August 1, 2025 • 22 mins
Nothing will excite a family faster than bringing home a puppy. The emotions often sway back and forth from joy to frustration. When the pup you've brought home is there not just as a pet, but also to serve a purpose, the training journey from kindergarten to college graduate can be long and arduous. Brent's in the thick of it with his Treeing Walker puppy, Jessi. Plot twist, not everyone's happy with how it's working out so far. He's also sharing a listener story that fit perfectly with that theme. Get the treats out, it's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Jesse goes to school. I've got a
new project to work on, a living breathing chew up
the patio furniture, long eared tree, and walker coonhound puppy
(00:50):
named Jesse. One of my favorite things to do is
training a young dog, and at times it can be
somewhat frustrated. The ultimate rewards are reaped long after the
process begins. You never know when you start working with
a puppy where you'll end up, or if you'll even
get to where you're wanting to go. I got a
(01:11):
lot of stuff to talk about, but first I'm going
to tell you a story. This story comes from this
Country Life listener to Jeremy Sullivan. Jeremy's from Wicksburg, Alabama.
Jeremy Sading this story a few weeks ago, and it
(01:32):
fits perfectly with what we're talking about this week. So
Jeremy's words in my voice, here we go. I didn't
grow up coon hunting, though I did grow up fishing
and hunting for other game. Was fifteen years old. My
brother said, put your boots on, I want to take
(01:54):
you coon hunt, and we went to the home of
an older man who had two sons that were just
a couple of years younger than meat. This man's coonhound
started barking as soon as we got there. There were
two English bulldogs loosing the yard that came up to
greet us too. Introductions were made, and soon after we
loaded up the hounds and headed out. We drove down
(02:15):
the dirt road about a mile and turned the dogs loose,
and they took off and disappeared into the darkness. Not
long after they left us, they treed. We'd only turned
out two dogs, but we could plainly hear more dogs
barking at the tree. I couldn't figure out where the
other dogs came from, but the boys we were hunt
(02:37):
with didn't pay any attention to it. I didn't say
a word. I just followed along, excited to be there,
and couldn't wait to get to the tree. Finally we
got there and the two walker hounds had a coon tree.
They were barking like crazy, and right beside them were
those two English bulldogs from the yard, treading just as
(02:58):
hard as they were. That was my first introduction to
coon hunting. I loved every minute of it. My brother
enjoyed it, but not as much as I did. And
when I was sixteen, I kept going with those guys
as long as I could, and one day the old
man called me to his house. He had a litter
of pups that were just winged, and he said, since
(03:19):
you've been hunting with us, I'm going to give you
the pick of the litter. I knew nothing about picking
out a coonhound pup. The only thing I knew was
that I needed a dog that would pay attention if
I was going to be able to train it to hunt.
I walked up to the kennel and squeaked my lips
and one little female perked her ears up and she
(03:41):
looked at me. She was the one. This was not
only my first coon dog, but it was the first
dog that was really mine. We had bird dogs, but
this dog belonged to me. I put her in the
front seat of the truck and I took her on
and I took her back with me. Later that same night,
(04:03):
when we met up to go hunting, we treed and
killed a coon. I cut the tail off of that
coon and told the boys I was about to start
training her, and they laughed at me, saying she's too young.
I started playing with her with that tail, just like
you'd play with any puppy with a toy. And I
told one of them to hold her, and I poured
(04:23):
a little bit of water on that tail, and I
drug it around the other side of the truck and
I put it on top of the tire, and then
I told him to let her go. She put her
nose to the ground. She followed that scent and got
up on that tire, looking at the tail. She never barked,
But I knew then that I really had something to
work with. I knew nothing about training the dog, but
(04:46):
I had watched the dogs hunting in the woods. I'd
seen Billy Coleman drag a hide for his red Bones
in the movie Where the Red Fern Grows. So every
day when I got home from school, I would drag
a hide into the woods and put it up a tree.
Then I would let my pup Abby trail it and
trea it. That didn't take her long to get the
(05:06):
hang of it. She never barked while she trailed it,
and rarely barked on the tree. She would just get
up on the tree and stare at it, and I
would try to sack her up by yelling, speak to him,
have you and she would bark a few times, and
I would praise her for it. When she was six
months old, we turned her and two other dogs loose
(05:26):
one night. Initially she stayed around the truck, but eventually
she moved off into the edge of the woods. The
two other dogs treed and we walked to the tree.
