Dealing with dogs with natural instinct and drive for a job...?

Well several of my dog "play" for a living, retrieving waterfowl and chasing rabbits. My ACD however has a job, and HIS job pays me well. Clicker training I found was a complete waste of time with a herding dog because they can't hear it from three miles away on the other side of a canyon. My ACD is trained to take visual casts in much the same way that a retriever does when being handled on a blind retrieve. From 50 years experience if a person plans to train a dog to that level the LAST thing they want to do is become single faceted with their training methods. I can "handle" my ACD to a cows location literally from the next mountain top, and a dog will never learn to do that if all the trainer is willing to do is hand the dog a cookie. Many people don't seem to be able to get past the debate of positive and negative reinforcement. Well until a person can get past that hangup I guess there really isn't much of a reason to talk about direct and indirect pressure is there. Without a complete understanding of how direct and indirect pressure, and attrition works sorry to say it but that person will never have a dog able to handle to it's full potential.