Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / From Scotland to the States: Mordor Gundogs’ Approach to Retrievers (Ep. 706)

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From Scotland to the States: Mordor Gundogs’ Approach to Retrievers (Ep. 706) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  Nathan Ratchford: Hey, guys. Welcome to Ducks Unlimited podcast. On today's episode, we're joined by Charlie Thornburn, a Mordor Gundogs. Charlie's come all the way from Scotland, and we're gonna be talking about Labrador training and the British style training over there. We're talking hunting, shooting, and some special tales from overseas.
• 0:19
  Tune in.
• 0:29
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• 0:40
  Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brazier. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jared Hemphith.
• 0:48
  And I'm your host, Matt Harrison.
• 0:58
  Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, the only podcast about all things waterfowl. From hunting insights to science based discussions about ducks, geese, and issues affecting waterfowl and wetlands conservation in North America. The DU podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails.
• 1:24
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• 1:46
  Nathan Ratchford: Hey, guys. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'll be your cohost today. I'm Nathan Ratchard. I am joined by John Gordon.
• 1:54
  Welcome, John.
• 1:55
  John Gordon: Man, thanks, Nathan. It's great to be here again on the DU podcast. It's a it's a lovely day, and, we got a lovely guest.
• 2:01
  Nathan Ratchford: We do. And, you know that we love talking dogs. Today, we're joined by our special guest, Charlie Charlie Thorburn of Mordor Gundogs. Welcome, Charlie.
• 2:10
  Charlie Thornburn: Thank you very much for having me.
• 2:11
  John Gordon: It's a
• 2:12
  Charlie Thornburn: great privilege.
• 2:13
  Nathan Ratchford: Charlie's come all the way from Scotland, to join us today. Charlie, why don't you introduce, yourself to our audience?
• 2:20
  Charlie Thornburn: Yes. I'm Charlie Thorburn. I own Mordor Gundogs Kennels in in right in the middle of Scotland. If you put a pin in the middle of Scotland, that's exactly where we are. I've been I basically grew up in a dog bed.
• 2:32
  So as a child, I was in the dog bed all the time with Labradors and my Spaniels as a kid, and then I got my own dog when I was 20 18 and then started training other people's dogs when I was at college and I was about twenty one twenty, 21. And then it just kind of grown almonds and legs from there. We've now got dogs in 34 countries globally and 37 US states.
• 2:56
  Nathan Ratchford: Wow. Run us through what type of dogs you're training
• 3:00
  Charlie Thornburn: each other. So we breed Labradors, Springer Spaniels, English Springer Spaniels and working Cocker Spaniels. We do train some other dogs as well. The primary base of what we do is training our own dogs that we breed. We breed them, we keep the puppies, we train them, and then they go to their new homes as, like, started or finished dogs, if I put it in kind of US terminology.
• 3:22
  But we also people bring their dogs to us for lessons, and they bring out their bring their dogs to us for what I would call boarding school. So the dogs come and stay with us for, you know, four, six, eight, ten, twelve weeks, whatever the requirement is. And all of those dogs are all hunting dog breeds. We won't take in anything else, but we do get some HPRs. We've got we've at the moment, we've got a golden retriever.
• 3:47
  Nathan Ratchford: And run for our audience, those are hunt point retrievers.
• 3:51
  Charlie Thornburn: Hunt point retrievers.
• 3:51
  Nathan Ratchford: So they'd be Versatals in America, we
• 3:53
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. Call German shorthaired, German wirehead, Vizslas, a few others. We get the odd Weimaraner, but not, you know, the same over here. The ones you see out hunting the most are the ones that we see in training the most. But the majority of what we're doing is we're probably 70% Labradors.
• 4:13
  We breed we're we're known for black ones and also red ones. So there's a a well known magazine in The UK called The Field, and they wanted to they did an article about the red Labrador, they they wanted to call me the godfather to the the godfather of the fox red Labrador, because I've had more and trained more and bred more than anybody else seemingly. But I I didn't I didn't wanna I didn't quite agree to that. So but I I I feel like I've had a big part of the the sort of the red Labrador kind of scene in The UK. That's that's very much something that I love.
• 4:44
  Nathan Ratchford: Well, they've certainly become pretty popular here too.
• 4:47
  John Gordon: That's right. And of course, I guess, you know, the I guess the does the AKC call them yellow? I mean, I I
• 4:52
  Charlie Thornburn: guess that's what it's are. The Labradors, there's just three official colors. There's black, there's yellow, and there's chocolate. And the red is just a variety of the yellow, and we just sort of hone in on that, you know, that seems
• 5:07
  John Gordon: to be a very British side of it, is the fox red dog. Right? You just know, most of the ones I've ever seen in this country have have been from that kind of lineage Yeah. Versus the, you know, the yellow dog.
• 5:17
  Nathan Ratchford: Yeah. So
• 5:20
  Charlie Thornburn: I mean, the history of the Labrador is all slightly kind of you know, there's a lot of hearsay. You know, not much of it was written down back in the day. But but when the Labrador was created by by a few English aristocratic families, they they they bred them with, they introduced other dogs, older breeds, such as the golden retriever, etcetera. They introduced some of those dogs into the line, into what they were breeding to kinda bring in some of the traits. And so I think probably the red Labrador has been part of the genetics, that color has been part of the genetics coming in from some of the other breeds.
• 5:53
  I mean, I imagine, you know, Chesapeake retrievers, you know
• 5:56
  John Gordon: Makes sense.
• 5:57
  Charlie Thornburn: Right? The the golden retriever, visceras, anything like that that was brought in to add to the sort of the ability of what they were trying to create when they were breeding these these inverted commas Labradors. So I think it's been there, but there was a was a real snobbery element in The UK that a yellow Labrador was deemed as inferior. So until until relatively recently, there was I mean, I say in the in the scale of kind of dogs, but in the seventies, I think, there was a dog called Rockland Pete of Drake's Head, and he was the first yellow to win the British championship. And then suddenly, people were like, oh, yellows are not, you know Not in that terrible.
• 6:36
  Right? Yeah. So what would happen in the back in the day was a guy would breed you know, the way kennels were run-in those days was an estate estate owner or a plantation owner or a ranch owner, kind of, you know, we would call them an estate. He would have a kennel, and he would have a gamekeeper or a kennel guy running the kennel. And what they would do is the is the owner of the estate would want black Labradors because that was the they were deemed to be the best.
• 6:58
  And the yellow ones were were either, you know, disposed of as a puppy or they were given away to some of the staff on the estate but not allowed to be bred from, kind of thing. Does that make sense?
• 7:09
  John Gordon: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense.
• 7:10
  Charlie Thornburn: So this this dog came in, he won the championship, and suddenly people's eyes were like, oh, the yellow dog is is is as good as the black dog. I mean, they're exactly the same, you know. If they're from the same litter, there's no genetic difference.
• 7:22
  Nathan Ratchford: Charlie, run us through, first off, what you're you're breeding for at Mordor. What type kind of describe your overall training philosophy. Off camera, you're telling us that you had, was it 10 dogs in inside the house? In the house. So clearly, you're breeding for family companionship as well as hunting, but give us give our listeners kind of an idea of what what you're looking for.
