped it off of the trainer and and that's kind of where things went a little bit South and the trainer definitely trained the dog. But my dog came left one way and it came home another way and not in a good manner. The dog came back um, timid, um, just not as responsive as it was and he was a happy, go lucky dog before, and so we can get more into this if you want, ken, but that kind of led us to learning to do it ourselves and pioneering our own path. Because one thing you got to know about us is that my dad and I both, when we do something, but specifically my dad, we're all in and kind of like you, ken, you're all in, we're all in and we're burning the boats and we're all in and kind of like you can, you're all in, we're all in and we're we're, we're burning the boats and we're all in.
Speaker 2:So I I don't remember the timing now, cause it's been a little bit, but my dad may have already had deposits, or we may have already had other dogs, like puppies, by the time this dog was coming back, cause my dad, like I said, he was a dog guy, so he already had a plan to to breed, because he's passionate about that and uh, cause he wanted to, you know, preserve, uh, the heritage and the legacy of the breeding that we were going to have in the other breedings that he was identifying, that we wanted to carry and um, so I don't remember the timeline, but anyways, we knew that we were going to have more dogs and we knew we had to do something because we couldn't do what we did before and waste that money and it not turn out and so, uh.
Speaker 2:So that led us to founding a step-by-step course to help people how to train a dog from our pain. We turned that pain and that we already had passion, but we turned our pain into something good. That you know the frustration like we could have just gave up right then. I mean, we were deer hunters, we were barely duck hunters and we had a dog. That was kind of a washout, but I was ate up with it so much and my dad was too because we bonded and connected over the hunting that for us it was not a matter of, well, we're just going to quit and go back to deer hunting.
Speaker 2:It was a matter of we're going to pave another way, we're going to find another way and that's why, uh, you know, we decided we're going to learn to do it ourselves and then fast forward a while. We now teach other people how to do it so they can avoid that same issue and they can have confidence in and not waste a bunch of money like we did. You know we're in a fortunate position. You know, maybe if that happened to somebody else, that might have been a deal cooler for them. That could have derailed their dreams for 10 years for them to have to recover from their dog. They might have just had to settle, and I believe no one should have to settle for a less than dog because money and lack of know-how and um yeah, so that that's where we're at you know that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I won't take much time here but I kind of kind of got the same similar road to where we are now is. My grandpa lived beside of me. He died when I was younger, probably 12, and he full of horses, like trained horses, but he trained dogs, just not as a professional trainer or anything like that, but he could get. He'd have the neighbor dog down the street because they were. We live in high in Kentucky where I'm from. You know there was no lease laws and fences. He'd have a neighbor's dog doing tricks and we went to Florida one time and I got a picture of this and he had some dog at this. We got this small house my family bought back when it was affordable in Florida and we were down there and I've got a picture of him getting this dog doing all kinds of tricks Just a dog that walked up from down the street.
Speaker 1:So it just fascinated me and I always had dogs growing up and my cousin back home, matter of fact, todd, who was like a brother to me and he's like man, as much as you love to hunt and as much as you love dogs, why don't you hunt with dogs? I'm like, why did I think of that, you know, and and same here. I got into beagles and and, but yeah, so that's kind of and I'm like you. I was a hardcore deer hunter, like you know, still kind of am. But um, I guess I kind of got into labs doing antler shed hunting first, really, wow, yeah, that's how I got to know Barton and started buying dogs from him back in 16. And I went to British labs because I ended up you know how I'm like you I read everything I got my hands on and I found a Robert Miller book and then I went to a seminar there and that's how I kind of got into the British.
Speaker 2:But anyway I'll let you go.
Speaker 1:So so you all first, before you say this, before we get into it, I highly recommend to the listeners Cornerstone Gundog Academy. I am a graduate of there, or at least I have a certificate, and the knowledge is. I mean you can always go back to the videos. It takes you from from eight weeks to a fully finished gundog, completely, and it's amazing and you have to humble yourself, like me. I'm 56 years old and I'm talking to Josh about. I was filming a dog before he was born and I'm asking him questions and he's always got the answers. So I love that. But if you're going to be successful in the dog training world, you got to be humble, right, josh?
Speaker 2:that's exactly right. But, yeah, go ahead and tell you.
Speaker 1:Know, I don't know where to begin you you've got to tell them how long your program is and okay, and just what it does. And I would like to know just your overall, in a nutshell, training philosophy yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's dive into that and we'll kind of use my story to kind of pivot us in there, because it only makes sense. That's how we found our way. So, because we train in a very unique way. You know, our first, like I said, our first dog he went through the typical American-style training program force fetch hole nine yards. And when we got him back and we realized the problem with the way the trainer ran that program was, it was not a, there wasn't the adaptation that needed to happen. Our dog needed other things and he didn't receive that. And so when we realized, wow, you know, it's not, I'm not saying force fetches, what mess our dog up, but although that dog really didn't need that In fact he already liked to retrieve and deliver stuff to him Fine, and we can get into that philosophy too. I'm really happy to talk about that because there's a big distinguisher in the way we view things on that. But he needed more, and so that led us down a rabbit hole of right. So we already had a British lab. He was a British lab, and so we kind of went down the British training route.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I started learning every DVD, every book we could get my dad was buying. My dad is an information gatherer. In fact, he was in the Army a long time ago and one of his jobs was intelligence and gathering information. So he's really into that. I'm telling you, when it comes to business, anything, he is the information guru. He will find and sort and get us what we need. And I'm kind of I like we took like an assessment, like to see how we, you know, respond and how so we could work really good together. And I respond a little bit differently. I'm more of a my natural instinct. The extinction is kind of like a they call it a quick start and that is to, like, you know, kind of bust through the gap, right, because when I was in high school we're playing.
Speaker 2:I think maybe I learned this here, I don't know, but and maybe from hunting. When I was a kid, I used to always go out every single day after school and before school I'd get up early and I would hunt with a pellet gun and when I got home from school I would hunt with a pellet gun. I thought about hunting all day, every single day, when I was out there, so like that's what I dreamed about and I would go out in the woods and I learned really quick. Opportunity is there, but it's there for a moment. You think about it too long, you can lose opportunity. But also now that I'm older and in the real world, you know sometimes it pays to think a little bit, even if you miss an opportunity. You know what I mean. But that really works pretty good for dogs too, and so we kind of complemented each other in that aspect.
Speaker 2:And so, long story short, he got all this information. We're going through the information and I'm learning the British ways and these guys are incredible. It's in their lineage, it's in their heritage. I mean, we're talking, you know, even the Queen of England as a state. Not too long ago she was out there. Well, I'll say not too long ago, time is kind of flying now, but anyways she was out there. They're having like a shoot on their estate and so it's a really big deal over there. So they've got lots of beautiful heritage and legacy. And you, that's the lineage from where our dogs come from. So we start learning a lot of that.
