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 #023: Ben Randall - UK Champion Gundog Trainer, Gundog App, Training Philosophy
Ben Randall, double British National Field Trial Champion and creator of the revolutionary BG method, challenges traditional training approaches in this eye-opening conversation. Drawing from decades of experience training hundreds of dogs and teaching thousands of handlers worldwide, Randall reveals how psychology-driven training produces exceptional results without harsh corrections.
At the heart of Randall's approach is a profound shift in perspective—training the human first, then the dog. "Many people talk about dog psychology and training with dog psychology. Well, I don't really buy into that," he explains. "The people training the dog are humans. If a trainer can understand human psychology first, how to implement those training methods to the client, that's a far better way of doing it."
Randall's innovative mealtime training method transforms how puppies learn core commands. By using feeding opportunities to teach directional work, puppies master complex handling skills months before traditional training would begin. This foundation creates young dogs capable of performing like seasoned veterans, all while building an unbreakable handler-dog bond.
Perhaps most controversial is Randall's stance against unlimited freedom for young dogs. "If I give a puppy freedom twice daily, that's 60 sessions a month I've taught that dog to find enjoyment without me," he notes, explaining how this creates the recall and steadiness problems handlers later struggle to fix. Instead, structured engagement with clear boundaries produces dogs that naturally want to remain connected.
Whether you're training your first gun dog or have handled dozens, Randall's methods challenge conventional wisdom while producing undeniable results. Download his BG Gundog App or find his book "How to Train Your Gundog" to dive deeper into a system that's transforming the gun dog world one meal at a time.
Gundog Nation is Proudly Sponsored by:
Hello and welcome to Gun Dog Nation. This is Kenneth Witt and I'm coming to you from Texas. I want you to know that Gun Dog Nation is more than just a podcast. It's a movement to unite those who want to watch a well-trained dog do what it's bred to do. Also, we are set out to try to encourage youth, to get encouraged in the sport of gun dogs, whether it's hunting, competition, trials, hunt tests, all the above. This is a community of people that are united to preserve our heritage of gun dog ownership and also to be better gun dog owners. So if you'll stay tuned to all of our episodes, we're going to have people on here to educate you about training, about nutrition, health. Anything can make you a better gun dog owner. It's my pleasure to welcome our listeners and please join our community. Hello, this is Kenneth Witt with Gundog Nation.
Speaker 1:Many people quickly become frustrated and confused when training the retriever. Cornerstone Gundog Academy's online courses eliminate all the guesswork by giving you a proven training system that will help you train a dog that anyone would be proud to have in their blind. Learn where to start, what to do next and what to do when problems rise. Visit cornerstone gundog academycom to learn how you can train your retriever. I have used this method myself. I have been through it a couple times with different dogs. I refer back to it lots of times when I'm trying to get dogs freshened back up for hunt test season. I highly recommend them. I have actually been a subscribed member of Cornerstone Gun Dog Academy since 2016, and I would suggest anyone use it. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:They have an app that you can get to on your phone. You can do it from your phone, your laptop. You can't get any more convenient than that. I've used it. It's proven and tried and I know literally hundreds of people that have done the same thing that I've talked to Visit cornerstonegundogacademycom and learn how to train your own retriever. Hello and welcome to Gun Dog Nation. I'm coming to you live today from Midland Texas and I have a friend just across the pond over in England who I've really been wanting to get on here for a long time. He's very busy. We're going to really learn some stuff today as gundog owners about training, training philosophy. It's a real pleasure of mine to have Mr Ben Randall and Ben, would you please just kind of briefly introduce yourself, because we're going to I'm going to peel the layers back and get deep into your history and your philosophy of training.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, good evening everybody. Hello. So my name is Ben Randall, as Ken said, I'm from the UK, based in a small country village called Herefordshire. Based in a small country village called Herefordshire, so it's central to England in the Midlands we call it in fantastic shooting hunting fraternity. So a huge amount of pheasant shooting gundog training here, also with big horse racing and hunting with hounds as well. So it was a very, very big shooting community we're in. I moved here 16 years ago for for this environment, to enable me to you know progress with my dogs and, um, I'm really, really embraced with my two children, the countryside, so yeah, it's a fantastic place we live.
Speaker 1:Ben, what age did you get?
Speaker 2:started into hunting or into dogs Gosh, I think it was.
Speaker 2:You know my father used to wildfowl, so he would be up, you know, like four o'clock in the morning in the dark getting his kit ready, his waders ready, and I would be, you know, six, seven asking to go, wasn't always allowed to go um, and then when I got to about eight or nine or ten, he used to take me um and I used to sit next to my lab and sort of curl up with her and keep warm and we'd be shooting ducks and geese on the foreshore and that's what sort of got me the bug really, even from that young age. You know, my rugby took over a bit, I'll be honest, at times, because rugby was always on Saturdays, so that took over a bit, but it was always burning. I wanted to probably do that a little bit more, and you know from then it's yeah, so that's, I was 50 this year, unfortunately, so you know that's like 40 years now I've been in this sort of, uh sort of environment really and and ben, if I, if I recollect, and we're going to get into your books.
Speaker 1:But when I read about you and learn about you myself, you started. You. Was it springers that you started with showing up in trials?
Speaker 2:it was lab. Labrador was my first start with. So my uncle was a semi-professional Labrador trainer and I used every single weekend, every holiday I had, I was staying at his, I was in charge of the kennels while he did his work. He'd come home from work lunch hours and we trained dogs together. I'd be throwing dummies, planting blinds out and it was my first love really was labs. I've had a lab probably in my kennels for the last 30, 35 years.
Speaker 2:So I train labs um a little bit different than most. They are first of all family gun dogs so I train the ultimate family companion which can go on five, six days picking up on a shoot in the UK at three 400 bird days, but for the majority of the year it could just chill out at home and be part of the family. You know we always say we've got a gundog. Well, I always say to people it's 365 days of the year and we've only got a shooting season from, realistically, from September to 1st of February. So what we're going to do for the rest of the year? You know we haven't got time with our jobs and our family and our busy lives to train a dog every day.
Speaker 2:So we want a dog that is trained with the foundations to enable us to do both disciplines, have a beautiful family companion that doesn't let us down and also be able to go on our shoots. And some of our shoots that we have locally around here, and the big shoots I go on are between 200 to 500 bird days now to shoot 500 birds at five, six, eight to one. That's a lot of birds being produced, um, and the dogs have got to sit there for half an hour, 40 minutes watching it go on before they're even released and then once, once it's all the birds on the floor, the horn's gone, guns are away, we can start to collect the birds. So it takes a, it takes a hell of a dog and a lot of training to enable the dog to do that, especially with nov novice handlers. That's the key.
Speaker 1:Ben, I had heard you speak on a podcast and it got my attention so well because I'm kind of a training nerd. I'm always trying to educate myself. That's why I chase guys like you to learn. But you had a strategy and a philosophy of training to me that sounded revolutionary, cutting edge to anything I'd heard before. So I was digging all over the internet trying to find out how to purchase your book. I'd heard that you just released a book I think I even found it on a website in the UK had it sent here. It's a very large book and normally I would have it with me, but it's at my ranch, which is three hours away in another part of the state. But if you don't mind, let the listeners know the title of that book and how they can find it. Then let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the book is, you know, the Gun Dog and it's, it's. It's for me, it's like I've wanted to do for many years, but I wasn't prepared to write a book, even though I was asked. I wasn't prepared to write a book until I until I'd won at the highest level, because I do believe that so many people do write books and they're good at writing them, and but I wanted the credentials behind me to say look, I've been using this system, especially my new system, for the last 15, 16 years and that system enabled me to win the championships back to back, which still hasn't been achieved in over 50 years by the same dog and the same handler. And I knew, when I put my foundations together, I knew it was good, but I had to test it at the highest level, and the highest level I could test, that was the British National Championships, um, and I was very lucky and fortunate enough to have the right dog at the right time, with the right training to win it once. And then I won it again and I was there to win it a third time in succession, with the queen watching, and it was, you know, phenomenal.
Speaker 2:But I'm I let the dog down, I made a mistake and it was my mistake, and that mistake would haunt me for a long, long time. Um, but up to that point she was the one to beat on that day. So the book was not going to be written by me at all until I had those credentials to say to people well, look, this system works. It's worked with my retrievers for the last 30 plus years and it's worked with my Spaniels and my Cockers to win at the highest level, which, to me, is there as proof, isn't it? It's like a full service history and a stamp on it. You can buy that car now because it's been been. It's been, you know, it's been warranted I totally respect that.
