Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Mike Stewart, owner of Wildrose Kennels, hops on the DU Podcast to discuss common corrections for your retriever with host Chris Jennings. Stewart explains that there are several very common mistakes retrievers begin to make after a long duck season and that the spring and summer is the best time to correct these mistakes.

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Creators and Guests

Writer
Chris Jennings
DUPodcast Contributor

What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?

Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.

VO:

Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, Reloaded. We bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In Reloaded, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong.

VO:

So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.

Chris Jennings:

Joining me today on the show is owner and operator of Wild Rose Kennels, Mike Stewart. Mike, welcome back to the DU podcast.

Mike Stewart:

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris Jennings:

Alright. Now in with this show, we wanted to kinda kick off our, you know, retriever training conversations with something that is that we've talked about before you and I have, but it's these are the most common corrections that retriever trainers have to make with their dogs following duck season. The bad habits that can be learned during duck season need to be corrected at this time of year. You know, when you're not in season now, you're fully focused on training. And we've got several of these that we can list through, but but these are really the most common ones.

Chris Jennings:

And the first one, Mike, is steadiness. And we basically, on the shot or breaking on live birds. This is a a terribly bad habit. It's unsafe, you know, for everyone involved. And and and, you know, and it is an issue.

Chris Jennings:

You know, I hunt with people who have dogs who break, you know, throughout the season, and sometimes it just gets worse and worse and worse. Now's the time to fix it. How are you going to approach or how are you going to explain to a dog owner how they should approach fixing steadiness during the off season.

Mike Stewart:

First, I just wanna touch on a mindset. Everybody's always down this time of year. Hunting season is closed. No more game. It's a long time till the fall.

Mike Stewart:

Actually, you're in preseason training. It's it's the start of the season. So there's a lot of things to work on. I would call them refinements to get the dog back into shape pre preseason. So we're really in the preseason training, not post.

Mike Stewart:

So that's really a mindset, and steadiness is one of them. What happens during the season a lot, especially if you have a really good season, the dog gets a lot of independent action. The birds are going down. He's we swim the dogs too fast. There's not a lot of opportunity to study the dog.

Mike Stewart:

It's about game recovery, not loo wanting to lose a bird. Waterfowling, you see it quite a bit. Three birds down. You gotta pick them fast. Wind's blowing.

Mike Stewart:

You don't have a lot of time to to to offer denials and delays in your retrieves. Pheasant hunting on wild pheasants, you pop that bird and that you see those legs go down, and those birds will run. They hit the ground running. And if you don't put your dog on the bird fast, you're liable to lose it. And, of course, that's what retrievers job is, is game recovery.

Mike Stewart:

So I realized we send the dogs far too fast, and now we found a situation that they're basically you pull the trigger, the dog's gone, or even snap the safety off, and the dog's gone. You know, they're downrange, ready to make that game recover. So we have to go back and refine that. So the question is how? We have the three d's of steadiness.

Mike Stewart:

Deny, delay, and diversions. So we're gonna practice all those this postseason, preseason tune ups. We're gonna get offer a lot of denials. We're gonna walk along, throw bumpers. Nope.

Mike Stewart:

No. It didn't get that. Walk out and pick it up and sell. We'll do some short bird, long bird retrieves. We'll put out a memory, for instance, dropping in the grass across the water, go back, get on the other side of the pond, throw a short one in the water, and send them to the lawn.

Mike Stewart:

And then we don't want them to have this short one. You can either walk around the lake and pick it from the other side or allow another dog to do it, which is called honoring. So not every bird is theirs. Every bumper down this this spring and summer is not the dogs. You're gonna offer a lot of denials.

Mike Stewart:

A delay is we're using our memory retrieves versus marks to build in delays. We place several bumpers out, for instance, and create a time delay before it before we send the dog box. We might put two to three bumpers out in a circle memory, circle back around, the bumpers are in cover or wood line, maybe the edge of a water source, and then we delay. We sit there, wait, let the dog get extremely calm, and then we pick the oldest bird to the newest bird. The shortest bird is the one that we're gonna deny.