Speaker 2:But I'm really thankful for my dad and not just selling out to one way and gathering all sorts of information and learning from all sorts of different sources. He was pivotal in that and encouraged don't just learn from them, learn from the American style of ways. Then we also started learning from the science behind how dogs learn Animal behaviorists. In fact. He hired an animal behaviorist PhD to teach me. He came over to our house and he taught us on the back porch. I remember sitting there on the back porch and he's sitting there teaching me what you would learn in a college class. And I'm in high school, I guess at this time. Yeah, I've been in high school at this time and we're sitting there learning. It was really cool. In fact, I had an internship worked out with a school to where I forget what they called it co-op or something like that. So I got to leave early from school every single day and I'd go home and I'd work. My job was trained dogs and you know cornerstone retrievers, which is our kennel name, and so, anyways, I'm learning all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And so, to fast forward and make a long story short on that, like we learned to blend and hybrid things and start pulling things that worked well and things that didn't work well. We started breeding our dogs to get money back because my dad was in deep For me I'm just in at this point my dad was the money guy. He was the one funding this whole thing. So I think our first dog that got messed up we had 7,500 in and that's kind of like I said, you know, for some people and it, that can be a deal killer, but we kind of just made sacrifices to make it happen and that's where we're like, well, we really need to buy this next female because we're going to breed some puppies and hopefully get some money back, and that we did. Well, that gave me an opportunity. I had a whole cohort of little puppies to start training, although some of them we sold.
Speaker 2:But basically when the clients would come pick up the puppies we had a few other dogs at this point and I had spent some time training and they would see we would show our dogs work. That was one of the things dad really wanted to do, is he wanted to make sure that our females, not just our male, our stud dogs, would perform. So we wanted to show both, and so when people would come, we'd go out to the land and we would show them our dogs. And we had two major questions how do you do that and will you train my dog? And so when someone asked me to train their dog for the first time, I was like, well, I hadn't even really thought about it. My dad was on board with that. He said yes, I said I'm on board with it. So now I became a pro trainer. At that point I'm receiving money to train dogs for people at a very young age. I mean, I'm in high school and we've got a whole business operation rolling. It was crazy, and so that led us down the path and we'll get to methodology here in a second of finding a different way to do things.
Speaker 2:I've always been inspired because my dad, like he, was in the Army. I've always been inspired by Special Forces specifically. I've got some friends now through Cornerstone that are Special Forces. Shout out to them.
Speaker 2:But I was watching this documentary on History Channel and one of the things that it was talking about is these guys think outside the box.
Speaker 2:Specifically special forces. They're unconventional, they've got to do things differently to get the job done, and that always stood out to me and I remember even back in elementary school. There's this video we watch and it was like this little four-year-old girl, like lifting up a car through a pulley system, using leverage to her advantage. I was like, wow, there's that marked me and this is coming from middle elementary school when I saw this, like there's always another way to do something, there's always another angle, there's always another way to view things and there's always another plan of attack even if what you're doing is not working. And so I took that same approach into dog training, especially after our first dog didn't turn out so good and we kind of started learning a different way to do it. And so that's. We can get more into methodology in a sec. I don't want to talk too long here, but that's that's kind of some of the background and some of the thought process that I took into learning to train dogs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you took all this experience and you and your dad I think that's how it worked Y'all had an idea to take this to the masses.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:How did you do?
Speaker 2:that Well. So it's really interesting you say that. So this is my dad's vision here and I'm on board with it and I've been since the beginning In the process that we were involved in learning. We were getting connected to community, and that's what I love about Gun Dog Nation. That's why we're fully supporting you in every way. We believe in it. But community was everything. So we started gathering. There was something called the British Field Trials Society of America. It's not really a thing now, but anyways, we started gathering some dogs and started working dogs and even there's a few sanctioned trials. That's ended up how we met Barton Ramsey and one of the things that I think sparked the idea for my dad.
Speaker 2:For me, I was more focused on the details of learning to train the dogs. My dad sees this, this big vision, this bigger picture, because he was. He was seeing it from his seat and I was seeing things from my perspective and I won't speak totally for him, but I'll speak what I've heard him say, and that's that when we were, we invited people out to our land because we wanted to advance the sport, we wanted to advance what we're doing, because we're passionate about it. Well, we ran into a problem. And the problem was when we wanted to have a field trial. We couldn't because not all the dogs could perform. And this is kind of where those big distinguisher comes in. And the British style of training versus American style of training. Right, american style of training, you know you're going to go run your hunt test and there's nothing against American style. But I got to paint the picture in the difference so you can realize the difficulty and why this is what it is. Because some people, people would say, well, anybody could train a dog. Well, yeah, that is true. However, the train, the standard that we're training to, is a different level and you have to understand a few things. Well, on the british style, you have 10 dogs on a line and the standard is no dog is on a lead and we're not training for five minutes running a setup and then putting our dog up. We are out there like all day, time after time, retrieve after retrieve, gun after gun, and the dogs have to be quiet, remain steady. And when it's their turn to go, dogs have to be quiet, remain steady, and when it's their turn to go, they have to be under total control and take your directions and work together as a team to achieve the goal of picking the bird and they have to do all of that together, which, when you think about that, you know it's it's actually a lot. It's like we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll give you, let me just tell you this story in a British field trial that I was in, I was smoking this one, I was winning, I was in first place and I was so happy about it. But this is where experience comes in and knowing some things, and I didn't have a whole lot of like handler experience outside of training my dogs and you got to sometimes know how to play the game. Well, unfortunate for me, there was a dog that had just come out of heat. I think the dog might've still been in a little bit of heat. Well, I was running my male dog, earl, and we're on the final series and things are going good. We've crushed it. We're like miles ahead of everybody.
Speaker 2:Well, barton was the former owner of Earl and Barton had stepped out to handle his dog and said a couple of words and Earl just peed and just had his nose in the air and I think from the direction where Barton was at, the dog was in. He was over in that direction, and so Earl just peeked out, and so what I did is I took my foot and I just pushed him back in with my foot. Well, you can't do that in the British field trial that we were in, that actually disqualified me. So I went from first place to out altogether just from touching my dog with my foot. Now, knowing what I know now, I would have done nothing. I would have just let him be because he didn't break. It's not like he was breaking or running away, and breaking will also get you kicked out. Whining will get you kicked out. So the standard is super high.
Speaker 2:What I should have done was just let him peek out and then just remained calm. You know what I mean? I should have not drew attention to it, but as soon as I did that, the judge came over, tapped me on the shoulder. He said you know, leash your dog, you're out. And I was. I was so upset about that, but it was a good lesson to learn how to play the game. But it also just pays to prepare, over-prepare, and it pays to be connected in community right and to be connected with other people, like if I had talked, which no one had ever told me that scenario. So maybe no one had experienced that scenario, I don't know. But one thing's for sure, I made sure to keep that in mind on future things.
