Mike Gould's Central Texas Dog Seminar
Photos of the seminarClick Here
There was no better way to spend my birthday than at a dog training seminar with Mike Gould.
To say this guy is top notch would be a disservice. This guy is world class, whether you choose to believe so is entirely up to you. When you actually see this man in action the choice will be an easy one to make.
I first heard of Mike from a good friend; Joe went to his class last year and could not stop telling me about how great he was. Another year quickly passed by and Mike was coming back to the Beaukiss metroplex for his dog training seminar, Joe had been inundating me with emails about the class.
He had nothing but great things to say about Mike: "We've got the best dog breeder/trainer in the country coming from Idaho to give a seminar. I went last year and was blown away."
I had my doubts, simply because I have found that everyone and their brother claims to be a dog "trainer" or "breeder". It is disheartening to see how much of a commodity dogs have become. Breeding is an art form that should only be done by professionals, but that is a soapbox I will not get onto. Because of this I was skeptical of yet "another" dog trainer. This had nothing to do with Mike personally. In fact I had never even heard of Mike Gould, sadly neither has a lot of the country. This is a man who we could use A LOT more of in this world. Mike, being the humble gentleman he is, would disagree and simple say he is no better than anyone else.
With Mike's seminar falling on the same day as my birthday, I figured what the heck it will be a good present for me as well as Gunny. I had been working with Gunny since the day we brought him home. The first 3 months were pretty intense; we had a good daily regiment of training. However, due to weather the training began to taper. The bird refuge we trained at was perfect, except when it rained. When it rained, the place turned into a Louisiana mud bog with mosquitoes that could carry away small children. With it raining every other week Gunny's training began to taper. Having moved to Austin this year, we are back into the swing of our dailys and Mike's class has helped fuel the motivation.
We arrived at the clubhouse sometime after nine. Mike was still on Mountain Time as were a few others. I was introduced to everyone, as I had missed the Saturday class. Joe and I were the oddballs with the Vizslas; or rather it was the other way around. The oddballs had all brought Labs, but to each his own.
Gunny was wound up as usual; he had never seen any of the dogs before except for Tiki. He wanted to play as did a few of the other dogs. This is always a touchy situation for me, not everyone likes their dogs to play. Sometimes the dogs aren't even allowed to socialize at all. Not knowing what type of dogs I was dealing with I had to keep Gunny on a short leash.
Soon some of the guys setup the "Chain Gang". This was new to Gunny and I. I had heard about it from Joe, it's really a neat and SIMPLE tool for the dogs. That is one of the things about Mike's seminar is that it was the little things that made it so appealing to me. But I will get to that later.
The chain gang is a long chain anchored into the ground on two poles. The dogs are chained to the chain in equidistant intervals set apart so that the dogs can't get too close to each other. Gunny was really close to Ben and harassed Ben for quite a while. But soon he laid off. The idea from what I gathered is that the dogs are tied to it and get to see other dogs out in the field working. It's kind of like making kids sit on the front row in class.
You learn more at the front cause you are right there paying attention. When I was in college they always liked to say that the kids who sat in the front row always got better grades than those in the back. That sure didn't apply to my Physics class, I could have been standing at the chalkboard and it wouldn't have mattered.
When one dogs moves, all the dogs feel it. It really was a neat thing to see, and simple in principle. Once everyone was in place Mike began to expound on a lot of his experience and philosophy. This is the nuts and bolts of his whole methodology. So much of Mike's theory, I took, is on Training the Dog Trainer to be in tune with the dog. My favorite line of the day was when he said "Well if your dog isn't retrieving, maybe you're not worth retrieving for". Think about that for a few minutes
Some of the dogs were a little uncomfortable about the chain gang, but pretty soon they calmed down and accepted it. While Mike was talking he was always in tune with what the dogs were doing. He would stop and make comments about how a particular one was acting. Gunny and Tiki were the biggest whiners of the bunch, Ben ranks up there though with his Ventriloquist act. When Don was out tossing birds you could really tell how much Ben wanted to be there with him. Gunny had separation anxiety no doubt about it.