I tried to call her to the tree when we
were there, but she never came. We found that coon,
headed back and loaded the dogs back in the truck,
and I called and called trying to find her, but
(05:47):
she wouldn't come. I was starting to worry, and then
I remembered when she trees a drag, she doesn't bark much.
Maybe she's treed. I told the boys I thought she
was treating aft and said, well, it sure doesn't sound
like it. And I started yelling, speak to him, mabbe,
speak to him, and she started barking about one hundred
(06:09):
and fifty yards into the woods. We walked a bit
and I'd yell again, and she'd bark once or twice
more and then hush. We repeated this until we made
it to her and shot in the tree. We found
six kitten coons. Those boys had laughed at me about
my dog twice now, but this time they were really
eating crow. I supposed the South put the kittens up
(06:33):
and tried to draw the dogs away from them, and
the old dogs treed the South, and my dog treed
the kittens, and from that night forward she was an excellent,
very accurate coon dog. She also barked on the tree
after that night, and I hunted five to seven nights
per week all through high school, which kept me out
(06:53):
of all the trouble that my classmates got into. Abby
lived for fourteen years and gave me my friends and
family many wonderful nights in the woods. And after she died,
I moved twice and it wasn't practical for me to
own another coon dog. But after Brent Reeves started this
(07:15):
Country Live podcast and kept talking about coon hunting. It
reignited a fire deep in my soul. Last week, me,
my wife, and my four kids drove three hours to
pick up a walker Pumpy. It's time my kids got
to experience the passion for coon hunting that I once had.
(07:36):
Thanks Brent for your unknown pride to get me back
in the night woods, and for the many wonderful memories
that my family is about to enjoy together. And according
to Jeremy Sullivan of Wicksburg, Alabama, that's just how that happened.
Jeremy and my man, you have no idea how happy
(07:58):
that makes me to hear that. My high school principal said,
my influence on folks is what led to the great
explosion in shop during my agri class. He didn't know
it was actually me that did it, but Johnny Nolan did,
so did Greg Hayes, Richard Bickers, and a whole crew
(08:19):
of other folks who watched me do it and never
said a word. I owe them a debt of gratitude,
and to you as well for sharing your story. Thanks
Pardner mentioned puppies around my house two months ago, and
(08:40):
the smiling and giggling from Alexis and Bailey was a
symphony of happiness and anticipation. Now, as I stand on
the patio listening to Alexis, tell me in no uncertain terms,
how my puppy has her backyard looking like a scene
out of a Mad Max movie. We're all wondering if
(09:00):
this was such a good idea. I get to picking
stuff up and she walks back inside. Now thirty minutes later,
I'm back in the house and she's out sunning on
the patio talking to the soul culprit in all of
that backyard bedlam, like she's an angel, as she pets
and loves on that floppyared monkey like it never happened.
(09:23):
I forget to make up the bed and I'm in
trouble for a week. Such is the life I live,
and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Jesse, our seven
month old tree and walker puppy, is here, at least
for a while. If she can hold up her into
the bargain and start treading coons eventually, that's the big question.
(09:44):
Will she be able to do this on her own
and to the standard of which I expect. Now, I'm
not nearly as particular as my good friend Michael Rosemund,
and he will tell you himself. He's hard to please,
but he doesn't have to say it because I remind
him of it all the time. Michael expects a lot
out of his dogs because in the arena that he
(10:05):
competes in, speed and accuracy are critical to success. Here's
an example. If he turns his dog Heck out, and
he strikes a coon, which means he starts barking as
he moves through the woods and trailing the scent. And
in ten minutes he comes tree and we walk to
that tree and see the coon looking back at us.
(10:26):
Michael tries to figure out why Heck didn't do that
in nine minutes instead of ten. Now, why would one
minute matter one way or the other? Well, in a
time to competition where the dog scores are all relative
to the clock, it makes a big difference. Dogs are
scored on different things, but the main two are who
(10:48):
barks first and who trees first, just on the score
relating to the dog's tree. And if they happen to
both tree on the same tree, meaning they are both saying, hey,
there's a coon up here, the difference between tree and
first and being one second behind the first dog is
fifty points. If that dog barks second on that tree
(11:11):
a minute after the first one does, the second tree
drops in value dramatically. And that's why a dog that
runs in a pack or likes to be with others
when hunting usually doesn't make for a good competition dog
independent lone wolf hounds are always more desirable. Michael's not
(11:32):
being unbearable, well, not about how his dog hunts. His
total disdain for coffee is often perplexing, but how that
dog strikes trails and trees of coon and the speed
in which it does are imported in competition, and that
all starts when they're puppies. Michael has a littermate, a
sister to Jesse, and he hasn't even named it yet.
