Golden Retriever - Is It Right For You?

welcome back to bluegrass it's beautiful Sunday afternoon today we are talking about Golden Retrievers and whether or not a golden retriever might be right for your family situation okay now this is Walker and this is Bo and you might say well Stoney if they're both golden retrievers why do they look so different and that's going to be a big portion of what we're talking about today as a as a general rule you're darker darker More Auburn colored dogs are going to be a little bit more on the field side and your lighter dogs almost white dogs are going to be a little bit more on the show line side and yes that does affect uh you know the dog's personality it's temperament it's energy level okay and how you go about training and managing it okay so we'll walk both here on the course just to demonstrate that they're both capable of doing Simple basic obedience exercises about the same then we'll go out in the pre-adventure area okay and kind of walk around and we'll talk about the the differences that I see in terms of the initial training period and then we'll go over to my farm and we'll take a big adventure and through all that now you can listen to me talk because I'll probably have some Salient points but mainly I just want you to watch the dogs okay you can always with my videos what you want to notice is that there's always a lot of dogs out everybody can talk a lot of Talking Heads in the dog business but what you want to do is watch the dog so throughout the video I want you to watch the dogs and see what they do and see how I interact with them and that's going to give you your best indication of whether or not a golden retriever might be right for you and if a golden retriever is right for you what type of golden retriever might be right for you all right so we'll start off with my normal basic obedience training what I call my kind of my formal training my school work that we do every day before we do fun stuff all right so okay guys now so I have this is what's known as a small challenge of course and this is where you know I teach people how to influence dogs and where I teach dogs to be influenced okay so basically what I do is I bring dogs out here when they first get here and I make sure that I have the ability to explain to them you know what I would like for them to do like get out of the way and I try to make sure they understand that I always have a reason for for the things that I'd like for them to do and I want to make sure that they have a good physical base on which to go out in the real world and learn to to to navigate different environments okay come on both all right so uh one of the things I see people do with their dogs is when they're puppies they don't take the time to really develop the dog's proprioception okay so you have a puppy and you're working on sit and down and stand and things like that and then what happens is you think well I'm going to go to the lake or I'm going to go hiking or I'm going to go on vacation and when you go like you're just going to take a hike like you've took for the last 20 years of your life you have a new puppy that's never been in an off-camber position they've never been faced with a log to go over they've never had to go over a creek or get their paws muddy you know in other words they've never had to face any kind of physical impediments okay now watch out country come on dog so what we do with our initial training come on nerd is we bring the dogs out and we put them in situations where they have to learn to use their body what we call that is developing proprioception now different kinds of dogs they take to this initial training phases at different rates they pretty much all all get you know get the exercises on lock eventually but some of them it takes longer okay so Bo which is a real light colored golden retriever a show bread golden retriever it's going to take a little longer you can see it's a little bit less ah he's a little bit less well balanced uh sometimes you might notice as he goes to kind of to climb up on obstacles uh he doesn't have a ton of strength drawn okay and so we developed that strength but more importantly we teach the dogs to develop leverage okay and that's really the key if you have a dog that's not super strong not super athletic then what you have to do is you have to teach the dog how to use their body more efficiently now these darker Auburn colored golden retrievers that we see normally now this isn't always but normally they're a lot more hard Chargers okay like these two here you're going to see when we go to the farm uh and I might splice in some other footage from being over there other times but you're going to see this dog he goes everywhere that this dog goes but like he doesn't have quite as much energy output as he's going and that might sound weird because you're like well it's only if they're going the same places aren't they putting out the same amount of energy no they're not okay so think about it like this let's say I'm going to walk one mile in a straight line okay so if I'm walking one mile in a straight line and I have a showbread Golden Retriever with me back up there showing that dog camera man one of these days I'm going to make a video just about chocolate labs okay so y'all just keep checking my channel for that all right but anyway back to what I was saying this dog right if I take a show break Golden Retriever with me and I walk one mile they'll generally kind of go a little ahead of me a little behind me but they're pretty close these dark darker colored golden retrievers as I walk a mile they zigzag the whole time okay so they might walk even though we're traveling one mile in a linear you know form like from point A to point B they zigzag and they might walk three or four miles okay which that is Hey listen that's a that's awesome as long as you don't have to have them on a leash you know now if you have to have them on a leash I'm going to tell you that there seems to be a pretty pronounced difference in the amount of time it takes to tire out these field