My passion for retrievers started at an early age while quail hunting with my dad back in the late 60's. When I seen our bird dogs retrieve the quail we were shooting, I thought that was the coolest thing that a dog would go pick up your birds and bring them to me. We also dove hunted but we didn't have a dog that would retrieve our doves, and our duck hunts were the same (I was the retriever). As
time we on and I got married I got a phone call from my cousin whom owned a large kennel in Mobile, AL asking me did I want a Labrador Retriever, knowing very little about the breed, she went on and was telling me that the dog had already been trained he would be a great hunting dog if I wanted him she would bring him up and I could have him. Well for a young redneck that love to hunt what could be better than to have a dog that would retrieve the birds for me. She gave me my first Lab his name was Zack a big black lab that loved to hunt just as much as I did, I took him hunting every time I got a chance, (and that was a lot), with in a very short time we had become a hunting team. I never really thought much about what a great dog I had until he passed away and I went on a quest to replace him. I talked to a lot of people that had labs and most of the dogs I seen back then would just run all over the field and I knew that was not a trained dog and I didn't want mine doing that, so I started learning to train. A friend of mine told me about this group of people in a club called Hunting Retriever Club, so we went to a hunt test and I seen that was what I wanted my dog to be like, it was the way Zack was trained. I talked to everyone there at that hunt test that would talk to me, I bet those folks thought this guy is crazy. Some of the people really wanted to tell me about how to get a dog on the level I was looking for and some didn't. There was a pro trainer there, every dog he ran was passing with flying colors, so I knew I wanted to pick his mind but that was not the place to question him due to the fact he was so busy. I talked to him for a brief time and he invited me to come to his place and train, I went but I didn't take a dog I just went to watch, I think I threw more birds that week than I had ever killed in a life time. He taught me enough for me to come home and get started on the dog that I had, he would call me during the week and ask me what I was doing in my training and he would come up bring his dogs and we would train. I found out I was not the only person in our town that wanted to train retrievers, and it was not very long before we started our own Hunting Retriever Club. After getting a title on the dog I trained our club ask me to become a judge for the U. I judged for many years watching and learning, I would see handlers bring dogs to the line that just wanted to do the work and some just did it because they had to. it didn't take me very long to figure out that all training could not be done the same way. I trained with anyone that want to train, I went to every seminar I could find, read every training book I could get my hands on, watched every video I could find, but what stuck in my mind was what I heard a guy by the name of Mike Lardy say, "Each dog is different, and you MUST learn to read each dog to be able to train that dog to the best of their ability". I seen there was an old school way of training and there was new ways to train. Some of the best dogs I judged may have not made it in the old school way of training, but the ones that had been trained with the new way was really turning it on and just loved what they were doing. I don't judge or run hunt test any more but, I'm sure sooner or later I'll be back in the game, but for right now I'll just keep on training my dogs. There is noting more satisfying than to be in the field with a dog that wants to be there. My door is always open to anyone with the passion to train, just give me a call and we'll set up a time to get together.
