For those who’ve ever owned a hen canine, then you definitely’ve in all probability acquired Tom Dokken to thank. Perhaps you learn his e-book or used the examine wire he designed. You virtually definitely purchased a Useless Fowl Coach (or an imitation of 1) to show your pup the right maintain on a hen. Or perhaps you despatched your canine off to a coach who learn Dokken’s columns or attended his seminars, or perhaps even educated beneath Dokken himself.
Throughout his five-decade profession, Dokken based Oak Ridge Kennels, developed his personal line of retriever-training merchandise, and helped a great deal of beginner trainers like me. He has educated 1000’s of gun canines and helped reshape gun canine tradition in America. At 69, Dokken continues to be working his kennel, coaching canines himself, tinkering away with new innovations, and looking onerous. And though there are extra professional trainers now than ever earlier than, extra coaching movies, extra on-line tutorials, and extra “specialists,” Dokken’s coaching methodology and philosophy are simply as necessary at present as they have been many years in the past.
As a Minnesotan by beginning and South Dakotan by residency, looking, farming, and manners are programmed into his DNA. Dokken doesn’t swear, as a substitute counting on Midwestern standbys like “geez,” “jeepers,” and “goat rope.” When offered with an issue, he doesn’t stall or gripe. He solves it.
A part of what makes Dokken an elite coach are these Midwestern roots. Together with his canines, he’s gentle mannered however agency. He’s pleasant with out overpraising. When a canine makes a mistake or is willfully disobedient, he by no means loses his mood. Tom Dokken is, above all else, even keeled. The canines he trains acknowledge that confidence and authority, and respect it.
And so do their house owners. As a result of whenever you prepare with the very best, you possibly can’t assist however really feel you and your canine are going to develop into the very best you might be, too.
The Dokken Philosophy
When Dokken started his profession, trainers would get one-year-old or older canines—an expertise he’s likened to “wrestling alligators.”
“You wouldn’t see them after they have been younger. We began a two-week hen and gun program [for pups as young as five months] after I began my very own enterprise. It’s a lot simpler to see them at that age. Their drive is up right here, slightly below the floor,” Dokken says, holding his hand excessive. “The older they get”—his hand drops steadily—“the tougher it’s to entry that drive. If there are social or developmental points, now’s the time we are able to truly do one thing with them [to address it].”
Dokken received’t say he was the primary gun canine coach to tackle such younger pups, since he can’t make sure what was occurring nationally within the Seventies. Nevertheless it was a brand new strategy at a time when looking canines lived outdoors and weren’t a part of our households the way in which they’re at present.
“I don’t need to take credit score for that stuff, however it had a huge effect on not simply our [bird and gun] program, however the way it set the stage for the subsequent course, which is ending coaching. We acquired them on the precise path immediately.”
Dokken acquired a have a look at my yellow Lab, Hatchet, when he was six months outdated. We’d been invited to the Dokken’s house in South Dakota for summer season coaching earlier than Hatchet’s first hen season. I’d taken care to socialize my pup and run him by means of the obedience outlined in Dokken’s e-book, together with a fundamental introduction to birds, however I had no expertise coaching a gun canine.
As an alternative of slinging recommendation or plowing right into a textbook bird-and-gun program, Dokken merely noticed us work collectively. He studied our progress with out judgement, and requested questions to higher perceive Hatchet’s temperament and drive as a result of, as he famous, I do know my canine greatest. I knew Hatchet to be desirous to please, regular, a reluctant recaller, weak on land retrieves (because of our recall troubles), and a robust retriever on the water.
Quickly Dokken prescribed a routine of enjoyable hen and gun introduction, the place he reduce my pup unfastened on clipped-wing pigeons with the steerage of a examine wire. Dokken studied Hatchet’s physique language intently at every step—if he twitched or checked out all uncomfortable, they’d again up. Dokken ran by means of a gambit of clapping, shouting, .22 blanks, and 20-gauge shells, making noise at a distance with every and transferring nearer till he may unload a 12 gauge over Hatchet’s head with out a twitch.