bread goldens as compared to the showbread Goldens right okay pretty much every time that I let uh that I let a bow off the leash then you know he's going to go find my daughter and he's just going to lay wherever she's laying and he's going to play with her right she might have something over there he'll put stuff in his mouth he'll get a stick and he'll you know try to get her to to throw it but he doesn't want her to throw it far five six feet something like that you know but pretty much I know all day I don't have to worry about Bo getting into stuff Walker on the other hand listen he's into everything right and so like if if I go in the kennel for a second and I come back out almost always I'm going to find Bo with my daughter or with some of the older dogs just kind of laying around chilling and I'm going to find Walker with my actual dogs who are field bread dogs uh running and getting into stuff right and sometimes they get into the stuff that you want them to get into and sometimes just to be honest with you they get into stuff that you don't want them to here let me show them cameraman all right so let me give you a prime example you see this jacket see the pocket torn out of this jacket how long did that take camera man few minutes maybe two minutes at the most right I left my jacket I had some salmon in here and I looked down and a little field bread lab that I have here had already chewed the whole pocket off my jacket I mean I just all I did was walked from one room to the other wasn't paying attention dog just got here that's what you're going to run into with these dogs now with the lighter colored golden retrievers what I see is if you leave them you know unsupervised of course they're very oral and they'll kind of chew on stuff but they're not big chewers like these guys not big chewers not big Runners they're a lot easier to let kids manage like you know I can let any kid walk that light colored Golden Retriever and the dog's completely compliant with Walker what he'll do a lot of times he'll put the leash in his mouth and like he'll be pulling the kid around okay so that's kind of the the basic thing let me see camera back up over there I'll get up on the exam table we'll give you uh you know what let me go over here to this other table we'll get bo back up here and we'll take a look at both of them from the side oh come on Bo up very nice okay so golden retriever a this is Walker and uh like he's pretty dark colored kind of wavy coat now the great thing about this kind of coat is when we go out like uh stuffed I mean it's worse than a lab coat in terms of getting Briars in it cocoa Birds things like that but it's not real bad okay pretty easy to manage in terms of cleaning them up all I have to do when I take a walker out is I bring them home and I look here with these little feathery hairs are make sure that there's nothing stuck under his ear sometimes their pads will have a little extra hair okay so I could do a cursory physical examination on them always if you have a retriever after you take them out look in their mouth because a lot of times they pick up sticks and stuff and they'll end up with splinters in their mouth and that can kind of turn into a mess run your hand over their spine lift their tail their privates joints toes okay but that's pretty good this dog like is not far off of easy maintenance of my labs okay like I don't worry about them too much let me find bow though bow come here boo come on you can do it oh my gosh he's a very good dog now here comes Bo now one of the first things you notice is that Bo came up here with a stick and then Walker took his stick both of these types of golden retrievers are super oral dogs and one of the things that people really like this is Springer Spaniel some people want me to make a video about him one of the things that people really like about the show line golden retrievers is that go on earth look now this is what I'm talking about see how he wants to be and he can't just take his turn so but the shoreline golden retrievers is like they you know you'll be around your house you'll come home from work these guys show up at the door and they always have a plushie in their mouth and they wiggle they go over to the toy box they get their toys out one by one they bring them to you they're really awesome you know in terms of making you feel good about yourself making you feel loved that's why these dogs are such you know such popular therapy and service dogs okay but it's kind of how he looks but come up here camera man let's show them see if you can you notice this hair feel bread lab okay so you notice his hair is like a lot more fine so down here like these feathers on the back of their legs under their ears under their armpits on these light colored golden retrievers uh it's it's it's it's a lot more problematic in terms of getting them back in the truck and and and watching you know because you'll get little things in there these lighter colored dogs I also find their skins get their skin gets irritated a little bit more a lot of them don't have a ton of pigment or nose or nose to kind of get sunburned if you don't watch out hey and then there's another kind of golden retriever I don't have one out here right now that's like this only their hair is angel hair fine and I mean those are basically impossible to do anything with uh every time we take them on an adventure they just soak up mud and soak up dirt and I mean it just takes a long time to takes a long time to to to get them clean and so we kind of discriminate against them basically just refuse to watch them in the look that's what I'm talking about field trial labs always into something okay but basically we discriminate against the super fine hair Golden Retrievers in the winter time because it creates a lot of Labor Force okay so those are just some factors for you to consider before we go out back and we can watch these dogs run around and play and then we go over to the farm what we're really doing here is we're coming out here and we're proofing these dogs so that we know that they