Mike Gould Grand River Training Seminar

[gspman]

Hey folks,

This May 6-7 I had the opportunity to attend a dog training seminar by Mike Gould of Grand River Labs. Mike came all the way from Idaho to MN to do this gig. He is a nationally known trainer and has developed his own line of Labrador Retrievers and also has a couple of books published. At this point you're probably wondering what the heck a pointing dog guy is doing at a retriever training seminar. Well, Mike has in the past trained pointers and ran his string of dogs at some of the biggest quail ranches in Texas so he has alot of experience in the pointer category as well. Many of his training techniques can be applied to pointers as well as labs. A handling technique called "influence handling" is something I can see myself using alot.

Mike uses alot of "point of contact" style training and some of you pointer guys who are familiar with Delmar Smith and his followers will notice some similarities with the Smith style of training. A training tool that gets a lot of use in Mike's program is a "waist cord" which is similar to the "wonder lead" that the Smith's plug. So you can see that no matter what kind of hunting dog you have, flusher or pointer, there are some similarities in the basics and even in some things that are beyond basic.

The first morning we learned about correct conformation in a dog, ie. how they should be built. Everything from the dog's toes on up to tailset, proper angulation, neck length, head size, and more were covered. It was a real eye opener to me. I always wondered about how some pointing dogs can run hard all day and how others just can't go hard all day and Mike's explanations really helped me understand that. I now look at dogs in a different way because of that conformation lesson.

Then we went on to basic obedience using the waist cord and there were some more eye opening things for me. Some stuff I forgot and some new stuff. It's amazing how dogs will try to not comply by doing subtle escape behaviors like yawning and turning their heads away. Once you had the dogs looking at you and focused you could make progress with them. Once they submit themselves to your bidding it gets alot easier to train.

After that it was off to the field to work on solving dog training problems or issues that either you and/or your dog might have. Good stuff.

I've been inspired to try some new things. With my work and family life I don't have the time to train like I used to so it's up to me to make the most of the little time I have. I now have a better idea of what I need to work on and what things I'd like to work on with my dog.

If you ever get the chance to attend one of Mike's seminars I'd highly recommend it. Also take a look at his books on Amazon. They are a good read and the training book is chock full of info.

Anyways enough about that, here's some pics from the weekend training seminar...

Mike Gould the teacher

The students

Some action shots...

A yellow being sent

The retrieve

Delivery to hand

Setting up a black for a retrieve

The black being sent

The pick up

On the way back

The delivery

Hey! How'd that pesky Shorthair get in there with those labs!