(11:54):
We took him both out the other night for the
first time, and I said, what's her name? Michael said,
she didn't have one. He's had it for the same
amount of time I've had mine. We picked them up
on the same day mine had a name. When I
found out I was getting one six weeks before I
got her, I asked him why he had named her.
He had Mike, I said, I don't want to waste
(12:15):
a good name on a sorry dog if she don't
turn out. I get it. It's probably why I thought
my name was to go get Firewood until I was
about eight. Anyway, just like Jeremy Sullivan, Billy Coleman, and yours,
truly training starts the day you bring them home. I
(12:36):
admit that Jeremy and Billy may have started a little early,
but I can't argue with either his result, especially Jeremy's,
because his were real, while Billy's was a pigurement of
mister wilson Rawl's imagination. But training does start, and it's
the assimilation of that puppy into the new world away
from where for the last eight weeks it's called one
(12:58):
place home. Jesse's learning curve has been mostly a flat
line and somewhat disappointing. And when we got Whaling, he
was six months old and as chill as a dog
can be. It's unfair to compare the two, because, like people,
dogs are different. There's a difference in my brothers and me,
and the reason I have two older ones is because
(13:20):
my parents stopped after finally getting the right combination of
brains and beauty. At least that's what I was told.
Whaling wasn't much of a cher and Jesse would make
a beaver jealous. She's noted up enough stuff around my
house that I've laid in bed at night imagining where
I put the beaver traps to catch her. Allow me
(13:41):
to give you a partial list. The back door ruged,
the old one and the new one. The flap over
her doghouse entrance, the air conditioner cord for her doghouse,
the extension cord to the air conditioner to her doghouse,
the cover from my blackstone grill, the sealed tub of
grilling supplies the contents of the sealed tuble grilling supplies,
(14:03):
the cover for my camp chef grill, the water holes nozzle,
the outside driver vent. I could go on, but I won't.
All you folks that are picking up your phones to
text her post that the dog is bored. Trust me,
I know this. Telling me that youngster is bored and
looking for things to occupy her time by chewing instead
(14:25):
of twiddling her non existent thumbs would be like me
meeting Noah and trying to describe to him how bad
the great flood was. He was there, just like I
am here, bearing witness to the buffoonery that seems to
abound wherever my associates lay their heads. I know she's bored.
I also know she's a puppy, and this two shell pass.
(14:50):
The tricky part in training puppies is it's like planting
apple trees. Takes a while before the apple started making Now.
My better analogy is how I described to Alexis yesterday
while we stood on the back patio and did a
bomb damage assessment on the battlefield we used to call
the backyard. Training a coonhound to be a coon dog
(15:10):
is going on a journey. You know where you want
to go. You want to go to coon dog Land,
the mystical place where coons stirred right at dark, Possums,
ticks and mosquitoes don't live, and there are no leaves
on the trees year round. Bad thing is there's no
map on how to get there, and the compass you
(15:31):
have is powered only by patience. You'll hear me refer
to these dogs as coonhounds and coon dogs. They are
two different things. A coon hound is a word that
describes a particular set of hounds specifically bred for the
purpose of treeing coons. A coon dog is a title
(15:53):
a title given to a coonhound that can go strike
the center of a coon, trail it to a tree
and bark until you get there. To the houndsman, purest
all coonhounds aren't coon dogs, but all coon dogs are coonhounds.
Now that statement will raise questions and opinions on which
(16:13):
breed is best, and have folks saying, well, I've got
a half poodle and a half Shetley pony that will
treat coons as good as any pure bread hound on
the planet. And that may be true, but that ain't
no coon dog. That's a half poodle and half Shetland
that trees coons. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I
just live by them. But I stand in support of
(16:35):
you and whatever creature you used to chase coons, regardless
of what it is. It's just that, like Doc Holiday,
my hypocrisy only goes so far. So on July the twelfth,
I left matter than a mashed cat wailing the wonderhound
at home with Alexis and loaded Jesse for her first outing.
