What factors do you need to successfully train your retriever?

CGA Member and Ambassador Scott Marquis excellently trained his incredible retriever, Lottie Mae. Together, they have gone through the sun, rain, and snow. She went from being a new pup to making an epic retrieve at Merrymeeting Bay with steadiness, drive, and a beautiful delivery. She's a dream retriever.

Are you wanting to train your dog to be an epic retriever like Scott has trained Lottie Mae? You may be wondering what you need to make that happen. 

After Scott's beloved dog passed away, he was searching for another dog. This time, he wanted to train the dog to be his hunting companion as well as his family's companion.

Scott, said, "I had always been kind of researching and following along with Barton Ramsay and Southern Oak Kennels. I knew I wanted a dog out of one of their litters and kind of simultaneously started scouring the web and trying to think, 'How am I going to do this? You know I don’t know anything about it. I'm not a dog trainer, I'm not a handler. What tools or what am I going to have to put in place?' You know?"

He realized the first thing you need to train your retriever.

1. You need a plan.

"I bought a couple of books, bought a couple of DVDs, and after kind of reading it, I just really felt that I needed something that was going to give me kind of daily/weekly guides. Oftentimes I found myself with like a video on YouTube about how to teach a dog to do swim by and they had some expert level dog out there that had already passed all these tests, and they give a couple hand signals, whistles. The dog does swim by. They go,  “and that's how it's done.” That really left me kind of frustrated feeling like, well, of course, that dog and that trainer are able to do that, but like what happens on the day to day and on the in between.

So when I downloaded the free Cornerstone Gundog Academy preview, and it had a couple of those layouts. One of them happened to show Josh and Violet kind of going through a little bit of a struggle where it wasn't all the good you know. And I said, “Man, you know what, I think this is it. Not only is it going to give me this whole weekly layout so that I'll know exactly the steps to take and in what order but this company, this group is real and authentic.”

Through joining CGA, he found the second key you need to successfully train your retriever.

2. You need a community.

"Now that we’ve been a part of it, that's [the community is] probably my favorite part. I think I was drawn to it by some of the realness and how training goes and sometimes how training doesn't go and how you have to kind of change and do something else.

But now that we've been in it, I think the community is the thing that keeps drawing me back to it.

Anytime we have a stumbling block, or anytime we have something that we just, you know, can't move past or we're just we're just trying to figure out, it's really refreshing to jump on there and all of a sudden see a bunch of other people that are having a similar issue or a similar problem and everybody kind of tagged teams it to work that out.

Then when you see that post of that success of that member, and you know they're like, 'hey, earlier this season, you might remember we struggled with  getting my dog to get in the water? Well here take a look at this!' Here's that dog pounding a retrieve through the water. To really see that, I mean, I don't think there's a member in that community that doesn't put a giant smile on their face when that all comes together.

And now with the community aspect, it's the reason that we've fallen in love with it and why I've recommended it to so many people who just may even want an obedient dog and don't want anything to do with duck hunting."

You can train your retriever to be an amazing hunting and family companion. Be sure that you have a plan and an encouraging community that is going to cheer you on and help you solve problems. 

You can see a free preview of the course Scott used, 52 Plus, by clicking here.

You can follow along with Scott Marquis and Lottie Mae on their Instagram pages.