October 8, 2025 • 17 mins
This week, Tony breaks down some of the sneaky ways an upland road trip can break bad for you and your dogs, and how to avoid them.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about road trips
in search of hunting adventure with our four legged counterparts.
How to make them go smoothly because sometimes they don't.
Tis the season to load up the pups and point
your truck somewhere wild and birdy. This month, all kinds
(00:24):
of upland and waterfall seasons will open up, and a
hell of a lot of us will head out somewhere
for a little feathery adventure. Some of us won't have
a good time, though, and that might be because of just
like little issues, or it might be because something goes
catastrophically wrong, which is obviously no bueno. But a lot
of what goes wrong could be preemptively avoided. You have
(00:46):
to know how. That's what I'm going to talk about
right now. There are two things that I've done a
lot for my writing career. Done a lot of traveling.
I've done a lot of camping, often together, as you
can imagine, since I wasn't just chilling in my backyard
in a tent. I don't know how to frame this
(01:08):
up any other way, but to highlight what a lot
means to me. In the context of camping and traveling,
I'll say this, I average driving about twenty five thousand
miles a year, and since I work from home, there
is no work commute in the mix. It's mostly miles
for some kind of over the road trip on the
camping front, which has thankfully slowed down a lot in
recent years. I might spend anywhere from about ten to
(01:31):
twenty twenty five days in a tent, but it used
to be around forty to fifty for quite a few years.
And let me tell you that the novelty of tent
life wears off pretty quickly when you start hitting some
big numbers there. Now, in case you're wondering, none of
that was glamping Kardashian style.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All of that is.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
To say that I feel like I'm well equipped to
talk about the pitfalls of travel in many forms, and
quite a bit of my over the road time involves
taking my dog somewhere, you know, which is track with
an asterisk. You might be thinking about this very thing
right now, considering that upland and waterfall seasons are opening
up like crazy, and sometimes travel is not just a
(02:09):
means to a unique experience, but a true coping mechanism
to facilitate hunting that you can no longer get close
to home for some reason.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
There are a lot of.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Reasons to head out on the road. So let's start
with something that needs to be said. Do you need
to travel with your dog to shoot some birds?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Probably not. A lot of people have no desire. And
that's great.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Some people, and I know this to be true because
they reach out to me a lot love the idea
of traveling somewhere to hunt some birds, but are hung
up on actually making it happen. There is nothing to
say to them, but either you know, get over it
or don't. But it's best to get over it and
just take the plunge. I think a good way to
look at life, and you know, in this particular instance
(02:48):
life with a dog is to think about if your
dog could talk, and if it could and you said, hey, buddy,
you want to head over to Kansas to try to
shoot some roosters and quail. What do you think that
dog would say? You think that dog would go? I
don't know what if the truck breaks down, or the
weather sucks, or the birds just start as thick as
we like them, you know, And we drive all the
(03:08):
way for roosters, and we could just buy them at
the game farm down the road.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
No, your dog's not gonna say that.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Your dog is going to say hell yes and then
run straight through the wall like the kool aid Man.
The biggest hang up that hunters usually have when they
hit this contemplation stage is an obvious one. Where should
I hunt? The thing about this is we always try
to default to what should be easy, what should be
(03:35):
you know, a sure thing for success? That lodge in
South Dakota that promises pheasant limits without hardly burning a calorie,
Or the quail hunt in the southeast somewhere where the
covees all contain familiar birds, and the whole thing isn't
a foregone conclusion, but is so close you might not
be able to tell the difference. Should you do those hunts? Honestly,
I don't care you do you boo? I just think
(03:57):
that a lot of people don't want to do those
hunts for a variety of reasons. I'll tell you a
few of mine, since no one asked. I don't want
to hunt with strangers ever, not even a little bit.
In fact, if you said you have to hunt pheasants
with two strangers for an hour, or choose option B,
which is a cattle prod to your junk pile for
(04:17):
an hour while we shoot you with paintballs. I'd have
to seriously consider it. There is also the cost factor,
which can't be ignored, and of course the reality that
some people just want to forge their own path and
spend time walking behind their dog and letting the whole
thing play out without outside influence. Count me in that camp,
and if you are too, you're still going to be like, well,
(04:38):
where the hell should I hunt now? I'm not going
to break this down as granular as I could, but
let me say this, there are a hell of a
lot of birds out there on public land in the
hell of a lot of different states. If you understand
the basics about what birds should need as far as
cover and food, and you have on X on your phone,
you're pretty close to where you need to be already,
well sort of. I guess what a lot of people
(05:00):
don't get as this, especially you know if they're used
to hunting private land or have years of experience on
properties that they know close to their house, is this
is going to take some work to get on the
birds on the road.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It just will. But that's okay. That's the best part
for a lot of.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Folks, because when your dog does flush some sharpies or
woodcock or whatever in an unfamiliar environment, that feeling is
pretty damn sweet. But you have to get over the
intimidation factor. How I did it was by being too
stubborn and stupid to not believe what I would eventually
find something. No matter where I traveled with my dogs,
you know what, it almost always worked, even on trips.