Speaker 2:But I say all that to say it was hard to get a group of 10 dogs together that could run on that level. I mean, we're talking a very strenuous level, right, that was the open stake. We also could run. I forget what it was called now, either a started or a seasoned, I don't remember the lower level stake for younger dogs, which some of that work to be performed on lead, but even then to perform to the standard and actually meet the criteria, was very challenging. So when we were out there and we would invite people over and we would try to gather, my dad saw a problem and the problem is like okay, we got to go back to the basics, like we got to get people to the level, to where we can even compete, and so I think that's where the vision came from from Cornerstone.
Speaker 2:Outside of our own pain of our first dog didn't work out, because at this point our dogs are performing like we could run at that level, but we didn't have a way to tell our friends that were wanting to run with us like, hey, this is what you got to do to get here, like a clear pathway, because there was no one book or there was no one DVD and there was no one resource that we could use, like we, I mean, we studied everything and that's how we were able to do it, but that's also not really feasible for the average person, right? You see a lot of people out there, even on Facebook right now, trying to decide between individual programs and courses options, and you know you see a lot of people recommend well, you know, get in the club, do all this and that. And you know you see a lot of people recommend well, you know, get in the club, do all this and that. Well, when you start adding all that cost up in your time and all the money, like, it gets expensive. And so that's why Cornerstone came along, like we needed to create something that was less expensive.
Speaker 2:And then the true way of learning to train a dog, right, you can't. It's typically you're not just gonna buy one program and learn it, unless until we kind of put ours together, which is very in depth and detailed. Typically, you're going to have to go through a whole process, and so that's kind of what we wanted to do was solve that problem once and for all, have everything you need at all in one place and also streamline the process so that you don't have to sit there and spend hours, like I did, beating my head against the wall, testing things to see if it works. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's not fun for the first timer and you always risk messing up your dog and that's a huge risk. And then you're going back and I've done that in my youth and probably still, but you know that's a big thing and you can talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So the fear of messing your own dog up, look, I get it. I get it when we kind of my back was against the wall and my dad's was too, like when we got our next dog. It's not like we had another choice, like, okay, well, we don't trust in a trainer now and there's good trainers out there. So I'm not anti-trainer at all. But if you can train your dog yourself, if you're willing to do it, that is 100% the best way to do it. Why? Because you know how the whole thing works. You know how to solve things when it. You know these dogs they're complex there and when you and it's really a bond that you have to develop. So if you go ahead, go ahead. Well, no, that that.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I was going to say. You know the team that you create, the bond you create. Learn each other's body language, knowing how to read your dog there's no substitute for that.
Speaker 2:No, and you don't really want to learn that with an already trained dog. I mean, you can, and that's great. Look, you'll get experience if you already have a trained dog. But the connection that you have with a dog that you've trained yourself all the way through is irreplaceable, because that dog knows you, you know it and it knows your quirks, just like you know its quirks. And every handler is going to have quirks and every dog is going to have quirks. So we're not looking for a perfect world. What we're looking for is when preparation and excellence makes hard work. That's what creates beauty and an amazing dog, not perfection.
Speaker 2:Not, you don't even need to be. In fact, let me say this If you think you know it all and you think you got it all figured out, you're actually worse off than someone that knows nothing about training a dog. Why? Because you're going to make mistakes and you're not going to recover from them, because you're too caught up in your mind, thinking well, I already know what to do, I've done this before. And you want to say that because I've been there, I trained a couple of dogs, of dogs. I thought I knew what I was doing. I started beating my head against the wall again. Dog training I think we already talked about this Humility. You've got to remain humble. You've got to remain hungry. That's what's going to help you be successful training a dog.
Speaker 1:I remember calling you Josh and I did Schutzen, which is a very high obedience protection sport, a German sport For short. I was trying to start taking my dog backwards during the heel.
Speaker 1:Well, I should know how to do heel 20 years ago I was doing Schutzen you know that's right. And I mean their heel is high tech, right, it's much more high tech than 100% heel. I was messing my dog up and I finally called you and I told you exactly what I was doing and you said you know what you're doing. I said what you said you're putting pressure on its neck when you're going back and it's freaky. You don't know what to do. And I was like, wow, that's so simple. What in the world did I think of that? But anyway, that's just an example. No matter how old you are, how long, you've into it yet because it's pretty expensive.
Speaker 2:But one day I would love to learn to fly planes. Actually I've been. I've have a course, I've watched the videos, but the more I got into it everybody says, well, no one will tell you what the cost of that is, because no one wants to know what the cost of that is. And that's what.
Speaker 1:I found out and I realized well, I'm not at that place yet. The real expense is once you get your license, then fly in a plane and operate in a plane. That's your cost.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, one of the things that I have learned through that course is the danger of complacency and thinking you know it all. The stakes are high up there, at least with your dog. Right, we're only talking about the worst case scenario. You're not going to make progress. You make those mistakes there. You know it's life or death consequences. But when we take it back to dog training, that same approach to never take anything for granted, always be, you know, alert, always be focused when you're out there. You don't have to know it all, but always be willing to mold and bend and work around things. Like we said kind of from my younger childhood, learning some approaches from hunting and from that video I saw as a kid, there's always another angle to attack things. So it's really important to just keep that in mind. Like sometimes we're going to have to shift to get our dogs to do what they need to do.
Speaker 1:One of the things you did in your video you used the same dog, violet, from beginning to end, and what I loved about what you did is that dog reminds me of a few pups I've had that I used like, oh my God, they're crazy and wired up, but when a hunt dog, that's what you want, that's right. What I loved about the videos, josh, is that you showed your mistake. You didn't edit out the bad stuff. If that dog took off running, chasing something in a park or whatever it was, you showed that and so you didn't have those videos. I'm Mr Perfect and I make no mistakes. My dogs never make mistakes, because that's not real life, right? So that's one of the things I thought that makes Cornerstone stuff just so authentic, so genuine, and it's what happens to us all when we're training.
Speaker 2:Right. You know that's worth talking about because so when we first came out with Cornerstone I think we had 40 videos and we had the complete Gundog Academy. We launched it, I believe the very first Southern Oak Kennels Summit. So I mean, so we've known Barton since he got started and he had a little operation and now he's got a crazy big operation but it's still small. I love how he does that. By the way, I love how he has the campuses. It's big but it's small, which is beautiful.
Speaker 1:And he stays involved even when the puppy pickup process.