Mike Stewart:

The longest bird is the one we want. Those are the ones that are likely gonna need to be recovered first. So we work on that in our training is not sending a dog quite so fast as that you would maybe practice in March. You fire the launcher and immediately send them. Run memories.

Mike Stewart:

Place them. Build some time in between you putting the bumper out or the cold game out, and you're actually releasing the dog for that recovery. So that is a delay. Diversions, you have a short bird, long bird routines. The short birds, you pick them up yourself.

Mike Stewart:

The dog is coming back from a retrieve, we fire another launcher or toss a bird, you deny that one. You either go get it yourself, allow another dog pick the bird up. So the short bird, long bird, and delayed routines will really put that steadiness back in your dog preseason.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. And then you kinda touched on it, but I was just getting ready to ask. So, you know, we've discussed honoring, you know, where you're sending another dog. But, you know, I was just sitting there thinking while you were talking is is how do you teach honoring if you don't have another dog? But I guess, like you said, you take it upon yourself.

Chris Jennings:

You go and get that bumper yourself so that the dog still, you know, has that that mindset. Is am I correct? And that's kind of what you explained.

Mike Stewart:

Right. You know, we we wanna work on honoring. We're gonna find a a buddy to come over and train sort of the similar to we do that we do, and we're gonna work together during the summer, spring, summer months. And what you wanna work on is double dog. I really like this routine.

Mike Stewart:

I'll explain this one first. You put a couple bumpers out, and you send the first dog. When the first dog picks and is on his way back, send the second dog. You need these dogs working independently. And so these dogs are honoring each other.

Mike Stewart:

Now if we put out a denial, for instance, and we don't want the dog to have it, there's only two ways to pick that up. Well, three ways. One is you have another dog pick it up, but you don't have another Okay? The second way to do is you walk out and get it yourself. Throw it in shallow water that can make the splash, or you could you could walk out and get the if it's on the ground, that's not a problem at all.

Mike Stewart:

Walk out and get it yourself. The other routine we'll do as we're alone is I was and I train a lot alone in Colorado. I'm I'm by myself as the only trainer out there. I'll set up a memory across the river on the on the water, and I'll pick up a rock, have it in my pocket, not in my pocket, but my game bag. And I make a circle around.

Mike Stewart:

The dog remembers that that bumper across the river. I'll send the dog, and then I'll throw the the rock. And it makes a big splash, but there's nothing to retrieve. And handle them all fast, and that is nothing for you to go back and get. Or the third way you could do it is you could toss the bumper in the water, use your short bird, send for the long bird, the dog recovers the long bird, returns.

Mike Stewart:

Simply walk around the lake to the other side and pick your diversion, your original diversion, becomes a circle memory. So you built a time delay in. So, basically, you're you're doing a delay now and just pick it up that way.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. No. That's a great way to do it. And and you talked about that as being something, you know, one of the common mistakes or common issues that dogs come up with during duck season is honoring. And can you kind of explain that, like, how that bad habit is created?

Chris Jennings:

And then also how, you know, using these tactics to fix that bad habit.

Mike Stewart:

When we talk about honoring, we mean that the dog will sit steady and quiet and honor the retrieve of another dog. Now what does that entail? There is no scuffling over the bird. There's no chasing the other dog. There's no whining or barking or making any squeaking noises while the other dog retrieves.

Mike Stewart:

That's honoring. So we'll define what it is first. So off season, one of the things we don't wanna do is let the dog we have a couple of dogs who have them playing together or going to the dog park chasing each other for exercise. Well, that's not reinforcing what we're looking for. So by practicing our arming, you got your body comes over, and one dog gets a retrieve.

Mike Stewart:

When he recovers back, the other one gets a retrieve. And you need to remember that dogs work for they work for reward. What is the reward? Well, the reward for a retriever is they get to retrieve something. So remember to reinforce and put a value on the steadiness.

Mike Stewart:

So if your dog sits really steady while another dog makes a retrieve on a hunt or in training, reach out and pet the dog. Good boy. Good boy. Really reward that dog that that's valuable. Put a put a put a value on that steadiness, that quad, man.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. That's good. And, you know, and this kinda leads into the the the next issue that that needs to be fixed sometimes, self hunts. And this is basically when the dog you know, a lot of times during duck season, you know, dogs have really gotten accustomed, you know, lots of retrieves. They're they're they feel comfortable in what they're doing in the whole situation.