(05:36):
It took a while to get the old engine turned over,
it eventually did, and some birds hit the ground and
things turned positive after enough miles and enough head scratching.
The main thing here is that you will hear a
lot of people say that traveling to wherever isn't worth
it because there aren't any birds left on public land
here or there or whatever. Those people are probably woefully misinformed,
(05:57):
even if they speak with a lot of confidence. I
see this constantly with birds. I see it with deer
in Western game and fishing opportunities and everything. Most people
are either just lying to gatekeeping opportunity or they genuinely
don't know. I guess the main thing that puts me
on birds in these situations. Besides, just going is not
believing what I hear from people or what I read
(06:19):
on forms or whatever. A lot of hunters aren't all
that into putting in real work to find birds, and
a lot of those hunters think they know what's going on,
but they don't, and if you listen to them, you're
gonna get a false read on the situation. You got
to believe that the birds are out there for you,
because they are, and if you can't find them.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
You just got to switch things up.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
This is mostly a matter of doing what other hunters
don't or won't, and that might mean hiking farther huntings,
thicker cover, hunting during the week and not the weekends.
There are many ways to skin the old cat here.
Now there's another aspect of e scouting that you should
consider as well. Before you head into new ground. Pay
attention to the property and whether it borders a busy
(07:00):
road on the backside, which could be a potential danger,
and look for homesteads around it where your dog might
grab the attention of a farm dog that doesn't take
too kindly to a stranger coming into his territory. We
get focused on identifying the most birdy looking spots, but
it's also a good idea to pay attention to the
danger zones you can identify and then plan your routes accordingly.
(07:21):
This is just a small warning, but the important part
is to understand that you can find good hunting spots
on your phone, and if you do, you'll have a
pattern to run wherever you are, which is a pre
fricking suite. So okay, that hype song is played out.
(07:45):
Now you might be thinking about what could go wrong
on your trip, and.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
There is a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You could get a flat tire, which means you should
have some fix a flat and a workable spare, and
of course the knowledge on how to change a tire.
I guess all simple easy preparation stuff there that sort
of that's the tone for this whole thing. But what
about this? Your dog could get sick? This one is calmon.
It's almost always due to a couple of different things.
Your dog could, for example, drink some water that doesn't
(08:10):
agree with it, which if you've ever gotten Manazuma's revenge
in Mexico, you understand I did once back in my
drinking days. And let me tell you something. When it
hits and you're sleeping, You're going to wake up real
fast and you'll be real happy that your hotel room
has tile floors and that your wife is a heavy sleeper. Anyway,
they might also you eat something on the road that
(08:32):
makes your dog sick too, roadkill or three day old
sandwich in the alley behind the hotel.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You just never know.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And if you've ever eaten anything that gave you food poisoning,
like maybe at a Christmas party for your work in college,
and then you know the next day you have a
very embarrassing situation happen in a larger grocery store, you
know what I mean. But the main reason for dogs
getting sick on the road is just stress. Sometimes you
can't avoid the water or the road killed that it
finds or whatever, but stress is a big one. Some
(09:00):
dogs travel well, some don't. The first key to this,
to avoiding it anyway, is just to have a healthy
dog going into the journey, one that is fit, well fed,
well hydrated, and just generally doing pretty well health wise.
That's a good state to keep your dogs in anyway,
but can really be an asset when you decide to
(09:21):
put five hundred miles in the rearview mirror and hunt
with them for four or five days. There is another
aspect of taking dogs down the road that we don't
often think of, but we probably should. That ties into
health sleep. I'd say my number one issue with my
personal travel is that there are very few trips I
take where I'll sleep better on the road than I
would at home. The motel life or the tent life
(09:42):
or the lodge life is generally not conducive to totally
restorative sleep for us. Now imagine it from your dog's perspective.
They don't know where they're going. They will usually be
hyped to the max because that's their default mode, but
that comes at a cost. I kept my older lab
in pretty good shaper whole life, but one thing I
could never figure out was how to get her to
relax when we took off on our trips. This only
(10:05):
got worse. So she started to figure out that we
might be going on a bird hunting trip. She'd watch
me pack and then be anxious, panting, pacing all night long.
Part of that was anticipation of a hunt, I think,
but part of it was her watching me pack for
a trip she might not get to go on, which
happened a lot and stressed her out more than anything else,
(10:26):
you know, the old separation anxiety. I ended up having
to pack either the morning of the trip or figure
out a way to keep it a secret from her.