Speaker 2:Yes, very involved, and he does a good job taking care of it, and that's why we're proud to be partners. Among many reasons, it's a dream team of success, really. Among many reasons, you know, it's a dream team of success really. But when we started, we did a minimal, viable product, not really because we wanted to, because it was just necessity. We were paying high level videographers and it was getting very expensive, but we had the vision and everybody we talked to. I mean, let's rewind, when we were doing this, we were filming videos somewhere 2012, 13 or 14. I know for sure by 2014,.
Speaker 2:We were heavy into filming and we had to film two years before we were ever able to do anything. But nothing was online at this point. It was DVDs, and then you got your forms and you got your books. So nothing. We were the first got your forms and you got your books, so nothing. We were the first to be online and provide a digital access. But when we started telling people about this idea, people loved it. Well, one of the things that we wanted to do was always maintain listening to people. We didn't want to just film something and be done with it. I'm serious about this. We were so passionate about helping people overcome the challenge because we got burned. We were always going to be eager to listen and we still are, by the way. We're still listening. But what can we do better? And we, we, we gave our best foot, like we gave it all we had, but we're still listening to what can we do better?
Speaker 1:And then and then over the question yes, yeah, after I've done some courses. You've asked me my opinion and thoughts.
Speaker 2:And we're still. We're always listening because we believe in providing the best that we can. But anyways, we you fast forward. After our first initial launch, we added videos. Then we had a complete course. It was called the Complete Gun Dog Academy. We had around. I think when we finished it we had 260 videos, 280 videos and we had seen great people with success.
Speaker 2:Marty Haynes let me just listen to him. He's a model CGA member. He's amazing and he's done an amazing job with the Complete Gun Dog Academy. We're talking. His dogs are qualified for the grand. He's got great duck hunting dogs. He's an amazing guy and he's learned so much from that and him, among many others. He was part of the Founders Club. I think he he might've been one of the first to sign up. I know I remember shaking his hand and talking to him at the summit. Um, when we were doing all that Well, as we fast forward, one of the big feedbacks that we got and at the time we per, we, we produced videos that were about uh, you know, three to five minutes long.
Speaker 2:Our original vision was to show a dog that had just started, then show another dog midway through, then show a dog that was already complete with the skills. But the way it fell, with the client dogs we had at the time and our personal dogs, we weren't able to actually do all that and have it all complete. So we just we kind of followed our motto which is one of our mottos progress over perfection and so we just had to go with what we had at the time. Well then we got the idea after hearing people I want to see mistakes, I want to see what it looks like. I see that in the video, but my dog isn't doing that. And so we're like okay, well, let's answer that call.
Speaker 2:And we didn't really have the full vision. We did an initial test before we ever did anything and people loved it. I think we selected 16 to 30 people and we did something called a jumpstart, which is a mini 52 plus, and it was just to test a concept. It was different and we took their feedback and we shaped it even further. And then we dove in and we started filming and I didn't really count the cost at the time, like what that entailed.
Speaker 2:But basically I was signing on for a two year process and I knew it took that long to train a dog. But you know, when you're young and you're just, you're eager, you don't think about that. But we committed to a big project which was filming day in, day out, and I'm glad we did. My wife actually filmed all the videos and she did, so we she learned to film and and we went through the process, so we were out there every day, so it was a great. In fact, we had just got married, so I think we had been married like three or four months by the time we decided to start doing the 52 plus.
Speaker 2:And you put her filming dog training. I did and she was more of a city girl at the time but she still loves the city. I would say, loves that type of shopping and all the girly stuff, but she grew to love the outdoors. We've got a video where she started screaming on camera and she was bit by a tick and was freaking out. I'm like what's going on and it was crazy. So it was a fun journey but we started that and we finished that process and, like you said, violet and I knew the litter was great but I didn't know the spiciness of the dog, that I was getting Super smart, but just hyped up amped up, yeah, yeah and honestly, maybe even too smart at times.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was, oh gosh, the pressure that we were under because we filmed the first 16 weeks and then released the access and opened up the first eight weeks for people to follow along. And the pressure that we're out there like and let me just say this, and this is an important point is how much we believe in our process. We believe in our process enough that we put our whole entire name on the line with this one dog that we didn't even know was going to turn out. So we had 16 weeks completed. We weren't even know was going to turn out, so we had 16 weeks completed. We're only we weren't even finished with what we call the foundation space and we had to go. We knew we were going to 56 weeks because that's our process, and but that's how much we believed in our process and I hope that gives listeners and members that are current members of Cornishong confidence, knowing that if we were willing to put our name on the line, I was willing to put it all on the line with that one dog. Like I didn't know that this dog would turn out, but I believed it would. And let me talk about that real quick.
Speaker 2:One thing that we talk about around here and we're going to start talking about more is the process of success Believe. You got to start with belief. That's your foundation. You then got to fight for it and then you're going to win. That's your winning combo. Three things Belief. You got to have inner fight and you got to have the desire and the willingness to win. You have to choose. I'm going to win and when it comes to training a dog, if you have that mindset, you're going to be okay.
Speaker 2:When you start to struggle in the fight, when you start to not see the winning results, go back to your belief. Change your inner belief first. Get back to your roots of what you believe that this will work out. And I had to do that every day. When we're out there, like I said when we did that, when I'm at week 20 and things are not going good, or 28 or whatever 36.
Speaker 2:And I have that thought man, what if my dog doesn't turn out? What if I were to quit? I mean, what are we going to do? Everybody's going to say, well, cornerstone, they fell. Well, you know what? We didn't. We decided we were going to win, just like our members do every single day. When you're out there training your dog. You're a winner because you believe that it's going to work. You put in the work, you fight for it and then you see those results. And that's what is important is, you have't believe that it's going to work. I mean, it's not because you're not going to have the fight to finish, what it takes to get there and you know well better than I do, josh, those pups.
Speaker 1:they read you, they know if you have anxiety. They know if you're confident, that's right, especially like at trials and tests or hunting. If you're having anxiety, you're stuck riding a horse. Your horse is going to have anxiety. It's what is the end of that leash. You know Anyway.
Speaker 2:That's a double-edged sword. That makes it really hard. When you hear that, you hear that, you're like, oh my God. Well, I know I've got anxiety. What do I do? How do I overcome that? And that's where you go back to the three things we just talked about belief. It all settles. If you believe it's going to work, you will see it. You may not see it immediately, but that belief will carry you through the fight which will get you to that victory.
Speaker 1:Well, I can give a hint to trainers that have anxiety. So I occasionally would import dogs from overseas Belgian Malinois Shepherds. A lot of these dogs were titled, already, trained to attack. I would see videos before I got them. So anyway, the last one I got like that that it flew into houston. I go pick it up. Now I've got to open the kennel up, for a dog's been flying for probably 16 plus hours, been sitting, trained to attack, trained to read body language, open it up, put a collar on its neck and get it out. You think that doesn't take concentration and just relaxation, you know. So I've done that like five times and it. But you have to so you can control your anxiety. It's just it's, you just gotta work at it, but it's, that's. But that was never easy, but I've never bit. And the guys at the airport were like don't open that dog here, get that dog out of here.