Chris Jennings:

And a lot of times, dogs decide to basically take their own direction, and and that can lead to several different issues. But this bad habit is something that that typically comes out of, you know, like you said, if you had a good duck season, the dog's getting lots of retrieves. But how can you slow down and correct this self hunting?

Mike Stewart:

And usually, started, as you mentioned, as an old becomes self employed out there. He's on his in he's on his independent activity. And he gets out there. You blow the whistle a few times, try to get his attention. He keeps hunting, hunting, and then he's successful.

Mike Stewart:

He finds the bird. Finally, you're just the guy that drives him around and shoots the bird. He's gonna get it. He's not even here not nearly as interested in you as if you can put him on the bird and so he sees you as a partner. So that's the kind of the relationship we wanna build and what the type of training activities we're gonna do.

Mike Stewart:

The dog is gonna have to become self reliant and get on you. So we're gonna shorten up the retrieves. We're gonna build in. One of the things we'll do is a lot of time to lay memories. We'll put out memories and maybe not come back to pick those up for thirty minutes until the dog's not quite sure where they are.

Mike Stewart:

The second thing we'll do is move them. Whether a assistant or a buddy over training, a member of your family walk out in a cover, some grass field, and toss in a bumper. Turn around and walk away with the dog in heel. The dog's going with you. He's paying attention to you.

Mike Stewart:

Your your helper runs in, grabs that bumper, and tosses it to another location. You send that dog in. He's got he knows exactly where it is. You're targeting a member. He shoots back into that cover.

Mike Stewart:

Hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt. Hit that stop whistle. If he doesn't stop, he's not finding anything. So we're hit that stop whistle a couple of times. If he doesn't, you're gonna go out there, You need to stop.

Mike Stewart:

Grab him by that collar, shake him a bit, tell him, you're gonna stop. Pete, pull that whistle, walk back, and then cast him to the fight. And all of sudden, you're smartest guy in the room. Wait a minute. I thought the bird was here, but you knew where it was.

Mike Stewart:

So that's a that's a cool little trick that works. The other one we'll do is what I call hunt, stop, hunt, stop, hunt, stop. We will toss in a bumper into a bit of a bumper. And this couldn't work at a pond's edge too. Let's say you've got some really good willows and some grass growing out water grass growing up at the pond.

Mike Stewart:

It'll work fine. Hust in the bar. Have this. You walk away. The dog's paying attention to you, not watching your helper.

Mike Stewart:

He comes in and picks it up. It's not there anymore. I wanna get three clean stops to the whistle before he finds anything. So if he finally stops, I put him back to hunting. I stop again, put him back to hunting.

Mike Stewart:

Third stop, put him back to hunting. When he's not looking, the assistant tosses it back in. He finds it. All of a sudden, he's not gonna find anything if he doesn't stop with that whistle. Again, you become the smartest guy in the room.

Mike Stewart:

You can do this in the waters of the edge. We filmed this for DUTV a couple of times with Deak and Rake. I'll have a assistant across the lake, and I'll toss in a bumper to the far side of maybe not it's not very wide. I'll say a lake, a little channel, splashes on the other side, big big duck, for instance, a nice frozen duck, or the big waterfowl dummy that makes a big splash. I turn and walk away.

Mike Stewart:

The assistant runs in, picks that rascal up, and runs down the bank and drops it at another location. I send the mature dog back, and he knows where it is. He's confident where it is, but it's not there anymore. I get about two good stops at that location, and I cast him up or down the bank. And they find that along that bank's edge where I know it is, and he doesn't.

Mike Stewart:

All those are building the interdependence, not independence, but interdependence with you, a teamwork. I'm looking at the hammer to help me become successful if I'm the dog.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. And it just seems like, you know, with that, he you're you're building confidence or you're building his confidence in you so that, you know, he's not like you said, I think that's a good way to good way to phrase it. The dog is basically self employed himself, and he's gonna go and find it, he thinks he knows exactly where it is. But with both of those training tactics, you're really you're really building that dog's confidence in in you to know where it is better than than him. I think that that's a that's a pretty cool pretty cool little way to approach it.