(16:56):
Since I brought her home and literally unleashed her un
a bashed calamity on our property and happiness. I expected
nothing fruitful or even remotely satisfying, and anticipated a steady
den of barking from the dog boxes. I made my
way to Michael's house to pick him Heck, and Jesse's
sister or what's her name up. Not one people was made.
(17:20):
I pulled into Michaels and he had his two ready
to load, and in short order we were making our
way toward our first evaluation of the sisters. We'd invested
money in to see if the investment of time would
be worth the expenditure. Adding two dogs to the box
didn't even register a sound from Jesse. We stopped for
gas and Michael pe in the dog box, expecting to
(17:43):
see terrified and cowering eight month old pups. They were
just chilling, no worries. All right, so far, so good.
We arrived at our hunting spot, unloaded the side be side,
transferred all three from the dog created my truck to
the one on the side by side, and outside of
Michael's pups slobbering all over Heck, from the experience of
(18:05):
the trip, neither one got sick or messed in the box.
Now that's a marking the plus column. Before we even
get started, we drove down the river levee and spotted
a coon. Pretty quickly we cut them all loose at
the same time, and Heck wended the coon and started
treeing in short order. Now we ignored the pups, who
had no idea what was going on, but I'm sure
(18:28):
were interested in not only all the new sights and
smells in location with the added element of darkness, but
could sense our excitement and praising of Heck, whose attention
was loudly focused on treating that coon. The pups eventually
made their way over and smelled on the ground where
we'd first seen the coon, which was only a few
(18:49):
feet from the where Heck was treeing him. Now I
watched him as they showed interest in every aspect of
what was going on, even though they had no idea
what it was. We praised Heck and loaded them all
up and changed locations to a pasture edge where we
strike a lot of coons in a shallow slough that
floods out into the field. Heck struck right away and
(19:11):
was off. The grass was much shorter here, and the
puffs moved all over creation with their noses on the
ground and in and out of the water. Jesse poked
her head in the water up to her eyeballs two
or three different times, and moved around with purpose, sometimes
fifty or more yards away. The Heck treed that coon
across the levee on the flooded timber and we changed
(19:31):
locations again. This time we moved to the edge of
a big cornfield that bordered a big old cypress swamp.
Ground zero for coons to be operating between their dens
and one of their favorite meals, free fresh corner on
the cop. I admit it's one of my favorites too.
This was a great place to see if they would
(19:53):
venture all further away from us. The border between the
swamp and and the cornfield was a sand farm road
that the coons would have to cross from woods to
the corn patch, back and forth. We walked the pups
and Heck down the road away from the side of
the side, and we cut them loose, and the Heck
left like he was late for work, like he always does,
(20:13):
And at one time the pupps ventured out about two
hundred and fifty yards down that road in front of us.
Heck was working a track out and swamping. They were
just meling around, doing their own thing and seeing what
they could find. They never made a sound, they never
acted like they had a clue what was going on,
But they didn't hang around us looking timid, sad, scared,
(20:35):
or like they wanted to be somewhere else. Those are
all positives, and in the puppy training world, you look
for the positives and work off of those. It's repetition
and positive reinforcement that wins this race, along with being
patient enough to know the dogs like people learned at
(20:55):
different spins by matching our expectations, how that individual dog
soaps in the lessons we're trying to get across teaches
us just as much as we teach them. It's up
to us to recognize the pace at which both of
these things happen and realize that if that hound doesn't
(21:16):
get what we're trying to get across to him, it
may not be their inability to learn, It may be
our inability to teach. Some are natural and instinctive learners,
and really the only job we have is to tell
them what we don't want them to do. That was
wailing for me, and it will spoil you to dogs
(21:37):
that require more patience and time. Will Jesse turn out
to be that way, Well, you're gonna find out what
I do. This is going to be our project, Jesse,
this Country Life Coonhound project, and I'm gonna take you
with me and keep you updated as we go along.
I think it'll be fun to mark her progression or
(21:59):
lack of as we attempt to navigate from the coon
Hound coon Dog. It's gonna be fun. Thank y'all so
much for listening, and my goodness, y'all are snatching those
this Country Life hats and t shirts up like biscuits
at breakfast. I thank you so much for the support
and encourage you to snag yours sooner than later they
(22:20):
tell me they're going out the door faster than they're
coming in until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Y'all be careful.
Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
I want you to stay a while as I share
my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented
by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you
the best outdoor podcast the airwaves have to offer. All right, friends,
(00:28):
grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
stories to share. Jesse goes to school. I've got a
new project to work on, a living breathing chew up
the patio furniture, long eared tree, and walker coonhound puppy
(00:50):
named Jesse. One of my favorite things to do is
training a young dog, and at times it can be
somewhat frustrated. The ultimate rewards are reaped long after the
process begins. You never know when you start working with
a puppy where you'll end up, or if you'll even
get to where you're wanting to go. I got a
(01:11):
lot of stuff to talk about, but first I'm going
to tell you a story. This story comes from this
Country Life listener to Jeremy Sullivan. Jeremy's from Wicksburg, Alabama.
Jeremy Sading this story a few weeks ago, and it
(01:32):
fits perfectly with what we're talking about this week. So
Jeremy's words in my voice, here we go. I didn't
grow up coon hunting, though I did grow up fishing
and hunting for other game. Was fifteen years old. My
brother said, put your boots on, I want to take
(01:54):
you coon hunt, and we went to the home of
an older man who had two sons that were just
a couple of years younger than meat. This man's coonhound
started barking as soon as we got there. There were
two English bulldogs loosing the yard that came up to
greet us too. Introductions were made, and soon after we
loaded up the hounds and headed out. We drove down
(02:15):
the dirt road about a mile and turned the dogs loose,
and they took off and disappeared into the darkness. Not
long after they left us, they treed. We'd only turned
out two dogs, but we could plainly hear more dogs
barking at the tree. I couldn't figure out where the
other dogs came from, but the boys we were hunt
(02:37):
with didn't pay any attention to it. I didn't say
a word. I just followed along, excited to be there,
and couldn't wait to get to the tree. Finally we
got there and the two walker hounds had a coon tree.
They were barking like crazy, and right beside them were
those two English bulldogs from the yard, treading just as
(02:58):
hard as they were. That was my first introduction to
coon hunting. I loved every minute of it. My brother
enjoyed it, but not as much as I did. And
when I was sixteen, I kept going with those guys
as long as I could, and one day the old
man called me to his house. He had a litter
of pups that were just winged, and he said, since
(03:19):
you've been hunting with us, I'm going to give you
the pick of the litter. I knew nothing about picking
out a coonhound pup. The only thing I knew was
that I needed a dog that would pay attention if
I was going to be able to train it to hunt.
I walked up to the kennel and squeaked my lips
and one little female perked her ears up and she
(03:41):
looked at me. She was the one. This was not
only my first coon dog, but it was the first
dog that was really mine. We had bird dogs, but
this dog belonged to me. I put her in the
front seat of the truck and I took her on
and I took her back with me. Later that same night,
(04:03):
when we met up to go hunting, we treed and
killed a coon. I cut the tail off of that
coon and told the boys I was about to start
training her, and they laughed at me, saying she's too young.
I started playing with her with that tail, just like
you'd play with any puppy with a toy. And I
told one of them to hold her, and I poured
(04:23):
a little bit of water on that tail, and I
drug it around the other side of the truck and
I put it on top of the tire, and then
I told him to let her go. She put her
nose to the ground. She followed that scent and got
up on that tire, looking at the tail. She never barked,
But I knew then that I really had something to
work with. I knew nothing about training the dog, but
(04:46):
I had watched the dogs hunting in the woods. I'd
seen Billy Coleman drag a hide for his red Bones
in the movie Where the Red Fern Grows. So every
day when I got home from school, I would drag
a hide into the woods and put it up a tree.
Then I would let my pup Abby trail it and
trea it. That didn't take her long to get the
(05:06):
hang of it. She never barked while she trailed it,
and rarely barked on the tree. She would just get
up on the tree and stare at it, and I
would try to sack her up by yelling, speak to him,
have you and she would bark a few times, and
I would praise her for it. When she was six
months old, we turned her and two other dogs loose
(05:26):
one night. Initially she stayed around the truck, but eventually
she moved off into the edge of the woods. The
two other dogs treed and we walked to the tree.
