By Chad Love

How many dogs do you own? One? Two? Perhaps three? If you do own multiple dogs you know what a jostling madhouse feeding time can be, what with dogs barking and wagging tails and jumping around. So here's a word of advice: stop right there. Don't get any more dogs, because then you'll want another one, and another one, and another one, and then pretty soon this is what feeding time at your house will look like...

By Chad Love

There has never been a greater quantity of easily accessible resources for the beginning retriever trainer than there are today. From dozens of DVD-based training programs to Internet websites, chatrooms, bulletin boards, forums and blogs that are frequented by thousands of like-minded gundog enthusiasts, you’re just a mouse click away from answers to any training question or problem you are likely to encounter. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is feverishly working on a retriever training iPhone app (and if they aren’t, I’ve got dibs).

Compare that to just a few years ago. I’m not exactly old, but when I got my first dog the only information sources I had were a stack of old Field & Streams and a copy of Bill Tarrant’s "Hey Pup, Fetch It Up!" A few years later I did acquire some worn-out VHS copies of Rex Carr and Mike Lardy training seminars, but that was about as high-tech as it got back in the early 1990s.

Right now is truly the Golden Age of gundog training information. So why am I singing the praises of a musty, old-fashioned Gutenberg 1.0-based training app that was first published back in the Stone Age, A.D. 1979?

Because D.L. Walters’ Training Retrievers to Handle is - in a field crowded with a number of very good training books and systems - still one of the classic treatises on teaching your dog to run blinds and handle, whether for the field or field trials.

By Chad Love

For many of us, wild, free-ranging birds under wide-open skies is the upland-hunting dream, but put-and-take shooting preserves in heavily populated areas is the upland-hunting reality. Declining wild bird populations, disappearing habitat, decreasing access to private land and increasing crowds on public land and a demographic shift toward deer and turkey hunting on what land remains have all combined to fundamentally alter modern upland bird hunting in many parts of the country. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but it is what it is and it's not going away.

By Chad Love

The dog comes trotting up to the car as soon as I pull into the parking area, a rangy-looking orange belton setter that looks like he hasn't eaten in a few days. He's dirty, his coat is full of cockleburs, his paws are full of sandburs, his ribs stick out from his side and he isn't wearing a collar. That's telling. No one hunts their dog without a collar and tags. This setter wasn't lost, some sonofa**** had abandoned him, left him to die. Dumped him out in the middle of nowhere with no food, no water and no chance.

He looks tired, hungry, scared and lonely. It's mid-week during the last half of the Kansas pheasant season, I'm 30 miles from the nearest town and I haven't seen another hunter all day.

Who knows how long he's been out here, hiding from coyotes and waiting for someone, anyone, to come along. He stands off a few feet and eyes me, but when I kneel and give him a soft whistle he walks up, gives my hand a raspy lick and then presents his head for scratching, tail beating a staccato rhythm against the car. I pour him a bowl of water and give him some of my dog's food. Both disappear almost instantly. When I let my dog out of the car he bounces around like a pup, playing and chasing. But when I grab my gun and try to whistle him up to go hunting he just sits his haunches by the car and looks at me as I walk off. "Sorry nice man," the look says, "but I've had my fill of this place. I just wanna get the hell outta here."