KAROLEIGH-Dog training is your second career, right?

Lou-Right. I spent twenty one years in the Air Force, 1962 to 1983. But I'm from right here. I was in the second grade in New Orleans. When I retired out of the Air Force, I first bought a place in Arkansas, then I moved to Oklahoma. I did walking dogs there. Then I went to horseback shooting dogs, then all-age. That's what Tony Terrell said was going to happen.

K- Why?

Lou-He said that was a natural progression if you stayed in it. But there's one thing that tickles me about our whole sport. When I was in walking dogs, I'd get guys calling me from horseback saying, "Lou, we got the perfect walking dog for you. This dog is super. The only thing is, it doesn't run enough for all-age or shooting dog."

I'd get the dog and see that it was just a wallow-around hunting dog. And I'm not putting down hunting dogs. Lord knows they are what keeps all of this going.

But these guys had no conception of what somebody else's part of the game was.

When I started in it, I was in the Air Force and because of a change in assignment, (I'd been in competition bass fishing) and when I was making the transfer, I picked me up a couple of dogs because I'd always loved to hunt.

From there it progressed. I started out with a friend. We'd go to little local weekend trials. Then I got into Shoot-to-Retrieve. Illinois was the second state to join the National Shoot-to-Retrieve. It started out in Indiana with Tom Love and Tom Scott, Ed Rader; those guys were the ones that stared it. In Illinois it was Don Cranfield.

K- Were you training for other people then?

Lou-No, back then it was just my own. I was the first Illinois secretary for Shoot-to-Retrieve. Don Cranfield was president and I was secretary. I came down here to Louisiana to talk to Lee Willey, Ted Caisson and Roy Allison. I was here to talk them into joining Shoot-to-Retrieve. They had the Dixie Walking Shooting Dog down here, which was exactly what National Bird Hunters is doing now.

What came about: I was sitting in Lee Willey's house and I'm trying to talk them into doing Shoot- to-Retrieve and they're trying to talk me into joining the Dixie. Then we had to call and find out if the dogs that were qualified to run in the Dixie could run in the Shoot-to-Retrieve classic.

K-I don't know anything about any of this. What's the difference between the shoot-to-retrieve, the walking dog and the bird hunters?

Lou-The best way I can try to say it is: Shoot-to-Retrieve, shows your dog's ability to point single birds. Most of their places are twenty acres, forty acres. You get points.

K-So you get points for each bird retrieved. Are these accumulated and when you get a certain amount, your dog becomes a champion?

Lou-No. You have to get so many first place wins to be a Shoot-to-Retrieve champion.

Mike-They put flags out and those are the boundaries.

Lou-If your dog is standing in bounds and points a bird out of bounds, it's okay. But if he I goes out of bounds and points the same bird, it's not okay.

K-And this is all on foot?

Lou-Right.

Mike-The first one of those I ever saw was in Arizona when I was working for Ed (Husser). And they had a trial there at Bill Gibbons' camp. And we got behind the truck!

Lou-(Laughter!) Did they shoot?

Mike-It was a foot race to see how many birds you could kill in a certain amount of time. They put a couple of us behind the truck!

Lou-It's finessed now. She got shot at a trial one time. She was working in the snipe stand. But the thing about it, the one thing, I would definitely give them credit for is that they stick to their guns. They have a set of rules, which is a cuss word in the spot system and they go by them. What you do on a Friday evening to win a trial is the same thing you need to do when you go to their national event. There's no change. It's not run one way one weekend and another way the next.

K-Then it's not like it is in the riding shooting dog. However the judge feels that day is the type of dog that gets placed.

Mike-In the NBHA they say the judging ceases at flush, but then when you get up in the big trials, it doesn't happen like that.

Lou-Then he has to be boke steady to wing and shot.

K-Aren't there three different camps: the Shoot-to-Retrieve, the walking dog and the National Bird Hunters?