• 7:44
  Charlie Thornburn: So when I started doing this, I wasn't I wasn't into I wasn't really interested in in competitions. It wasn't my thing. I I I mean, I think they're great to watch and an interesting part of the the the industry as it were, but that that is not really what I wanted. What I wanted was was a dog that I that suited my life, and my life was going to the pub with my friends, going out hunting, you know, going to different places, traveling in the car. A dog that could just be like a great companion.
• 8:11
  I mean, I said to you earlier, like, my my favorite dog that I have at the moment, if she was if this was in The UK or if I had my own airplane. She would be sitting at my feet or sitting at the journey, so she goes everywhere with me. She'll come on the boat fishing with my kids. She'll come, you know, she'll come hunting. She'll come she'll be in the house.
• 8:28
  She'll be sitting on the sofa. She would sleep on my bed. So we are we are we are breeding family dogs that hunt, basically. So that rather than hunting dogs that can be family, they are a family dog that can hunt. Because the reality is is that, you know, we would all love to hunt a lot more than we do.
• 8:48
  I mean, there's not a person I've ever met who doesn't wanna do more. But the reality is in in in the March of the year, if you can do if you can do fifty days hunting, you're doing in my having a good time. Most people, it's, you know, a dozen, 20, maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:05
  So therefore, you've got a dog that if you John,
• 9:07
  Nathan Ratchford: you hunt more than that, let's get real.
• 9:09
  John Gordon: Well, look, you can't use me as an example, Nathan. I mean,
• 9:13
  Charlie Thornburn: come on. If you if you take a if you take that as a sort of, you know, you know, the percentage of time that it is not a hunting dog is significantly more, And you compare it to, like, a vehicle as well. Like, we all want a big, what we would call, and I'm, you know, probably say the wrong thing, what what in The UK, we would call a big redneck truck. Like, a big truck, big wheels, winch. Same here.
• 9:35
  A winch. Okay. It's cool. It looks cool. But, I mean, you know, it's not great at parking it in the Walmart car park, is it?
• 9:40
  It's not it's like getting your mom to, like, hospital and her climbing in with a winch and stuff. It's it's not that practical. So it's great fun and and and but the reality is it's probably like a a Land Rover Discovery is gonna be a better all round car because it'll kinda do everything you really need that big off roader to do because none of us are really using them to their extreme, but it'll also do all the other stuff. And that's basically what we're what we're training. So we're we're breeding.
• 10:02
  So I was yeah. So so a Land Rover Discovery or a Landcru a Toyota Landcruiser, that's what I'm that's my kind of if you convert it into a vehicle, that's what I'm producing. Like, a really versatile dog that just kind of does a bit of everything, and it does it all pretty well. And there's very rarely an occasion where you need a specialist at either end, you know, a Ferrari or a big monster truck. It's very rare that you need that with most things you can do with that one vehicle or that one dog.
• 10:27
  So that's kind of we're looking at. And then I like a traditional, what I call a traditional looking lab, so it should have a leg in each corner, not too tall, not too short, not too fat, not too thin. We want them to look like a Labrador should do, but we also want them to be able to, we would say in The UK, jump a five bar gate, like a a field a field gate and a farm. You know, it should just be able to clear that. No problem.
• 10:50
  And and, yeah, we've got dogs who can can jump a six foot six foot gate kind of thing. So so they've gotta be athletic, but they've gotta be they've also gotta look right, and they've gotta be calm and house calm for the house life, but have be able to turn on that switch and do their job as well.
• 11:05
  John Gordon: Well, if you're producing a dog like that, there's no wonder you've got dogs all over the world. Right? I mean, that that's a real ideal companion. Right?
• 11:12
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I mean, that's what we're that's what we're aiming for. Well, there there are always gonna be people who want to win a field trial, and people come to me and they say, wanna win a field trial.
• 11:20
  And I'm like, don't get a dog from me. Because that's not we're not I mean, could could I run my dogs in field trials? Yeah. Of course I could. Could I consistently win field trials in the IGL in The UK and things?
• 11:30
  No. Because it's not what my dogs are it's not what my dogs are for. But then that IGL winner and those field trial dogs maybe aren't suitable for for what I'm training dogs for exactly either. So
• 11:39
  Nathan Ratchford: Interesting. Run us through what it looks like with that in mind, you know, when you're say you have a client, even here in America, that you're preparing a puppy for, right? You're gonna what is it typically, like a year old that you'll be?
• 11:56
  Charlie Thornburn: So we yeah. We sell we sell some of them at a year old, some of them at, like, 16 old, some of them
• 12:02
  Nathan Ratchford: at nearly So for that one that you're gonna be training a little bit yourself, run us through what that looks like and what you're focusing on, how it might be different.
• 12:13
  Charlie Thornburn: So we I think one of the main differences is we like puppies to be puppies. So we have a we have a series of grass, outdoor grass pens, which the puppies hang out in during the day, and they're maybe half the size of a tennis court kind of size, maybe that that and there's six or eight puppies in a litter of puppies in in one of these pens, and they're eight weeks, 10, twelve weeks, fifteen weeks. They're they're just in there having fun. They're having a good time. They're playing with each other when they wanna play.
• 12:41
  They're sleeping when they wanna sleep. They're getting daily interaction from from my me and my team. We we feed them four times a day. We go in, we make them all sit for their food, so we'll eat of them or however many are in there, they'll sit down, they'll wait for their to sit down when we're holding the food trays, so they've got that focus on us. As soon as we go over there, they're up at the fence, they're kinda like, hi, we wanna play with you, we we pick them out individually and do a little bit of, like, encouraging them to follow us around Very, very low key.
• 13:06
  It's a kindergarten kind of stuff. It's just encouraging some positives. Throwing a a ball or a soccer or something for them, you know, a few times a week just to make sure they've got that retrieving instinct in them, but not over not pushing them, pushing them, pushing them. Okay? So we're not pushy parents.
• 13:22
  We're kinda like, you have fun. You be a kid. You you just enjoy your time. We've got them in pendants. They can't get anything really badly wrong.
• 13:30
  They dig some holes. They cause you know, they play fight, etcetera, but nothing really goes nothing can really go too badly wrong. And then when they reach a point, and often it's when they start climbing out of that pen, because the pen's only like a low height fence. When they start climbing out of that pen, that's almost a car trigger to go, that dog's got a bit of spirit. We need to start training.
• 13:47
  That that could be a dog that does that at 15. It could be a dog that does that at 24. It it it they're all different like we are all different. So we don't have, like, a kind of, oh, on this day, we need to be training them to do this, and on this day, we need to be training them do that. We very much bring them on as they wanna kinda come up.
• 14:02
  They as they as we think feel like they wanna come interest. Yeah. Yeah. And and show that kind of motivation and drive. And we really get to learn the personalities.
• 14:11
  So when when someone from someone, say, from Texas rings me up and says, Charlie, want another dog. It's gonna be a family dog, and most of what I'm gonna do is ducks, I'm gonna shoot a few quail. Like, I'm not selecting that puppy at eight, 10 old. I'm selecting that puppy full of at, like, five months because we've seen the litter develop when we've gone right. This one here, this is this one's this one's got a bit of drive.