I tried to call her to the tree when we
were there, but she never came. We found that coon,
headed back and loaded the dogs back in the truck,
and I called and called trying to find her, but
(05:47):
she wouldn't come. I was starting to worry, and then
I remembered when she trees a drag, she doesn't bark much.
Maybe she's treed. I told the boys I thought she
was treating aft and said, well, it sure doesn't sound
like it. And I started yelling, speak to him, mabbe,
speak to him, and she started barking about one hundred
(06:09):
and fifty yards into the woods. We walked a bit
and I'd yell again, and she'd bark once or twice
more and then hush. We repeated this until we made
it to her and shot in the tree. We found
six kitten coons. Those boys had laughed at me about
my dog twice now, but this time they were really
eating crow. I supposed the South put the kittens up
(06:33):
and tried to draw the dogs away from them, and
the old dogs treed the South, and my dog treed
the kittens, and from that night forward she was an excellent,
very accurate coon dog. She also barked on the tree
after that night, and I hunted five to seven nights
per week all through high school, which kept me out
(06:53):
of all the trouble that my classmates got into. Abby
lived for fourteen years and gave me my friends and
family many wonderful nights in the woods. And after she died,
I moved twice and it wasn't practical for me to
own another coon dog. But after Brent Reeves started this
(07:15):
Country Live podcast and kept talking about coon hunting. It
reignited a fire deep in my soul. Last week, me,
my wife, and my four kids drove three hours to
pick up a walker Pumpy. It's time my kids got
to experience the passion for coon hunting that I once had.
(07:36):
Thanks Brent for your unknown pride to get me back
in the night woods, and for the many wonderful memories
that my family is about to enjoy together. And according
to Jeremy Sullivan of Wicksburg, Alabama, that's just how that happened.
Jeremy and my man, you have no idea how happy
(07:58):
that makes me to hear that. My high school principal said,
my influence on folks is what led to the great
explosion in shop during my agri class. He didn't know
it was actually me that did it, but Johnny Nolan did,
so did Greg Hayes, Richard Bickers, and a whole crew
(08:19):
of other folks who watched me do it and never
said a word. I owe them a debt of gratitude,
and to you as well for sharing your story. Thanks
Pardner mentioned puppies around my house two months ago, and
(08:40):
the smiling and giggling from Alexis and Bailey was a
symphony of happiness and anticipation. Now, as I stand on
the patio listening to Alexis, tell me in no uncertain terms,
how my puppy has her backyard looking like a scene
out of a Mad Max movie. We're all wondering if
(09:00):
this was such a good idea. I get to picking
stuff up and she walks back inside. Now thirty minutes later,
I'm back in the house and she's out sunning on
the patio talking to the soul culprit in all of
that backyard bedlam, like she's an angel, as she pets
and loves on that floppyared monkey like it never happened.
(09:23):
I forget to make up the bed and I'm in
trouble for a week. Such is the life I live,
and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Jesse, our seven
month old tree and walker puppy, is here, at least
for a while. If she can hold up her into
the bargain and start treading coons eventually, that's the big question.
(09:44):
Will she be able to do this on her own
and to the standard of which I expect. Now, I'm
not nearly as particular as my good friend Michael Rosemund,
and he will tell you himself. He's hard to please,
but he doesn't have to say it because I remind
him of it all the time. Michael expects a lot
out of his dogs because in the arena that he
(10:05):
competes in, speed and accuracy are critical to success. Here's
an example. If he turns his dog Heck out, and
he strikes a coon, which means he starts barking as
he moves through the woods and trailing the scent. And
in ten minutes he comes tree and we walk to
that tree and see the coon looking back at us.
(10:26):
Michael tries to figure out why Heck didn't do that
in nine minutes instead of ten. Now, why would one
minute matter one way or the other? Well, in a
time to competition where the dog scores are all relative
to the clock, it makes a big difference. Dogs are
scored on different things, but the main two are who
(10:48):
barks first and who trees first, just on the score
relating to the dog's tree. And if they happen to
both tree on the same tree, meaning they are both saying, hey,
there's a coon up here, the difference between tree and
first and being one second behind the first dog is
fifty points. If that dog barks second on that tree
(11:11):
a minute after the first one does, the second tree
drops in value dramatically. And that's why a dog that
runs in a pack or likes to be with others
when hunting usually doesn't make for a good competition dog
independent lone wolf hounds are always more desirable. Michael's not
(11:32):
being unbearable, well, not about how his dog hunts. His
total disdain for coffee is often perplexing, but how that
dog strikes trails and trees of coon and the speed
in which it does are imported in competition, and that
all starts when they're puppies. Michael has a littermate, a
sister to Jesse, and he hasn't even named it yet.
