The first stage is obedience, field obedience, and exposing your dog to birds, gun sounds, water, cover and building up your dog's retrieve with all the above.

Obedience is essential whether it's around the house or in the hunting field. We start off by teaching your dog the commands "Here" and "Sit". The command "Here" combines your "come" and "heel" commands. We instill everything on-lead as well as off-lead with the use of the E-Collar.

While your dog is learning the obedience, we are building their retrieve. We understand that many people do not have access and time show their dogs everything, so depending on the dog we will start to show them and develop the field work. We will show them birds, gun sounds, water, cover, etc.

Once we feel they understand the obedience, we will instill the obedience in the field. Once they pick up a bird/bumper they will come back and heel to your left side and sit down. They will walk beside you as you move around. This process normally takes 2 months.

The mouth work or force fetch is the 2nd stage. We teach your dog to bring the bird/bumper all the way back and deliver to hand. This command is important because it teaches your dog not to eat, chew, or play with the bird while out in the field. We start by teaching them to hold a bumper and then instilling in them not to drop the bumper/bird until you take it from them. We want them to pick up the birds and bring them back to deliver them to hand. From the first step of teaching them to hold to retrieving back in the field with the field obedience and mouth work takes about 6 - 8 weeks; however this timeframe varies from dog to dog.

The last stage is showing marking drills and teaching steadiness. We will start of by teaching them to look out for the bumpers/birds with the use of launchers in the field/water. We then go into the steadiness stage. Steadiness (or steady to shot) is when a dog only leaves for a retrieve when you say their name. After we teach the steadiness, we instill the steadiness with the field/water retrieves and various scenarios. The last state is where we put all the stages together and provide the foundation for a hunting dog. This stage takes about 6 - 8 weeks, but varies from dog to dog.