Solely as soon as did a session veer off observe, when two pigeons in a row escaped with out Hatchet getting a retrieve. Unperturbed, Dokken produced extra pigeons from his vest like a stage magician. Even Dokken, an excellent shot and professional pigeon wrangler, had deliberate for the worst-case state of affairs, and was nonetheless capable of set Hatchet as much as succeed.
“He’ll at all times ask you what may occur, and if that occurs, how are you going to react?” says Tina Dokken, who has been coaching together with her husband for twenty years. “What are you going to do to right the canine’s mistake? He’s making an attempt to get you to be ready that these issues will occur, as a result of timing is every little thing with these canines. He does that so that you, the coach, could make errors forward of time—earlier than you make them on the canine.”
My errors have been simply corrected beneath Dokken’s steerage. Our recall bother was fastened in a single day of examine wire work and e-collar reinforcement. As we superior by means of Hatchet’s intermediate coaching, Dokken requested me to deal with his personal canine, a modern black Lab, and Tina’s older chocolate, so I may get snug with hand gestures, timing, corrections. These veteran Labs can be resilient to my slip ups.
Any time we launched Hatchet to one thing new—the heeling stick, the power fetch desk—Dokken confirmed me the best way to make optimistic associations with these instruments earlier than including self-discipline. We let him odor the heeling stick and even pet him with it nicely earlier than utilizing it to fine-tune his heel work. Within the days main as much as his first force-fetch session, he’d eagerly leap into place on the force-fetch desk, the place he acquired loads of affection.
“Some canines might be pushed, some canines you must take a extremely sluggish strategy, as a result of you must maintain them working,” says Dokken, who trains pups from various qualities of bloodlines. “An excessive amount of management on some canines early will take drive away. A canine with tremendous excessive drive? It’s good to begin controlling that immediately. These are the issues we discover out early. Once we do hen and gun, we’re getting that glimpse of drive degree and character.”
As a result of Oak Ridge Kennels trains looking canines, Dokken’s trainers should use hen and gun periods to construct drive and need.
“We don’t have the luxurious of washouts,” Dokken says. “If somebody is working discipline trials, that’s a excessive share of canines that received’t transfer on. For us, the household isn’t going to go, Daisy isn’t actually working that nicely, we’re eliminating her. Not gonna occur. So you must do something and every little thing to get any type of drive degree. That’s a problem, as a result of you must actually know all of the methods to tug the drive out. At 5 months, it’s simpler to entry it. At a 12 months in the event that they’ve had no hen contact? That’s powerful.”
These methods (and he actually means methods—this isn’t advisable programming) embrace artistic problem-solving to get disinterested canines to choose up birds. In case your canine exhibits some curiosity however received’t choose up a pigeon, drop the hen in two-foot-tall grass. The pup would possibly seize it and drop it within the quick grass for a greater look. If the canine is an efficient swimmer, perhaps you strive a water retrieve. They’ll seize it and drop it on shore to take a look at it, however most significantly, you bought the canine to choose up the hen. A retriever that loves taking part in maintain away (a foul behavior Dokken can repair in a day) could be persuaded to choose a hen up if it thinks you’re going to seize it.
“We have to get to the tip end result [of a capable gun dog], however we’ve got to judge the canine first. They’re like folks,” says Dokken, who research a canine’s drive and character. “It’s like a group sport. You’ve acquired your tremendous athletes, the place all they need to do is follow and follow after which play, and a few gamers who’re simply there as a result of their buddies are there.”
I hazard a guess at Hatchet’s psychological profile: Craves approval, can deal with some (however not lots) of stress, and a blended drive. He’s lukewarm on drills however likes to hunt birds.
“I feel the place Hatchet is at, he wants a number of alternative now,” Dokken says diplomatically. “He must get out and hunt, get birds killed in entrance of him. He’s been on the follow squad. It’s good to put him within the recreation.”
The Making of a Legend
Lengthy earlier than he started avoiding cities with populations above 500, Dokken grew up within the suburbs of St. Paul. He had began looking with buddies north of the Twin Cities after they have been 14, these hopeful outings the place “you’d exit, however you’d by no means get something.” That droop ended his junior 12 months.