Speaker 1:Uh, you also have an app that people can subscribe to. It's called bg, correct?
Speaker 2:yeah, this is called the gundog app, so I'll give you a little bit of a background on this. So, um, my, my co-founder, christian fors, is a blue chip guy from London. He had a Cocker Spaniel. This Cocker Spaniel was extremely hard going. The pictures of Christian running around several fields with his wife trying to catch the dog, trying to get the dog to come back to him, all hands and whistles everywhere. Christian is a very, very professional, very focused person and he wanted to get this dog right because his dream.
Speaker 2:He's half Swedish and he's grown up with hunting. But he wanted to have a hunting dog but it wasn't going to plan at all. He had an English Cocker, one of the hardest, notoriously hardest dogs to train, especially on game. So he went to multiple trainers and multiple trainers were extremely physical with this dog and Christian, and Christian would get in the car each time after the lesson and, if I'm honest, at times almost in tears, that what he witnessed and what he was told to do, he just didn't like it. And then he come across myself, had some lessons and then lockdown hit, as it did all over the world, and I was having to send christian videos and I was having to earn some money because my business was closed down 40, 50 dogs a day gone and it was a, you know, a massive stress for. So I started teaching online globally with people and, um, I was sending christian videos, sending me videos, and then we had a gap in lockdown where we opened a bit and this guy knocked at my door and said hi, ben, it's christian, just want to have a chat. I've got a proposal. Do you fancy doing a dog training app because the videos you're sending me are transforming my relationship with my dog. I cannot believe that. I've been to all these other trainers. That hasn't worked. I'm now doing stuff online with you and it's amazing. It's working. Can I show you? So he showed me his dog. I was wow, okay, um. I said, look, can we do it? And then a year later, five days a week filming, he was here every day, monday to Friday. Friday we filmed, we just planned it out, and that was four years ago. And the app has been going now and used globally by thousands of people on a daily basis all over the world with all types of gundogs and now even pet dogs. So it's been incredible and I think what makes it so powerful is that the systems I'm showing you in my book and the systems I'm showing on the app are the systems I use seven days a week and that I use to win at the highest level. So there's no tricks, there's no gimmicks. These are what I use.
Speaker 2:Many trainers used to show me over the decades how to train a dog, but they wouldn't really show me. It was bizarre. I go training with them. They sort of show me, but they wouldn't really show me. It was bizarre. I go training with them, they sort of show me, but they wouldn't quite show me everything, because maybe they couldn't show me things that they did behind closed doors potentially, um, but they wouldn't show me the little tricks that I wanted to know as a young lad, a long one to learn. They wouldn't show me because they were thinking well, it's another person to beat, why would we show him his dog's good? We don't want him that good. So I had to self-learn and I've studied human psychology for over two decades and to me that's what makes me a teacher is because I understand the human side of things first.
Speaker 2:Many people talk about dog psychology and we train with dog psychology. We train with a science. Well, I don't really buy into that. If I'm honest, what science is there about a dog's brain? What science is what? What psychology is there about a dog?
Speaker 2:The people that are training the dog are humans. So if we can, if a trainer can, understand the human psychology first and how to implement those training methods to that client and get him to understand how to implement them to the dog, why he does them, in what order he does them, and then he can teach him how to read the dog, it's a far better way of doing it than just going. It's all about the dog. To me, it's all about the owner and once the owner understands the end goal and how to get there, and that's what the app gives you. It gives you a daily, a daily tasks to do literally every day. We've got a community now as well, which is a global community that people talk to each other. They're constantly messaging each other there.
Speaker 2:We've got our own Instagram, whatsapp sorry Instagram and Facebook system going live this week on the app, so it's our own type of Instagram and Facebook, where you can post videos, post pictures, post accomplishments, post problems. People can help you, and I think it's in this day and age. We all know what keyboard warriors are like on Facebook, whereas on our platform Christian and I are very strict. People can only post positive things and help people, and that's quite hard in today's world, as you know it's. You know everyone's criticized everything, and this is why I had to win at the highest level before I did this, so it's like I can rubber stamp my methods. So and I and I post on a daily basis my dogs all over the um internet doing things retrieving, jumping, swimming, quartering, hunting, whatever they're doing. I'm posting it regularly to show this is what I'm doing. I'm using the same methods, I'm teaching you and this is what I'm achieving.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people in the UK, you know they get 20 days holiday a year.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you get in the US, but most people get around 20 days off a year.
Speaker 2:Now, if they have a two week holiday with their family, that's 14 days. Now they've only got six days left. So that means are they going to spend the rest of those six days coming for lessons, or should they have three or four lessons a year with me, or once a month or whatever they do on a Saturday or Sunday and the rest of the time for a very small fee? They've got the app that they can train Monday to Friday and then they come to me when they need real assistance, but most of the time, because I have a live webinar each month, they don't need assistance because they're going on the webinar, they're talking to me, I'm explaining to them, they dive back into the app, they focus on the bits of arson to do and they go and they nail it. So it's um, it is. Technology is incredible and I think I think being able to help so many people every day of the week, all over the world with every type of job is pretty humbling, if I'm honest.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember one of the first things that struck me is and I don't know how much you want to get into it on here but I really liked you know how you approached this training style. If I'm correct, ben, you used your years of rugby training, yeah, and your years of dog training, kind of combined, or I guess had an idea and merged some of that together. Elaborate on that a little bit, I guess had an idea and merged some of that together.
Speaker 2:Elaborate on that a little bit. Well, you know both my boys play rugby at a pretty high level semi-professionally and hopefully professionally soon and I coached their prep school, which was up to I think it was about 8 to 13, and I coached the prep school five days a week and turned them into over the last in seven years years. I turned them into a team. In seven years I think we potentially lost four times in seven years. I drilled them on a daily basis. But the most important thing is they had to enjoy it. If they didn't enjoy it and they didn't see a reward from it, they wouldn't give me everything. So I had to build a relationship with these kids and build a bond with them. That when I turned up in my shooting briefs with my gun and my dogs in the back of the car halfway through shooting to give up for them and take my wellies off, put my rugby boots on, run onto the pitch. I wanted them to see me. I want to be with me. I wouldn't think Mr Randall's arrived. We need to train with Mr Randall. I would get there some days 10 minutes late. They'd still be doing the drills for me before I even got there Warming up, doing everything I'm asked them to do, all the other teachers watching the team do it and for me I had an incredible bond with them. Even now, when I see those kids and they're 22, 23 years old, I haven't seen them for five or six years they come straight up to me and say best rugby coach, I've ever had the most fun we ever had. We learned the most from you because it was fun.
Speaker 2:Now the trouble is with many rugby coaches, like dog trainers, they do too many drills and they drill, and they drill and they drill the dog until it becomes so stagnant and so bored and they pressurize and pressurize and pressurize when it goes wrong. So I'll give you an example. I throw the ball at a boy and he drops it. I tell him off, I smack him. I throw it at him again, I smack him. Now I put electric collar on him and every time he drops it I jab him. Every time he drops it, I fry him. I keep frying him every time he drops it.
Speaker 2:That kid is not going to want to do it, he's going to do it out of duress and he's going to be made to do it. So, yes, he will do it, but he won't do it with fun and enjoyment. He definitely won't do it with a respect for me and I won't have a mutual respect for that dog either, or that child. Now, if I threw the ball and you dropped it, it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you dropped it, I'm going to show you how to catch it. I'm going to teach you how to use your hand and eyes to catch that ball. And after that boy has caught it a few times, the smile on his face comes.
Speaker 2:The trust that I'm teaching to do something is now working. Exactly the same with my dogs. They need to trust me. If they trust me for a period of time, the reward will always come. That might be a praise, it might be a retrieve, a jump, a hunt. Whatever it is, they've got to trust me. So I start from a puppy to build that trust up, just like I do when I teach rugby. There's no point in doing drills and telling and pressurizing a person, a human, a dog to do something, because they will not enjoy it, and the time they get to pull your pants down when your back is turned, they will.
Speaker 2:You know the amount of times I'm judging or I'm training a client and the Spaniel is hunting and quartering. It flushes a bird and moves 10, 15 foot and I got to put them out of the competition. They go if I don't do that at home. I said, of course he doesn't because you're chasing him and telling him off at home. And now he knows you can't and now he's going to do you in front of everybody where, yes, my dogs go wrong. Of course they do. They're not perfect, no dog is. But my dog wants to sit to the bird because he knows if he sits he gets shot and he gets it in his mouth. So the trust is like if I sit to that bird, I get it. If I move, dad shoots it at home, goes and picks it up himself, puts it in his bag, puts me back to the same spot. I never get the retrieve unless I sit. So it's just just a simple explanation.