(11:54):
We took him both out the other night for the
first time, and I said, what's her name? Michael said,
she didn't have one. He's had it for the same
amount of time I've had mine. We picked them up
on the same day mine had a name. When I
found out I was getting one six weeks before I
got her, I asked him why he had named her.
He had Mike, I said, I don't want to waste
(12:15):
a good name on a sorry dog if she don't
turn out. I get it. It's probably why I thought
my name was to go get Firewood until I was
about eight. Anyway, just like Jeremy Sullivan, Billy Coleman, and yours,
truly training starts the day you bring them home. I
(12:36):
admit that Jeremy and Billy may have started a little early,
but I can't argue with either his result, especially Jeremy's,
because his were real, while Billy's was a pigurement of
mister wilson Rawl's imagination. But training does start, and it's
the assimilation of that puppy into the new world away
from where for the last eight weeks it's called one
(12:58):
place home. Jesse's learning curve has been mostly a flat
line and somewhat disappointing. And when we got Whaling, he
was six months old and as chill as a dog
can be. It's unfair to compare the two, because, like people,
dogs are different. There's a difference in my brothers and me,
and the reason I have two older ones is because
(13:20):
my parents stopped after finally getting the right combination of
brains and beauty. At least that's what I was told.
Whaling wasn't much of a cher and Jesse would make
a beaver jealous. She's noted up enough stuff around my
house that I've laid in bed at night imagining where
I put the beaver traps to catch her. Allow me
(13:41):
to give you a partial list. The back door ruged,
the old one and the new one. The flap over
her doghouse entrance, the air conditioner cord for her doghouse,
the extension cord to the air conditioner to her doghouse,
the cover from my blackstone grill, the sealed tub of
grilling supplies the contents of the sealed tuble grilling supplies,
(14:03):
the cover for my camp chef grill, the water holes nozzle,
the outside driver vent. I could go on, but I won't.
All you folks that are picking up your phones to
text her post that the dog is bored. Trust me,
I know this. Telling me that youngster is bored and
looking for things to occupy her time by chewing instead
(14:25):
of twiddling her non existent thumbs would be like me
meeting Noah and trying to describe to him how bad
the great flood was. He was there, just like I
am here, bearing witness to the buffoonery that seems to
abound wherever my associates lay their heads. I know she's bored.
I also know she's a puppy, and this two shell pass.
(14:50):
The tricky part in training puppies is it's like planting
apple trees. Takes a while before the apple started making Now.
My better analogy is how I described to Alexis yesterday
while we stood on the back patio and did a
bomb damage assessment on the battlefield we used to call
the backyard. Training a coonhound to be a coon dog
(15:10):
is going on a journey. You know where you want
to go. You want to go to coon dog Land,
the mystical place where coons stirred right at dark, Possums,
ticks and mosquitoes don't live, and there are no leaves
on the trees year round. Bad thing is there's no
map on how to get there, and the compass you
(15:31):
have is powered only by patience. You'll hear me refer
to these dogs as coonhounds and coon dogs. They are
two different things. A coon hound is a word that
describes a particular set of hounds specifically bred for the
purpose of treeing coons. A coon dog is a title
(15:53):
a title given to a coonhound that can go strike
the center of a coon, trail it to a tree
and bark until you get there. To the houndsman, purest
all coonhounds aren't coon dogs, but all coon dogs are coonhounds.
Now that statement will raise questions and opinions on which
(16:13):
breed is best, and have folks saying, well, I've got
a half poodle and a half Shetley pony that will
treat coons as good as any pure bread hound on
the planet. And that may be true, but that ain't
no coon dog. That's a half poodle and half Shetland
that trees coons. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I
just live by them. But I stand in support of
(16:35):
you and whatever creature you used to chase coons, regardless
of what it is. It's just that, like Doc Holiday,
my hypocrisy only goes so far. So on July the twelfth,
I left matter than a mashed cat wailing the wonderhound
at home with Alexis and loaded Jesse for her first outing.
