If you don’t make your living training, this whole hunting dog thing can be considered somewhat seasonal. Another will come and the idea that “nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” is a true, but hard pill to swallow for us mortal dog owners. The optimist in me reminds you that springtime is coming, which means a season of new litters and pups. For many of you, the next generation of bird dogs and gun dogs will enter into your life in the coming months. Decisions should be made. How are you going to raise, develop, and train them?

Maybe the first decision that needs to be made is whether or not you train the dog yourself or send it off to be trained by a professional. It's hard to say for certain, but from relatively non-scientific research efforts, I’ve concluded the great majority of hunting dogs will never be sent for formal training, which leaves the heavy lifting up to their owners. When asked how they plan to train the dog, the answer I hear most refers back to one of the many popular training “methods” or “ways” they’ve read, seen, or heard about, whose origin almost always come from a “professional.” They can be delivered and marketed as a complete system and likely include both techniques and tools in a packaged deal. Makes total sense; today’s consumers like things that way.

Defining a Professional Dog Trainer

It’s probably important to explain what I mean by the terms “professional” or “amateur.” A profession is defined as a paid occupation that involves prolonged training and formal qualification. A professional is a person engaged in a profession. An amateur is someone who engages in a pursuit on an unpaid basis. I realize in field trialing/competition there can be some more complex definitions to determine pro/amateur status, but for now, let’s keep it simple. By professional, I’ll mean you get paid, and by amateur, I mean you don’t.

If simply “getting paid” makes you a pro, I’ve been training professionally for a little over 21 years. Of those, I spent the first 10 trying to figure things out on my own. Over the last five years, I’ve made the point to be around more pro trainers than I did the first 16-prior combined. I’ve read plenty of books and watched many videos, all written and produced by the pros, but I learned more from time spent in person watching what, how, and why they were doing things. All that’s led me to believe there are plenty of reasons to pay attention. I’ve also learned why folks like me, and I suspect many of our readers, shouldn’t necessarily train the same way they do.

Advantages of Professional Dog Trainers

Simply put, professional trainers have more “stuff” to work with. I know, some people like gadgets and gizmos. It’s nice to have some of those things, but I’ve always felt like it didn’t take a whole lot more than a few dummies and tennis balls, a whistle, lead, eventually birds, and a good pair of hiking boots to train a nice retriever or bird dog.

Another advantage pros often have is right under their feet. The types of property they own and have access to are often specifically designed and manicured with training, convenience, and efficiency at the forefront of priority. Makes total sense for several reasons. All those things, from the tools they use to the ground they use them on, are tangible and financially accountable when dog training pays the bills. The IRS treats them different than the amateur when money is spent on things dog training related. I may be aging myself here, but I’ll never forget the Seinfeld scene where Kramer explains to Jerry what “just write it off” means. Although it doesn’t quite work that way, there are tax benefits when pros spend money on things like electronics, multi dummy remote launchers, ATV/UTV’s, kennel facilities, etc. Beyond tax benefits, using those things helps get a lot more work done, in less time. When things get scaled in volume, efficiency becomes of primary importance. As pure as I think working with a dog can and should be, the reality is, dog training is a business within a sizeable industry. Dog trainers see the positive effects of economies of scale too. The right tools and equipment bring efficiencies that help get the same, or more, work done with more dogs, faster.

All that “stuff” aside, the biggest and most valuable thing I think pros have a lot of is experience. That’s something money simply cannot buy. The sheer volume of dogs they get to see in a few months can be greater than that of many lifetimes combined for the average dog owner. The variety of dogs they have the opportunity to work with, from breed and temperament to age and ability, requires they continue experimenting in ways most dog owners will never have to. That’s the most precious “tool” they can keep in their “toolbox” and it’s something that will grow over time, allowing the advantage of historical reference to most any situation they come across.

Advantages of Training Your Dog Yourself

“Americans have the watches, but the terrorists have the time,” is a line I’ll never forget. A close friend of mine told me it was something they’d say while he was deployed overseas. Very different circumstances but recognizing time can be the great equalizer and an advantage when it comes to getting results is an important thing to understand. I’ve had countless conversations over the years about how important both time and timing is with an animal.

“Amateur hour” is a term we’ve all heard used to describe a time when a lack of skill or ability is on display. Ironically, as it relates to training dogs, I think it could and should be instead taken as a compliment. The average dog owner who trains a few dogs at a time has all the hours they need, or more importantly, all the hours their dog needs. There’s no billing by the hour and no pressure to check the program’s boxes of accomplishment in order to keep the client happy. The only pressure an amateur trainer would feel is self-imposed. Dogs don’t wear watches, but their actions tell us all we need to know about when they are ready to move forward in training. In the same way, they’ll show when you’ve gone too far, too fast. Whether or not you can read and understand the message is what matters most.

Last spring I attended Pheasant Fest and had a chance to listen to a panel of professional trainers field questions from the crowd. One stood out to me: “My dog started running off when making retrieves, what should I do?” That’s a question I hear all the time, and I was curious to hear the panels take. The first answer came quickly, recommending he send the dog to a trainer to put through a force fetch program. From a second pro on stage, instead of an answer came a number of questions for the man in the crowd. She asked for specific details and then came back to him with what I took as the bigger answer. She stressed the importance of how before trying to fix the problem, we should determine at what point did things go wrong, and more importantly, the reason(s) why. Two professional trainers with two very different answers. After thinking about it, both were right. Which answer was best? That’s dependent on the person asking.

More recently, I spent a few days running bird dogs with a group of friends. In our group was a professional trainer with a young setter that stood out and seemed very advanced for his age (about 15 months). At the end of the day, with the help of a few beers on a tailgate, I had to ask how he did it, and, “if that is how you do it with your client dogs?” His answer was, “no.” I stretched out the interrogation, asking for reasons why he trains his dog different than he does a client’s. He’s a pretty quiet guy, but I managed to pry this nugget out of him. He told me he trains the dog whichever way he thinks he’ll get the best results—within the amount of time he has to work with them. For clients, time is limited, which requires one way. With his own, he has more options. There’s that old saying about how the carpenter’s house is never finished, maybe the trainer's dog shouldn’t be either?

I hope it doesn’t leave you with the impression that I am either in favor or against the idea of sending a dog off for professional training or doing it on your own. Both ways work, but they are done differently. Different doesn’t mean right or wrong, quite the opposite in fact. I think it’s wise for amateurs and pros alike to watch and understand what the others are doing and really think about the “why.”