understand the relationship between having access to freedom and paying attention to us okay and we do it with a natural environment but we also like to because people email me and they said Stoney you're always out in nature but what about the other stuff that comes along what about people you know uh joggers other animals well the other animals they're out a lot okay a lot of places that we go there's a lot of livestock and stuff but so today what I did is I'm having George my middle son uh come out here and ride a motorcycle around okay and it gives us just another element because a lot of natural places that you go you're going to run into joggers you're going to run into you know Machinery in Kentucky you can swing on around here cameraman in Kentucky almost everywhere you go you're going to find somebody on a side by side or on a four-wheeler on a motorcycle and so like that's just a that's just something that you want to throw in the mix a lot of times I don't put that in the videos just because kind of you know the four wheelers and stuff but we do it so much I forget to that for you guys you got to be reminded hey Walker here Beau this is oh come on now so I want you to see Walker comes back a little faster now and you watch Bo he's coming back a little slower okay and then as George comes by us hey George you can come on by as George comes by us then I'm just gonna let these dogs kind of investigate the motorcycle uh and then some of them will probably follow him they like George and I let him go a little ways and I'll try to call him back Walker oh and this is what I really like about Golden Retrievers very nice is that they like their people right and it doesn't take long to convince them that you're part of their people some dogs they come here they can stay here weeks and still not really identify with me and Charlotte and George and the cameraman as their people why mariners can be tough German Shepherds can be really really tough you know a lot of times I say with the German Shepherds they come here and they look at me like I've kidnapped them not like I run a fancy private school for dogs but with the golden retrievers they like to go party with just about everybody so whether you get a field bread golden retriever or more of a showbread golden retriever you pretty much for sure going to get a dog that likes people so the big difference is going to be kind of in the coat care characteristics like don't you think there's a lot more stuff gets in Bose coat that we have to get out yeah yeah no almost never have to fool with that with Walker now well we'll go down there in a second cameraman you want to go ahead and back up that way all right now so uh George is over there running around but these golden retrievers are staying with me now the real super athletic dogs a lot of times they'll go ahead and do two or three laps with the four-wheeler or the motorcycle you know like the short hairs short hairs love to follow four-wheelers and motorcycles okay and it almost takes it almost takes a four-wheeler or motorcycle to exercise uh you know a hunting German Shorthair that's kind of the way it goes down so George is going to make a couple of laps here and you'll see we've got almost all of our dogs back but what will you notice what you notice is that all of these dogs are cloaked bred to stay close except the jack russell okay the jack russell we might lose him for a few minutes all the rest of these dogs they're gonna be in and out of the frame all the time look at this what a nice group of dogs now another thing that should give you confidence when you go out with your dogs is once that his tongue starts hanging out we call it a fatigue meter once that tongue starts hanging out then you pretty much know that you're not going to have to deal with any issues where they uh they make a con you know a concentrated effort to get away or get into stuff very good now see all of this uh I really want to make the point guys when you're out walking it's tempting to walk your dog just where you're walking okay Charlotte go up there and talk to George for a minute and tell him to to meet us at the brush pile one of the things I really want to make a point of when I'm walking these dogs you notice that there's a kind of a mode path here okay I do that because it kind of guides the dogs that they get away from me and start running they kind of run in circles and end up finding me so it makes me look kind of magic but another reason I do it is because people come out here very few people that come here to wear the right kind of clothes and so they can get out and they can get scratched with the Briars and the sticks and stuff so I make it convenient when you go to the park or whatever you make it you know they make it convenient for you to be on the trail okay but this is not where the fun stuff happens over here over there under the trees in the creek that's where all the fun stuff happens so you know if you're out with the children or if you're out with dogs don't try to keep them on the well-worn trail encourage them to get off and explore and the more they explore when they're young then the less you're going to have to worry about them going and exploring things that uh that that they don't understand at a later and more vulnerable stage of life you know and you might say wellstonia I thought being a puppy I thought that's when they're vulnerable no because puppies aren't super Brave they're not going to get themselves in a ton of trouble it's the pubescent dogs the late adolescent dogs that really get themselves in trouble and so if I bring a 9 or 10 or 12 month old dog out here and I don't have any Mentor dogs with me those are the ones that I have to watch and have to worry about running off and getting in trouble you know that's why we keep the mentor dogs around and that's really why we encourage people to start early [Applause] foreign now this right here this is the point of all our formal work at the kennel attention span impulse control responsiveness that's what makes us able to come out to the pre-adventure area and