• 14:32
  This one's an interesting dog. That's probably the pick of the bunch from a hunting point of view, so that's probably the one we would keep ourselves. Unless we've got a client who's very capable with dogs and has had dogs from us before and we know that they need a sort of higher level dog. Because what a lot of people think they want in term going back to the vehicle, they think they want the big redneck truck, but actually, when you get in there, they want a Land Cruiser or a, you know, or a Ford Expedition or whatever the way, you know, whatever the but so they said, I want your best dog. You're like, you want the best dog for you, So we select the best dog for them.
• 15:03
  And what the best dog is for you is not necessarily the best dog for you, and it's not necessarily the best dog for me. So it's not like that's the best dog. That's just the best dog for somebody. And the quiet one in the corner is the best dog for somebody else, a guy who hardly does any hunting. The dog's at home all the time with his wife and kids, and and, you know, who who am I aiming to please in that scenario?
• 15:22
  I'm not aiming to please the guy who wants a hunting dog. I'm aiming to please the wife because she's the one who's looking after the dog most of the time. She's the one who's tolerating this dog, and if I send if I send them over some kind of, like, energetic kind of let's go, let's, like, do some stuff kind of a dog, she's gonna be like, oh my god. This dog's a nightmare. She wants a dog that's kinda quiet and easy, comes with it on a school run, and I'm I'm stereotyping here, but I'm just giving you an example.
• 15:44
  She wants that quieter, easier dog, and if the guy takes it out hunting at the weekend and he can pick a few birds and do a nice job and behave, he's he's delighted. Is that dog gonna pick a goose five hundred five hundred yards across a across a of a sort of marshy field? Probably not. Is that guy gonna need that dog to do that? Definitely not.
• 16:01
  So it's about matching the dog with the person as much as as much as anything else.
• 16:06
  Nathan Ratchford: Very interesting. When that dog as that dog starts to show that interest, show that drive, and you start working on some field basics for, you know, duck hunters, right, you have someone who wants a waterfowl dog. Yeah. And and you're doing some of that training or maybe you're bringing that dog to a finish level. Run us through what what that looks like.
• 16:27
  How do you approach the main categories like steadiness, handling, things like that?
• 16:32
  Charlie Thornburn: So the the first thing we first thing I'd say is because just because we did a video on the the a little clip on our Instagram the other day, and it it it it was pretty popular. And it's one of my it's my head trainer running down to the our little pond, tiny little pond to stand by our kennels with a litter of 10 old Labradors. There's eight of them. And he runs down, and literally before he's blinked, most of them are jumped in. And they're in, and they're swimming around and having a good time.
• 16:58
  And there was one that didn't, and he waded in and and encouraged him. So we so we know from from the word go, those dogs are all kind of keen swimmers. So that's just a big tick for for us. If if someone's gonna know, if someone wants a quail dog, doesn't need to be a good swimmer. So if one of them's a bad swimmer or, like, not that keen on swimming or it's like, you know, it's like, it will do it.
• 17:16
  It will do it to pick a bird, but it's not a vital part of its day, so therefore, that's not the dog I'm gonna pick for the guy in the guy in Utah who who we just trained the dog for a couple eighteen months ago, who who's got this amazing, like, 17,000 acre, like, duck place, and I probably you guys probably know where it know of it. It sounds it's pretty awesome, and in the middle, they've got this 2,000 acre island where no one's allowed to go near and hunt. You know, that guy needs a dog that's a swimmer. Okay? So we needed to make sure that was the first dog in the water as a puppy.
• 17:46
  So we'll do that just to make sure they're all kind of keen enough swimmers because they're like us, they're not all good swimmers. They're not all, you know, they're not all good swimmers from day one. Then we then keep them away from from once we've done that, and we've we encourage the swimming periodically, but once we know they can swim, we we don't worry too much about it. We're then all about the kind of the the the the the discipline and the obedience long before we get anywhere near a hunt. And that's, I think, one of the biggest differences I see British versus US training wise is we will do all the obedience and all the theory training, and they only get out hunting when all of that is is sort of super strong.
• 18:28
  We won't take a dog hunting. We won't let them on game, let alone wounded game until, they're much further down the line.
• 18:36
  Nathan Ratchford: And roughly how long? I know every puppy's different, but two years old?
• 18:41
  Charlie Thornburn: No. No. Younger than that. But, I mean, we we certainly it'd be very unlikely we'd have a dog out hunting before they're, like, 14. And and if we do take them hunting, then it's very much kind of just a little bit on the they're sitting on the side, they're watching a little bit, they're maybe getting a retrieve, something simple, but it's all about kind of calm and controlled and
• 18:59
  Nathan Ratchford: Right.
• 19:00
  Charlie Thornburn: And and being being being, you know, a very small part of the of the event. Because we we don't want them sort of thinking that they're the main event and they're, like, getting overexcited and and that's when we, you know, you see Alec like, see them people losing control of their dogs is because of the the the instinct and the drive of the dog overtakes the level of obedience that they've been taught.
• 19:20
  Nathan Ratchford: And tell our listeners what typical hunt looks like so they understand when you're talking about the dog just being over there.
• 19:28
  Charlie Thornburn: So yeah. So we do we do ducks kind of we do ducks kinda differently to you guys. Or, you know, I I've shot ducks in a few places around the world or in in a few places around The States, and it's all been slightly different. But if our sort of the majority of what we would do in terms of ducks would be what we call duck flighting. So we we shoot them in the evening just as the as it's getting dark, and they're coming off they're coming off a a river or a lake, and they're flying up to a smaller pond up in the hills, and we're allowed to feed that pond.
• 19:59
  And so we feed the pond for, say, a month, and the ducks come in every evening, and they land, and they feed, and then they fly back down to the river during the day, and they come back the next evening, and and every month or or so we would go and sit around that pond just as it's getting dark and let the ducks come in and shoot them as they're as they're coming in into the into the pond. And the dogs are so the dogs are sitting there more like a traditional English, like, peg dog. They're sitting there off the lead waiting for the birds to be shot and be sent as and when they the handler decides to send them. So if I was doing this with a young dog, I would be I would be out of the way, like, out of the the sort of you know, if that's where we're gonna be shooting, I'd be back there somewhere sitting quietly in a out of sight so I didn't put the ducks off and just allowing the dog just to experience the environment. But by this stage, they're already capable of sitting there off the lead, seeing things land, hearing the shots, and just being calm and focused on their on their job.
• 20:55
  They might get one retrieve. They might get nothing. But it's just a kind of like shooting to them is not like, oh my god, I'm going hunting, I'm going shooting. It's kinda calm, behave, this is just another part of the day. So if I've got a dog that lies there and almost falls asleep, I'm not thinking, oh my god, this dog's useless, I'm thinking this will be a really lovely steady dog.
• 21:14
  Because you can always encourage the motivation and the drive, but once they've got that, to get a handle back on it is much harder. So we drip feed them in gently into their kind of into the live game scenario. We don't just go, right. They're trained. They're ready to go hunting.
• 21:29
  We're gonna go and shoot 50 ducks. Like, we'll be like, we're gonna shoot a duck.