Speaker 1:You're not opening that dog in here you could look at him and tell he was the real deal. Anyway, you know it. That's awesome. So, and we'll get into this I definitely won't get off here without getting some information about how listeners can find your stuff out. You and I can talk about so much and we could go for a week, but you have another business that I've purchased stuff from and now I'm so glad I have because I found it's all American made, but RTS. What does that tell us? You asked what is that Tell us?
Speaker 2:Yes. So in our mission to make retriever training a better experience for people, we decided, well, hey, we need to have the gear to back that up too. And a lot of that came from like. People would ask me like, well, where did you get this in the videos? Well, I got it from here, we made it ourselves or we bought it from here.
Speaker 2:We decided we're going to start selling gear because we wanted to, like I said, one place, you go to one place, you can get it. Right, there are two separate companies technically but they're all the same Retriever Training Supply and Cornerstone. But we wanted to make it really easy on people, like, if you're watching a video and you're going to need gear, we don't want you to have to sit there and think about, well, what have I got to do? We want to make your life easier because you need to spend your time focused on training your dog, and that's where Retriever Training Supply comes in All the gear we use in the videos and other gear. We kind of expand that just to give you anything you can need for your sporting retriever Like we're just sold out the retrievers and for Coruscant and RTS. I mean, any gear will work for any dog, but our main focus is hunting retrievers.
Speaker 1:And your bumpers are made in Alabama, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so actually the the really I believe the bumpers are the original fire hose bumpers. So there was a company called Real Duck and when that so that training dummy I talked about earlier in this podcast my dad showed me. I'm like what is this thing? He's like, well, it's a training dummy. Well, that dummy I'm talking about is the same dummies we make now. So I was using those for years and we loved them. We found out about them. We started buying them ourselves.
Speaker 2:Well, mike, the owner of that company he was getting to the point where he was ready to settle down and move on right. He wanted to spend more time with his family. Well, we didn't want the dummies to stop being made, and so we were already selling them at the time in our store, shop CGA. This was before RTS, and so we started talking to him and we eventually came out to the deal. We decided to buy the name from him and start making the dummies, and so we my dad flew out to I think that was Idaho, and so we actually package all that up his whole entire operation, you know to make these dummies into a U-Haul, shipped it down here in August in the Alabama heat and we had a. We called it the sweat shop because we didn't have AC. It was a big metal building and we were drinking about 50 body armors a day per person. You know, when it first arrived, it was me, colin we had a few other employees at the time and we were there like we had like one day working with the person that made the bumpers before, and then we were on our own at that point, so we were trying to make them, but anyways, we believed in it so much that we wanted to.
Speaker 2:We wanted to bring that down here because we wanted to see those bumpers continue, because those are really good bumpers for training dogs to have a good hold. There's just a good, solid bumper that doesn't have a lot of the problems that you find with other bumpers, um, and they're durable. I mean I think I don't know where it is now, I've lost it, um, and it may be around here, but I'm pretty sure I have one of the original bumpers that I had years ago and it was still. We're talking uh, I don't even know how many years I want to say, cause I don't even know, but years and I still had it, and so, like they're very durable and so, anyways, that's just part of it is the dummies. We manufacture a lot of the stuff in house. Some of the stuff we sell from other people, like Mo Marsh and Rigam gear. We use the gear. If we use it and we believe in it, we're going to offer it. But the stuff that we make is made here in Alabama at our shop.
Speaker 1:And I think y'all, what I'm a huge fan of and have several, is the leashes and collars. Yes, sir. So y'all do those, you make those right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir. So we originally got some. I think Barton is who originally turned us on to that material. He had a friend that was getting them from Amish country, but we couldn't ever get in touch with them, right. They're not really tech savvy up that way. So we had to find a solution and start making them ourselves, and then we kind of improved upon it, because we were trying to sew them on there and that didn't work as good. That's where we have the beautiful rivets and all that, so that they're, in fact they're more durable now. Um so, but yeah, we're a big fan of those. We make check cords and all kinds of stuff with it.
Speaker 1:Do you think, you guys? I know you and your dad are big up there waterfowl guys and I'm kind of an upland guy, more so you think you'll ever do a waterfowl. I've been an upland training scenario.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, um, we're definitely not against it. In fact, we had a whole stint with some setters. My dad got the best bread setters in the world, but it wasn't the right timing. I was still in college and I was trying to win my wife's heart at the time, so I was kind of a little preoccupied. Well, that paid off. It did it did it paid off and I've got a wonderful, beautiful wife and now two beautiful little girls. We have a beautiful family. So, but we, we do. In fact, I love upland hunting. In fact we are. The land that we train on is better suited for upland hunting and we actually have done a ton of quail hunting out there and that, honestly, is some of my favorite hunting any upland bird. But like we would go put quail out, and now, actually, what's hilarious about that is we had a we're out in the country.
Speaker 2:But these, these, these two people and I'll say that, I'll just say that they were interesting people, I'll just leave it at that. I met them at the gate and I'm like what are you doing on our property? And they acted so scared and we're talking very strange. And I'm like what are you doing on our property? And they acted so scared and we're talking very strange and I'm like okay, well, okay, and they're women, okay, they're two girls. And so I'm like this is so weird, out in the middle of the country, there's two girls at my gate on our property.
Speaker 2:I was like something's not adding up here, they're lost or something's bad wrong. And they were scared and I was like I don't want to scare them anymore. I was like well, look, y'all go on your way. I said it's fine, please, just don't come back out here. It's private property. Well, I drive up there to my, to my quail, where we have all of our quail. We have like thousands of quail or a thousand quail and they had let our. We didn't have a lock or anything, cause we, to this place, would be a mile into the property. They have let our quail out and there were quail running all over the place and so at first I was pretty disappointed. I was kind of mad about that, but it's actually really funny. The quail actually lived and repopulated. So even now this is years ago we still have quail that were farm raised.
Speaker 1:I guess that have now become wild quail. In my experience, most of the time pin-raised quail don't thrive very well.
Speaker 2:Right, you're very lucky and maybe it was just the numbers that we had. You know, a thousand quail and then the odds are some of them are going to survive. Yeah, that's right. But I guess they learned. So now when we go out there, there's coveys of quail. Now it's not like some paradise, there's quail everywhere, but like like we have multiple 10 and 12 coveys of quail out there now you know, this ranch I have now in texas is a five.