A lot of that is my fault. When I first got Gunny, he went to work with me everyday from the day we got him on Mothers' day until the day I quit my job Jan 30th and moved to Austin. I took him to work with me because I wanted him to get used to people and I also did it because I hated him being pinned up at home alone. It did however make him very uneasy about being away from him. His incessant whining during the day was evidence of that. They call the Vizsla the Velcro Dog; it's one of the best descriptions of them yet.
With Mike finished with the first part of his session we took the dogs for a walk to burn off some energy and get them ready for some field work. The walk consisted of letting all the dogs off to run around and follow us around the property. We had one person on point and we followed behind. The point of this exercise was for us to watch how to dogs cue off of us and the other dogs. Danny could move just a little to the left or right and the dogs picked up on it. Some of the dogs were watching Danny, and some of the dogs were watching the other dogs. But no matter what the dogs all followed along. Some of the more experienced dogs were trying to work the area; they would run along the tree line looking for birds and what not. Some of them were just along for the ride.
About halfway thru the walk I had noticed numbnuts had disappeared. I knew he was probably off somewhere but it still worried me a little. I also knew that he wasn't going to run away, I am the one who feeds him. He is just at the terrible twos right now and is kind of rebellious. Mainly I was embarrassed, it appeared as if I had the only dog missing. This probably is what fueled the worry. But I tried as best I could to not let it bother me. I was looking around while we walked for the red menace but he was nowhere in sight.
During Mike's introduction he mentioned time after time to have faith not fear, well easier said than done. But I was trying to trust the dog. I had caught myself trying to correct and control Gunny just before the walk because he was doing something I didn't like. As soon as I corrected him I knew that I didn't have faith in him and should just have a little faith in him. As we continued walking, Gunny still AWOL, I was trying to keep a laid back mind frame and say it's no big deal he's around somewhere. Finally I mentioned something to Mike that Gunny had decided to venture on his own. Mike had already been aware of the situation and mentioned that he noticed he veered off back when we crossed the creek. We stopped and Gunny was now the topic of a good example of a dog that decided to be independent.
Mike had us stop, he apprised everyone of the situation and had us sit for a minute. He began to tell us what was going on. Gunny had decided that he wanted to do a little of his own thing, the pack was fun but something else had caught his attention. But Gunny was soon realizing that he was being left behind. Mike said that this made Gunny scared, Gunny was now worried that he wasn't really sure where we were at. We waited for a little while longer, Mike said that now Gunny was back tracking and trying his best to find the last familiar place we had left off. I asked Mike if this was a time to use my whistle, I have worked with Gunny for a while on whistle training and when I blow three short toots he knows to get his rear in gear and get back to me. Mike said not to, this threw me a little but I also knew that Gunny was learning on his own. Mike said that right now Gunny is worried and knows he is somewhere he shouldn't be. Blowing the whistle wouldn't help Gunny learn. Gunny had to learn on his own. Pretty soon we saw the rapscallion running across the field. But he wasn't alone; he had a few partners in crime that he was running with.
Wilson, Deek, and Gunny were racing back to camp. They were lost and heading back to the last known spot, they were following the trail we had walked in on. We were told not to say anything; Mike said that now they were going back to camp. And they would get even more worried. Sure enough, the dogs made it back to camp and one of the dogs let out a loud howl. Everyone got a good laugh out of that. The dogs started back down the trail and were furiously trying to find us. When they came up the trail, Gunny and one of the other dogs spotted us, the third followed shortly after. They had found their way, they were scared, and they knew they would not do that again today.
After that, Gunny never lost sight of me. Don was first to notice; Gunny would run up about 30yrds and then stop and look back for me. Then he would run back to me, circle around and run back out up front. He made very sure that he knew where I was. This was one of a many important lessons we both learned that day.
Towards the end of the walk we came up on an area where there were skeet throwers. Mike had mentioned to us earlier about how the land was sad. He told us a little how Mother Nature worked. How when we hurt Mother Nature, she give us little warnings. His example was about how the King Ranch used to have grass in it so tall it would catch on the cowboys spurs. Every see South Texas present day? Cattle ranching had hurt Mother Nature. So she put up things in the way of us so that cattle couldn't graze as easily, such as cactus and stickers.
