Why I Train Dogs

Larry Laqua

I'm a simple guy who loves the land and working with dogs.  I may always have been an animal person. For my whole life I've worked for customers, whether trucking, horse training, or with gun dogs.  But it has always been a job working through our furry friends.  Sometimes I love the dogs more than my customers.  In a way that assures my clients of their dog's safety.  Your dog's safety is my absolute first priority.

They ought to put a video in the yard of some of these trainers, because some field trialers can be pretty tough on a dog.   I’ve seen a trainer connect a wire from their e-collar to a dog's private parts.  I don’t know how they stay in business.  That rough stuff happens because the trainer doesn’t put daily time into conditioning a dog to bring out their natural hunt (and people) instincts

I first started training dogs 20 years ago.  I was a pretty active horse trainer at the time.  But one year I started hunting with a weimeraner, Malakai, I got for free from an ad in the paper.  Malakai was a little rough in the hunting way, however.  He’d find birds like quail just great, but he tended to enjoy the meal before bringing it back.  One time Malakai mauled a beautiful pheasant.  Being rough around the edges myself, I grabbed Malakai by the collar and started whacking him over the head with the pheasant feet, then put him the kennel. It taught him somewhat of a lesson, I guess, but it wasn’t professional to say the least.  

I knew a guy Al Freeburg, who trained dogs for a living.  I can’t remember how I first met Al, but he had been training dogs for years.  Al wasn’t the smoothest of characters, but he was great at teaching a dog to force fetch, an essential skill to any higher learning in gun dogs. So one day I asked Al if I could hang around his facility an help him shovel shit, and other menial tasks, if he’d help train Malakai.  Al’s only answer was, “That’s what we’ll do then.”  

After working with Al, and learning a thing or two, I read everything on hunting dogs written worth reading in the U.S., and some not worth reading. Anthony Quinn: The Working Retriever, is the one book I’d recommend to everyone.

At first it was a challenge with the puppies.  I would train them the way I saw others do it and the way I read in books.  But over time I tried my own methods and many of them worked.  Then it just became fascinating to watch them develop into hunters, yes, but individuals with their own personalities and styles. It’s been a blessing of creation to work with these wonderful creatures.

--Larry Laqua

P.S. I actually got Malakai off an ad in the paper because his parents were trying to find him a good home. The story was that, while on a trip to Africa, the poor couple’s son killed three of their cats.  So they just couldn’t let the same thing happen to their dog.  The day I picked him up, the son handed him off.  The only thing he said was, ‘Don’t let this son of a bitch ruin your life the way he did mine!’”  After some training, Malakai turned out pretty well.