“It was like, geez, that is the true deal,” says Dokken, who had tagged alongside along with his dad’s buddies one morning. “We’re seeing geese, we’re capturing our weapons. There wasn’t a canine on that first journey, however it’s what planted the seed.”
Though {the teenager} badly needed a hen canine, his mother and father thought their solely son was too busy with soccer, hockey, and baseball. After commencement, Dokken left for a small faculty in Minnesota and a spot on the soccer group. That lasted a semester.
“It’s like, what number of lessons are you able to miss since you’re looking and nonetheless be in class? College simply actually wasn’t for me. Even in highschool. College was for sports activities, and also you simply put up with going to class.”
As an alternative, Dokken began working second shift at a pc firm and spent all his free time looking along with his highschool buddy, Bruce Knowlan, who ran discipline trials along with his Labs. The 2 dragged Dokken’s camper all around the northern U.S. and Canada, bowhunting caribou and capturing geese and dwelling the dirtbag life-style lengthy earlier than it was glamorized like it’s at present. By Knowlan’s discipline trial contacts, Dokken purchased a 5-month-old Lab pup, a black feminine he named Dyno—quick for Dynamo.
“I needed to hunt, however I began working trials too. We labored every single day. She appreciated to work, and we figured issues out collectively. And she or he was very profitable, particularly at a really younger age,” says Dokken, crediting Dyno’s drive and the time they spent coaching relatively than his personal talent. A 12 months later, the younger Lab was on the nationwide derby record and working competitively within the highest degree of discipline trials. “I didn’t know that you just weren’t supposed to have the ability to do this [with such a young dog], however we did. Lots of people paid consideration. Like, what’s that man doing there with a 12 months and a half outdated canine and working within the Open?”
The pair began coaching with extra skilled handlers. Quickly Dokken took a second job cleansing kennels for Jim Kappes, Dyno’s breeder. Grunt work—feeding canines, hosing stalls, catching pigeons—ultimately gave strategy to a full-time coach place because the kennel grew to accommodate some 60 canines, largely looking and discipline trial Labs. (Minnesota hunters, Dokken explains, are particularly keen on Labs.) When the cruel Minnesota climate settled in, Dokken would load the canine trailer and head south for the winter to coach and trial.
By his mid-twenties, Dokken was prepared to start out his personal kennel. He purchased a constructing with a fellow coach, however they rapidly realized the power was restricted by metropolis ordinances and too small for the expansion they envisioned. The boys parted methods and, really on his personal now, Dokken bought a constructing in Northfield, Minnesota, and named the enterprise Oak Ridge Kennels.
“I didn’t know I couldn’t do it,” Dokken says of these early years. “Which was in all probability an excellent factor. It was obvious from the primary kennel [I worked at] that the enterprise was there, and I may make a dwelling at it. Might I be affluent? That’s one other story.”
4 many years later, it’s a 70-dog operation with 4 full-time trainers plus workplace and amenities workers. He doesn’t rent trainers from different outfits who’ve their very own concepts about looking canines, however relatively trains them to the Dokken program from the bottom up—identical to the canines. Over time, many of those trainers have gone on to start out their very own kennels and packages, and plenty of have been fairly profitable. On this approach, Dokken’s coaching philosophy has expanded throughout the nation.
Present Enterprise to Businessman
Within the Seventies, Dokken landed a slot on the Minneapolis Sports activities Present to placed on an hour-long retrieving canine act. It was an enormous deal in an period with out looking TV channels or YouTube, and 1000’s of spectators noticed what well-trained gun canines may do. Demand for Dokken’s coaching companies exploded. Then a expertise agent from New York Metropolis started reserving his act at different sporting exhibits throughout the nation. Dokken spent his winters on the street, staying at motels in main cities with as much as six canines and placing on as many as three exhibits a day.
A pointer would work throughout the stage and lock on level above a faux bush, the place one other canine would come out. Or if the auditorium was sufficiently big, Dokken would place a retrieve approach up within the grandstand and deal with a retriever to a bumper. The finale featured a simulated goose hunt full with a blind, honking taking part in over the loudspeakers, shotgun blanks, and a goose that appeared lots like an early Useless Fowl Retriever dummy splashing down right into a pool for a retrieve. Many of the canines have been his shopper’s canines, though Dokken’s personal Lab would play the clown because it required some tough coaching. The clown’s job was to make the viewers snigger by doing the alternative of no matter Dokken requested.
