Handling...

[beardog003]

Hello everybody, I had a quick question and thought maybe I would post it here to see were I stand. I have been having a problem lately when I get a track started, I have an old dog and a young dog that I run together
and when they get going on a track they'll be scream'in like they see it but and running big loops in the same canyon but after a few hours maybe like 3-4 hours if they don't get it treed they seem to over run the track. Sometimes they will get it going again but other times they just kind of hoot every now and then and then sometimes it may take them like 5-10 minutes maybe even longer to open. Now for the question, do you think it is bad when they loose the track or are barely runnig it and taking a long time to figure things out to call them off and this is pretty hard to do cause they will not come off the track they just keep on mosing along. I get pretty fustrated cause it is wasting good hunting time if they can't figure it out I want to start another track some where else. Do I need to teach them their names a little bit better with the tri tronics or do you think this will mess them up( and when I say Tri-Tronics I mean when I call their names to come back to the truck)?
We mostly hunt for Bears, Bobcat and fox and the last few races have been on either a fox or bobcat I'm pretty sure.
Any info or help would be appreciated very much on this subject due to the fact that when hunting with others they just call their dogs back if they can't get things going or if they loose the track but I always seem to be the one trying to get my dogs to come back to the truck and by the time I get them the days over pretty much.

Thank you,
Beardog

[Emily]

I try not to use the Tritronics for COME ever. A lot of people don't agree with me on this. For situations like this, I use an extremely loud whistle--the brand I use is called ACME Thunderer. The best hound I ever had learned to respond to the whistle with a bark if he thought the trail was hot enough to work out, and come in if he didn't. If I went to him, he would come in if I needed him to, but he let me know I was a jerk for calling him off.

The only way young dogs ever learn to work out a track is to be patient while they figure it out. This is one reason why its not a great idea to work a lot of young dogs at once--they will slow down the learning process to the lowest common denominator, or they will drive you crazy with some being too slow to work things out while the better dogs are way ahead. IMO, you only want to have one dog that doesn't know how to figure out a track at a time. Are you sure you want your young dog working with this particular older dog? Have you tried them separately to see whether this goes on when they are not together?
Given what you say you are hunting, bears are a lot easier to figure out than fox, and fox are easier than cat. If you're working with a dog that needs to straddle a track and think to work it out, keep it on something easy at first, like bear. With experience, they do get better, but not if you don't have the patience to let them think it through. And make sure the older dog isn't jumping from one track to another and teaching your young dog to do the same.

[southwestwalkers]