Mike Stewart:

All those are the little routines that we run-in spring and summer to tune that dog back up to get them working with us back on the whistle and taking those hand signals.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. I mean, that that's a good transition because that's that's kind of my next one is, you know, hand signals and focus. You know, as as the season progresses, sometimes these, you know, sometimes these dogs and some of these tactics some of these training tactics may be very similar getting the dog to refocus. But is there any other little little tips and and training methods that you use that will get the dog to refocus on these hand signals?

Mike Stewart:

What There's one of the thing conditions I think is that maybe we're starting as dogs on our postseason. Coming off of postseason, the dog's not handling well. We're still trying to handle it long distances. I'm gonna shorten things up. We're gonna go back more to the basics.

Mike Stewart:

It's like old Vince Lombardi says, my dog my I said, my dogs, my players don't know a few things, but they know a few things very well. And that's what I want my dog to do. I don't necessarily need them to know a whole gamut of but I want them to know a few things extremely well. I'm gonna shorten things back up. I'm gonna get my hand signals cleaned up on the basic drills like a walking baseball, walking baseball extensions.

Mike Stewart:

All those are in our book, Retriever Training for Sporting Dog Retriever Training, The Wild Rose Way. You can pull those up online on uklaps.com. I've got loads of drills for you to do. But instead of trying to run those drills way across water, away across along lands, I'm gonna move the skills off the water back to the land. Refine them on the land, get them smoothed up, move them to the water, smooth them up on the water, such as switching on doubles.

Mike Stewart:

Can you put out two bumpers, walk around the pond, send them for one stop and hound to the other? That's called a switching on doubles. If you won't do it on the water, unless you're real fond of swimming, you're gonna have to refine it on the land. Everything's refined on the land before we move it to the water. So that's one tip.

Mike Stewart:

Keep it short. Keep it close to you and keep it on the ground before you move it back to the water. If you wanna practice flooded timber for instance, how do you practice flooded timber? Quite simply go to the woods. Go to a hardwood.

Mike Stewart:

Just open open hardwood and start running your drills in that open hardwood, then transfer it to your water source. It's very hard to correct the dog, very hard to get them to stop, hunt where you want them to hunt when you're not out in that water with them. So you can do it on the ground. So we'll do it in the grass fields. We'll do it in open ground.

Mike Stewart:

We'll do it on plowed ground, and we'll move it to the we got some really nice open hardwoods, excellent for that, to duplicate flooded timber. Then you transfer it to the water.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. It's really hard to to duplicate that flooded timber, especially during the off season. But, you know, that's a that's a very good tip. That's a strong I I really like that that you're basically doing everything on land. When I think a lot of trainers immediately a lot of dog owners immediately think they have to go to the water, throwing bumpers into the water, you know, going to the local pond where I think that's a good a good tip that you bring out is is really do everything on land.

Chris Jennings:

It's a lot easier to handle the dog too and and control the situation. Like you said, you know, if if the dog for some reason does not wanna retrieve the bumper that you just threw into the lake, you're gonna be swimming for it if you wanna get that bumper back.

Mike Stewart:

The the Wild Rose way is to refine or teach any skill on land first, transfer to the water, and refine any skill on land before going before going to the water. So if you wanna teach water stands, working a dog off water stands or any type of dog hide, teach it on land first and then transfer it to your water source. If you wanna get a dog working out of a boat, we have our boat on solid ground. Get him working in and out of the boat, remove it to shallow water, Get him working out of the shallow waters, deeper, deeper, deeper, and then you have him working in the boat. Everything is progressive from land to water.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. And everything adds a step. There's you know, once they once they, you know, can accomplish that, you know, from land, it it seems that they're they're already gonna know before you introduce this water. And it's a, you know, that's a that's a that's a good tip for people to remember, something for people to keep in mind as they as they start, you know, making some some changes or having some expectation that that the dog's gonna know how to do this, definitely do it all on land. That's that's a good one.