the pre-adventure area it's pretty wild but it's not wild like my farm as you're going to see in a few minutes okay and uh so the pre the your your your schoolwork your form will work that prepares you for your neighborhood Adventures okay and your neighborhood Adventures they prepare you for your Big Time adventures where you're on vacation or you're going hunting or you're going on a big hike or something along those lines come on Oaks all right now notice that I'm not making any efforts to micromanage the dogs and as I'm walking I'm carrying myself with a lot of confidence okay this is another problem that I see consistently out of people who are trying to take their dogs out into high distraction environments is the people are nervous nervous and the nervousness uh it affects their ability to influence their dogs the more time you spend practicing influencing your dogs well the better you're going to be at it so just always remember that you want to put them in situations where they can really like test boundaries at a young age and you can learn to be yes but back to what I was saying uh is that nervousness when like you go out into the real world that affects your ability to to manage your dog safely okay so you got to go out and you got to do things that test your comfort level uh and and help you learn to be resilient uh in tough situations one of the things that we do here all the time okay this is just a brush pile and this just comes from Property Maintenance we have a lot of wind storms here and it's always blowing down trees or you know we got grapevines that grow up and stuff and we pull them out so we're always like working on this Grapevine and this Grapevine for me is just another version of my small challenges course up at the kennel now the small challenges course is formal training because I have a you know a kind of a standard regimen of activities that we do and then we do that so we can engage success with the brush pile challenge okay it's always changing sometimes this brush pile is Big sometimes it's little sometimes it's wet sometimes it's cold so it's always it's always changing right and then that variance in the obstacle it makes it you know like really good for the dogs because every time the dog sees the brush pile it's just a little bit different maybe not a lot different but a little bit different okay all right Sean did you go up this way a little ways it's also good for training children okay all right now what do we see up here right off the bat of course uh black lab because all dogs want to be Labs all Labs want to be black let's see if we can get these golden retrievers up here Walker come on Walker come on Walker you can do it come on Bo o yes I know you can do it come on Bo you can do it come on come on dogs are fresh more dogs now see that little bit difference in the kind of dogs they are uh the red one a little bit more athletic and that kind of applies across the board um Bo is the same mentally in terms of like his basic personality he loves people he loves to do things he likes to have things in his mouth uh I would say that the big difference is he's not strong he's not as fast he doesn't have as much endurance right but also what goes along with that is he's not near as likely to get himself into trouble okay he's a little bit more reserved he he likes children a little bit more like this dog here is really gravitational give him some love Charlie he really gravitates towards children uh kind of like the old people too you know like like he likes for people that'll just sit around pet on him and love on him like uh Walker you notice he got up here and he's just investigating he's seeing what's in the brush pile Bo got up here just to see like how close to me he could get and that's kind of I think think across the board pretty much how it works out oh don't you think Charlotte yeah yeah all right so what we do here is we just kind of fiddled around to keep our footing ah you're gonna fall come on Walker climb back up here up here come on you can do it both says I'm already up here boss come on Walker the Walkers kind of got himself stuck oh come on there we go get up here and look at that Springer Spaniel I know you guys are going to see that Springer span you'll go Stoney what about Springer Spaniels actually have a lot of old videos with Springer Spaniel in them named Floyd he was pretty good it's a pretty good dog too okay so um that's kind of what we do in our pre-adventure area the fact that the dog stayed with me and the fact that the dogs all like uh like made a you know a good effort watch out there freckles made a good effort at navigating the brush pile challenge with confidence and they showed me that they have pretty decent proprioception they're willing to try to overcome impediments oh my gosh there you go okay that lets me know that I'm ready to take them out to our actual Adventure area we got a super awesome farm and that's where we'll be headed next very nice okay all right let's head to the farm guys oh my gosh very good job good job come on dogs okay we made it over to the farm and now we're gonna do my favorite type of adventuring which is a Creek Walk okay and you might say Stony why why do you like Creek Walk so much uh I feel like walking around water always gives you your best bang for the buck in terms of early socialization and the reason I I think that is because when you go to a creek or a river or a pond or even just a watershed you're going to get a wide variety of sights and smells and sounds and textures and even temperatures okay like we're out here in the field and it's one temperature we're going to get over in the Shady Creek and it's going to be a little colder the water in the Shady Creek is going to make it even colder and then as the dogs get more and more wet well of course they're going to get colder in the summertime that works really good to you know to to to cool down a hot dog and in the winter time what you're looking for is you're looking for simple acclimation right I mean that's really important if you want to be able to take