Speaker 2:Um, now, obviously I've trained in the us. I've trained all over europe. I I've judged all the European championships, springer to Springers and Cocker Spaniels, and I've seen collars used in the US. I've sent multiple dogs to America. One of my first bitches, field trial champion Stedwell Zetland's a beggar. Bush won over here and was a champion.
Speaker 2:I sent to a very good friend of mine. I gave him free of charge, this young puppy and I said to him we've built up a great trust. I've been to America with you. I really enjoy where you train. I like your temperament and I'd like to give you this dog as a gift. And bear in mind he was a multimillionaire, he could have bought it 10 times over. But I gave it to him as a gift and I was only in my 20s and I said to him I want you to train it without a collar. You're not allowed to use a collar on it. I want you to keep it in the house for the first six, seven months. I don't want it to go in the back. I want it to. I wanted to go in the front truck on the front seat.
Speaker 2:He did all this for me and he kept having professional trainer, professional trainer say to him put it in the back, get it in the kennels. You're building too much of a bond with it. You're getting too close to it. Get the collar on it. It needs this, it needs that. But, needless to say, bill didn't do that. He kept doing it. He fell in love with the dog because it was his companion, his best buddy. He built a bond that was so strong with this dog. It was incredible.
Speaker 2:Bill won the american amateur champion national championships twice with this dog beggar bush clipper, beating 140, 50 dogs. Each time he won the championships and this was a guy that had a very high profile. Job was a way at work quite a lot um would come home, train clipper, you know, put him back in the house. People, the family would look after him. Yes, he did go in the kennel when he was older, but it just just went to show that if he, if he used the right methods, built the trust someone like bill, who was an amateur trainer at the time, was getting advice coming from everywhere, from every trainer.
Speaker 2:That's every dog we teach on a table. Every dog we teach a um, you know, a delivery on a table gotta have a force fetch. I've never force fetched in 35 years. There's no need to force fetch. It's completely, completely. That's a waste of time and energy for the person to do that. You don't need to do it, especially from a puppy, because you teach it from day one to deliver to your hand. And bill did that and the rest is history really. You know, double amateur national championship winner twice so um. You know, over five days to beat 100 plus dogs each time so um you know it's pretty impressive, and he trained that dog himself.
Speaker 2:A lot of the amateurs have a professional trainer train their dogs for them, don't they? And then they're allowed to run them in the amateurs, but they don't always, I far as I remember. They don't have to train them themselves. They can get them back that number that morning of the championships, potentially, you know.
Speaker 1:So bill did it on his own with with the right methods, with the right breeding, and it worked that you, when your book starts up being and you know we talked a little before the show that I I I'm just getting into it pretty good, but you, you start your method, you start with with feeding correct With puppies. Yeah, explain that. Explain that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, ok, well, I can give you a good example. So for many years I just walk out to the kennels rank of kennels, all the bowls, open the kennel doors, slide the bowls in. Dogs just eat the food. Open it done. And then one day I don't know how this happened, but one day I walked into my kennel and I went to put the food down. This dog jumped up at me and I went sit put the food down.
Speaker 2:And then I went to the next kennel, next kennel, next kennel, and I fed them as normal, walked back to this kennel and this spider was sat there. Still, that's pretty good, ok, I quite like this. Then I looked at the food in my hand and I went get out, which is a retrieving command, get out, dog, ate it. So the next, the next day, I fed this dog, I made it sit in the kennel, but I made everyone else sit in the kennel and they all sat in the back of the kennel with the doors open, put all the bowls down. They could all see me visually and I all one, one by one, by hand, with their name and a point and a direction to eat their food. And then the following day I took them out onto the lawn lovely cut lawn sat the lawn in a line and put the food down, made them wait a bit, went and cleaned the kennels out, come back. They also sat there a few, moved and fidgeted, but they were getting pretty good, and then again by hand, sent them left, right for their food. And it started to develop from then.
Speaker 2:And then I had this, um, this young dog called Hollybeck Shafaty. You know, we know that she won the championships twice and I had her and I used to sit her up and I'd send her for a bowl of food and halfway to the food I'd stop on with a verbal sit. I'd say heel. She'd come back to heel. I'd teach her heel to the food. I'd stop with a verbal sit. I'd say heel. She'd come back to heel. I'd teach her heel with the food in my right hand, over my left leg. She'd tap my leg. She'd follow me. Before I knew it I was teaching the dog to go left, to go right forwards, backwards, stop, hunt and recall. Now I was blown away by this. I couldn't believe what this dog was learning with three puppy feed today. It was phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Now remember back in the day, for six, eight months I couldn't get my dog to retrieve because they're too young to retrieve. Up to about six months old, they can only just hold a dummy properly and they're not that good at it and it drops and you create issues in the retrieving problems. So I was now enabling my dog to learn stuff that probably a 16, 18 month old dog could do by six months. So now my dog could go left, right forwards, backwards, stop, leave, recall and hunt an area. I had no idea it was doing it but it was learning life's commands. When I then started doing some retrieving with it, when his teeth grew and it was better and it delivered to hand, all of a sudden the dog now could go left, right, forwards, backwards, do all of the food retrieving, but with the dummy, and I thought to myself my god, this is incredible. You know, I've got this young dog six, eight months old, is handling and directional work like a 12, 18 month old dog. You can do everything.
Speaker 2:So I never forget taking fatty to a very good friend of mine, um, a panel judge, and he said to me you've got to come and see this young crocker. I've got ben, six, seven months old. Mine was six, mine was about the same age. So you've got to come and see this cockro. I'll have a look at yours first. So we went out into his field, started hunting her. She caught it in front of me. I threw a retrieve 50, 60 meters out into a field, straight out, straight back, sent for another one, stopped her, called her back, pushed her for a blind, sent her back for memory. He never said a word. We walked back to him. Is he going to show me mine, yours? He said it's pointless. I have never seen a dog on four legs as good as I've just witnessed Now. He just couldn't believe his was just running around wild and playing and hunting, because that's all he's done with it, because it's too young to do anything else.
Speaker 2:We all think, we all thought for decades, but now, with this method, we can teach the whole of life's commands as quickly as possible, without the dog even knowing it's being taught. All you're doing is feeding it and every time that dog sees you it's building an incredible bond with you. It wants to be with you, it wants to stay close to you, it wants to stay connected to you. It can't wait to respond to each command because every time it responds it gets a reward, a left, a right, a back, a recall. It's just incredible. And over the last I think it's probably about 18 years now. Over the last 18 years I have trained hundreds and hundreds of dogs come to me for lessons and thousands of people around the world using the app to train this. Lots of americans now going over to my training, especially since the app's been live over there, since the books now got over to the us.
Speaker 2:People are realizing that we don't leave a dog in a kennel for six, eight months and feed it three times a day and then we train it later. That's why you have the retrieving and delivery issues. That's where you have a dog yipping and barking and chasing the dogs and they can't get it back and they've got to then collar train it or they've got to condition it to do something else. But there will be people in america, there will be people in the us, in the uk, that I don't, this is how we do it. I know you do do it that way and I know that many of you have had success. But if I said to you, you can color conditioner on a table for weeks and weeks and weeks to resolve a problem, or if you do this from a puppy, you would never have to do that. It'd be. It'd be weeks and weeks of your training gone. You won't have to worry about it. Also, you save yourself a fortune on electricity charging, your charging your collars. You won't need it.
Speaker 2:So obviously, when you get an older dog and it's got real issues and problems, people say, well, it's impossible then, ben, because you're training it from a puppy, and I say no, I'm sorry, because I get most of my clients coming to me or with older dogs with issues and problems, and what I say to them is if you're so, if a dog is pulling and hunting, you know, when they're quartering and the dog keeps pulling and they blow the whistle, it doesn't turn, or it pulls too far and they flush a bird out of gun range. How do I sort this bed? I said right, there's no quick fix to this. Your dog is pulling for a reason. It's because it doesn't respect you, it doesn't trust you. It probably doesn't walk to heel that well, it probably doesn't stop on the whistle that well. If it doesn't turn on the whistle and you haven't talked to it, it finds things close to you. So it's not that's not the issue of pulling that the other bits are all. All those other bits are adding up to the final bit of the pulling.