Speaker 1:I've had about five years. First year ever I've got coveys of what bob watts really my neighbors do too. It's we don't know where they came from again now in midland, where my house is, which is not where my ranch is. It's blue, there's blue, it's desert here. So right, right but yeah, are there any other upland species to hunt in alabama um or?
Speaker 2:anything. I don't know. I've never, really I'm not really got much into that. I mean maybe I'd have to look into that. I think we've got a season for all that. I mean we do dove wing shooting dove. I mean that's more of like a migratory top bird, but um, there's a lot of dove hunting in Alabama. I'll say that, yeah, texas.
Speaker 1:You know, I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. Dove hunting was not really a thing and I didn't even know people did that. I moved to Texas. It's like a national holiday opening day here. Academy is stocked up with shells and no one works on opening day.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So where can our listeners go if they want to Learn how to train your dog with a do-it-at-home video process? Just walk us through an introduction of the course. Okay, you know, when they pay that price, what do they get?
Speaker 2:Yep, well, so basically, if you want to train your dog, we call it our three-step process, super simple. You just purchase access to our videos, you choose your course. We have two course options. You follow the videos and don't just watch them. It's not going to happen unless you go out and do the work. So you got to follow the videos and then you can enjoy your dog.
Speaker 2:But once you purchase, so what? Following the videos looks like number one. You've got amazing customer service. We have a team like dedicated, and I think that's I mean we have a lot of things that sets us apart from other people out there that have started trying to sell online and try to do what we're doing. But like this is what we do, like this is our, like we're not over there, like I. Actually, we scaled our kennel back at the time. My name Barton's kennel were about the same size, but we decided Barton needed to keep doing what he was doing, but somebody had to stay focused on the cornerstone and like drive it forward. And so my dad and I we kind of let our kennel just kind of be what it was and we just started slowly fading it out and we went all in on this. So one of the biggest things I say that you're going to get is great customer support and service and an amazing community of people. More than anything, you're getting an amazing community of people, then outside of that I can vouch for that.
Speaker 1:I belong. You, do you said the word, the truth.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and I mean Member Weekend. You were there at the last one. It was amazing. You get to do all that, but you also have in between. When you're not at Member Weekend, you're connected with people that believe like you. They're not going to put you down. Unfortunately, in the online space, there's a lot of people that are just you ask a question, genuinely wanting help, and people will make you feel like you're an idiot and stupid, and I think that's wrong. But what's and this is crazy Like we didn't actually do this, like we didn't try to make this happen. I think it's just that people believe so much Our members believe in this process, so much that they believe in helping others too. I don't even know how this happens we didn't do this but we have amazing people and they support people.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Josh, but you have members in other countries, correct?
Speaker 2:We do Unintentionally.
Speaker 1:I know Canada because I've met some Canadians at the seminar, but don't you have some in New Zealand or something too?
Speaker 2:So we have a few different countries represented, goodness I know, in South America. We've got Peru, we've got one member in Peru that I know of, we've got some in the UK and we only really advertise in the United States. So I guess this is word of mouth, I don't know how this gets out, but New Zealand, australia, I'll tell you this. I even got invited to Pakistan one time to come do a seminar. I was a little unsure because, you know, I don't know, but it seemed very legit and the guys are amazing. So if they're listening to this, thank you for the invite. But I just was a little unsure to go there by myself. But, but I just was a little unsure to go there by myself. But so I don't know how the influence has grown that much. It's just a God thing. It's not anything that we've really done. Like we're not that great, we just had a belief that we could help people have a better experience with their dogs. But they get the community, they get support, and then you get the step-by-step videos, and so we've kind of made a recent shift to.
Speaker 2:We have two options, and it's the complete retriever package or the huntable retriever package, and that just depends on what level you want to train your dog. If you want to have a good hunting dog that can pick up ducks that it sees fall, huntable retriever is the way to go, meaning all right, you may hunt in timber, you don't need to do blind retrieves. Maybe you hunt in a field but you're only hunting a couple of times a year. Maybe you don't need to do blind retrieves and that's okay. If you do want to do all that and you maybe you want to hunt anywhere anytime, then the complete retriever package is the way to go. But both of these courses are step by step. They're the they're 52 plus huntable retrievers the first half it's called 28 plus and then complete retriever is the second half, or 52 plus. All that means is you got 36 weeks of training or you got 56 weeks of training and either way you're going to have a good hunting dog. It just depends on if you want to go even higher on the level. You may be on the fence sitting there thinking, well, I don't know if I really want to go all the way. I don't even believe in myself enough to go the whole way. Well, that's okay. Do you believe enough that you can train a dog that you can hunt with, because you don't really.
Speaker 2:I see people do this all the time and it makes me upset. But trying to try, just you know what? I'm going to get a dog and just see what happens. You don't do it that way. You got to have belief, like we're going to commit to this, like if you commit and you have that belief and you put in the work, you're not going to fail. If you choose not to quit, the only way you lose and the only way you fail is if you quit. And so I say this I see this all the time.
Speaker 2:This is on social media that I typically see this or someone may question our pricing, and the truth is our pricing is very fair, beyond fair, when you look at the value that you're getting and you look at what the outcome can be and you look at the people that you're surrounded with. Personally, I would pay for it that price easily just to be surrounded with the people, because the people are amazing and they're who are going to lock arms. When you have that rough day and it's going to happen, you're going to be out there and you're going to feel like this won't work, and we call that the dip. When you train a dog, you go through a four-part process as a trainer. You start with a dream phase. You're on cloud nine. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have this amazing duck dog yeah.
Speaker 2:You're like that's why you're shelling out all this cash. You're spending thousands on a dog because you're like you see yourself out there and it's going to be beautiful. Well, you start the process and boom, you hit the dip. And what that is is you're just not where you need to be on your skill level yet. And so you feel like, honestly, you're at the bottom of the mountain and you look up and you're like, wow, that's a long way to go. I don't even know if we can make it up there. What if we don't make it along the way? What if we get stuck?
Speaker 2:But let me tell you, if you have belief, it doesn't matter, because you're going to find a way. When you get to that stuck point along the mountain, you'll find you have to develop yourself. You can't. You will not start Cornerstone and end up in Cornerstone and graduate like you have and end up the same person. You will become a different person, because that's what it takes to get there. And at the end of it, you get to that fulfillment of the dream and then you forget about it and you buy another puppy and you start all over.
Speaker 1:And you know what listeners I can and you know what listeners I can tell you. Look, looking at from a different point of view than josh is. I, I was a, I'm a customer, so you've got these. You can look at the videos on your phone. You can have stuff that way on the road. Uh, and like right now, I've got some pups and I'm going. Even though I've been doing this a lot, I still go back and reference the videos because I got a new pup. That's right, I want to make sure that I, you know so it's.
Speaker 1:It's a lifetime of viewership that you have with that purchase. That's right.
