GUN DOG's "Embarking Together" Episode 1 - The Introduction

For some reason that, you know, there's the the image in my head of a German short hair pointer. Set my heart on that and I lucked out and got got copper. I kind of want to prove to people, especially newer people that get into it, that you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to train your dog. You just have to spend probably thousands of hours to train them. There was a lot of things, a lot of questions, and in my mind like I, you know, to start the training I have to start, like, teach her, you know, to look for birds and what. But some of the things that I'm seeing is, like, I'm the one being trained. I'm Cole. And I'm Colleen. And we're from Georgia, Vermont. And this is our German short hair pointer, Copper. Hi, I'm Kelly. I'm Josh. And this is River, our Labrador Retriever. We live in Fletcher. My name is Brian. I'm Hannah. This is Piper. And this is Priya, our wired hair pointing Griffon. We're in Highgate Springs, Vermont. And this is our first year with our first young dog. Yay! Well, hunting has always been a huge part of my life growing up. Small game, big game. And for a while we bought, my family bought a camp in northeast Vermont. And there's a really good upland, you know, grouse, woodcock going through there a lot. We go up there, dedicate a weekend every year to go up there and hunt. And every year, my brothers and I always say, somebody's got to get a dog. Somebody's got to get a dog. And I lucked out and finally, finally picked Copper up. This fall, when Cole and I were talking about getting a dog, we just kind of started talking about, well, maybe now's the time. Go through your hunter safety and get some of that stuff out of the way. So I'm pretty excited to be able to go. And especially now that like Copper's here, it's a little more enticing to go out and be part of that. You know, maybe go to camp or, you know, go out with the crew and with Copper and get to do some hunting. I'm excited to see everything that they go through and make it through this first year. I'm excited to reach the goal that I've had since I laid eyes on him when he was little. And that is seeing him run through the woods with a bird in his mouth back to me. You know, that's, I think that's the big thing for me anyway, you know, because that to me feels like everything has come kind of full circle at that point. I'm the one who is training her and I'm leaning on him to tell me what his expectations are for how he wants to hunt with her because I'm not as experienced with waterfowl hunting as he is. So pretty much, I guess it really depends on what style of hunting we're going to be able to do. So just slowly working into like the basic retrieves out back and then we'll eventually go over to the local lake after work or whatever and do water retrieves and that kind of stuff and just try to get like the basic commands down and see if we can get like back going with her hands if she's lost or can't find the bird and pretty much that's my expectation for the first year just to see if we can hunt with her. The most important thing for me at least is, you know, spending hours whether it be on YouTube or reading magazines talking to other hunters and trying to figure out what worked best for them and then not always going with what their opinion is but trying to see where that fits best in our life and our view for what we want her to do. And then just go from there and see what we can get out of her. So a lot of it came probably a couple years ago we were talking about getting a dog and one of the things that we wanted was a good family dog, hypoallergenic type dog and the Griffon pretty much hit all the marks that we were looking for with their temperaments, their hunting abilities, that's kind of led us down that road and it's been a it was it was something we've been thinking of for what two? It's been over two, over two years it's been in the works looking at different breeds of different dogs. I'm looking forward to just having the adventure dog that can go out and play. We're an active family we like going out on our boat, the boats, the paddle boards, we go camping a lot. These guys forage for mushrooms in the spring and throughout the summer so they're oh we're always out hiking, walking. We wanted a dog that can hang with that so she's not 100% just focused on hunting but the family aspect was huge, a snuggler. Obviously we got one of those and I think Piper got her wish fulfilled she wanted a dog that would snuggle in her bed with her and this is her perfect little snuggle pet. I'm not exactly sure what to you know what to really expect you know I think I had these goals and stuff set but now I feel like you know I think you even said it like you just got to put the steering wheel and the brakes on and that's kind of what it feels like.