In the area of the skeet throwers Mike took notice to some of the "forbs" Mother Nature had put up. He mentioned how there were a lot of bull nettle in a certain area, then he said "and look where it is growing, its in about the same area as where the skeet probably land" I don't know how many heard this, but when I looked out at the nettle, looked at the skeet throw, then looked back out at the area. The connection hit me like a ton of bricks. Sure, maybe nettle just likes to grow where clay falls because of some chemical composition. Call it how what you may, it made sense to me.
After the walk we put the dogs back on the gang and began to do a little bird work. Utah was one of the first up to bat, he did some retrieves. Bonnie, who "never had hunted" was a natural. A few others had their chance then we took a break for lunch.
And a great lunch it was, Don had cooked up some killer BBQ. During the lunch break everyone got a chance to talk with Mike on things they had questions about. One of mine was about how Gunny sometimes stretches in front of me if I tell him to do something. This is an escape Mike said.
With lunch done, Gunny was up for some pointing. When I started working with Gunny I tried to put in as much retrieval work as possible. My basis for that was that Gunny already has the genes for Pointing. It's what they do. Retrieving is not their best trait. My idea was to work on retrieving as best I could and get him rock solid on that, then work in the pointing. I took Gunny out to the field and walked him around a little bit. Mike had hidden a pigeon out in the field. Once the bird was place, I turned Gunny around and walked him in the area. Once we got about 5-10ft from the bird Gunny locked up. He did want to move on it but Mike had him in his 2-point lead. We did this twice, Gunny pointed, all was good.
Gunny did have a little problem holding on whoa. A lot of this is my fault; well all of it is, because I have always used whoa as a slowing command not a stop. The only command I think I have used him to stop is the whistle. Mike then used Gunny for his student a while. He did a 3-point hitch on him and showed us how to get him to whoa if he was not being cooperative. Gunny didn't like this too much. He wanted to hug up on Mike's leg and not stay in place. Then Mike would pull on the lead and Gunny would do his impression of an out of the water Tuna fish.
Mike and Gunny went thru this about 4 times or so. Finally Gunny began to get the picture, he's a hard head and like Mike said doesn't have much of an attention span right now. Hopefully he grows out of this. Mike rewarded gunny's sitting still buy going from the 3-point to the 2-point. But soon Gunny was not staying still; this is what Mike was talking about when he mentioned his attention span. Gunny went back to the 3-point then after a while to the 2-point, then just the lead around the neck.
Next after Gunny was a little more relaxed and responsive Mike began to show us how to use the lead to teach your down to "turn out" when working so that he always keeps covering new ground. This was accomplished by placing the lead around the neck of Gunny and twisting on the lead just enough so that it made Gunny turn to the left or right.
After Gunny's session Utah was back up to do some stop to whistle drills. After that Mike showed us his "looking glass" drill and the Star/Circle drill using dummies.
I think we crammed about as much as possible in one day. The sun was starting to set and daylight was fading fast. We helped cleanup and everyone got their gear packed.
All and all it was a great time, it opened my eyes to a lot of ideas that I had never took into consideration. A lot of it was little things, I mentioned this before and I want to expand on it. One of the things I liked about Mike was that he really made me look at the little things involved with the training. I see it as a long bridge with rocks blocking the path. On that bridge of rocks of all types, big rocks, little rocks, medium rocks, gravel etc. I always saw the way to get across as having to just move the big rocks. In my mind the big rocks represented the large training tasks, Obedience, retrieving, tracking, etc.
I spent a lot of time working to get past the big rocks without paying any attention to the little ones. The little rocks represented a lot of the things Mike spoke up. The little nuances about dogs, about how they act as a pack and how they socialize. How a dog will feel embarrassed to a greater degree in front of his friends than in front of his handler. The behavioral science I never took too much stock in simply because of arrogance and ignorance. While Gunny didn't get a lot of one on one time, it did not matter because I felt that the training was for me not Gunny. Along with the fact that Gunny was learning regardless of if he was being taught one on one because he was with his buddies picking up on cues of other dogs.
Skeptic I was, Convert I am. Mike Gould has a knack for what he does, and anyone who participates in one of his seminars will take away something great.
The ideas expressed in this write-up or solely those of the writer. It is what I took home from the experience.
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