Speaker 2:It is lifetime access.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the customer service I can vouch for. I've drove them crazy. So it's a. It's a great program and you know you don't really believe what you can. I mean, if you just got the patience and the will and you watch these videos, you can train a dog. You can train a good dog. I believe anybody can train a great dog.
Speaker 2:That's right. I believe you can train a dog You're proud of 100%. Anybody can do it, In fact, 100% Anybody can do it. In fact, anybody can do it.
Speaker 1:You just got to have the willingness like you said, and the patience You've got to be willing and, josh, please chime in because I actually was going to ask you this question but I'll give my two cents and I'll please elaborate. But to me and God knows, I wasn't born with patience. But the number one thing that I would say and I want Josh's opinion about it too is, if you're a new trainer, if you're a young kid, if you're wanting to start training yourself, or if you're 70 years old and retired and you want to train your own hunting dog, just patience and time and these videos and you're good. But what, josh? What would you say is your number one piece of advice to give to a new trainer, whether they're seven years old or 77 years old?
Speaker 2:So I've kind of hit on it in a couple of different ways, but I really want to hone in on it, because we talked about methodology earlier. We never really got to that and I kind of want to answer that question with. I'm not going to go into like in-depth science methodology- but what?
Speaker 2:I am going to talk about is a simple concept. I like to put the cookies on the bottom shelf because I remember when I was going through it and things were complicated and people were telling me especially and the PhD guy was amazing, but sometimes I had to really focus to learn because he was on another level, and so I like to put the cookies on the bottom shelf, make it super easy. But this simple concept and this is the massive distinguisher and method, and this is the massive distinguisher and method is gets to versus has to. You make a choice as a trainer and your dog makes its choices. If you are a good leader and you have to become a good leader. You don't have to be a good leader to start with, but you just need to become a good leader for your dog. But if you make the right choices, you can lead your dog to a place to where it will choose what you want it to do, because it internally wants to do that, and that is the strongest form of connection. That is the best method of training you could ever have is my dog chooses this because it wants to. You see a lot of trainers out there that ignore that and they. They're only focused on result. Their one focus is my dog will perform this, no matter what. It doesn't have a choice, it will perform. Or if it doesn't happen over time for example, our first dog it washes out of training and to me that's not an option, because it's it's like I think about that with school too. I think about like kids in school and like me. In school I struggled, not, I mean, I had the capabilities, I was smart, but I needed to learn differently. Being stuck and being stuck in a desk was so hard for me, but having the freedom and the ability to learn and to like, actually apply myself is what I needed, but same for our dogs. Every dog is different. So it's your job to unlock your dog's potential. God needed, but same for our dogs. Every dog is different. So it's your job to unlock your dog's potential. God already put the potential in the dogs. It's already innately in there and it's not your job to make that dog something. It's not. It's your job to unlock what's there and make it the best version of itself that it can be. And you only can do that when you come to a place of I'm going to work with my dog and I'm going to help it make the right choice, and that's really what it's all about. Your dog will make the right choice if you put it in the right position over time. It won't always make the right choice, but if you're patient, you got to just keep that one thing it's gets to versus has to. It's the.
Speaker 2:You know, I love my job. I hate my job. I'm going to work just to pay the bills, just to take care of my family. But I hate this job. I would not be doing it otherwise, or it's. You know, that's an app, but taking care of paying the bills and all that, that's like just a byproduct of I love this job. I wake up early because I'm so passionate and that's how I want my dog to be, and that takes someone that's willing to, like I said earlier, use that leverage, go from different angles until you eventually get there, and there's a series of processes that you can do to make that happen, which is what we basically custom built into our courses.
Speaker 2:But if that's the one piece of advice I had for you is, don't look at your dog Every day. When you look at your dog in the eyes and you're going to go out there and train. You have your own agenda, but you may have an agenda, but if your agenda gets wrecked, what are you going to do then? Are you just going to get mad and force your dog with force fetch and an e-collar and you're just going to force your dog through and its tail is going to be tucked through? Or are you going to keep connecting with your dog and keep working at it and keep chiseling away until you develop this beautiful work of art that does what you want it to because it wants to, so gets to versus has to. That's my one piece of advice. If you took nothing else away, train a dog that wants to that gets to do what it does not has to do what it does.
Speaker 1:And that's just done by building a bond, by being patient. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. Okay, because that gets us to that methodology. So I remember the first time I heard about clicker and treat, I scoffed at it and this came from the PhD gentleman. I kind of scoffed at it but my dad, like I, said he's amazing, he encouraged me to keep an open mind and I remember the guy talking with me and he said, you know, just try this and see. Well, what took me, you know, two weeks to a month to do I was doing in five minutes with a clicker and treat and I was like, okay, I'll buy it on this Cause it seemed a little frou-frou to me, you know. I thought, oh, this is like a pet smart thing. Okay, well, it's actually not, it's actually a science, it's absolutely completely rooted in science and if you don't leverage that, you're not leveraging your dog's full potential, just like if you don't know how to correct your dog, you're not leveraging its full potential.
Speaker 2:But it all starts there. It all starts where we start with week three in our in our courses. It starts with teaching our dogs to get on place. But and I love this Let me say something about Clark, because we're associated with Hunt Test Guide. Cornerstone owns a part of Hunt Test Guide and we believe in Clark Kennington and Lyle Steinman. Let me say something that Clark I love the way Clark says this because it makes so much sense Put the responsibility back on the dog right. So often we feel like we have to, like make our dogs do this, but the responsibility is the dogs. It's responsibility to make good decisions, and so I love how he says that. But we start that process with when we teach. We don't give commands to start with. We don't give any indication. We just stand there and we let our dog make choices and we reward choices that are steps in the direction that we like and we ignore choices that are steps in the direction that are not what we like.
Speaker 2:I've heard we're shaping. That's a process of shaping and using reinforcement to our advantage, and that's kind of like one of those things too I thought was so cool, because I remember, like, just like I said, the special forces documentaries that you hear training stories of like how, like the guys that are going through the I forget what they call it but the process to be selected, and like they'll just be told all right, here's the, here's, just go do it. They won't be told how to do it. They won't be told anything and like you don't know if you're gonna do the right thing, you're getting judged Like they're actually just seeing how you process to do stuff. The same for our dogs.
Speaker 2:If we want to be a good leader, let them make the choices and then shape that as you go. If you reinforce something, you're going to get more of it. Like if your dog touches the play sport and you give it a treat for that and you click, which you tell the dog. That's marking. Telling the dog hey, that's what I want you to do, then you're going to get more of that. If you ignore it, you're going to get less of it. And that's, in a nutshell that that very that first week of training is the most important week of training honestly, more so for you, the handler, than it is for the dog. Because if you, as long as you remember that concept, when you remember that concept, you can apply it to everything that you teach your dog and you'll get incredible results because of that. So that's where the process starts.