a dog out and do a lot of adventuring with it later on and life while it's a puppy you have to expose it to a broad range of physical conditions so nothing shocks it and makes it unable to stay focused and attentive later on when you're out on a real Adventure okay so we're going to walk on over here and get in the creek now notice what these dogs are doing this guy over here has got him a stick okay this guy over here is wet and he's come out here and he's rolling around you gotta let your dogs roll around and you have to let them play with sticks guys now on this walk you know there's horses that come out here there's a lot of deer out here a lot of turkeys these dogs are probably going to find some you know some excrement and they're gonna they're gonna eat it and they're gonna roll in and they're gonna you know I'm not gonna yell at them I'm not going to fuss at them okay I want them to get that out of their system the more that you let them like just be dogs while they're young the less problems you're going to have later on so mainly what we're going to be doing here is just a you know kind of a structured version of Follow the Leader I'm going to just keep an eye on the dogs I'm gonna make sure they kind of follow me along I'm going to lead the activities but I am not going to try to micromanage and you'll notice that shows up in my videos a lot I'm really big into not micromanaging now so Walker the darker colored golden retriever he's already off in the creek I don't know if you can see it back there very well but Bo is just laying down chewing on a stick right so I'm gonna have to get both fired up here come on Bo now if he was uh just out here with me oh my gosh Here Comes Walker if Bo was just out here with me he would be perfectly happy to watch me work on my cabin or watch me mow or watch me weed eat or work on the trails and I wouldn't even really have to worry about him I with with these light colored golden retrievers I bring them out here I let them run around for five or ten minutes and then I just I don't even pay any attention to them the darker colored golden retrievers and my field Labs they're off you know I mean they're off in the creek they're climbing the rock face they're just they're just into everything okay so from a dog trainer's perspective like if you're trying to get a dog to do lots of stuff you need a dog that wants to do lots of stuff every day but from a regular pet owner's perspective uh it's kind of one of those things where you have to be honest with yourself in terms of how many things per day do you actually want your dog to do it has been my experiences that people really don't want their dogs to do a whole lot they want the dogs to be excited for about five or ten minutes at a time and then they just want them to relax and not bother anything the rest of the day but some of you like to get out and do interesting things so you just have to make sure that you understand the simple rule about dog training being happy with the dogs about having met expectations so make sure that your expectations are in line with the type of dog that you get when I say type I don't mean just the breed okay but the bloodline so you want to write your expectations down you want to communicate with breeders and you want to explain to them what you expect out of the dog over the next 10 years okay and breeders are pretty good at making sure their puppies go to the right homes most of the problems that I see arise when people aren't honest with themselves which leads to them not being honest with breeders and then when they find themselves in a position where the puppy doesn't fit into their lifestyle they oftentimes externalize that blame onto the breeder when really it was kind of an owner problem from the beginning because they had a kind of a idealized version of what their life with the puppy was going to be like now earlier in the video I was talking about zigzagging and you'll notice that no name does a lot of zigzagging Annie uh no name sister she does a tremendous amount of zigzag and Walker does a fair amount of zigzagging and Beau does the least zigzag okay when you're out walking a lot of dogs like I I am on a regular basis by having the dogs off the leash in you know this kind of environment it's very easy for all of the dogs to self-regulate okay so when you're watching this video it might seem like Bo and Walker are kind of doing the same things but I want you to re-watch it okay and understand how often you see Beau take more steps or you see Walker take more steps than both he's constantly in the creek and out of the creek he's constantly up the hill and down the hill okay where a bow is pretty much always here by where I am okay now we're going to get in the creek and we're going to do a tremendous amount of environmental socialization in a relatively short period of time now the first thing that I want you to notice in the creek is that I mean just within a few feet I've got like look at that dust and crinkly leaves okay I've got all kinds of uh of little trees and broken pieces pieces of wood in various stages of Decay which leads to a lot of different types of off-gassing a lot of different kinds of odors there's all kinds of different bugs that live in these trees and then this debris that's scattered along the creek bank there's a cute little flower flowers and all these little flowers are very fragrant fragrant there's Sandy mud right okay we got tons of rocks some of these rocks are sharp most of them are rounded off from being in the creek for a million years and then we've got uh some water varying depths okay some of this water is just just deep enough to get on the dog's pads some of it's going to get up to their chest some of it they're going to have to swim and then over here to the left or you're right we have a rock face now I really like using Rock faces where they meet creeks and rivers to socialize dogs because the dogs have to learn to be very careful in how they navigate these low traction environments because in in these Rock faces here there's lots and lots of broken