• 21:33
  John Gordon: And and that happens in America every season. Right? The dogs that are taken out there, I mean, that are not ready to to hunt at all. And people just, you know, oh, they, you know, they rush the entire experience. And they they they really don't take I I think the lack of patience with the American hunter is is a big problem with with dogs.
• 21:55
  Charlie Thornburn: I think I think you're absolutely right. So so I had a client who I sold a Labrador to in in New York, in the sort of New York state, and he waited eighteen months for his dog from me, and he said to me, he said, I cannot believe you've persuaded me to wait eighteen months for a dog. He said, I rang you because I wanted a dog. I was in Scotland hunting, I came to see you, I wanted a dog, and you told me you gotta wait eighteen months? He says, I've never waited eighteen months for anything in my life.
• 22:19
  He's like, I wanted to write you That's not the American way. I wanted to write you a check and buy whatever you had there and then, but you you were like, that's not how it works here. And as you say, that's the American way. Like, when guys have come over to to hunt with us and they wanna play golf, they're like, woah. Can we go and play at Saint Andrews?
• 22:32
  I'm like, no. You need to put your name down, like, eight months in advance. They're like, can't we just write someone a check? No. You can't.
• 22:37
  That's not the and in Britain, if you start talking like that, they'll just not let you on at all because they're so sort of snooty in that way. But, yeah, he he I would say the biggest mistake I see from everybody training dogs is is is and I'm not just saying over here. In The UK, it's the same. It's rush, rush, rush. I wanna get out.
• 22:55
  They wanna do the fun bit without doing the boring bit. And and people go, how do you get your dogs to be so steady, and how do you get them to walk to heels so well? Because we do it day after day after day till we are blue in the face, and then we still haven't done enough, and we keep going. And it's not just, oh, I did it for a week. What am I doing now?
• 23:11
  No. No. You're doing it for the next ten months repeatedly, and you'll continually do it, you know, repeatedly. That's the bit they forget. The obedience, both the owner and the dog.
• 23:20
  The the obedience is the bit the dog doesn't wanna do, so that's the bit you've gotta practice. The retrieving and the swimming and the fun bit, dog's not gonna forget that. If you don't take a dog hunting for three years, it's not gonna forget how to swim and how to pick up a duck, but you can sure as hell guarantee it's gonna forget how to walk to heel, how to sit and wait, and how to stop on a whistle. So those are the bits that you need to focus on, and everyone focuses on the fun bit.
• 23:42
  Nathan Ratchford: Well, I think that's a good place to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about some of the other mistakes that you see from amateurs. And, yeah. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.
• 23:59
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 24:16
  Nathan Ratchford: Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm joined by Charlie Thorburn from Mordor Gundogs. Hello again, Charlie. And, before, we were talking a little bit about some of the mistakes that amateur handlers make.
• 24:28
  Right, John? Right. And, Charlie, run us through some some of the other things that you see that are most common when you either you sell a puppy or say you start a dog and you see that dog regress. Yes.
• 24:45
  Charlie Thornburn: We've talked about the the people trying to do things too quickly. I would say there's also there's also a a kind of a, oh, that'll do. That's okay. He's pretty good. Yeah.
• 24:55
  That'll do. Next. And it's not necessarily the rushing, it's the it's the lack of, like, attention to detail with the dog. And the and I think you have the same saying over here, and it's if you look after the the the pennies, the pounds are carved themselves. If you look after the cents, the dollars are carved themselves.
• 25:11
  Is that is that a kind of saying over here? I've
• 25:14
  Nathan Ratchford: heard that.
• 25:14
  Charlie Thornburn: So it's it's if you look after the the pennies, the small amounts of money, the big amounts of money will just figure it out. Whereas if you've just, oh, that's just small change. I'll not worry about that. And it's like, yeah, that's everything then becomes small change and you and you've you've lost there isn't any bigger money. Does that make does that?
• 25:28
  So so when we're when we're training dogs, we're we're very much if you look after the dog pennies or the dog cents, the dog dollars will look after themselves. So if you get the little fundamental things really, really right, all the other stuff will go well. Training a dog is like building a house. And if you just go, oh, I just want a little a little, like, cabin, and I'm just gonna chuck it up in the dirt, it'll it'll be fine. And then you go, oh, my yeah.
• 25:51
  We we wanna put another floor on. We wanna put an extension on. Whole thing falls in because the foundation, the basis of the building, oh, we didn't put we didn't put wiring into there, we didn't put plumbing into there, oh, we gotta rip that up, we gotta you know? Whereas if they go if you go in at it, like, we might wanna build a castle, so let's do a really, really strong foundation, a really good job, spend much more time on the foundation than we are gonna pull the put the thing up afterwards. And that's very much the way we look at the with the dogs.
• 26:17
  The the the the foundation training, the heel, the recall, the stopping on the whistle, the sit and stay, and the general focus on the owner, the the the dog understanding that they ask permission from the owner. It's it it it's people talk about the dog the dog relationship with their owner become being a kind of a partnership. It becomes a partnership when the dog is of an age and of a level. At the at the beginning, it's not a partnership. It's mastering dog.
• 26:44
  And I don't mean that in a kind of, like, old fashioned kind of tough training dog kind of a way, you know, breaking dogs, they used to call it. I think maybe they do a bit a little bit over here, but breaking dogs, breaking horses, because they used to break the spirit. They used to break them down. And that's not how we do things generally these days. But but the the the partnership comes once the dog is overlevel, and you guys are working together and understanding each other, and the dog is looking to you saying, do you want me to get that now?
• 27:09
  Are we gonna go over there now? Rather than I've gone already, and you're then like, oh my god. My dog's gone, and I need to rein them back in again. So I would say that that peep people don't have the the really, understanding of how much obedience and discipline you have to have as a trainer. I I to to kind of really achieve a good level of of a good foundation.
• 27:32
  And I and I I say to I've I've said this before, and I and I've said it to my team. Like, all of my team that work for me, and and I would include it, we're all slightly kind of we're slightly kinda kooky. We've got, like there's something not quite wired right in our heads, like, it it because it's it's not a job that I do. It's a it's a complete obsession. Training dogs is a complete obsession, and there's some other dog trainers in The UK who who are, you know, well known.
• 27:59
  We were talking about one and they and they're the same. They're it's it's complete obsession about sort of being a bit of a perfectionist. You gotta have quite a high level of OCD. You gotta be like, it's not sitting there. It's gotta sit just there.
• 28:11
  It's moved a quarter of an inch. I need to put it back. It's not quite in the right heel place. I need to correct it. And and to have a really good dog to a really high standard, you've gotta have that level of of kind of being very, very particular, and everything has to be just right.
• 28:24
  And and my team are they're awesome. I'm incredibly lucky. I've got an amazing team. I can come over to America, I can leave them at home knowing things are better when I get back than when I left. You know, they're it's great.
• 28:34
  But they're all slightly cookie. They're you know? And they and I mean, they would turn around and say, well, it comes from the top down because, you know, when you work for a crazy guy, you're gonna be crazy. You know? So we stood a joke.
