My name is Dave Gyurica I’m the owner and trainer at The Retriever Barn.   I was born into a family with dogs and I’ve never been without one since. With being around dogs all my life I can read dogs very well which is very helpful when training. I train every dog by their personality and then work on bringing the best out of them.

My first dog that I trained was in 1969. I was 12 and she was a black lab named Queenie. Luckily she was full of natural instinct. With the help of my great uncle Billy who was an avid waterfowl hunter with great labs told me how to train her. Then we still had wild pheasant so we got to hunt wild pheasant. Since l had been duck hunting with my grandpa since the age of 10 I took her with me when l would duck and goose hunt. She was where it all started and since her I have trained dogs for obedience, show, guard dogs, shed hunting, waterfowl & upland hunting. I’ve also help owners with hunt test training and good companion test.

In 2001, I was a journeymen machinist mold maker.  I had been doing that kind of work for 28 years. I had been guiding for WR Hunt Club for a couple years at the time. I was tired of the work I was doing and started looking for a new career. One day I was looking in the paper and there was an ad looking for a dog trainer. I thought I’ll check it out. After a few hours of phone drilling and couple hours of personal drilling Jim Maxey the original owner of The Retriever Barn asked me to train dogs for him while he was dealing with medical issues. Sadly Jim passed away in 2002. I was asked to continue on with Jims work and dogs bloodlines so I moved the business from Huron, Ohio to Fremont, Ohio and so began a new career.

After doing both careers for about a year I got out of the machining. Now I’ve been a guide for great place for 18 years and get to do my real passion working with dogs and their owners. I really enjoy taking a dog that knows very little and their owners and turn them into a happy hunting team. I’ve been very fortunate to meet a lot of great dogs and owners through the years and we have become good friends and hunting companions. I love going out hunting with a dog and owner I trained and see how happy the dog is doing what it was breed to do and how happy and proud the owner is of his new hunting companion. Dogs and hunting have always been one of my greatest passions and that’s why I’ll continue to keep doing this.