Books:

"Smartwork for Retrievers" vol 1 and 2, by Evan Graham. This is a great pair of books to get you going in the right direction in training your Poodle. There are instructional descriptions of training designs and lots of "how to". You can get these books from: Rush Creek Press or the Retriever Journal. This is the place to begin.

Retriever Training Tests by James B. Spencer, 2nd Ed. Alpine Publishing, P.O. Box 7027Loveland, CO 80537, 1997. This is a great resource for ideas about kinds of training tests to set up for your dogs.

"Training And Campaigning Retrievers, the Principles and Practice", by Jack M. Gwaltney, Jr., M.D., 4863 Wesley Chapel Road, Free Union, VA, 22940, 1995. This is an excellent book to read after you have a basic understanding of retriever training methods. It gives some pointers for handler attitude, preparing for a test/trial, theories, practice ideas and problem solving ideas. Kind of ties everything together.

Training with Mike Lardy I, II, III, by Mike Lardy, distributed by Younglove Broadcast Services, 800-848-5963. This is a compilation of articles written by Mr. Lardy and published in the Retriever Journal Vol 1-No. 1 through Vol 4-No. 1. These articles compliment the videotapes by Lardy and the entire set is "must have" if you want to excel in training your competitive field retriever. A MUST is the set of videotapes by Mike Lardy on both a training program, marking, and e-collar conditioning available from the same distributor. Even better is to attend the series of Lardy workshops!

"Training Retrievers to Handle", by D.L. and Ann Walters. This is a well written and indepth book which is a must to read even if you have the Lardy video tapes and have attended a Lardy workshop!

Periodicals:

Retrievers-ONLINE, ed. Dennis and Fiona Voigt, 1457 Heights Rd., R R #3, Londsay, ON, CAN K9V 4R3 (705-793-3556) e-mail at: <online@lindsaycomp.on.ca> If you can afford it I recommend getting all of the back issues and keeping them in 3-ring binders. This provides a wealth of information and there is an index updated in the February issue each year. Wonderful training articles, test and club issues are discussed, lots of give and take. Most issues need to be read more than once!

Retriever Journal, (1-800-333-7646) A bimonthly periodical with training tips from Mike Lardy and other professionals as well as entertaining stories and informative articles relating to hunting/training retrievers. They have published several articles over the years relating to Poodles in the field.

Retriever News. A bimonthly newspaper devoted to keeping the fancy informed about new rules, top dogs in the field trial venue, descriptions of the annual National field trial tests from both Canada and the US, and lots of ads and condolences. They list qualifiers (for hunt tests) and placements and JAMS (Field trials) in AKC events. They also sponsor and maintain the website www.working-retriever.com. e-mail: retrievernews@mindspring.com

Hunting Retriever Magazine is the official publication of the UKC Hunting Retriever Club. They are supportive of Poodles in their events and have published several articles about Poodles. You can obtain this magazine only by becoming a member of the Hunting Retriever Club.