Speaker 2:So when someone comes to me, say, my dog's jumping up and like why is it jumping up? I need to stop that, of course I can stop that dog almost instantly in a training session for jumping up. However, he's jumping up for a reason because it doesn't respect the owner, it doesn't walk on the lead. It doesn't walk off the lead. It doesn't walk on the lead. It doesn't walk off the lead. It doesn't come back when it's called and it begs for food and it jumps up for food. So once we sort all those issues out, all of a sudden it doesn't jump up at you anymore, so it's just going back and reprogramming the dog.
Speaker 2:It's like having a computer that's got a load of viruses and we just keep using it and keep using it. It load of viruses and we just keep using it and keep using it. Keeps going wrong and wrong and wrong. Take it down to apple store. They blank the memory completely, reboot it. You got your brand new computer. Now it's down to you now not to get any more viruses on it. So to me it's worked with not one dog, not two dogs, but thousands. So I know it works.
Speaker 2:And I'd argue to those blue in the face, anybody, that the system works. If I could help you do it differently, you should try it. And if someone said to me, ben, I've got a new way of training, it's better than yours, I would be the first person to listen, the first person to try it. I have tried everything other than electric collars, I've tried the place boards, I've tried every method you can think of over the last 30, 40 years.
Speaker 2:When I started trying this method, it completely shocked me. I was so excited I like kept it under covers, I wouldn't tell anybody about it and people would ask, and I just kept it quietly training on my own, and then in the end obviously I was giving lessons, I was trying to see it, and then I had all the success and I thought right now I've had the success. Now is the time to tell everyone about this because it is just phenomenal. And I've got three cocker puppies at the moment are all about 10, 11 months old and they've gone through sort of nine months of this training. And what they are doing for 10 months, 11 months, is phenomenal. You know, they're all house trained, they all sit and stay, they all walk to hill and off lead, they all retrieve, they all do little blinds, they suck on a whistle, they go left and right and they're cocker spaniels. It's just phenomenal. And when I'm training them myself, even I get shocked each time, and I'm doing it like a conveyor belt, dog after dog after dog, and it shocks me how quickly they train. So yeah, it is a method that I'm extremely proud of and I just love watching people using it, and you know these are novice people as well most of the time that are using it. Obviously, lots of professionals have got the app, um. We can see on the back end who who subscribed and uses it. Obviously, a lot of people do um, and you can see now all over the internet where people are demonstrating their dogs doing things. I know they've used my methods to get to that goal, which is very humbling for me, thinking well, I've managed to change this person's viewpoint and they're older than me, they're no longer than me, and I've changed their view on it.
Speaker 2:There was a chap called Professor Simon Allison who wanted to write a book with me, but he got a little bit ill in the end and pointed a bit old and he won't let me say that. But in the end I wrote the book for him. With what wrote it without his help, but I he inspired me to do it, if I'm honest, and he he is now in his 80s and I sent him a copy of the book and what he sent me back was tears in my eyes, all of us really. It was incredible. He's basically short, long story short, ben, I've been doing this for around 60 years, 50, 60 years and I've trained every way you could possibly think of. You have transformed the way I look at my dogs, transformed the way I train my dogs.
Speaker 2:I sold him a fully trained Springer Spangled Dog that was trained with my methods. He ran it in a field trial with john bailey judging, who's a chairman of the kenneth club now. He's a very experienced judge and I remember john telling me this old boy comes in with a stick hobbling along. He cast this dog off. Then it went left and right, no whistle, for 50, 60 meters, 100 meters. He kept going, still no whistle. Flushed a bird on the lake straight out, straight back. Flushed a bird over a head over a wall straight out, straight back. Second run did the same. Hardly any whistle dog was with him completely and he won the trial. And that's the first trial he's won in in over a decade, because all the other dogs he had he trained the other way. So it was very humbling to to help someone of that age that has done it that way for so long, with very experienced people helping him and teaching him.
Speaker 2:Um, and I said to him surely you enjoy this dog more. Every time we take him out, there's a smile on your face. You're building a bond and a partnership with this dog. You're not having to bully him, smack him, tell, tell him off, do nasty things to him. He's not trying to do you in any way. Every time he takes him out he's trying to please you. And he said Ben, you are completely right, it's a pleasure every day to take him out. He's given me a complete and utter new lease of life at 70 plus. So, yeah, things like that is why I teach and why we develop the app and the book and is why I teach every day, ben it's a little bit changing gears.
Speaker 1:but I'm just curious, because you have so much experience and you've worked with different breeds Of the gundog breeds that you've trained, is there one that you find that's more intelligent than the others, or is it just each dog is different?
Speaker 2:I think the Cocker Spaniel is the most intelligent, naughty, arrogant little shits you've ever stood behind, and the reason they're so intelligent is because they want it so much. So I had some South Africans come over big hunting guys come over in January to hunt with me and they wanted to shoot woodcock and pheasant over my dogs. So they come all the way over from South Africa. I arranged for them to walk in line with us on a very prestigious sporting estate in in the UK called Ragley Hall and they walked behind me and my dogs were hunting and my young cocker about 16 months I put on the internet, actually not in a while ago she flushed a hen bird.
Speaker 2:The hen bird got up and the South African guy shot it and clipped it, hit the and it ran like a stag gone and I want you to imagine it's all bracken with patches of bramble flattish area and he said Ben, it's gone. So my cocker hadn't seen it down. So I sent a stop to two directions. He said that's it, she's on the floor and the dog went on the floor. You could see the dog moving and twisting and all of a sudden the dog was gone and it felt like an age. It was probably only a minute, but it felt like an age. And he said then it's gone, it's right up the woodland next thing you know this cock is coming back with it in its mouth, fully alive hen bird straight back, delivers the hand it's. They still talk about it now. They cannot get over how he did it. And I said to him that's the first live bird that dog has ever had, this is the second day shooting it's ever had, and it just did it. Now, if I'd have had a labrador, it would have taken all day to have worked it out and then by that time the bird would have been gone. A spaniel spring, a spaniel potentially would have, but nowhere, nowhere near as natural and wanted it as much.
Speaker 2:I think it's because the cocker winded it, centered it. That's mine, I'm having it Whatever happens, that's mine. And so I think they are the ultimate all-round shooting dog. But the Labrador, for me the Retriever is the ultimate gun dog. You know it's one that I can. Why is that? Well, it's because the handler can never be there 24 hours a day. So when you've got a family gun dog, you've got your wife, the husband, the housekeeper, the nanny, the kids, the grandparents, everyone can look after this dog because it's so level-headed, it's so relaxed, it's so easy to train.
Speaker 2:I can normally train two to three Labradors to one Cocker because they're that easy. They naturally just do everything, but they do it at a certain miles per hour. They do it and you've got to coach them and help them and drill them every day to do the same thing, get them better and better at it. Um, whereas a cocker spiner just they just want it. So so much. Um, I know that cockers aren't as big in the us, um, springers are, and springers obviously equally as good, but a cocker on a runner is one of the most incredible things to witness.
Speaker 2:I remember two years ago on an estate I want you to imagine that we shot a bird that landed on a ploughed field which was frozen solid, minus two, minus three white. We got out to the field and the gun shouted Ben, that bird landed. It's a black, dark, melanistic hen and it's landed 40, 50, 50 yards. You can see the feathers, he said, but it's gone two, three hundred yards under the fence up into woodland it's gone. So I had a young cocker, black copper bitch, which was quite good on runners, and I sent her out. She took a line, went off up the thing, up under the, under the um the fence, up into the wood, and I would say she was gone half an hour.
Speaker 2:We stopped and had a drink and something to eat and I was thinking, well, I've completely lost this dog, I'm never going to get it back, he's gone. And we were all chuckling and joking. I was quite embarrassed. Then one of the gamekeeper shouts on the radio there's a cocker coming down the hill with a dark hen in his mouth and the cocker climbed underneath. I remember it like we're doing it now, me and you, ken. And underneath the barbed wire fence, back across the field, exactly the same hen, black, dark, melanistic hen, fully alive. And I thought to myself that was in there for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, whatever it was. It was in there for an age, taking a line trying to find it. Phenomenal. There's not a Labrador in the country that could have done that, not after that delay.
Speaker 1:Hello, this is Kenneth Witt, and Gun Dog Nation is proud to have one of their sponsors as Retriever Training Supply, based in Alabama. Retriever Training Supply offers fast shipping on quality gear. Your dog will love it. Retriever Training Supply offers fast shipping on quality gear. Your dog will love it. Visit RetrieverTrainingSupplycom to purchase gear to help you train your retriever. Listen, they have some of the best leashes I've ever found. It's stuff's made in America. Their leashes are and they source them locally. They have anything you want fast, friendly service, fast shipping, just good people. Retriever Training Supply.