• 28:44
  If people aren't if people aren't crazy when they arrive, they're definitely crazy, you know, within within a few months of being with us. And you have to be because because you've gotta, you know, you've gotta think about it in in in a in a sort of to have a dog to a really high level, you gotta think about it like that. And definitely, the the clients I train who the clients I've trained dogs for who then take their dogs on to be better, they're the ones who become completely obsessed with it. Got a really nice young guy in in Dallas who got a dog from me last year, and and, I mean, he's just taking the dog we'd sent him the dog here, he's taking it to here, he's got plans to take it there. He's it's awesome.
• 29:18
  And he was he was at an event the other day, a charity event at a dog training facility, which was not where he got his dog from. And some guy walked walked up to him, passed all the dogs that was for sale, and he walked up to him and offered him a huge amount of money for his dog. He's like, I've never seen a dog like that. It's the most beautiful dog. It's the best behaved dog.
• 29:36
  You know? Anyway, I I said to God, you give him my card. I'll I'll sell him a dog for that kind of number. But That's right.
• 29:42
  John Gordon: We can arrange that.
• 29:43
  Charlie Thornburn: We can arrange that. But but he he's just taken this he's just, like, taken everything I've said, and he's got that kind of obsessive personality, and he's doing an incredible job with it.
• 29:53
  John Gordon: I think you're right. Some of the best trainers been around, it's obsessive compulsive. Right? I mean, that's that's all they're concerned about, and they and they put in the work from daylight till dark. It's not a job, like you said.
• 30:06
  It's really more of a calling than I've ever seen. The best trainers I've been around, they just they're obsessed with it.
• 30:11
  Charlie Thornburn: And it's something that there's a there's a level that you can if someone's coming for training with us or their engagement, there's there's a level that you can take somebody to in terms of their ability to train a dog, but there is something that is just they have to have or they and you can't teach it. Yep. It's like you can't you can't make someone an opera singer. You can take Simon Cowell and his best team of vocal coaches cannot take somebody who can't sing and is tone deaf and turn them into an opera singer. It's just not possible.
• 30:38
  And I and I I'm not remotely saying I'm anything like an opera singer or anything as talented as an opera singer, but but what I mean is there's just sort of something that you some people have and some people don't. They just understand dogs, and and they can read a dog, and they know that and the timing is everything when you're when you're correcting a dog. And we talked a little bit about this outside about when you correct a dog and how you correct a dog. The timing is a big part of it. You can't tell a dog off later that day or it's gotta be like you've gotta see it.
• 31:03
  The best time to tell a dog off is before they've even done whatever they're gonna do. And what I don't mean, like, get after them and give them a hiding. I just mean I just mean, like, uh-uh. You're about to move. I know you're about to move.
• 31:13
  Like, what are you doing? The dog did anything wrong. Nobody was thinking about it. If you can stop a dog when it's thinking about doing something, you solve an almighty amount of problems because you've prevented a problem rather than curing it. And that's the big people say to me, how do I stop my dog, you know, running in or chasing something or like, don't let it do it in the first place.
• 31:35
  Just prevention rather than cure.
• 31:37
  Nathan Ratchford: For when that relates to steadiness and for, you know, your average duck hunter who might not be, you know, as concerned about, you know, that level of perfection. Right? Just your average hunter who wants normal person rather than
• 31:51
  Charlie Thornburn: the way they're
• 31:53
  Nathan Ratchford: sane ones amongst us. You know, that individual who just wants a dog who's steady in the blind, well behaved at home, what are some of those those mistakes that you see common commonly, I should say, specifically I mean, steadiness has gotta be one. Right?
• 32:15
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. So I think the key is is you gotta think like a dog, not like a human. And dogs are very simple, logical animals, which is probably why I get on with them. But one of the things we spoke of earlier, once we when we're teaching a dog, we're we're we're we look at it in terms of a a kid in school. They learn history, they learn math, and they learn Spanish, say.
• 32:43
  Okay? They learn those three subjects in separate rooms with separate teachers. They're completely disjointed. They've got nothing to do with each other. We don't try and teach the history of maths in Spanish as one lesson because that's pretty complicated.
• 32:54
  You gotta be pretty damn good at all those three subjects to be able to understand. You gotta be able to speak Spanish. You gotta be able to comprehend maths. You know? So we do the things as three separate lessons.
• 33:03
  And and with dogs, that's retrieving, that's healing, that's sitting and staying, that's, you know, recalled. They're they're all separate they're all separate lessons. When we start combining two of the lessons so when we start combining start doing steadiness, that's combining retrieving, which at the time has just been throwing a ball or a bumper or whatever it is. Throwing a ball, dog goes out, picks it up, brings it back to you. We've kinda gone over that, so the dog just wants to retrieve, wants to retrieve.
• 33:27
  Because we we don't do any, like in The UK, you know, we don't do force fetch and stuff like that. We we just encourage a young dog to want to retrieve. They're a Labrador. They in in inherently want to pick stuff up, so it's just encouraging them to do it from a young age. So we're doing that as a separate lesson.
• 33:40
  That's and to them, that's just fun, and then we're doing sitting and staying separately. Now one day, we then decide, right, they're ready to their retrieving is good enough and consistent enough, their sitting and staying is good enough and consistent enough, and we combine those two things. The day we combine those two things, that dog then does not go for a retrieve without being told because it's now sitting and staying and and waiting for the retrieve. So that that lesson has been combined and become a new lesson, and that never separates. Okay?
• 34:05
  So we don't then go home and go, oh, well, we're now just gonna play in the yard and throw a ball because it's too confusing for a dog because they don't know whether they're like, they don't know that's the hunting place and that's the yard and that's the that's the friend's ranch, and that's another, you know, and now we're just in the park at the pond, and and and then now we're on a lake shooting ducks. They don't they don't have a GPS. They don't have Google Maps. So they don't know where they are. They just need it to be the same every time.
• 34:29
  So once we decided they are gonna be steady, until they come out the other end as a very reliable four, five year old dog who's been hunting and been trained and things, then we can revert back to them being like a dog that just plays with the kids in the garden or whatever. But if you want a really steady dog, you wanna try and avoid you wanna try and avoid the conflict of, well, I was allowed to chase a ball yesterday, and now you're telling me I've gotta wait, because it's confusing for them, because you can't they don't have a perception of time in the same way we do. You can't say, it's a Sunday, so we we'd have to do the hunting thing on a Sunday, or it's because we're in The UK, we don't hunt on a Sunday. I think that's different over here. You guys do hunt on a Sunday, don't you?
• 35:06
  So so say it's a it's a Monday. We're back home. We're back at work. It's different. You'll know that like, they don't understand that.
• 35:12
  They're just like, every day, they take it as it comes. So if we, every day, we treat it treat them as the same day. So every day, we're treating them like we're in the hunting field. They're steady, and they're waiting for their ball. And so once they've if we can establish that they just never chase anything, then they just understand that's just the new rule.
• 35:32
  That's what we do. And we repeat that over and over and over and again, and there's never any blips. There's never any confusion in that. And the the way we do that is we just we sit the dog down where you are, we throw the ball over our head, and then we just act as a what would it be in American football? A defensive blocker or something.
• 35:48
  We just stop the dog if the dog tries to go. And most of the time, 99% of time, if you've done your sit and stay well enough, that dog just won't move. Because you've said sit. You've said sit. You've said sit so many times to this dog over the course of its training that it's sitting there.