Lou-No, no. You've got Shoot-to-Retrieve, National Bird Hunters, U. S. Complete and American Bird Hunters. Now, National Bird Hunters has a walking course and, originally, they had a birdfield. They've done away with the birdfieid and everything's like a continuous one course now. You lead and start from the same place. American Bird Hunters is basically the same. U. S. Complete is basically the same. And these all broke out of the camp of the National Bird Hunters. American Bird Hunters started over a squabble in Texas. It was about backing and not backing. U. S. Complete was the same thing. They didn't like all the rules everybody else had.

K-Kind of like religion, huh?

Lou -Right. Just like religion.

K-I don't like what you're doing, so we'll just start our own.

Lou -That's exactly how it was. And this whole thing, this whole thing, if you go back to the beginning of it at all, what the National Bird Hunters are doing today is what all-age used to be when it started. In Memphis it started with handlers walking and everybody walking and it was a bird hunting thing. Now as history talks down, it says that birds got scarcer and scarcer, so you got on a horse to be able to cover more ground and more ground and more ground. And then all-age has perpetuated to where it is today and enough people didn't like the extreme range that was being required of the all- age dogs, so that's what started horseback shooting dogs. Each time it's been somebody who thinks you're pushing too hard. Then they start something else.

K-I remember hearing about the old time all-age trials where they'd run like crazy to get to the birdfield where they'd handle on foot.

Mike-See, here in Louisiana, they've been doing walking trials since the early 1960s.

Lou-The Deep South Walking circuit.

K-Did they have a hard time getting The AMERICAN FIELD to ... ?

Lou-The Shoot-to-Retrieve had a heck of a time getting recognized by The FIELD. They threatened to start their own registry and everything else. And some of the guys in it were big enough that they had their own computers and they were going to do it. It vacillated around and they discussed putting suffixes and prefixes on the kind of champion you've got. And to this day, I think it's a good idea.

There are some very wealthy, wealthy men and women involved in Shoot-to-Retrieve and that is what they want to show their dogs doing. They are perfectly happy where it's at. It's not a cull down; it's not that they can't afford to go somewhere else. It's what they want to do. And we all need to recognize that. Now if your love is that great for that animal and it's showing what you want it to show, why would you object to its champion saying "Shoot-to-Retrieve Champion"?

K-Right.

Lou-Why would a horseback shooting dog man say, "I don't want 'shooting dog' in front of mine, I just want 'champion.'?" If you're proud of what you're doing, if you're proud of what your animals are accomplishing, I'll tell you what it would do. If Mike's wanting to breed a dog and he looks up the record and he is wanting to try to develop some real class walking dogs, he may well want to breed to a shoot-to-retrieve dog. If he has a powerful female that he needs to cool the blood off, there even may be some shoot-to-retrieve dogs that produce some great running dogs.

K-Well, it would tell a better story than what you have now in a pedigree.

Lou-You'd have more to deal with. It's like the Field Dog Stud Dog registry. It tells you he was bred fifty times and he produced eighty puppies and out of them, he has sixteen champions.

Well, that's a helluva record. Now about this other dog, they may brag that he has a hundred champions that he has sired, but maybe he sired ten thousand puppies too. All of that helps a breeder to decide who, what, when and where to breed.

Mike-It'd be nice if, in their numbers, they'd tell not only how many but what kind of champions they sired.

Lou-This is like saying, well, how versatile is your stud dog? Can he produce walking winners and all-age winners? Or, does your stud dog only produce all-age winners and if they're not all-age dogs, they're culled? You can start putting this stuff together and have a better total picture. A lot of us, you know, that go all over the country, we get to see the dogs.

Mike-We had this discussion with John Steger. You know, you just can't breed pedigree.

Lou -Papers cannot point birds. You do have to know and you have to breed for characteristics.

K-A few people have told me recently, Bill Gibbons in particular, that the dog they want to breed to is one they saw as a Derby because they were able to see what he had naturally. When you see the finished champion in a field trial, you don't know how much is man-made and how much is natural.