Speaker 1:You know, ben, I've had I've just been doing this since probably mid-September, so I've had a lot of, you know, guests on here and it's so interesting and you're just kind of reinforced what I'm trying to say. I've had so many guests that own cockers and they're actually probably retriever people, lab people, and now they've got a cocker and they hunt with it and everybody loves them. The popularity seems to really be growing here and there's going to be a lot of good dogs coming out of the UK here. There's some good breeders in the States now that are getting dogs from there, but they're really catching on and it's for all the reasons you just said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got lots of inquiries in the US because I've got probably a good half a dozen dogs here that I'm getting ready for this season, and I've got lots of inquiries about my cockers in the US. At the moment, especially now, trump's taking all your tax away from you, so everyone's got a little more money apparently. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't get into politics much on here but you can probably imagine my views.
Speaker 1:But, yes, living in Texas. But no, you know, it's one of the things too, and I always like asking questions of people like you that's got so much experience and so you know, know, I mean the experience. You've got as many dogs you train per day and for many years. I mean it's just, there's no, there's no school in the world could teach that. There's no substitute for that. What you have to be an expert. I know you're not probably educated in dog nutrition or veterinary science, but you have to be an expert in dog nutrition. What, what's some of your advice? What have you found over the years that works the best for you? No, I.
Speaker 2:I have tried everything and I always say to my vet when, when, like so I'm seeing, just give you an understanding. We run a luxury boarding kennels, so we have. We have clients from every background david beckham, gordon ramsey, a-list celebrities, you know, um come here with their dogs, from my local builder farmer to a celebrity, so everything you could think of. They feed everything you could imagine to their dogs, from cakes to cooking food, everything.
Speaker 2:So my wife and I and my father and my son, we are feeding up to 50 dogs a day for 16 years. So I want you to do 16 years on average. If you set 30 dogs a day times 16 years, times 365 days a year, 30 dogs a day times 16 years, times 365 days a year, that works out well, over a hundred thousand dogs we've fed, plus mine, for the last 30 years. So when, when they come in and my vet says feed this, I said don't listen to your vet. You probably don't even own a dog. And my vet always smiles at me when I say that because he owns one spaniel and he hasn't got a clue about what to feed a dog and I always tell him he only feeds what the vets get given because they get a discount yeah, um, so what works?
Speaker 2:I don't really know. Every dog is individually different. One thing I always say is I'm a spaniel handler really, and I am paranoid about noise. Because if my dog makes one minute noise and I'll give you an example of the sounds I go when I cast it to hunt it, I'm out of the competition by the time I get home most of the UK, most of the world knows my dog's made a noise and then that's affected my breeding program, which is crazy really, because every dog will make a noise every so often and I know it's not a big thing in us.
Speaker 2:So a lot of that will be training induced, breeding induced, but a lot of it also will be diet. So the higher the protein, the higher the fats, the higher the oils will get a dog to be a bit hyper, a bit more highly strong. So I know in the us they feed like eucanuba, very high in protein, very high in fats, and that will be like rocket fuel to my dogs. Um, it's like I I do a lot of my myself and my son's train lots, we weight train, workout lots. So my protein intake is huge. Per day I would say it's I don't know 160, 80 grams of protein per day. So I'm having a lot of protein. That doesn't make me squeak and jump around and run around, but what it does is build muscle. And the more muscle that dog builds, the fitter it gets, the faster it gets. The high, high, dry, higher the dry becomes, the harder it is to maintain it and then, because it's so fit, so fast, so wired, it then can't contain itself and then makes a noise or runs in. So I don't. Oh, there's a big, probably a big thing I used to do wrong back in the day to overtrain my dogs. They they were too fit, too fast and then they would go wrong. So my dogs have just had a good five weeks off. The whole of February I went on a holiday to Maldives. Come back relaxed Dogs will put a bit of weight on. They all look healthy. I'm slowly getting them back into a bit of work now, but not really worried about it because you're only in march. So by mid-march, end of march, I've got them a little bit fitter. And then I've got april, may, june, july, august. By the end of august they'll be pretty fit. Partridge season in the uk starts in september. By the end of september they'll be absolutely on fire, ready for oct, november, December, january for the championships, for trials or for my shoot days. So I build them up like an athlete.
Speaker 2:So I feed by eye. I feed a complete food, fish-based, but, as I say, I feed everything every day, of everything you could possibly imagine. I feed a little bit of raw to my puppies with their puppy kibble, something I've always done and I quite like it. My puppies poo rock hard, firm poo, which makes it a lot easier. I don't ablet feed them and leave the food down so they can just gorge. I want to build, I want them to see me from four weeks of weaning. I want them to see me as a person that gives them something they love.
Speaker 2:So time I start feeding them at four weeks time they're five weeks, they know my sound and when I go into the kennels I use a recall whistle. The whistle's in my mouth. I'm using it constantly as they're eating and when they get six weeks old I open the door and stand outside the whelping kennel and I use the whistle. They come running when they're seven weeks old they're following me half a mile around the paddock, if I wanted them to, with the whistle, like the pied piper and they just follow me and follow me. And then when they start eating, I start using the hump whistle, even at that age, eight weeks old. So by the time they go to their new client, I say to the client, when they're this big, I say right, they all recall perfectly. And it walks to Hill and they laugh at me. I'll say I'll show you.
Speaker 2:So I get a bowl of food with two, three bits of kibble in my right hand and I shake it over my left knee and I tap my leg and say Hill, and the puppy follows me all up my yard all the way back. And I say, there, you go up my yard all the way back. And I said, there you go. And then I walk away. When the puppy can't see me, they hold it as I put the puppy on the floor and I get the whistle and I go and I shake the bowl and the puppy comes straight to me and I said I've already done this for you, you've already started the wood, the tap, the left leg and the wood heel and it already understands the recourse when it's eight weeks old.
Speaker 2:Now, here, here's the app. You get the app free of charge for 12 months. Here's my book, here's my puppy. Go and transform that dog's life and your family life with this dog. Don't come back to me in six months saying it won't want to heal, it won't sit and stay, it's chasing, can't get it back, it won't deliver. That's because you've let it be wild for six months. So train it like this and you'll have an incredible hunting shooting companion for a decade plus ben, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1:I was just. You just reminded me of something that I recall from your book, which I read a lot. So if I get it mixed up, please correct me, but was there an excerpt in there where you talk about giving a pup or a dog too much freedom?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So this again is I must be that puppy's world. So from eight weeks old I am that world of that puppy. But there's five things a spaniel wants to do and a Labrador, but more so a spaniel Find it, chase it, catch it, catch it, kill it, eat it. And when they're really good at those five things they develop a sixth not come back when asked.
Speaker 2:So if I was to give you an example, you take your dog out. This is pets as well. They take their dog out in the morning and they let it off the lead. They take it out in the evening, they let it off the lead. That's a minimum of without toilet breaks, mind. That's a minimum of 60 sessions a month. They've taught that dog in the first month of owning it to find its own enjoyment without them 60 times. On top of that they've let it run around the garden like a lunatic, six, eight times a day. So we're probably now in a couple of hundred times. In the first eight weeks, 12 weeks that dog has found its own enjoyment. So they get to like four or five months old. It's now done it a thousand plus times. The dog is finding its own enjoyment and you go, just come. Come on, come to me recall why You've let me develop and hone my hunting skills on a daily basis, in excess of hundreds and hundreds of times on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:I do not need you. So for the rest of that dog's life. Now you're going to battle against its thoughts because it's honed its hunting skills, it's got good at them, it's got better at them. So with me, yes, I let it be a puppy. It sleeps most of the day, it plays with toys in the kitchen, it chills out, but every time I take it out for a toilet it goes to toilet. It can't wait to go to wee, it can't wait to go to poo and get back to me, because when it gets back to me I'm doing stuff with it and when I take it out and play with it, hunting wise, it might have a small I normally use, um, a small sponge with a little like a brew pad and I flick it in the grass and I cover their eyes and I teach them the hunt whistle and start hunting for it. They find it, they hear the hunt whistle, they hear the recall whistle and I clap my hands and move my fingers like a lure and they see my fingers like a lure and they come straight up to my fingers and I touch their face and take it out the mouth.