• 36:01
  Then you throw a ball, and they're like they've got this bit of con conflicting advice. They're like, there's a ball, but I've also been told to sit. Because until now, we haven't combined the two. When we combine the two, we're here just to make sure it works. And by, you know, three balls in, that dog's steady.
• 36:15
  Does that make sense? And then it's just continuing that consistency and not kinda going, oh, I'm just having fun with my dog in the park. That's great. But but it's then gonna cause you problems when you come back to when you come back to hunting. And then when you want to then separate those two things, what we suggest is to people is you have a very, very different way of doing it.
• 36:33
  So you might go out with, like, a a tennis racket and a ball and just whack a tennis ball or a baseball around the park, and it's like that is almost like that's their plaything. And the retrieving the the whatever you use for your training, whether it's whether it's a ball or a bumper or a rabbit skin dummy that you had, like, those are never a plaything. Those are those are up on the shelf, they come out for training, and then and then in the same way, the baseball and the baseball bat never come out to the training field. Does that make sense? Yeah.
• 37:00
  But I'm only doing that and encouraging people to do that when they've achieved a really steady dog. They've achieved the level of maturity because then the dog can can differentiate. They know they're hunting. They know they're at home. In the same way as as, you know, trying to explain things to small children, you you can go to do that today, but you can't do it tomorrow.
• 37:19
  Why not? Why can't I go to the Soft Play Center every day? Because that's not how life works. Well, life's life's shit. You know, I wanna do that every day.
• 37:27
  You know, it's harder to explain that to a four, five three, four, five year old kid than it is to a 25 year old kid. Yeah, sorry, you can't have a holiday every day of your life. Yeah, I know. That's just the way the world goes around. I've gotta work and I look forward to my holiday.
• 37:38
  They can understand that, a small kid can't. So we've gotta kinda come through that sort of teen that small child through adolescence, through teenagers, and out the other side, and then you end up with this really reliable, you know, kid in their mid twenties, whatever, who just gets how the world goes around.
• 37:54
  Nathan Ratchford: It's interesting that, you know, that concept of compartmentalizing those, you know, elements of training. I guess the same would be with handling. Right? Like, it's the same thing we were teaching a right and a left and a back. Right?
• 38:07
  You don't do them all at once. No. Right? No. One question I had in particular over there, they call it rough shooting, right?
• 38:14
  Like when you're upland Field hunting. Field hunting, That's something that, and I'm sure, John, you'd be interested in too with your cocker, but balancing like to encourage hunting while also like, how how would you approach encouraging hunting with a dog that you also want a waterfowl hunt with and have a handle on so that they're not beginning to hunt on a retrieve unless you want them to, of course, and I know you have probably, you know, but like a dog that you want a basic handling on, left, right, back, know, on a sit whistle, but you also want to be able to go upland hunting with. There's a lot of people in our audience that they live in the Dakotas or they they live somewhere they could pursue both, and they want a Labrador to do both.
• 39:00
  Charlie Thornburn: Right? Absolutely.
• 39:01
  Nathan Ratchford: How do you approach that?
• 39:02
  Charlie Thornburn: So so hunting as in staying in close and searching out pheasants.
• 39:09
  Nathan Ratchford: Correct.
• 39:10
  Charlie Thornburn: Or or or whatever. Generally Quail. Generally generally pheasants, is not is is a is a spaniel's job, essentially. Like Labradors, it doesn't come to us as naturally. So so we if we have someone and we we do this a lot.
• 39:23
  We we get especially up in the North in, like, New York state kind of area. We get a lot of people who they want a lab because they want the kind of calm, nice house dog, but they also want it to be a a flushing dog. So we start letting them hunt when they're young, much more so than if we've got a dog that's just gonna be an out and out retriever. And we we we encourage them we encourage them to do it by by high like, going out into just, like, long long, like, long grass, this sort of height hiding tennis balls. So they go over here, they find a tennis ball, they bring it back, they go over here, they find a tennis ball, bring it back.
• 39:54
  And every time they they're out there, we place another one just out of sight without them finding this one, and they come back and they find this one. And they're they're learning to find things in close rather than find things at a distance. That, to me, is a harder job for the dog to learn to do than the retreat the longer retrieving and the handling because it's it's it's not so natural to them. So we put more focus on that when they're younger, and we get that established, Because to try and train an older dog to do that, they will be inclined to pull too far away. Because they won't find a scent, and they'll be like, well, I get on a line because they're used to following a, you know, a line of a of a of a wounded bird.
• 40:32
  So they they start pulling off up lines of corn and things where the birds have run, and we need to discourage that. So so so we're we're we're very much training them to do the rough shooting bit more than we are the they will still do the handling, but they won't we won't be doing as long retrieves as with them because because we're to teach a dog to stay close is harder than to teach a dog to go further away. Dogs are just like children. When they're small, they stay close. As they get bigger, they wanna get further away.
• 41:00
  They don't need to be holding on to mom's coattails. They're happy to be further away, and then they get to kids get to a point where they just want your credit card, they want you out of here. Dog dogs it's very easy to allow dogs to do the same. It's very easy for dogs to do the same thing. They'll be close as puppies, and then very quickly, they wanna be further and further away, and you become less and less relevant.
• 41:16
  So when we want a dog to be an upland flushing dog, we're we're that's our focus. We will still be teaching them to stop. We'll be teaching them like we would a spaniel was you know, from the very beginning, we're putting our hands out, teaching them to go to the left, go to the right. They're doing more of that possibly than a at a younger age than a dog that's just gonna be a a retriever. But it's much more about go that way for five yards, whatever, and then and then hunt on a bit and a bit more erratic.
• 41:43
  But we would we would we would very much focus on that until that is a discipline they very much understand, and then at a we would probably do their handling training at an at a at a later stage. We'd wait till they've really got this nailed, and they're good at this, and they think every time they come out, they do this hunting, and this is what they do, so they kind of think they're a spaniel. And then as an as a further down the line, like, a year old into their sort of teens, as it were, eight eight 15, 18, then we'll put more focus on the handling because this bit here has been so ingrained in their mind that that they they just get it. And they just they can come back to it because it's it's it's still there in the back of their mind. And I would say we want this to become like driving a car.
• 42:28
  You know, it just becomes instinctive. You know, when to brake, when to change gear. I know most of us drive automatic cars these days, but, you know, when you're not thinking about putting your foot on the clutch and changing gear and indicate you just kinda do it automatically because you've driven enough.
• 42:42
  Nathan Ratchford: Are you doing little things through that in order to to later make that clearer, that separation for the dog? Like, as an example, like, you're not hitting the sit whistle before you send them on hunt command if you're gonna use that.
• 42:55
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. We're not.
• 42:56
  Nathan Ratchford: Right? Yeah. If you're gonna use that later in handling. Right? Are you using like
• 43:00
  Charlie Thornburn: would we would still teach them to we'll still once they've got into a pattern of hunting, we'll still teach them to sit. But if you start sitting them when they're just trying to get into the momentum of hunting, if you stop them on the whistle all the time because you think you're doing sit whistle training, you're gonna dampen down their enthusiasm. Yeah. So you've gotta slightly let them let them go and let them get on with it. Quite often, we've the advantage we've we've got spaniels as well, so quite often, if we've got a young lab who's doing we'll let them run with a spaniel.