Lou-In the old days, when I first started and was talking to some of the guys that were seventy and eighty years old, the old fellows that rode around on the dog wagon, you get to talking with them and they would have major debates over whether a dog had natural ability or man-made ability. You had this debate going on then. Just like the idea of let's make the dogs amateur or pro. They started that at one time. If your dog ever went to a professional trainer, he would be a "pro" dog and you couldn't run him in an amateur anymore.

It's people trying to manipulate the system to make it come out the way they want it to be.

Mike-When I was young, I mean eight and nine, we used to go ride in the Southern. I can still remember those old guys and they'd come out and there'd be a famous dog getting ready to run and they'd say all right, when he gets down to that creek down there the course turns left. If he doesn't turn, then we don't want to breed to him. Let's see if he'll stay and handle without the scout. Now you can't do that because of the collar. You don't know it. Now, if you really want to look at a dog, you'd have to look at him as a puppy now.

Lou-We just had this debate this weekend. I was running in the Cajun and scouting over there, marshalling. And then Saturday, for one of my customers from National Bird Hunters, I've got Derbies for him. His back's hurting him, so I went over there and ran his two dogs Saturday and Sunday. The dog Saturday knocked a bird, and he was out. Their Derby standards even this time of the year are real strict. They have to point and hold birds. And then the dog I ran Sunday had seven immaculate, perfect wing and shot finds. When the trial was over, they said he didn't run enough, so they didn't use him.

Mike-You have a real nice running dog that you could win a championship with and you can't get him placed. They tell you he ran too big. This dog here had eight finds and your dog only had six. You ask if you're counting finds or counting class. Well, on weekends they're counting finds and in championships, they're counting class.

Lou-It's just like, the one thing John Criswell used to tell me, and he pushed it big for awhile, that for a dog to make the Hall of Farne, he needed the prairie to win. And there was a bunch of them, pushed that for a long time. When I got into all-age, my real introduction was where you helped and worked and saw what was going on was out in the Midwest, which was a prairie all-age dog, really. I never even visualized what went on in the pinewoods of Georgia or Alabama or further up the East Coast.

K -How about hunting woodcock in Maine?

Lou-Yeah. In fact, I was talking to Miss Leslie Anderson one time when they were trying to get National Bird Hunters recognized by the AFTCA. My gripe was, we're handling off foot and y'all just don't want to recognize us. She said that was a misconception and went on to explain the grouse trials. That was a shock to me. You never read it in THE FIELD that they're handling off foot.

K-It still seems to me, as far as coverage and interest, that the foot hunters are the stepchildren of the whole game.

Mike-Who taught you how to train dogs?

Lou -I started off with an old jack leg trainer.

K -Is that like a jack leg carpenter?

Lou-About the same, bending nails and using a big hammer. Paul Justi was the first one to put a little class in my training. (He was an amateur guy from up in Illinois.) I got to where I could wing and shot dogs pretty decent. When I started going west, I went out to Arnett, Oklahoma and there was an old man out there that took an interest in me and showed me how to polish-finish a dog. His name is Bill West. I've told people over in Georgia on plantations that I watched work a dog. I've said, "You know whose method you're using?" Or, I'd ask them when they were ever around Bill West. It would come out that the person who'd taught them had been taught by Bill.

Mike-When I spent a summer with Bill Gibbons many years ago, he told me Bill West was coming and said I should go watch him. I spent the day watching him. When I got back, Bill Gibbons asked me, "Well, did you learn anything?" I answered that I didn't see him do anything and Bill told me I wasn't paying close enough attention.

Lou-Bill has the best, most magic hands of anybody I've been around. There's a thing about dog training. You do not have to be a rocket scientist. You have to have patience and you have to have diligence.

Lou-Let me tell you something about Alvin (Nitchman). You know him a lot better than I do. We were all at Rend Lake one time, this was for the horseback shooting dog and Alvin came with Scope Renfroe. I had a little white barrel back there. It's still there, the same barrel. Well, you know how he is, he kind of peeks over his shoulder at what you're doing.