off uh you know broken off I think this is limestone but what happens is the dogs when they first start coming out here they'll Place their foot somewhere and then the rock will slide off well I want them to learn about sliding rocks while we're on a controlled walk I don't want them to learn about that when we're in the middle of a of a week-long or two week long vacation okay a lot of the people that I work for the reason they hire me is they only get one good big vacation a year and so they want to make sure that when they go on that vacation that they're properly prepared and their dogs are going to be able to hike and boat and uh you know do do various outdoor activities safely one of the big things is just simple campfire safety that's something people around here take for granted you know having a dog that knows not to stick their nose in a campfire but not in not in the world of Suburbia now look what a wonderful socialization experience this is we have an old tree down we have water the dogs are having to navigate the Water they're smelling this tree one of the things that you'll start to see is the general inquisitiveness of the dogs out of all these dogs right now Annie is Young and she's full of Life full of energy so she does the most exploring Walker is second no name has been out here so many times that like he's got that out of his system and he pretty much just follows me around with a stick and Bo stays pretty close just because like you know that's the kind of that's the kind of dog Beau is I'll spend a little time in the creek and then I'll get out of the creek and I'll find something to do a lot of times people will email me and they'll say well Stoney I don't have a great adventure Farm like you do what you know how can I get my dogs out and do the proper socialization guys you have to understand that everywhere you go for your dog like it's fun just a little trip to a drainage ditch right there in your neighborhood that's like going to Africa I say it all the time now look I have a little I have a little downed tree right here so I'm gonna see if I can't get one of the dogs to come up here and work on the proper foot placement can you see what they're doing there swimming with the see that's the deep water so we're having to swim every Walker Walker come on I'm going to give Walker just a little bit of practice walking on a walking on a log just get a few steps in very nice I'll give Bo a few steps good now I got a bigger tree up here that we walk on very nice now notice I'm not not making a big deal out of it I'm just letting them put their feet on the log their feet are slipping off the log and their feet slipping off the log factors into what we call learning by doing okay you don't need to come out here and like really try to teach everything what you need to do is come out here and be a director so that you help your dog learn to look for opportunities to build their own uh emphasis their own ability to navigate impediments in the environment okay you want them to come out and you want them to look for challenges challenges are what creates stress and stress is what leads to adaptation very nice now look how Walker has a tendency to charge through the deeper parts of the water a little more than bo bo is a little bit more gingerly with his foot placement a little bit more reserved here's a nice little deep spot look at no name he goes right over there in the Deep spot looking for something to bring me to throw Annie you see Annie zigzagging the whole time and he's always looking for opportunities to hunt something up one of the things you'll notice with Beau is how orally is like if we get ourselves in a situation where he's not sure what to do he'll oftentimes pick up a stick and that's kind of a self-soothing thing that the showbread golden retrievers do whenever they get nervous whenever they get excited whenever they get really happy they have a tendency to carry things around that's why so many people get they love them when they come home from work the the showbre golden retrievers are notorious for like coming to you with a plushy toy then you take it and you play with it for a second you probably put it up they go to the toy box they get another plushy toy they really like soft toys thank you okay now here's a little bit bigger tree so I'm gonna let the cameraman come up this way a little bit okay now this is one of my favorite obstacles this log right here and so what I like to try to do is I like to try to walk the door or walk the log and then I like to try to have the dogs follow me every year seems to be getting harder and harder for me to walk this log you know but I'm gonna keep trucking as long as I can I might cheat a little bit and if I've done a good job with my training at the kennel these dogs are going to at least make an effort to negotiate this obstacle now I don't you know I don't really expect them to be able to walk this at this age but I do expect them to make an effort remember Walker come on we'll see if Walker can come down from the other side come on dude come on come on come on you can do it now Walker has found something that he thinks is more interesting than Uncle Stoney so we'll go over here and see what he's doing now don't get frustrated with them like I called Walker right then and uh like he was over here doing something he didn't come right to me and then he started trying to come to me and he decided that like it was hard to figure out how to get over here like that's there's nothing wrong with that guys hey people always Walker come on you can do it people always try to give you this illusion that you're going to go out in the world and your doll is always going to pay attention to you 100 when look Walker has found something that he likes to do and it's going to be a little bit hard to encourage him to get away from Rolling In Those leaves so we're just going to put a little bit of effort into it come on nerd okay remember this is supposed to be a Cooperative endeavor good boy come on Walker you can do it come on very nice now if I would have made a