Speaker 2:And every day that pup is with me. Every time I see it I put two hands down like a cricket wicket keeper and I let it put its head to my hand and it's called BG head to hand. And this is why I've never had to use a retrieving table, even though I put it on the app. I put it on there for a reason to show people. I didn't have to use it. Every time that puppy or my dog see me, they see two hands and they put their heads into my hand. So I want you to imagine that puppy's put his head into my hands a couple of hundred times in the first four weeks and then all of a sudden I chuck it a sponge. It picks the sponge up. It hears a sound. That means recall, because that's what happens. When I hear that noise, I go to that person and then he sees my hands. Oh, I put my head into his hands. It forgets he's got a dummy in his mouth, comes straight and gives me his head. I slowly stroke it. I slowly take the dummy out of his mouth. I've cracked it. Every time that dog sees me I'm going to put my head into his hands. So I've psychologically tricked that dog. You do that every time the other way around. The dog's wild, running around, playful. You throw a dummy for it. It picks it up, it drops it, it runs off with it. It won't come back to you with it. Right Retrieving table. Let's hitch it up on a thing. Let's put a collar on it. Let's force retrieve it. There's no need to do any of that. This is a new way of doing it. That I've done for 16, 18 years and I've done it the old way. This is the new way of doing it and it works. And it works almost 99.9. It works. I've not had a dog that it won't work on. So for me it's 100 percent.
Speaker 2:And my clients are really just novice clients lots of them and what my novice clients can do are incredible. My ladies are better than my men because, like us blokes, I always use this analogy you have IKEA in the US, don't you? Yes, sir, so if you and I went Ken me and you went to IKEA and bought a table, I guarantee you we wouldn't use instructions. We'd have three screws left at the end, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, my wife would put all the screws out in a line, get the instructions out and she'd have no screws left and the table would last, but it wouldn't with a bloke, but it wouldn't with a bloke. So when my lady clients come to me, they do everything I ask them to do, inch by inch, book by book, read the cover to cover. They come back to me and I cannot believe what they can achieve. It's phenomenal. But I also think that ladies have an amazing bond with their dogs, better than men, and they really do bond with them and build a trust with them and they really do bond with them and build a trust with them.
Speaker 2:I've said it a lot of times.
Speaker 1:They're better trainers in general by a long shot I think they are, and it's that attention to detail, like you say.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, and it's that compassion. They don't want to be rough, they want to do it with fun and they want to enjoy their time with that, with that dog being the most enlightening thing to me is what you just talked about in your book.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to reiterate it, but you know I thought I'm 56 years old. I fool with dogs most of my life heavily. I've done protection work and stuff, and I don't consider myself a pro trainer by any stretch. However, I've read all kinds of books. I've been protection work and stuff, and I don't consider myself a pro trainer by any stretch. However, I've read all kinds of books. I've been to seminars and schools and when I read what you wrote in the book about not allowing, you know, them to have that freedom, that uncontrolled freedom and the damage that it does, it just threw a light bulb on me and I feel so stupid. I was like I do this. You know, I own a ranch and I turn my pups loose and I yeah, and then when they won't come back to me, you know, just like you said. So that's probably the, and I haven't even gotten that far in your book yet. I thought if I didn't read any more in this book, that was worth every dollar that it cost me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. That dog is going to want to be with you and you've got to want to do that. Simple as that.
Speaker 1:Do you ever come to the States and do seminars?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used. I used to come over quite a bit with with Bill and a guy called Martin Ibs, a very big, big trainer over there. I used to come over probably been over four or five times and another guy called Mark. He's come over with Mark quite a bit, but it's just obviously when I had Fatty I was getting really into my, I wanted to win with her. I also then bought the boarding kennels with my young family 16 years ago. So for the last 16 years there's some I've not been back over because of that, because he's just too far to come with the kennels.
Speaker 2:I go to Denmark lots and I judged the danish championships twice the swedish championships, the finnish championships, the belgium championships but that's like a four-hour flight and I go over there to teach. So, um, I really enjoy teaching in denmark. They are, they're very, very professional. Um, their attitude is fantastic. They all want to learn. I go over there to teach them the bg foundations. I go over there to teach them also how I judge.
Speaker 2:So we did a really interesting thing. Um, last year I had, I think, six or eight of the top judges in denmark all walk with me behind dogs that were hunting and I asked them in twos to take control of that dog and handler, and I supervised and then, at the end of that run, all the eight judges, or however many it was, had to write their books and what they saw and give a mark. And then, when they all marked, I called them name by name, individually, and they had to read out what they wrote and the mark they gave. And then we went on to the next dog, the next dog. We spent three or four hours doing this and it was amazing to watch the difference in that guy and that guy, because they weren't copying each other. I was just making them read it out, which was pretty hard, if I'm honest, because it's been embarrassing for some people. Um, but they, some guy was given an a plus and I said, well, I've not given an a, I've given two a pluses in 20 years. So why did you give an a plus? And then the other guy's given an a minus, a really bad mark. Why have you given that? Well, he did this, and this is why I disagree with it. Have have you thought of this? Oh, I never thought of that. Actually, I think you're right, ben, it shouldn't have been an A-. No, it shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to educate their judges. I'm helping them educate and they're really good. They're so professional and, what the most important thing is, they are so keen they want to learn. I think, if you're, I'm prepared to learn something new every day and that's what makes me a good trainer and it's what makes me successful in my businesses, because I want to learn and be better than I was yesterday. And I think the most important thing is I only ever compete against me. I don't compete against anyone else. Far as I can say, no one else matters to me. All I compete against is me every day. If I can get better each day by a little percentage, that's better. And if I can say no one else matters to me. All I compete against is me every day. If I can get better each day by a little percentage, that's better. And if I can get better and better and better, then I'm probably going to be better than most of them.
Speaker 2:But you know, a dog is a leveler and you could have the best dog. I've got two fantastic dogs at the moment, as good as I've ever owned, as good as I've ever trained. I ran them both last year at the end of the season. They're young dogs and they both had seconds, massively frustrated. I didn't get first in both of them. But we won't go there. But you know, I know that they are very, very good and I was pipped at the post in two competitions. But they were young, inexperienced, and they're going to be so much better next year. So you know I put a lot of pressure on myself as well, um, to win.
Speaker 2:But anything could go wrong, especially in the uk. It's very different than the us trials, very different the us trials. They're set up. You've got a course. There's a bird dropped out in front of you. You know roughly where the bird's going to be in the uk. As I've said to you, that could be. You could flush a woodcock, turn, flush a flush a hare. Flush a rabbit. Flush a pheasant. Flush a partridge. Send your dog for a retrieve on the way out. It flushes five pheasants. It's got to sit to them. You push it left. It flushes a rabbit off its nose. Leave the rabbit, pick the bird. It's incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2:And that's when, when, when bill willett and martin came over to the uk, um, they came to watch my champion, which was the mother to beggar, which clipper who won the american championships. They came to watch her compete and they couldn't believe she was flushing woodcock and they were shooting woodcock left, woodcock right, pheasant down, hair down. It was phenomenal, um, at holcomb hall, a very prestigious state in norfolk uh, wild birds only. It was phenomenal. And that's when I said to him what you think he couldn't believe, what he witnessed, and that's when I gave him a crate and a dog when he left to go back to the airport. Um, you know, that was many years ago, it's 20, about 20 years ago now, um, but I got fond memories of that and fond memories of that dog being trained completely different on the front of his truck, you know, not in the back in the house, it was just, yeah, fond memories of sort of changing someone's mindset when everyone else was in his ear saying do it one way. He blocked them out and did it that way.
Speaker 1:So yeah, very, very good, very good. Now, ben, do you train dog? Do you train dogs? For I know well, maybe I don't know, you breed also, correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so I'm a five-star licensed breeder in the uk. We've got to be licensed. We're supposed to be, many aren't, but because I'm a licensed boarding kennels they know. So I've got to be licensed and I probably I only breed for myself, really, but I breed my Labradors probably one to two litters a year. I normally keep between two to four pups and I keep them for 12 months.
Speaker 2:I either sell them to a client as a puppy and then I train them on, or I sell them as a 12 month old dog with hips and elbows over all the tests completed and then when that person buys that dog off me at 12 months, or they buy it as a puppy, they'll have around 12 months of videos. So they are basically going through the whole process with that dog with me for one month to 12 months. So if they, if I've got that puppy for 12 months and at the end of 12 months it's 14 months old, because I've trained it for eight weeks and it's retrieving, it's been on its first shoot, maybe 14 months old, whatever, um, and they've got the whole video process for a year, they've probably got 300, 400 videos to watch that dog. For example, one of my young puppies at the moment is 11 months old, and my puppy trainer. I've got a couple of puppy trainers that work for me and they're like a racer trainer. You can't train them all, unfortunately. So I've got a couple of people that work for me and they're very, very good. They do my foundations on the app to exactly how I want it. So when they come back to me, every command I tell me understand they're fully house trained.