I'd set that barrel up. Several guys had wanted to see it.I'd set it up in the little woods that was behind the dog kennels there. Alvin never would go over and watch me working the dogs on the barrel, but he'd go to the end of the kennels and be filling a bucket with water. You know, he'd put a hundred gallons of water in a two-gallon bucket while he's watching what I'm doing.

Well, Scope was back there and Jack Herriage, Billy Holmes and Pony Man just happened to be the ones that were there at that time. We all saw Doc peeking around the comer, so, you know how these guys are, they got to aggravating him. Doc said something like, "Humph, pros! Got to have these dogs broke before they go on the road. Big Gleber's got that little barrel over there; this one's got birds in a wild cage in his trailer. Outta be broke before they come here!"

Well, this was true. We'd leave Kansas City and we'd not go home until we were finished at the Michigan, Indiana, whichever one you chose. Well, if a dog went sour on the road, you better have , something that could fix it! It just so happened that Doc had a nice little dog that year. Anyway, right behind the barn, just after they turned loose, about two hundred yards-bing!

By that time they had already started shutting down the amount of pheasants; the pheasants were down because Illinois had quit releasing them. As soon as she smelled that bird, boom (!), she put it up and went with it.

Here comes Scope saying, "Now, I'm going to ask that old fart if he wants to work on that barrel!" "No," I said, "I ain't going to mess with him."

Mike-Who else did you learn from?

Lou-Not only Bill West but so many others. Really and truly, this is a sharing sport. I learned a lot from Bill Gibbons. You know, Gibbons missed his calling by not being a school teacher because he loves to teach people to train his way.

K-I couldn't get over how articulate he is. While we were there, I saw him explain his method to many different kinds of people, each with a different ken, and he can assume just the right amount of knowledge on the learner's part and take him on by explaining in just the right language for that particular person to understand.

Lou-He and I had a big discussion this summer out there. He was talking about different trainers that he had invited to come and work with him, and they don't come. You'd be surprised at how many people are intimidated by somebody else wanting to show them something. Well, God Almighty did not plop anybody down on this earth and say, "Bloop, you are a dog trainer!"

K-It's all a matter of that male ego.

Lou-The egos just blow up and the heads get as big as this table.

K-Like Alvin always used to say, "Yeah, you think this is a real nice fellow, new in the business. But let him start to beat you and you'll be calling him a miserable so and so."

Lou-That's exactly right. The game is so hard now. Your pool of owners is getting less and less because of the hunting. Every huntable species on our continent is on the increase except quail. The deer population, turkey population are booming.

The point is that everything else-the sandhill cranes? They were shot almost to extinction. Now they're begging people to start hunting. Now they're getting to be pests. Look at the geese and the ducks.

K-Everything seems to be against us, quail dwindling as well as land and owners. When I interviewed Paul Walker, it amazed me, the stories he told about the super rich owners. It sounded like it was such a romantic time.

Lou-Go down to Miss Geraldine's place over at the Continental and look at the old buggies in the barn. Now adays there are a few entrepreneurs out there to keep things going, but where's the next crop coming from? The kids are not out bird hunting.

K-Did you have much trouble when you went from, say, Shoot-to-Retrieve or walking stakes to horse back shooting? Did they say, "Huh, he's one of the bird hunters."?

Lou-Yeah.

K-Well, were they the same dogs or did you have different ones for each kind of 'competition'.

Lou-Some good dogs can switch, not all, the good ones can. It's like if you run horseback shooting dogs in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Illinois-that part of the country a lot of dogs can go run all-age, especially when you get over into Alabama and Georgia.

Before, when I said when John and them walking about if a dog didn't have a prairie m then it shouldn't go into the Hall of Fame as an age dog. And I used to say, boy that's kind of self centered, self-gratifying or something, but I've gone and I've been on some very familar courses and stuff. And that dog that you use show in Canada, North Dakota and South Dakota and in Kansas, ain't the same dog that you're running down there. And when you do run him, it's tough, if you can't see two hundred yards. Why have a dog out there half a mile?

Mike -It's back to the difference between an all-age dog and a shooting dog. With an all-age dog, it's objectives and, on the prairie, the dog has to run to the objectives. In the piney woods, the objectives are everywhere. In Alabama he has to hunt all the way, so it's really not an all-age game. One just runs a little bigger, but they're all shooting dogs.