• 43:22
  So they see the spaniel flying around in front of us, and we'll let the lab in with them, and they'll just follow the spaniel. So they learn that that's acceptable, and they kinda learn the range. What I what I say to people do do you know what I mean by hula hoop? Is that the same thing over here? Like a Yeah.
• 43:34
  It is. Thing that, you know, someone would spin around their tummy. So what what we say is we you get a giant imagine imagine in your head, you have a giant hula hoop. Okay? And it's tucked into the small of your back, and it's out you're holding it out here, and it creates a a circle, like an oval an oval shape out in front of you.
• 43:49
  And what we're trying to do is we're trying to keep the dog in that range and train them to have an an automatic boundary that they bounce off within that range. And if we teach that with a young dog, whether it's a spaniel or a Labrador, because that's gonna be their job, That's the primary kind of thing. So they know just to hunt in this range because we don't want them fifty, seventy yards ahead because they're they're flushing birds that we can't get a shot at. We want them in this range. And as I say, that range is closer as a younger dog because they will naturally pull further as an older dog.
• 44:16
  So we wanna have them nice and tight so they're learning to do that. But we won't use any kind of pressure in terms of a stop whistle or whatever until they're really happy hunting away quite enthusiastically. And some of them just get it quicker than others. Yep. So we just assess that as we go along.
• 44:32
  Nathan Ratchford: What I do with my I had a springer once upon a time too, and what I learned from the trainers here was running a really clean field, right, one that you know that there's not birds in, and if that dog ranges out, just rolling out like a wing clip bird and letting it find it within five yards of your feet, and very quickly, they're gonna learn. Yeah.
• 44:55
  Charlie Thornburn: Exactly what I would say.
• 44:56
  Nathan Ratchford: Yeah. Yeah. Everything is right.
• 44:58
  Charlie Thornburn: Wouldn't use a wing clip, though. Yeah. Just because we don't wanna they've got enough drive and motivation. We don't wanna, like, we don't wanna send them
• 45:06
  Nathan Ratchford: Right.
• 45:06
  Charlie Thornburn: Too excitable. So we use a we we just use a
• 45:08
  Nathan Ratchford: tennis ball. Tens ball? Yeah. Yeah. Charlie, how about you share a particularly memorable retrieve that you witnessed, whether in a a waterfowl hunting setting, preferably, or when you're out shooting pheasants that really stuck with you that that spoke to the capability of a a well trained retriever?
• 45:29
  Charlie Thornburn: Yes. I'm really lucky. I've had more dogs than most people, and I've had some pretty good dogs. And so the majority of the Mai hunting is is, you know, pheasants, grouse, etcetera, in the in The UK. But I remember I remember shooting a I remember not me, someone else.
• 45:53
  I had a it was a Springer Spaniel, and someone shot a duck, and it came down in a in a in a it was an old quarry because there was one side. It was almost like a sheer cliff. And it came down, and we we kinda knew roughly where it was. We thought it was in the water on the far side, just tucked into the kind of the, you know, little bit like your pond out here, like, tucked into the sort of the undergrowth on the far side. There were some more broken trees that had come off the edge of the quarry and they were lying on the edge.
• 46:20
  And it was probably a hundred and hundred and odd yards across. So I sent it was a totally blind retrieve. The dog hadn't seen it. I'd been called in. And I sent him across this across this this lake, you call it water, and sent him across, and he he was a great swimmer.
• 46:39
  Was a great retriever out of water. That's very very good for a springer spaniel and and would handle really well in the water. And he was swimming across, and he got to the other side, like, where the bird was meant to be, and and he wasn't finding it. Was kind of climbing over, like, broken logs and, you know, getting into the water again and swimming, and I'd stop him and I'd send him along a bit, and then they were like, no no no, it wasn't that far along, so I'd send him back again and he'd go too far the other way. And then every time he got to a certain point, I could sort of tell him, like, he could tell he was getting a wind of something.
• 47:11
  So I got him back to that spot and, you know, you know, got him going a little bit, you could see him sort of trying to figure it out. And and I and I was kinda thinking it was underneath the cover at the edge, so I gave him a back command just to push him just like a metre, not even a metre, like further, just against this wall. He was here and I was just trying to get him into there. Anyway, suddenly he started climbing up, a kind of combination of sort of, like, brambles and and ivy and just sort of cover that was on, like, undergrowth that was growing out of the wall of the quarry and on these broken logs. And he's climbing up, and he came about he climbed up about about the height of the ceiling, sort of 10 feet out the water.
• 47:49
  And I mean, you know, from our side, we just thought it was a sheer cliff, and he was climbing up this I mean, it was literally like rock climbing and scrambling up this bank. And what happened is the duck had been shot coming over this way, and it had landed it had landed wounded in, like, or it had sort of hit the edge of the quarry and come down, but it had managed to kind of get its wings out and keep itself from going too far down. You know, like in a panic, like if one of us fell off a cliff, just sort of grab for anything. And and it was sort of somehow holding on to this little bit of branch and stuff, and we could, know, we weren't looking up there, we were looking down there, and he climbed up and up and up, and he got it. It was like a sort of Tom Cruise Mission Impossible sort of movie.
• 48:30
  He got up there and he and as he picked as he picked as he went to grab it, it kinda fluttered, and he kinda came off backwards. So I like you see some of these videos online with Malinois, like, leaping up a wall. He did a kinda like a backflip kinda move and caught it on the way down and landed and landed in the in the in the water. Came up from under the water with the retrieve, and there was just this it was it was a big driven UK, like, driven hunt. I mean, there was, like, 25 beaters, there was eight, nine guys shooting, and and and they were all up on the edge of this quarry watching this watching this happen, having a a glass of, I don't know, like, slow gin or something in their mid morning break, and there was just this sort of resounding, like, clap which echoed around the quarry.
• 49:16
  I was completely unaware anyone was watching me, so was slightly embarrassed because it was quite early on in my career. I was, like, 24 23, 24. Anyway, that that was pretty awesome. And then I had a a Labrador on a grouse moor, you know, Scottish grouse, kinda they only exist in in sort of Scotland and Northern England. Awesome.
• 49:32
  It's like the king of Red Yeah. Red grouse. They call it the, you know, the sport of the kings because it's so expensive, and the kings the kings and the dukes own all the land kinda thing. And I was I was loading for a guy. So it was driven grouse.
• 49:44
  I was loading for a guy, he wounded a bird. I watched it go back and back and back, and I watched it. And I watched all the guys working their dogs, and no one picked it. So I pulled my dog out of the out of the grouse spot at the end of the drive, waited till everyone was out of way, sent him down this this valley up the other side, pushed him back, back, back, pushed him all the way back, and he got to it and he flushed he bumped it and it flew about the width of this room and he took it down and brought it back to me. It was a long long way away, and I went down the hill and again, everyone was like, wow, that was amazing.
• 50:08
  Some guy walked up to me and was like, I want you to train all my dogs, kinda thing. It was a good day for business. And and the the the gamekeeper, so the guy who looks after all the birds and manages the
• 50:20
  John Gordon: shoot. Right.