VO:

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Chris Jennings:

You know, one of the other common mistakes that that dogs start making during during dunk season is stopping hunting. And I know this sounds a little counter, you know, to exactly what they're doing at the time, but they they're so used to seeing the birds. They're so used to making these retrieves one after the other, but they stopped using their nose to find down birds. They're really relying on that, you know, being able to market visually because they're sitting maybe, you know, in a boat where they can see. And then they they decide to not use their nose to find these birds, and it can really become an issue, and you can lose a lot of birds this way.

Chris Jennings:

How are you correcting something like this?

Mike Stewart:

We use a lot of sense. We have taken our frozen birds, cold game. We take the wings off the birds that we take, freeze them, pull them out, and take them to our bumpers, or we put out cold game. And then we also try to teach our clients to work the wind, which way is the wind moving. And so a lot of guys never consider that, and they don't put the dog in the right location.

Mike Stewart:

So we do put the dog hang bumpers and cold game and and bushes and up on top of brush piles and all different places where a bird may not even be on the ground. And the dog's never been taught to win lift his head and win the up. If your dog falls on top of a beaver dam or over on top of a levee, he's not likely gonna pick it. So you and wanna practice all these thinning skills and, again, start close and work back. So we're gonna go longer and longer during our off season training and in preparation to send the dog farther and farther back where you can stop him.

Mike Stewart:

Let's go back to a couple of the tips. Put a bumper out, heel back up the heels, have our assistant walk in, pick that bumper up, toss it over to the other side of a lane, send the dog back, let him hunt a moment or two. Give them some time to see if they can find, make progress, and they hit that whistle. You hold the dog's attention three to four seconds and then cast the dog. So when you cast him, you're casting him into the wind.

Mike Stewart:

He's gonna pick that son up. Well, again, he's gonna make that fight. So that's how we're get that dog hunting. First, very close in on high grass, in timber, and then we're gonna move it to the water's edge along the marshy grasses and anything that you can find that has places that are safe because I know there's snakes out in a lot of parts of the country. But anything that is safe, it's been checked out really well, put that dog in those marshes to get them using those nose.

Mike Stewart:

Because it's the nose knows, and that's what these dogs are about. What we're looking for in waterfowling and upland hunting dogs, gun dogs, is game recovery. It's about getting that bird bite, not precision handling, not trying to challenge the blind. If you're running an unseen or blind, you put that dog down the wind, let it hit hit it when he's in that in that scent cone and cast him into the wind, he's gonna find that bird and really helps him get it get straightened out. Another thing that people can do is and when take take all three of these together, honor steady, handling, and hunting cover, and hunting for game recovery, is put them together on a clay course.

Mike Stewart:

You're a member of a clay shooting course. You can go out and work your dog on those courses. We just completed a a series called the tactical retriever series where each participant shot over a case of shells over three days with their dogs in the field. And I had blinds out, feathered bumpers out, launcher marks, all kinds of hunting situations from upland, the duck blinds, the lay down blinds, the water stands, the dog hides, decoys, the whole thing. So off season, you can practice hunting situations.

Mike Stewart:

You just using a clay Oh, I don't have a clay floor. You can go down to the sporting goods store and buy a handful, freight dollars and a box of clays, and you're in business. When I see those clays fly, shotguns are going off, blowing calls, put out your flags, put your robo ducks out, and duplicate that hunting situation. Hide you some bumpers around, get that dog handling with that intensity of the shot, the fall calls and flags and dabblers and babblers, you can duplicate that off season.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. And that's one thing, you know, I I always remember visiting your kennel in Oxford that they, you know, that there was always decoys out. And that's, you know, that's something that, you know, a lot of trainers kind of forget. They go out to these fields and they're, you know, training. But, you know, it's very easy to throw out some decoys in a field and let the dogs work around the decoys and then just in the field, not even having to worry about underwater.

Chris Jennings:

But it also gets the dog accustomed to being around the basically, the essence of, you know, waterfowl hunting, you know, the scenarios that they're going to eventually see. And and that's all part of I think we did last year, we did an introduction show where we talked about introducing some of these things. So that's a that's a good tip for people to keep keep in mind for this spring.