“It was entertaining, and it was fast-moving,” says Dokken. “There’d be an emcee and he’d be explaining it whereas we’re going by means of every little thing. So having 4 canines up on stage at a time, one canine working at a time with out the others working round loopy—it was lots.”
As sporting exhibits phased out within the early Nineties and his coaching enterprise continued to develop, Dokken began to focus extra on product growth.
“I used to be at all times simply modifying stuff that we used simply to suit what we would have liked,” says Dokken of the early variations of the Useless Fowl Retriever and different home-made merchandise that cropped up in his act. “Completely different small issues simply to make life just a little simpler. Like, okay, how can we make this extra environment friendly?”
The Useless Fowl Coach, or DFT, is a foam-injected mould of a recreation hen’s physique with onerous plastic toes and a tough head that dangles by a string. It’s designed to form a retriever’s correct maintain of a hen: securely however gently across the center, since most canines will keep away from a pair of plastic toes poking them within the palate. He can’t bear in mind precisely when he began tinkering with the DFT, he simply is aware of that Dokken Canine Provide started in 1995, after which the corporate secured a patent and launched the mallard DFT in 2000.
“It was an journey. I at all times say, ‘If I knew what it will’ve taken now, we wouldn’t have gone by means of all of the complications.’ However you don’t know that whenever you begin.”
By “we,” Dokken actually means himself, even when he’s reluctant to take credit score for his personal accomplishments. “I’m like, what do you could have a mouse in your pocket?” his spouse, Tina, likes to joke. “He’s essentially the most humble particular person I do know.” Dokken attributes the preliminary success of the DFT to not its usefulness as a coaching device, however to its shelf attraction.
“I don’t know if folks purchased it initially for the issues it does, apart from the truth that it appeared like a duck. Nicely, and the canines simply love them. I feel it’s the texture of the physique and the truth that the top strikes—it feels to a canine prefer it’s an actual factor. Then we made totally different species. I bear in mind a man got here as much as me and mentioned, ‘I actually like your product however I don’t use it.’ And I mentioned, ‘What do you imply?” The man mentioned, ‘I’ve a springer spaniel and I hunt pheasants.’ Nicely, it’s a coaching dummy. Nevertheless it type of advised you that individuals relate to what they hunt. So our second hen that we got here out with was a pheasant. Then we would have liked to return out with one thing for a pet as a result of the mallard’s too massive.”
The teal, bobwhite quail, and ruffed grouse got here subsequent, then all of the grouse subspecies. DFT gross sales are closely regional in accordance with Dokken, who says no matter hunters hunt sells greatest. Californians demand pintails, whereas Germans purchase pink grouse. The canines don’t a lot care what paint job is on a goose, all of that are constructed from the identical mould, however hunters certain do.
As we speak, Dokken Canine Provide provides greater than 30 DFTs in a dozen nations, along with bumpers, examine cords, leashes, and different coaching gear, together with hen scents to inject into the DFT our bodies. (One 12 months, after Tina’s Chapstick tubes stored disappearing and reappearing half-melted round the home, Dokken Canine Provide launched a line of wax scents.)
“Tom’s primary objective is to make one thing–whether or not it’s a coaching approach or a coaching product—simple for the canine to grasp and simple for the proprietor to have the ability to prepare the canine with,” says Tina. “His complete objective is that he needs canine house owners to work with their canines. So what’s the best approach to make use of for the canine to grasp, and for the coach or proprietor to have the ability to educate that?”
For those who ask Dokken what it’s about canines that’s led him to commit his profession to them, he talks first in regards to the hunters.
“I feel it’s simply the truth that persons are approach into their canines,” says Dokken, pointing to me and Hatchet. We’d had a breakthrough throughout this morning’s coaching session as Hatchet linked his recall classes with the enjoyable of retrieves. I couldn’t assist laughing as my canine introduced an actual hen to heel with none instruction. My delight appeared to please Dokken as a lot as Hatchet’s progress. “You’ve one thing in frequent with these folks as a result of they love their canines. Canine are an enormous a part of the household now, and that’s modified immensely over time.”