• 50:21
  Charlie Thornburn: So I'm just sort of questioning because I just wanna make sure everyone knows what a gamekeeper is. He's like the the guy who who lives on the ground and runs the hunting for the guy who owns it kinda thing. And he's out there, like, killing the vermin and stuff. So the gamekeeper had the head gamekeeper had a map. This was predating kind of maps on our phone.
• 50:38
  He had an ordinate survey map out in front of his Land Rover, and I'm like, what are you doing? And he said, no one here has ever seen a dog handily listening to their owner that far away. We've never seen so we're trying to work out how far it is, and they were measuring it. And they reckon the cane keeper's like, well, here's the greatest spot, there's down the valley, that's roughly where it was. And they reckon it was just short of a mile.
• 50:57
  And he'd been stopping on a whistle and taking a back command at a mile. And I was literally, like, putting my hand over my over my you know, cupping my mouth so that the whistle would carry further, and that when I said back, you know, he'd hear it because he couldn't see my hands by this stage, but to push him further out. And so, yeah, there there's there's a few others I've I've had over the years, but those, I'd say, for one in the water and one one on land, those are probably my two so far. I have great plans to have many, many more, but those are two awesome awesome trees.
• 51:26
  John Gordon: Just fundamental difference, you know, of of The UK and hunting a lot. And you're talking about the gamekeeper. That's what we have in this country is land managers. Right? I mean, they basically just work with habitat.
• 51:37
  They don't, you know, you know, they're just trying to attract more wild game. Right? Where the gamekeeper in Scotland is is in charge of the birds too. Right? So
• 51:45
  Charlie Thornburn: It depends on the on the grouse more. They're all wild, though. So he's in charge of the habitat, and the and the main thing is the vermin control. So make sure they've got a nice a nice nesting a nice a nice place to nest with no And it's no vermin who are gonna come and take on the take on the eggs or the chickens.
• 52:00
  John Gordon: And and another difference, right, is the driven shoot. Right? You've got the you've got shooters and you've got the guys who are handling the dogs. It's a separation, right?
• 52:07
  Charlie Thornburn: You've got the guys shooting, you've got the beaters who are driving the birds, and you've got the guys behind the guys shooting who are with the majority of the dogs. So the beaters will have flushing dogs. They'll be out there with their cocker spaniels or their flushing labs, and then you've got the guys shooting who's who have dogs as well if they want to have dogs. Right. And they'll pick up the birds immediately around them, closer retrieves.
• 52:27
  And then you've got the guys standing further back, which is historically what I've done, standing further back with with a team of dogs, and we're we're picking up the the the longer retrieves, the wounded ones, and we're just making sure everything's all hoovered up at the end. Yeah. Yeah. That's So I I I used to pick up a lot on on the the now king of king of you know, the now British king, Charles. I used to pick up a lot on his grouse moor, and I used to come I used to turn up with up to about I've got a photo in my office of my picking up team on one day, and I think I had 16 dogs with me.
• 52:58
  So there's 16 dogs at heel sitting watching the birds come, and I'm sending them out by name. Then at the end, when there's like, we think we've picked up all the birds we've seen, I would then, like, literally hoover up, so I'd just, like, let the dogs hunt, and I'd walk down the line of the kind of where the grouse butts are and turn around and walk back up again to see if there any had been any had been missed. And he used to just sort of call me like the the carpet hoover guy because he's like, you know, I've met he was just he's like, oh, Charlie, come over and hoover up over here for me, please. And he was also amazing. He's amazing at marking birds.
• 53:31
  So some people who some you know, you'll have been hunting with guys who are like, oh, yeah. It's over there by that. And you're like, how did you see that? And some people just have that, and the king the king has that ability.
• 53:40
  John Gordon: The king
• 53:41
  Charlie Thornburn: has He a will guy three guns up, a 150 yards away from him, wound a bird, in the middle of him hunting as well. Like, he's shooting away, and he's a good shot. But he'll see a guy up there wound a bird, it'll go and land way way back by a rock or something. And he'll come up to me he would come up to me then, he'd be Charlie. I had a particular dog at the time called Mars.
• 53:59
  He's like, can I just borrow you and Mars? And he said, see that rock? And I'm like, oh god, here we go. You know, the future king is asking me to do, like, a three fit 300 yard three, four hundred yard blind retrieve. You see that rock?
• 54:10
  Well, just to the right of it, there's a there's a grouse with a with a with a with its white right leg has been shot. You know? And you'd be like, I can't even see that far.
• 54:18
  John Gordon: That's got eyesight, man.
• 54:19
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. So it was a ability to mark, but and it was great. It's a real privilege to work your dogs for people who are that, like, that passionate about picking every bird and making sure every wounded bird is picked. And that's what, you know, the real real dog people working for real what I call real hunters who really wanna make sure they get every bird. That's the kind of that's the that's the dream.
• 54:39
  Nathan Ratchford: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Charlie. I couldn't think of a better spot to end it. It's a great
• 54:47
  John Gordon: Talking about intriguing stories. King of England.
• 54:49
  Nathan Ratchford: Yeah. I don't think we could go up from there. So thank you so much for your time. Charlie, if our audience wants to check out your content, where can
• 54:57
  John Gordon: they find you?
• 54:57
  Charlie Thornburn: Yeah. So we're we're mordorgundogs.com, is our website. We've also got a, a YouTube channel, which is Mordor gundogs, and and it just shows a lot about, a lot of, like, the the the the realities of training, what what we do, our YouTube channel is very much show it as it is. We show the mistakes. We show the we show things going really well.
• 55:17
  We show things going really badly. It's very much to help people learn and understand our way of our way of thinking about dogs, our way of training. And there are many, many ways to train a dog, and I'd never say to someone, oh, this is the way you must do it. This is just this is just how we do it, and it works for us, and we enjoy it. And and I think, I think one of the key things is is is if you're not enjoying the training, your dog isn't gonna be enjoying it, and therefore, it's not gonna work.
• 55:40
  So both of you have to be having a good time even though I talk about taking it all quite seriously. It's all about fun and and really enjoying it to get the most out of it. But, yeah, is is is definitely our YouTube channel is mordor gundogs is definitely somewhere to take a look.
• 55:53
  Nathan Ratchford: Awesome. Well, thanks again. Thanks for joining me today, John.
• 55:57
  John Gordon: Oh, man. As always, Nathan, you know, we he and I talk dogs daily. Right? I mean, we're probably the two people in this building Yeah. Who who care more about gun dogs than anybody else.
• 56:08
  So And our
• 56:08
  Nathan Ratchford: offices are right next to each other. Yeah. Right.
• 56:11
  John Gordon: Which is fortuitous. Right?
• 56:12
  Nathan Ratchford: Yeah. Anyway, well, thank you so much again, Charlie, and thank you guys for tuning in to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, and if you want to check out more of our retrieve related content, be sure to check out our YouTube and as well as our magazine. Every issue's got a retriever column in it. We appreciate you listening, engaging, and, yeah, we'll see you next time.
• 56:39
  VO: Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by Purina ProPlan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
• 57:02
  Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.