Mike Stewart:

We just filmed a series for Ducks Unlimited TV that'll start this summer, and you may pick it up as well. And we created absolute chaos and filmed it, and it'll give you a lot of we had flags and dabblers and dabblers and four dogs running simultaneously. And each one of them had a different spot to work from, a brush pile, a dog hide, lying under a goose, a big goose shell. He was hidden in the field. All kinds of different things.

Mike Stewart:

The first time your dog sees these types of activities should not be open in day at sunrise. You could practice these all season and create these cool little fun situations with you and your friends and get the dog used to handling those situations. So once you refine your stop whistles, your walking baseball, you hunt your cover, a hunt stop hunt that we mentioned, amp it up. Put some decoys out, put some spinners out, shoot a few clays, and put some intensity in there. Put a little chaos in it and see how the dog performs.

Chris Jennings:

Yeah. That's great. You know, that's a that's a perfect idea for people to and you get to play with all your duck hunting gear during the off season. You know? I'm I'm a big gear guy.

Chris Jennings:

So anytime you can get decoys out and clays and, you know, any of that, I'm I'm all down for those types of training scenarios for sure. You know, one thing that that you are are a big proponent of and and most, you know, professional trainers are, But something that your average, you know, retriever owner may miss out on here and something that they really need to keep in mind going into what you're basically saying is preseason training, not necessarily postseason. But following duck season, people tend to let their dog lay around, not get not be near as active. And one thing that people should really keep in mind is the conditioning of the dog. And this is something that this time of year is when you really you know, you shouldn't be taking your foot off the gas here.

Chris Jennings:

You know, the conditioning of your retriever should be a year round thing. So kind of explain how you would recommend to people to get their dog from you know, who may have been laying around a little bit. Do you have any kind of tips to get that dog back into shape?

Mike Stewart:

I absolutely do. And you're quite right. It's important to keep them in physically physically in shape, keep the weight off of them, keep the muscles moving, keep them engaged just like you work a gals. You don't stop in the summer or off season. And also mentally engaged, thinking, learning, having new experiences, keep that that dog's mind engaged.

Mike Stewart:

Of course, we're gonna be giving him a routine of exercise. You have to be careful about the heat, especially in the South, and heat exhaustion. So you're gonna do a lot of swimming if it's midday or doing some early morning training is what we like to do. So watch about the heat. Keep what you got keep that dog physically agile, keeping him moving, keeping him running, but you may have to shorten the distance of your retrieves.

Mike Stewart:

You can't do maybe 300 yard retrieves. You can maybe shorten them up to a few 15 to 25 yard retrieves and get more of them. And then you can use a lot of water, and you can use early morning training. And that's especially in our kennels in Wilderness, Texas. They face that.

Mike Stewart:

They start really, really early in the morning, and by midday, they're finished because just because of the heat, humidity, and so on. Our second consideration is weight. Our friends at ProPlanet, Purina, did a lot of really valuable research on nutrition. And a lot of the guys and myself included used to change our mixture of dog food from the protein fat content all season. They found that was really ineffective.

Mike Stewart:

It takes about twelve weeks for the the dog's metabolism to adjust to a new a combination of dog food that they're that they're actually ingesting. So what you wanna do is actually go down on that amount of the dog food, not change the particular mixture. Let's say you're feeding Pro Plan thirty twenty Sport. That's a really good feed food during the season because it has a a good bit of fat in it, and that's what keeps it all that's what keeps his energy level Not the protein, it's the fat that that he's burning. That's his that's the gas.

Mike Stewart:

That's the diesel fuel. Mhmm. But in the summertime, if one of these short retrieves, he's inside an air conditioning, guess what? He's gonna gain weight on that diet. But instead of switching it to a twenty six sixteen, which is a great dog food, but it's gonna take him a long time to adjust to it.

Mike Stewart:

And then we gotta readjust him on the backside in August and September to get him back up back in the season. Just decrease the amount. Just decrease the amount. Don't change the food. Then keeping the dog mentally stimulated, again, all the things we've already talked about in this program are valuable for that.