Speaker 2:Now the one cocker. I have nearly 400 videos of that cocker. So imagine selling that cocker to somebody and giving them a diary of 400 videos from eight weeks to 12 months, so they know everything that there is about that dog. They've watched it learn. They've watched it train it's. I don't know anyone else that does this. So I've made it my goal that every dog I train I keep a diary of and I can go back and find all those videos, put them all together, collate together and give them to that new owner. And it's quite a special thing that.
Speaker 1:Ben, is that diary also instructional? Does it show you training? I mean, what I'm saying is could I buy that? Say, I bought a pup from you and I got the catalogue of videos with the pup. Could I watch those videos and use it to train maybe another pup?
Speaker 2:myself. Yeah, definitely you could and a lot of the times on the videos I put say a group together and I'll just do a talkover. So really simple. This is why I'm doing this. Watch the puppy. I've sent the puppy left. It's gone right. Watch what I do.
Speaker 2:This is how I correct it and you see me go out. I do this, how I correct it, and you see me go out. I do this. It's yes, it's um. Yes, I don't know anyone else in the world that does that, that sells puppies. So that person's got I call it the service history.
Speaker 2:When you buy a car, an old classic, you don't want to just buy the logbook, you want every receipt, every job that's been done on that car. So you know it's a good one and I think with a dog it's. It's very similar for me. I want to make sure that they they see that and they can see everything I've done with it. Um, I've just I've just got one going next week which is um, a train bitch, and I think I've got a, a six minute video.
Speaker 2:On a day at the end of last season on a 600 or 580 bird pheasant day, and she picked up on two drives and I videoed two drives that she picked up on and she must have had 50 60 retrieves. Sat there like a statue went when told pick runners, jump ditches. I've got it all on video. And when my client asked what I had available, I sent them the video and they bought it straight away because it's there, isn't it Right there, of proof on video. This is what you can do and I think if I hadn't had the app and Christian hadn't educated me on how powerful a video is, I probably wouldn't have any of these videos. But I video absolutely everything. My camera's with me, constantly videoing my dogs.
Speaker 1:And that's time consuming, isn't it Massively?
Speaker 2:My wife, I think. I upgraded my phone last week to the new iPhone 16 Pro Max. I had, I think, 28,000 videos on there. I know, let alone the pictures would double that, but it's something I do on a daily basis. Now I've been out training today with a labrador, a spaniel and a cocker and I videoed them all and I go back and look at it and I can learn a lot from the videos and I can see mistakes that the dogs make and maybe I'm making and I use them to learn myself as well excellent I I love that.
Speaker 1:Do you train any other breeds? I know you probably get your hands full with the Spangles and Cockers.
Speaker 2:I mean the Spangles and Labs. Hprs I do a bit with, but not a great deal. What I do with HPRs is I teach them to be Labradors the youngsters. So a game with an HPR. What they tend to do with the pointers, they tend to hunt them first and they get great ranges and they hunt beautifully and they go on point and they flush birds and they retrieve them lovely. But then they ask them to pick a retrieve and they can't mark it. They ask them to pick a blind. They can't pick a blind. Dog wants to hop on a whistle. So I say to them look, the dog's always going to hunt. So we will do a small amount of hunting but mostly we're going to be doing hill work, steadiness, directional work, marking, drills, blinds. So now you've got this dog that can do all the things a retriever can do at an HPR skill level and then we teach it to hunt, and then we teach you to hunt and then after a month or so of hunting the hunter becomes as good as all the other HPRs in the group in the competition. But what this dog has got now above all the other HPRs, it marks like a spaniel, straight there, straight back. It handles like a Labrador stop, left, right, forwards, backwards, picks it. Now it wins everything Because he's got the package.
Speaker 2:But so I I I don't hunt my springers or cockers or hprs first. I teach them to be labradors first, and once I've got them good enough at doing all the things I want, then I start to teach them to hunt for balls and game. And when I'm teaching to hunt for balls and game, because I've got such an amazing bond with them, because they understand the commands and just absolutely 100% trust the commands, when they go on game they flush a pheasant and go sit, and they sit, they go leave, heal leave. They come straight back to me Because they understand that command. They don't even know what a pheasant is.
Speaker 2:If I taught them to flush pheasants first, like I used to, and then they chased them and I had to go chasing myself, catch them, drag them back, tell them off not allowed to do that then I teach them to retrieve. They don't want to retrieve, they want to hunt, because they've had the success that way around. So it takes me maybe a month or so longer to get my dog ready to shoot over for a competition, but when I got them ready, my dog does everything else, but the other way around I used to do it the other way around. Many of my colleagues do it is they hunt first, retrieve second. I think people are now realising that there's no point in having a Formula One car that goes 200 miles in a straight line if you can't take the bends.
Speaker 1:Absolutely One of the things I was going to ask you a while ago you the the pup that you just sold you're referring to, and it had about 50 retrieved and you had the videos with it to go to the client, the buyer. How, how do you, how are your dogs usually when you take them out to retrieve on a real hunt like that?
Speaker 2:It's how long is a piece of string? Really it depends. It's like a human being is. When are you ready to take that on?
Speaker 2:My dogs are always a lot younger and I love to use January as my tester month. So January is the last month of the shooting season in the UK, so normally in January I've got a load of youngsters in the car. It just normally works out that way when you make them in spring and they come around and they're too young at the start of the season and they're always with me on the shoot and I get them out at lunch breaks and I let them have a little play and say hello to people and a bit of hill work. I give them a few dead birds and they pick them and they're okay with that. And then when I get to January I think, right, I need to just tick a box and the box means good with shot picks, cold game picks, warm game. If they're good enough and I trust them and they're advanced enough, maybe they can pick a few flappers. Very rarely will I give them a runner, but a couple of strong flapping hen birds, a few small running partridges and maybe a strong cock if I think their experience are mature enough. They might be 15, 16 months, they might be 10, 12 months old.
Speaker 2:I know that I had two. The shoot I'm talking about was 1st of February last year and I, for one drive, I took two red cocker bitches out and they were, I'm guessing now they were, so they're two now. So they would have been about 11 months old and I took them on one of the busiest drives you've ever seen. There was birds just coming over, filling the sky, birds landing everywhere, and they sat there off the lead and didn't move a muscle and individually they had one retrieve each, straight there, straight back and delivered to hand. I put them back on the lead, put them in the car and went. Whew, thank God for that, it went well. Put them in the car and then I trained them right through spring, spring set all the way around to this season and they were ready.
Speaker 2:But I knew that it was just an opportunity that you shouldn't miss, because in the uk when that season finishes, we can't shoot any more birds. You know so, um. You know we can't do the pigeons like you do, um, because we're just not allowed um, so it's very hard for us. Out of season, obviously we can go and flush lots of birds because there's still thousands on the ground left, but what we can't do is shoot them. So it's an opportunity that I always try and juggle around so I can have two or three young dogs to give as much experience I can that last couple of weeks of the season and y'all can't, you can't shoot pin raised birds either right like domesticated raised, okay, no, no nothing like that.
Speaker 1:No, unfortunately man the question I had, because I think I've been wrong about this uh concept, but are you guys not allowed to own e-collars in the uk or use them, or am I wrong about that?
Speaker 2:no, no, no. So I think it's, um, I think in wales. I get. I might be wrong, but I think in Wales they're banned and they're being banned now in the UK. So not yet, but they are Because they're used incorrectly. I know that there will be some Americans listening to this going what does he know? What does he know? Trust me, I know I've seen them used in the US and I've seen them used very well. I've seen them used with a small nick and a small pinch type feel, because I've put the collar on myself and felt it. So it's a very, very powerful tool if used right and if used correctly. The trouble is who uses it correctly.
Speaker 1:Hardly anybody.