Lou-The thing that gets me goes back to putting down somebody else's sport all the time. There's a prairie all-age dog and there's an East Coast-Deep South all-age dog.

K -It's that summer trip north.

Lou -It's great for all of them, for any of them. When you're making the switch from one to the other, you eat the linings out of your mouth when you hear them saying, "Here comes smarty pants to show us how to do this."

Yeah, you go through that, but there's dues to be paid when you make a switch that you don't even think about until you've made it. That's the reason that I am very thankful to God. I started out as a hunter. I went to just weekend field trials. Then I went to Shoot-to-Retrieve. Then I went to National Bird Hunters. Then I went to horseback shooting dogs. And now I'm running all-age dogs.

Although, when I talk to you as an all-age man, I know what that Shoot-to-Retrieve man has to put up with. I know how much pressure he put on his dog to do it. I know how much pressure has to be put on National Bird Hunter dog. He's got to stand wing and shot, keep class and style and retrieve. One guy one time said he could teach a goat to retrieve; I'd like to see it, but it is a "taught" thing. But if it is, how much natural is it for a dog to stand wing and shot? Absolutely none of it is!

A dog's point is a momentary hesitation before it pounces on the game. He is zeroing in on where it's at, just like a cat.

Mike -He's stalking.

Lou -You take that and you alter that and polish it, as a trainer, to whatever phase you want it to go to. So everything these dogs are doing that's finished is taught. Now, God Almighty sends those dogs here with certain natural ability. If you get the right dog, you can polish out a very finished, fine product. But if you start out with a horse turd and you polish on it for five years, at the end of the five years, you got a shiny horse turd! (Laughter!)

You don't have a diamond because a diamond can't be made. That's all any dog trainer is, a polisher. And in this sport, you have people who can train dogs and show them. And you've got some people who are master showmen and couldn't train a dog to drink water.

K-And then you have those that can't do either! (Laughter!) You see 'em out there though!

Mike-And there are master trainers that can't show them.

Lou-But, you can learn from every trainer, sometimes what not to do.

K-Well, you gather information, refine it and make it your own and it becomes incorporated into your training program.

Lou-I can learn from Mike even though he's younger than me. There's some stuff that he picks up from me. You put it up in your little bean and sooner or later somebody's going to put a dog out here that you need that for.

Mike-But now it's so much "training" the dog rather than "breaking" him.

K-The biggest problem I see handlers have is that they don't know when to shut their mouths. They scream and holler constantly.

Lou -That's the biggest problem anybody's got. I could call in five or six people to come work dogs with us and I guarantee you the majority of them. I'd give my own puppies to them to work and they just naturally point. I guarantee you that if the pup starts going to a bird and points, every one of them will start hollering, "Whoa!" Ain't one of those puppies know "Whoa!" from "Jump over the moon!"

Once you give a command and the dog doesn't respond to the command and you keep giving the command, you're enforcing him not to listen. The whole thing that is the hardest to get through the people is the slow development of the dog. And when you mess around and you keep going great guns to win that small stake, you're increasing your problems for later on. And it's something you've got to undo.

I used to get all upset with owners, but Bill said to me, "Look at it this way, Lou. If they mess it up, you just have to be enough trainer to straighten it up." Although I don't believe in the method of let a dog do something that you're going to have to break him of doing later on, I do not believe in that, but, at the same time, when you start breaking a Derby and that Derby knows he has given you every sign that "I am ready to stand, Mr. Trainer." And, you start. You don't ever go back to playing puppy, unless the dog goes south on you. If he goes to getting sour, then you might have to let him come loose again, but then you start all over again.

Mike-But if he comes loose, it's the trainer's fault. I used to listen to old trainers say, "I don't know, he just come apart. I don't know what I'm going to do with him. I believe it's the bloodline." And I'm thinking, "Hmm, maybe it's the trainer."

