This brings me to what you said outlaw about pups being board. I also give my pups toys to keep there mind stimulated as much as i can when I'm away. It seems to keep the barking down as well as I have noticed a lot of dogs (not just hounds) when left in a kennel or on a chain most of there child hood do not develop mentally like dogs that are kept active and have there minds stimulated. This ends up making it allot harder to train a dog and makes a dog never fully grow to its potential (Just my opinion and not meant to offend any one that has a different way of raising there dogs, you probably no better than me when it comes to training hounds).
So after we where done with the drag and me praising him, we went back to my folks house and i through the toy on the deck loaded him up and went home. He never seemed to play all that much with his toys at home so i put a little of the gawes sent on his toys and well good luck getting them away from him.
Fast forward a couple of months and he is now 8 months old and it is December, of coarse this means cat season and i got tags in my pocket so why not
. I throw him in the back of the truck and we head for the snow. I head up a dirt road and he starts barking a very sharp high pitched bark. As i look out my window I notice a deer track and yell out the widow in a mellow voice thats enough. At this point in his life I do not take it very hard on him because I do not want to discourage him from rigging out of the truck and he doesn't know what good game is yet in my opinion. After about 2 more miles he goes ballistic. This time the bark is different it is a deep ball and has a sense of urgency in it and he is running from one side of the truck to the other and he wants OUT. It is fresh snow and i cant see a track any where i keep driving up the road for another 50 yards with him freaking out and there it is what i have been looking for a nice bobcat track. So i let him out and start following behind him in almost knee deep snow. The whole time since he has been out of the truck he has not made a sound. About a half hour into it I can hear him bark twice and the garmin says he is 150 yards away. When i get to where i heard him bark i can tell the cat had beaded in a hollow log and i figure he must have jumped it. After a hour or two more of the cat pulling tricks and the dog checking in every once in a while I'm spent so i beeped the dog back and we head to the truck. The rest of the winter went about like that with him rigging about every track out there but the cat tracks where always with the same voice and urgency, not like anything else that he would rig. We did end up treeing one and running one into a slash pile but that was it.Every time he goes to my folks house the first thing he does is search for that toy with the bobcat scent and he caries that toy every where around the farm showing it of to me. So the other day I was thinking is he so cat crazy and cat scent oriented because of the toys with cat scent?(wish I would have had 2 pups. one pup raised with a cat scent toy on with out) Does he just remember how much fun he had on that drag when he was very young? Or is it just genetics? He is a leopard hound and his father and mother where both cat dogs but you don't have to go far (3 to 4 generations) and all his relatives where coon dogs as far as i know and I have walked him through coon tracks, fox tracks, lion tracks, and possum tracks and he shows no real intrest in them and will not run them far if at all. (Except for deer, i have caught him running deer
)Sorry guys i was so long winded. Feel free to critique me on any thing i have done with this dog witch isn't much besides take him in the woods every week and walk him on cat tracks when season is open and the snow is on the ground. Also what do you think could the toy have made the dog like bobcat scent more than anything else or is it probably another factor?
John.