mistake right then of you know fussing at Walker for not coming well then I would have taken a really fun and positive learning opportunity and I would have messed it up by being trying to be too much of a hardcore disciplinarian you know instead I was patient and I just kind of tried to be a little bit insistent and then after he got done rolling he was like oh that's right Stoney wants me and Stony does cool stuff and so he came right over here and he ended up getting on the log you know and so I took up I took a moment where like I didn't get perfect obedience and instead of letting that lack of perfect obedience getting in the way of my training session I just it was persistent and I ended up getting some valuable uh work in very nice oh my gosh very good dogs now I'm gonna go over here and I'm gonna kind of go up the same little route where Walker was uh like rolling and we'll we'll see if I can like encourage him to follow me through that area oh one of the things that's really important is when you have problems with something you know you want to identify the problem and uh work through it so instead of avoiding this area I'm going to go right through it again I'll see if there's something interesting heck I might find something that I think is interesting over there cameraman you can go ahead and go up that way a little bit come on around this way come on Walker so look I'm going to call Walker right up to this spot where I was where he was digging and rolling and then I'm going to look in here and see what's going on and I don't see up yeah I see what it is there's some poop up here listen with young dogs when you're out you're just going to lose a few battles to poop right you're just I know it's gross I know it's tough to talk about but that's the truth and uh so he was up here and he wanted to eat a little poop and he wanted to roll around a little poop so we have some natural perfume on and it took him a minute to decide that he had enough perfume on and he was ready to do something with me now look at Annie what's she doing she's getting a stick and she's saying that's enough talking Stoney let's go ahead and get to working all right now we'll come off this rock face oh my gosh take off walking now right here this is where you'll be out hiking and you won't know but if if you're not careful you'll pass up some of the most valuable environmental socialization that you can do and that's walking along a rock face okay now um right here I gotta tell you this is for professionals only my advice is do not do this this is only for trained uh Adventure dog trainers okay so if you get hurt don't be saying it was my fault all right now so look I'm just going to walk along here and Walker's here Bo come on Bo let's see if we can get bowed back over here for a second come on boo very nice now again what you'll see look the two more adventuresome dogs come on Bo you can do it and Bo's being a little bit hesitant he's not sure if he wants to get over here across the deep water but there he comes very nice very good dogs okay so I'll take off walking again oh that's very good dogs I wish I had a way to really show you like what it's like to walk up here I need some kind of three D camera or something oh but this right here will really teach you how to to look for proper foot placement okay and it's really good for dogs let me get Walker back over here so as we walk along this rock face what I want you to notice is that it gets harder as we go come on Walker you can do it very nice come on oh my gosh now as we get up here there's more and more broken rocks and sometimes I'll lose the dogs here because they'll be like well Stoney you know that's hard to walk up there with all those loose rocks and that's okay they get a little better at it every time they come very nice sometimes you gotta kind of stop and sweeten the pot a little bit here boys hey Walker a little extra good treat for you a little extra good treat for you now look we're getting into a whole Boulder Field here now one of the things I want to warn you about is you do not you know just go out and find things like this to do without uh you know quite a bit of Preparatory work the dogs have to have a basic understanding of how to distribute their weight they have to have a basic understanding of traction differentials in the environment and they have to have a you know a pretty good and consistent habit of paying attention to you when like they're in a high distraction environment okay because off the leash here like these dogs could be going off and doing a lot of things and I can't move super fast you know I have to be careful myself these golden retrievers are pretty easy dogs to do this stuff with because they're just so naturally compliant whether it's a field version or it's a show version very nice good boys oh my gosh good dogs call them up here maybe give a couple of good treats very nice now notice no names not really coming over here to get any treats and Andy's not really looking for any treats one of the things people ask me about when they see me training dogs and they see me you know rewarding them a lot they're like Stoney wood you always have to like carry the food around I'm like no young dogs just go through a period of their life where they need a kind of consistent affirmation right and the treats really serve as a physical manifestation of your pleasure more so than like the dogs are doing these things for calories okay and then as they get older you know dogs are like people they need less and less you know encouragement because most of the patterns that you know the dogs find enjoyable are intrinsically or internally rewarded you know adherence to patterns is just naturally rewarding okay all right now I can come off of this Rock Bank a little bit get back in the creek very good dogs now again notice Bo is pretty close to me and Walker is up here zigzagging a lot all right now I think what we'll do next is I'll run up to the van and I'll get my waders and we'll get in the water and let these guys swim a little bit come on dogs let's go swimming