Speaker 2:I've seen them trying to fry a dog at full power dog running in with its head twisted and yipping with pain but still picking the bird. So it's like having a young boy and the dad beating it. The boy gets hardened to it and he just absorbs it and he still misbehaves because he knows he's got a beating coming but he can take it because he's had it multiple times. So I know that that correction at that particular point is very powerful. So I have methods that I use without any negativity, that I use and I do it silently. So if I give example, if your dog's pulling you when it's hunting and you turn on the whistle and you press the collar and it nicks it and the dog understands what happens, then is that very, very quickly in the US and in the UK the dog will become collar wise. You'll get to it. You'll train every day with that collar on. You'll get to the competition. The dog will jump. It'll open the back of the truck and all the dogs are waiting to put the collars on. All of a sudden you don't put the collar on that dog. You take it to the competition. You use a turn whistle and it turns the first five or six turns. Then it pips and it doesn't turn. It doesn't get jabbed, it doesn't get nicked, it doesn't get a pinch, it doesn't turn. And then the turning gets worse and worse in each run. And then when they come back in they go and train them in the training fields before the second series they put the collar on again, they go out, the dog behaves once or twice, then it realizes not going on, and after two or three trials they can become trial wise and color aware and then you're stuffed. So just one quick example of what I would do when my dogs are hunting and it's pulling me. What I do is I run as fast as I can, completely silently, and I arrive, the dogs are, oh my god, wherever you from. And I look at the dog and I got the whistle in my mouth and I do the turn, whistle, sharp, pip right down to its face. I put the lead on, nothing harsh. I walk all the way back to where I started and cast it off, sit it up. I do my BG correction, my left hand over the rise, no pressure, right hand under the chin and I do the whistle once more. I tip the lead off, I pause, relax, cast off again. Normally if I do that twice in a session, that dog is hunting, which hard as its forehead can move its body. And when it's casting left or right it's got an eye on me because it never knows when I'm coming, not to hurt it but to stop it doing what it wants and to take the enjoyment away from it until it does what it wants. And then the dog starts to realize if I stay connected and stay with one eye on him every time, I just cast an eye every so often and I see his hand go left and hand go right, I get to continue my hunting pattern, I get to flush a bird, I get to get a reward. So do you know what? I'm going to continue doing this. So it's a simple process.
Speaker 2:But remember, if the dog is pulling me, it's because I've probably missed some other things in its training the respect, the trust. It doesn't understand the whistle properly. I've probably made some shortcuts. It's not just the dog pulled and it's an easy fix. It's because I've probably made shortcuts and I'm too excited to shoot over it. So I've shot over it too early, which is the cardinal sin, isn't it, especially for us blokes. We're ready, we're ready, let's shoot over it, where the ladies are like no, no, no, no, no, we're ready, we're ready, we're ready, let's shoot a group.
Speaker 2:Well, the ladies are like no, no, no, no, no, we're not ready. Ben said we're not ready yet. We've got a flush 20 birds before we shoot one, you know. So there is where the mistakes are made.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, you know, I started out using the app and I just got so busy I've lost the habit. I've got too many irons in the fire. But I'm going to get back on it. I'm going to finish the book. I've really enjoyed it thus far. Matter of fact, I actually went back and I had to put it down for about a month or so, and I went back and reread everything over again, and the part that I probably have read five times is the one about you know, letting your dogs loose and just out of control and playing. I thought, wow, so that's one I've nipped in the bud. If it's not too late, it won't be too late.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was the last question I was going to ask you. So say, I've got a dog that's eight months old and I haven't been using your methods. Is there still hope?
Speaker 2:Massively, massively, so, like you've got to re-sow a seed. So I you know, I look at it, the dog's had its own way and it's learned that behavior. So what I'm going to do is not allow it to have that behavior again and relearn the new behavior and actually have more fun doing that. So if, if you go out with that eight month old dog, you put, you put on the lead, you take it out to a confined area and you play with it and you teach it to sit for its feed times, you teach it to recall for its food times, you teach it to retrieve a little sponge and things back to a confined area, you do that two, three times a day. Before you know it. That dog cannot wait to see you, dad. Where are you dad, my dad, me and him doing doing something together? Bugger the rest of them. I'm not interested in running around like a headless chicken in the in the countryside. I want to train with this person and then, after a week or two of doing that, you will have a bond with that dog that you never thought was possible when you did, when you started today, and after a month the seeds are growing. You know there is, and then, before you know it, six months down, the line're established and that dog is completely and utterly attuned into you.
Speaker 2:But there's never a shortcut with dog training. There's never a shortcut with training somebody. You've got to start from the foundations. You cannot build a house unless you've got solid foundations. If you shortcut on the foundations, the walls will crack, you'll have to knock them down and redo the foundations will crack. You'll have to knock them down and redo the foundations. But so many people, especially us men, want to do the fun stuff too quickly rather than set the foundations. Most of my champion winning dogs retire around eight years old and I give them to very, very good friends you know family friends and they have them. It's hard for me to do, but it's a better life for them, probably. And they go to them and they say when they get to 12, 14, they're still trained. Then they still turn the whistle, they still listen, they still do as they're told. Because I've set the foundations. It's solid for a decade plus. But if I let them do it the other way, which I have done multiple times, it doesn't bloody work.
Speaker 1:No, I'm seeing that. Well, ben, I've been a fan of yours. I think Maybe I heard you on the Jeremy Moore podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. So I think it went on with the phone chat. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've followed Jeremy for a while. I knew him from a few years back and I actually just had he and I just released. He's been on this podcast too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, jeremy had the app and was learning that sort of thing and I went on and spoke to him about it. It was really cool, lovely chat.
Speaker 1:It was really cool, yeah, yeah, and he. You know he and I have shared a lot of the same, a lot of the same training ideas and I've picked his brain in the past. He helped me train a dog and actually trained a dog for me shortly for a while to kind of help me be a better trainer. But anyway, so I'm so glad to have had you on here and I've been really impressed with everything I've. I've been really impressed with everything I've I've read that you've put out. I've I've been on your app. I've I've seen some of your videos obviously not near enough, uh, and I really believe in what you're doing. So it's uh, hopefully I'll get to come back to the IGL this year. Of course I've heard it's in Scotland, but I got to go back in November. It was my first time at a field trial in the UK. I just had a ball.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want to come over and experience some of the Spaniels, then come on over. You can come and shoot with my dogs. You'd love that. I would absolutely love that. January is a great time for Spaniels. It covers down lots of woodcock, hares, rabbits, everything. That's when most Africans come over. They loved it. The Europeans, they like to come over in January and try to do the championships and some shooting as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'll keep it. Well, ben, it was a pleasure having you again. If you don't mind, tell the guests how they can find your products, your apps, your website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Instagram and Facebook really easy. Just type in Ben Randall, a beggar, bush, gun dogs You'll find it. Go on to the app store and just type in gun to gap and we were one of the first apps I think it was a world's first up anyway so just go on to that and you'll be able to download the app. And once you've downloaded it, then you just subscribe to it. And again, I'd say Facebook, instagram is really good. I post loads and loads and loads of videos on Facebook and Instagram. So just go on to that and type in my name on Facebook and you'll find me and I'll allow you to follow me and you can see all the things we do. It's really powerful. I'll allow you to follow me and you can see all the things we do. It's really powerful.
Speaker 2:The book you just got to go on to Gundog Journal, which is I'm field editor for Gundog Journal, and they helped me publish a book and we've got an exciting new project starting. When I've got time for this I don't know, but we've already started it. My next book is going to be a really advanced book on judging, shooting and advanced dogs, to really show you. You know. The first book for me. My debut book is covers everything, but this book is going to really deep dive into, you know all my psychology, um, how I get the best out of individual dogs.
Speaker 2:Talk about dogs I've owned and problems and issues I've had. I've overcome them. It's going to be a very different type of book, but one that I'm extremely excited about writing, although I just don't know where to start at the moment. But we're getting there. We're getting there.
Speaker 1:I can't wait until that comes out but I'm sure you've got a lot of irons in the fire yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty busy, pretty busy. But yeah, very excited, very excited well, ben.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Maybe we'll get you back on here when that new book comes out. Talk about that. Uh, anyway, I thank you for being a guest and I thank all my listeners and we will be in touch. Thank you, ken, take care. Purina pro plan. Here at gundog nation we use Purina ProPlan for our dogs. We actually use the Sport Performance Edition, which is 30% protein and 20% fat the beef and bison. It contains glucosamine, omega-3s for their joints. It also contains amino acids for muscles and antioxidants. It also has probiotics. It's guaranteed to have live probiotics in each serving. There's no artificial colors or flavors. We see the difference in our dogs. We see the difference in their coat, their performance, their endurance and also in recovery. Be sure to use Purina ProPlan dog food. The reputation speaks for itself. There's a reason that Purina has been around for such a long time. We suggest that you use it and we are so proud to be sponsored by Purina dog food.