Speaker 1:And you always say in the videos you're teaching your dog to learn, or you're you know, but you're letting it learn. Yeah, you're letting it learn. I don't I'm saying it wrong, so you have clearly up there.
Speaker 2:But no, you said it just right. I mean, you're a product of the course, you know how to do that and it honestly makes your life a lot easier. When it's not up to you, for your to make your decisions for your dog, it's really not. It's your dog's responsibility to make the choices. It's our job to take the choices that they make and respond appropriately in ways that are going to hopefully lead it to the proper choice. We are just leaders. We just lead our dogs little by little, and sometimes they're going to make off the wall choices, like in the videos with Violet when she runs off and everybody's like, well, what just happened? And we keep showing it. Well, what do we do? We respond to that? We don't react. We respond with, to the best of your ability, predetermined decisions, and we teach you all this in the videos, which is the good thing about it. When you're seeing it on the videos, you're going to see it before, typically before it ever happens to you. So at least you already know how to respond, like if you had been out there.
Speaker 2:Look when I was learning to train dogs the first time that ever happened to me. Okay, my dog runs off. Well, what do I do now. I didn't have anybody other than I had to go back and start reading the book. Well, it's not there. So then I have to go out there and try again. And then I also talk to other trainers and some of them would tell me some stuff and you'll try it and it doesn't exactly work. And that's one of the biggest things I think, too, with us is that we're not.
Speaker 2:Our process is a development process for the trainer. So we are teaching you how to think for yourself. It's not a one size fits all. It's not cookie cutter yes, it is. You can't do things without a process. So we have a process. But going through the process, there are small adaptations that you're going to need to make, but we equip you with that through the knowledge that we teach you. And let me just tell you, it's already in you, trust me, it's in you. If you have a desire to train your dog, the decisions you need to learn to make are there. I'm not worried about you making a mistake. I'm worried about you not continuing to try. It's not about the mistakes you make. That's why we say progress over perfection. You can never expect to be perfect and not make mistakes. It's about making responses. And here's the other thing when you make a failure, when you screw up and you do something wrong and you know you did well what do you do? Do you beat yourself up over it? No, you don't have time no-transcript.
Speaker 2:I need to write that down.
Speaker 1:I need to write it down too. Yeah, seriously, that's because you know I'm just sitting here. Everything you're saying I'm thinking my own training scenarios. I like that. Well, josh, I guess, tell the listeners where they can find your stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, all you got to do is go on Google or whatever you use the internet, search Cornerstone Gundog Academy. And you got to do is go on Google or Sephard, whatever you use internet, search Cornerstone Gundog Academy and you can find us from there. You'll get information. Sign up for our free stuff or buy our course. We, in fact, obviously we'd love for you to buy the course. Right, you may be, we get it. Look, if you look at it, you're not ready to spend the money because you're just not sure. Maybe it sounds good. Look, explore it, get on our list. We'll take care of you. If you have questions, reach out. I pay people to actually talk to you personally, like if you have a question to reach out, and these are good people too. They're going to take care of you. They're going to answer questions. I'll answer questions too. I mean, heck, I do, but they're waiting to help you. We're not. And when I say we pay people to help answer your questions, not every single training question, that's what the course is for. But if you have questions about the course, we're not going to. I teach them not to try to like sell you the course. I teach them to try to help you based on what you want for your dog. So if, for some reason, we're not a good fit, they're going to tell you that we don't want more than anything. We want people that are right for our course to be in there, that we're right for them. But if we're not a good fit for you, we think it makes more sense for you to be where else you belong, right, and so, um, don't be. What I'm saying is, don't be afraid to reach out to us. And then we've got retriever training supplies, retriever training supplycom, and go there, check out the gear. Uh, we do like, when you first get to the website, you can sign up. You get 10% off your first order. You'll get a text with your link and everything you need to do that. And then, other than that, I would just say just follow us on social media, stay connected with us.
Speaker 2:And then I may say this get connected with with Ken here, with gun dog nation and his community. We're involved with it, we believe in it, we support Ken, and I should say that I really believe that, like, he is forming an amazing community that that you should be a part of, because it's it's. It's like what we, it's very similar, like the connections that people. Just the mindset is what's important. You got to be surrounded by people who are going to help you. They're going to build you up. They're going to not tear you down. They're going to help you in a life giving community, and that's what I believe here, with what Ken's got going on. So those are really the ways you can connect with this podcast. We do the Built From here podcast. Barton has the Lab podcast. So if you're a podcaster, if you're listening to this or watching this video, you probably are into all that. We'd love to have you check out all that and other than that. Just here's the biggest thing Just enjoy your moments in your times with your dog and think about it this way.
Speaker 2:Don't wait in life. My dad's we've always talked about that. Right, you know. You hear it's important to plan for the future. It's important to like, have a vision where you want to go. But don't be a one day person. Someday I'm going to do this. If you wait too long, one day you might not have that opportunity. Do it today. Live in the moment, enjoy today. Today is what matters.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, you know, once someone forms a bond and a team and you're hunting with your dog, that's a team, you're a team, that's right. It's just that there's no feeling like it. That's why I'm still here, and that's why you're here and that's, you know, that's that's what makes it great and I'm just, I feel I'm honored to get to talk to people like you. You know had already had some pretty, really informative guests, you being one of them, and I, I, I'm the. I think I enjoy it maybe than anybody else, but that's okay, but anyway, well, josh, it was a pleasure having you. Thanks for coming on Gun Dog Nation, thanks for supporting me and I'll always support you. I believe in what you do and I'm a customer, I'm living proof. So I guess we'll just let it go. Any final words for the crowd.
Speaker 2:Let me just say this First of all. Like I said, I want to honor you, ken, for inviting me on. It is an honor. I know you're saying it's an honor to have me on, but it really is. The honor is mine to be on here talking with you. I think it's so crazy that I'm talking with someone that has fully embodied and used the course and that is so passionate about it, that is doing something great out there in the community, and so it is an honor to actually seeing your success and seeing you use the program makes me proud. I'm proud of you, but it's an honor to be here and just to be able to even have this conversation with you.
Speaker 2:So thank you for the invite, thank you for letting me share, and for those of you that are listening and that I hope you enjoyed this episode, let me say this be sure to leave Ken a review, even if Let me say this, be sure to leave Ken a review, even if not for me. If you enjoyed, even if you didn't like some of the stuff I said, don't worry about it. Ken's amazing. Leave a review for him and make sure to like it and do all that good stuff, because that's going to help get this word out there and help support the community. So be sure to do that for Ken. But again, ken, it's an honor to be on here with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for this invite. Thank you.