okay now we're up at my waterfall so it's going to be a little loud uh but what I'd like to do is just get down to waterfall and walk around the water and have these golden retrievers kind of follow me down I might have to use a long line to get them in here this waterfall it kind of makes some dogs nervous in the beginning they did pretty well the last time I brought them though now as always I got these fantastic Mentor dogs you know all dogs want to be Labs all Labs want to be black all golden retrievers want to be Labs come on now this is not going to surprise me if Walker comes down first come on Walker come on Bo so I'm a big proponent of like leading by example right which is why when I'm teaching a dog to swim I like to get in here and do the work with them but again this requires patience what I did yesterday was I started them off with a long line and today I'm just going to kind of see you know if oh they'll work hard to get over here come on now that's Bo he's barking a little bit come on come on come on you can you can come on you can do it all right back up there over there in that corner camera Max I'm gonna have to go all right foreign you can do it a lot of times if you're having trouble with something it's just a matter of changing where you're standing in relation to the Natural obstacle so like where I was standing the the I was standing kind of close to the waterfall and then even when I was sitting down I was pretty close to the waterfall and remember I told you some of the dogs they get a little bit nervous about the noise and so I moved down here and the dogs were able to come down and find a little closer entry one that suited them a little better at their given confidence level this is now what we see here again is the more confident more outgoing uh field golden which is a good thing right okay if you need a confident outgoing dog that's into everything we have the more reserved uh kind of kind of more cautious showbread golden right who's not going to get himself into as much trouble come on you can do it you're a good boy come on come on oh I know you can do it you're a smart boy come on come on come on and it's not that Bo's not going to do it it's just that he's it's going to be a little hard for him see now what he's doing here is he's looking for an entry into the water that suits him and you don't always know what that's going to be oh my gosh come on dude you can do it I might walk over here and sit down for a second look at everybody having fun dude you want to come party don't you there he comes come on you can come party come party very nice oh you're a very good dog oh my gosh ah you're a very good dog all right now got to walk around over here for a minute then I'll go back in the Deep part and what I'm doing is I'm just steadily working myself over here kind of closer to the waterfall come on cautious come on cautious you can do it now if I get too far away from him he's Lobel to go to where the cameraman is oh my gosh come on come on you can do it very nice oh perfect and you see he's going away from the noise he's going away from the waterfall so we had to kind of move back over there and do that again so back on up a little bit cameraman I'm gonna call him back oh very nice come on Walker oh go give him some love oh don't give him lots of love give this guy some love oh we're going to try it again come on come on come on you can do it come on come on oh my gosh Come on come to me don't go that direction oh come steer him this way watch out boys there we go and what I need him to understand is that I'm not going to put him in a situation where things don't work out but you see every time I'm getting him a little closer to the waterfall then he goes back to what he considers safety you know come on come on come on you can do it you can do it come on Bo he went there he comes oh he's a smart boy he's a smart boy all right we're gonna do one more rep come on not you hey come on bro you can do it come on I know you can do it come on oh I'll come over and love on you if you'll do it oh my gosh very good dog you're a very good baby you're very good come on [Laughter] okay so when you're doing dog training you always have to try to end on a positive repetition so what I'm going to take from this lesson is that for me to end my session on a positive repetition I'm going to have to stay a little bit farther away from the waterfall okay so cameraman you back on up and we'll mark this we got to about right there had some success I'm going to make it a little easier on them so that uh he leaves with a good feeling about himself Elise was confidence and then tomorrow we'll try to work work ourselves a little closer to the waterfall yeah there we go he's got that Masters very nice very good dogs very good okay we'll call that a success all right well listen uh that brings us to an end of golden retriever is it right for you like I said earlier in the video pay a little attention to what I said because I do know a fair bit about dogs but mainly I just want you to watch the dogs watch how they move around watch their energy levels watch their overall athleticism watch how they get along with the other dogs and if you see something you like contact some breeders and send them a written list a written overview of your lifestyle and a list of your short and long range goals and that's going to help you and the breeder start off on a good footing where everybody understands what's expected and that's really the key to success guys all right so I'll see you next week and maybe we'll do a springer spaniel video

Channel: Stonnie Dennis

Views: 90,656

Keywords: stonnie dennis puppy training, golden retriever, golden retriever puppies, hiking with dogs, should I buy a golden retriever, are golden retrievers good housedogs, golden retriever vs labrador retriever, retriever, hunting dog, golden retriever therapy dog, golden retriever service dog, how to train a golden retriever, obedience train golden retriever

Id: vWRbEAhvrFE

Length: 52min 34sec (3154 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023