Mike Stewart:

Keeping the dog thinking, keeping the dog working for you, problem solving, giving things to figure out. Agility, go you you can go down to the park and find all kinds of little agility that the kiddie park, things for him to go over and crawl through, more things to condition the dog to problem solve. Create a dog that's not just a machine that's responding to something, but really analyzes things and can really solve problems.

Chris Jennings:

That's awesome. That's a that's a good tip. You know, some of the the local parks, there's little playgrounds and things like that that you can do some really interesting agility training at those things, you know, running up and down little hops and and being able to, like you said, really think through some of these situations, which kinda leads me to a last thing here that, you know, as part of conditioning, one thing that you always stress is, you know, conditioning, you you get get that in your mind. It's kinda like people on a treadmill. You know?

Chris Jennings:

It's pretty boring to just run on a treadmill. And just having a dog run for no reason is is not really that productive. But when you're conditioning, you it has to come with a training focus. And and I know you really stress that. But, you know, kind of explain maybe a couple short little tips for people to do some, you know, small intro conditioning things but in a training regimen.

Mike Stewart:

Well, of course, I've already mentioned swimming. You can do let's let's take a couple of our adventure dog situations. We have a a certification program for adventure dog where a dog become trail rated. Adventure dog certified, our our master tracker. Deke, the DU mascot, is a master tracker.

Mike Stewart:

I do things all season with him. I teach him to hunt sheds. He's a good little shed hunter. That's a real close in. Early morning activity for this time of year, he can go out and find shed along fence lines.

Mike Stewart:

He thinks that's really that's grand. Swimming by the kayak, swimming up, getting in and out of the kayak and going kayaking, that's that's gonna duplicate a poke boat or lay down blind, being still in the kayak. Swimming by a canoe, going out, and just swimming at a distance. Those are all good activities that you can do. Running, jogging, just have to be very careful about the heat and the high impact.

Mike Stewart:

Mountain biking, take a bike on the trail. All these kinds of things are mainly engaging to the dog, and you're burning energy. You're you're keeping the body condition and going, and you don't have to go out and just throw bones. This is a lot of things they could do. Another thing we found out that I think of people that really ignore is the dog if you if the dog is concentrating and having to work his mind and sitting there, for instance, being still and steady as another dog works and then it's his turn to work or has to pick multiple bumpers in certain orders, like the oldest bird to the newest bird or the longest bird to the shortest bird, he's actually burning energy.

Mike Stewart:

Think about if you're taking a test, a really difficult test. You go in and you sit down, and two hours later, you come out of that test exhausted. What have you done? It's all mental. But that dog is burning energy here through memory conditioning.

Mike Stewart:

He's not he's certainly not working his muscle, but he's working his mind. And you can exhaust that dog through just thinking and problem solving. It doesn't have to be high impact running all the time.

Chris Jennings:

Mhmm. Yeah. That's that's fantastic. That's some great tips and some you know, we I like to kind of refer to that as almost like a a reset button for retrievers, all these different training drills that you mentioned and and kind of a refocus on, you know, the post duck season errors that your dog may have picked up. But, hey, Mike, I really appreciate it.

Chris Jennings:

This has this has been a learning experience for me, and I think, you know, all of our listeners out there, you know, they can visit uklabs.com or ducks.org and really dig into some of these different training sessions that that you've created, you know, kinda laid the groundwork for a lot of these, you know, trainers to to look at and say, oh, yeah. I'm gonna try this drill. Like you mentioned, the baseball drill and and hunt stop, and, you know, there's tons of drills out there for for all of our listeners to go ahead and check out. But I appreciate you joining me on the show, and we'll have to have you back on here very soon.

Mike Stewart:

Thanks. Really enjoyed it. I'd like

Chris Jennings:

to thank my guest, Mike Stewart, owner and operator of Wild Rose Kennels, for coming on today and giving people a little intro into kind of a reset button for retrievers this spring. I'd like to thank Clay Baird, our producer, for putting the show together and getting it out to you, and I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on the DU podcast and supporting wetlands conservation.

VO:

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VO:

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