(16:56):
Since I brought her home and literally unleashed her un
a bashed calamity on our property and happiness. I expected
nothing fruitful or even remotely satisfying, and anticipated a steady
den of barking from the dog boxes. I made my
way to Michael's house to pick him Heck, and Jesse's
sister or what's her name up. Not one people was made.
(17:20):
I pulled into Michaels and he had his two ready
to load, and in short order we were making our
way toward our first evaluation of the sisters. We'd invested
money in to see if the investment of time would
be worth the expenditure. Adding two dogs to the box
didn't even register a sound from Jesse. We stopped for
gas and Michael pe in the dog box, expecting to
(17:43):
see terrified and cowering eight month old pups. They were
just chilling, no worries. All right, so far, so good.
We arrived at our hunting spot, unloaded the side be side,
transferred all three from the dog created my truck to
the one on the side by side, and outside of
Michael's pups slobbering all over Heck, from the experience of
(18:05):
the trip, neither one got sick or messed in the box.
Now that's a marking the plus column. Before we even
get started, we drove down the river levee and spotted
a coon. Pretty quickly we cut them all loose at
the same time, and Heck wended the coon and started
treeing in short order. Now we ignored the pups, who
had no idea what was going on, but I'm sure
(18:28):
were interested in not only all the new sights and
smells in location with the added element of darkness, but
could sense our excitement and praising of Heck, whose attention
was loudly focused on treating that coon. The pups eventually
made their way over and smelled on the ground where
we'd first seen the coon, which was only a few
(18:49):
feet from the where Heck was treeing him. Now I
watched him as they showed interest in every aspect of
what was going on, even though they had no idea
what it was. We praised Heck and loaded them all
up and changed locations to a pasture edge where we
strike a lot of coons in a shallow slough that
floods out into the field. Heck struck right away and
(19:11):
was off. The grass was much shorter here, and the
puffs moved all over creation with their noses on the
ground and in and out of the water. Jesse poked
her head in the water up to her eyeballs two
or three different times, and moved around with purpose, sometimes
fifty or more yards away. The Heck treed that coon
across the levee on the flooded timber and we changed
(19:31):
locations again. This time we moved to the edge of
a big cornfield that bordered a big old cypress swamp.
Ground zero for coons to be operating between their dens
and one of their favorite meals, free fresh corner on
the cop. I admit it's one of my favorites too.
This was a great place to see if they would
(19:53):
venture all further away from us. The border between the
swamp and and the cornfield was a sand farm road
that the coons would have to cross from woods to
the corn patch, back and forth. We walked the pups
and Heck down the road away from the side of
the side, and we cut them loose, and the Heck
left like he was late for work, like he always does,
(20:13):
And at one time the pupps ventured out about two
hundred and fifty yards down that road in front of us.
Heck was working a track out and swamping. They were
just meling around, doing their own thing and seeing what
they could find. They never made a sound, they never
acted like they had a clue what was going on,
But they didn't hang around us looking timid, sad, scared,
(20:35):
or like they wanted to be somewhere else. Those are
all positives, and in the puppy training world, you look
for the positives and work off of those. It's repetition
and positive reinforcement that wins this race, along with being
patient enough to know the dogs like people learned at
(20:55):
different spins by matching our expectations, how that individual dog
soaps in the lessons we're trying to get across teaches
us just as much as we teach them. It's up
to us to recognize the pace at which both of
these things happen and realize that if that hound doesn't
(21:16):
get what we're trying to get across to him, it
may not be their inability to learn, It may be
our inability to teach. Some are natural and instinctive learners,
and really the only job we have is to tell
them what we don't want them to do. That was
wailing for me, and it will spoil you to dogs
(21:37):
that require more patience and time. Will Jesse turn out
to be that way, Well, you're gonna find out what
I do. This is going to be our project, Jesse,
this Country Life Coonhound project, and I'm gonna take you
with me and keep you updated as we go along.
I think it'll be fun to mark her progression or
(21:59):
lack of as we attempt to navigate from the coon
Hound coon Dog. It's gonna be fun. Thank y'all so
much for listening, and my goodness, y'all are snatching those
this Country Life hats and t shirts up like biscuits
at breakfast. I thank you so much for the support
and encourage you to snag yours sooner than later they
(22:20):
tell me they're going out the door faster than they're
coming in until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Y'all be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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