There’s extra to coaching a canine than a one-and-done transaction for Dokken. He’s curious about monitoring a canine’s profession over time and serving to hunters troubleshoot alongside the way in which. The persistence and particular person classes Dokken brings to every canine is a trademark of his strategy.
“That’s fulfilling as a result of a whole lot of instances most canines received’t have a lot management on them in any respect [when you get them], so by the point you’re accomplished with the coaching course of and then you definitely prepare their house owners, they’re approach grateful for it.”
A Resolution for Every thing
When the Dokkens fastened up the pre-1900 home that got here with the farm, Tom and Tina crammed baggies with grime and canine hair to decide on essentially the most sensible flooring. As we speak, their home is an element looking lodge, half kennel, and half workshop. Friends are instructed to not take away their footwear. The most important mistake they made, Dokken likes to say, was not placing a drain contained in the entrance door.
The inventor’s handiwork is clear all through the home, although nowhere greater than his eight-stall kennel. Years of mucking poorly designed amenities led Dokken to rethink the normal arrange: Most trainers drop canine beds behind stalls, which inspires canines to do their enterprise close to the door and their bowls. This additionally forces whoever has to wash the stalls to stroll by means of the mess as they hose from again to entrance, towards the drains.
So Dokken rigged hanging platform beds on the entrance of his kennels and a concrete gutter alongside the again for the uncommon events it’s wanted. There’s a nozzle for contemporary consuming water, which canines be taught to make use of with a smear of peanut butter. The entrance of every pen is provided with a metallic meals pan that snaps into place so it may be crammed and swiveled beneath doorways with out opening them, then locked again into place as soon as emptied. Even the kibble container has been “Dokkenized,” as Tina calls it: luggage of Purina Professional Plan poured into an hermetic container and seated in a wheeled platform for straightforward dishing.
The coaching drones Dokken designed are additionally saved within the kennel. Though Dokken needs to be coerced into utilizing a sensible cellphone or a laptop computer, he’s develop into an professional drone pilot due to its usefulness as a coaching device. Dokken rigged a drone to accommodate as much as three dummies, which he can launch over land or water with a distant. He additionally invented bumpers that unspool from the drone, which he’ll drag by means of the water to simulate an escaping cripple. (After crashing one drone into the lake by his house, Dokken added a pair of pool-noodle pontoons for emergency landings.) Only a few periods with the drone turned my pup right into a devoted cripple hunter who watches the sky for birds.
Hanging close to the kennel’s again door is a picket contraption that appears like a shotgun however accommodates a .22 clean pistol to easy a pup’s transition to louder studies. Beside that’s Dokken’s battered Browning Citori. A strip of Velcro retains the barrel selector in place; one other on the protection that makes it simpler to govern with gloves. Two extra strips run alongside the fore-end for straightforward e-collar distant entry. (This is useful whereas coaching steadiness to shot or making an attempt to hunt with a youthful canine.) A pair of big dents have flattened the rib to the barrel.
“Who cares what it seems to be like?” Dokken says of a philosophy that extends nicely past his shotgun. “It really works.”
Even his sentimentality is purposeful. Outdoors his workshop, a desk holds three hand-carved canvasback decoys. They’re not finely formed or all that nicely painted, however inside every are the ashes of their outdated canines, with every Lab’s title inscribed on the keel: Sam, Sage, Rookie. Though Dokken leaves out plastic decoys within the sloughs close to the home, he units these with care some mornings so he and his spouse can nonetheless hunt over their canines.
When Tina brings house the pet that may develop into her fourth hen canine, Tom doesn’t run to greet them as I do. As an alternative, he sinks to the grass and stretches onto his again. The pup’s shyness dissolves into curiosity as she clambers onto his chest. Inside days there can be foam and cut-down DFTs round the home, the scraps of a real pet dummy within the making. However at present he simply rests within the fall sunshine, his face breaking into a touch of a smile as he welcomes one other canine into the fold.