Lou-It's like when me and Linda stuck this out and God knows I could go to work at Wal-Mart and make more money, if money was the object of this game.

She's with me. She runs puppies with me. She stays home and takes care of the kennels when I'm on the road. Every one of us dog trainers has got somebody behind us that's helping us along the way and that's one of the things that I think too many of the girls get shortchanged on.

You've got unsung heroes in this game, or maybe heroines.

It's the truth. If I didn't have her backing me up, if it wasn't for her doing the kennel chores when the amount of dogs is down and you can't afford to hire help, there'd be trouble. There's a big reason why most of us don't have our own scouts anymore. If it wasn't for the good support of the person behind you, you're in trouble.

K-That's what John Steger was telling us about his wife. She hops on the four-wheeler and road-works all the dogs. She feeds them, cleans the kennels, and then she cleans the house, etc. He runs dogs and cooks. What's in the future? Do we have a future?

Lou-Yeah, we've got a future but you'll never go back to the grandiose. It's a different future. It's really choked down. The game has always been that you've got to have that one right owner. And I've been on top of the pile where everything was just gravy and everything was flowing and I had the right owners, then went bankrupt, then went and alot a business that got in trouble and then I was out there again. You can't make it without that one owner.

And where are the new people going to generate from? I've seen some of the people that are coming into our sport and they're not sportsmen or sportswomen. The difference has come to be "win at all cost". I mean, we have people that don't need the money and they're the biggest cheats in God's world.

Linda-Excuse me for interrupting, but I think, in the future, you're going to have to take it beyond the sport. The world in general is out for ME. That's not sportsmanship. There used to be people out there enjoying the sport whether or not they won.

K-It's a matter of finances too, though. Years ago, during those grand old years, when you went to the field trial, you went to the field trial. Whether you won or not, your dog messed up or not, you stayed until the end for the fun of it.

Mike-If their dog doesn't do a good job, they get mad and go home.

K-But it costs to stay. And you can't help it if the person doesn't have the money.

Lou-That four wheel deisel truck of mine out there is thirty thousand dollars and it's a 1993!

Linda-The owners don't want the trainers staying on the road either because they don't want to fork out the expenses.

Lou -What we were talking about before, why a handlers' association won't work. Listen to how the different trainers say they do it. One trainer gives part of the purse back; other trainers say, no, they keep it all. Some of them give part of the purse back and charge so much to run a dog in a half hour stake and so much to run him in an hour stake. Now me, I have always split expenses between owners. My expenses have always been the fuel and the motel room. I don't want you telling me what I can eat and I don't want to have to look at you sheepishly because I ate a steak.

If you try to hold down the monthly bill for training dogs, somewhere you got to make this stuff come out.

If you look at it realistically, you have to learn from everyone. I mean, you pick up a little bit from this one. I've learned stuff from George; I've learned stuff from Harold Ray, Andy Daugherty, Tony Terrell. Tony's an old gruff, hard core guy, but if you just sit back and watch Tony work dogs, you can learn more just by watching than what a lot of loudmouths who want to impress you with what they know can teach you in a hundred years.

K-Well what's your big message for the field trial world?

Lou-This is supposed to be a sport. Regardless of who you are, you learn what you do from someone else. It's a sharing sport. You're going to be in a competitive sport, you have to be out there to win, but you do not win at any cost. I fully believe, in my heart and soul, that if you do all the preparation you can do, when luck provides you with the other half of the show, you're ready to win. So, if you've done your basics and you've done your homework, (Let's have everything as honest and as straight on the table as we can have it!) you'll share and it will keep our sport alive. If we don't have more of this attitude, we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot in this sport. Give credit where credit is due.

Guys need to give credit to their wives for supporting them and to the trainers who taught them. Everything I know about training dogs is in the melting pot. I learned this from Bill West; I learned this from Bill Gibbons; I learned this from Ed Husser; I learned this from Mike Allison; I learned this from Harold Ray and this from George Tracy. And I put it all in that melting pot and one day a dog's gonna pop out and I'm going to remember that one day I heard Harold say something about that.