I'm sure there are trainers who will listen to that,
who will slap their foreheads in disgust. But by the
time I figured out what was going on, it felt
like it was too late to untie that knot.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So I did the best I could.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I do know that if Luna had not a great
night of sleep, you know she was all keyed up,
or you know, on that drive hours and hours where
she was just running a little bit hotter because she
knew where we were going, that I would eventually see
her energy level flo flag not too deep into the trip.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Add in motel rooms or the tent life that not
only keeps us restless and awake, but keeps a dog
restless and awake, and you have the recipe for a
dog that gases out way too early on a trip. Now,
this is where our beliefs about dogs often don't jive
with reality. They are athletes in a way that's hard
for us to understand, but they're also living, breathing creatures
(11:25):
that have similar biological needs like we do. One of
the things I learned after starting to work out a
lot is that a bad night of sleep for me
won't affect me much the day after, but two days
later it definitely will. I don't know if that's standard
or unique to me, but I know that I feel
it at the gym or during a run. It's palpable.
Your dog might only get, you know, eighty percent or
(11:46):
fifty percent of the sleep it's used to getting at home,
and that's going to change things. Then it comes down
to realistic energy management and trying to find ways to
facilitate better sleep. Little things like a noise machine app
on your phone to override the noise of other people
in your hotel opening and closing doors and talking in
the hallways. And if you're in a place with a
lot of hunters other dogs barking.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
That can help a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
If you can feed them on the same schedule you
feed them at home and let them out for a
pee break at the same times, that can help. Structure
is good for dogs, and sticking to the routine as
much as possible, you know, as long as it's reasonable
on the road just helps, but it's also just our
responsibility to read our dogs too. If on day four
you're exhausted, think about them. Maybe you don't need to
(12:33):
go from start to finish that day, burning it up
during every minute illegal shooting hours. Instead, maybe you should
just sleep in and keep it relaxed and head out
at noon or want. I've started doing this when my
dogs are burned up, and it's an absolute game changer
for pheasant hunting. Instead of getting a couple hours of
energy and then a lot of hours of a slow burn,
I can get a smaller window of really good energy
(12:55):
out of my dogs when I want it the most
in the afternoon and not continually burn my dogs to
the ground. Look, it's not ideal because a lot of
us don't really want to waste time not hunting when
we're on a hunting trip. But it's also not fair
to ask too much of them because they generally will
try to deliver and they'll generally fail, as we all
would if the roles were reversed.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Well.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Lastly, it pays to remember that your dog will feed
off of your energy on these trips. This might sound
like woo woo bullshit, but I don't think it is,
and they neither do a lot of people who have
way more experience working with dogs. If you're stressed, they
know it. If you're frantically trying to walk out the
seventh slew of the day because you don't have a
limit yet, it's going to affect your dogs. This is
(13:39):
supposed to be a fun adventure, and it can be
exactly that, or it can be a stress filled grind
where you go into terminator mode on the fear that
you'll have to return to work on Monday and tell
your co workers that you drove all the way out
there to only kill a cup a quail or a
praier of chickens or whatever. A relaxed, calm hunter is
a hunter who will shoot more birds if for no
(14:00):
other reason than the dogs will recognize that vibe and
match it to the best of their ability. I've said
this a lot, but if you spend enough time with
dog trainers who really know their stuff, you rarely encounter
an edgy, nervous, over the top energy vibe from them. Yeah,
almost always get the opposite. They are generally pretty calm,
pretty confident, and just even keel. This is an accident
(14:24):
and it's not an act now. I honestly don't know
if it's because those types of people are drawn to
the profession or the profession molds those types of people
and weeds out the people who can't get there. Doesn't
really matter either way, but it is something we can
try to emulate when we are in a highly dynamic
environment with our dogs and everything is humming at a
little higher frequency. This is important to remember because it
(14:45):
will literally flavor your entire trip and can make it
awesome or a total suckfest, not only for you but
for your dogs. So have some fun with it. Take
your time, slow down, plan out your routes, and try
to learn from what you know the land and the
it's going to show you. It's also a good idea
to keep an open mind, especially if you go someplace
where you might be able to shoot more than one
(15:06):
species of bird. For example, I don't know how many
times I've had woodcock save a tough grouse hunt, or
how fun it has been to realize that our peasant
plans might not pan out, but that prairie chickens are
far more available than we planned. Options are good and
twitching from one bird to the other might not seem
appealing when you're planning a trip, but in the moment
(15:26):
it certainly can be. And I can promise you this.
Your dog won't care if you're having fun. They are
having fun, and there are a lot of ways to
ensure that happens. So consider this stuff if you're heading
out for a road trip this fall, and definitely consider
this if you're not heading out on a road trip
this fall, because it might be entirely possible to make
one happen. And if you do, and you anticipate some
(15:49):
of the bigger hurdles, you'll have the kind of trip
that makes you want to take more trips, and that's
good for you and your dogs. That's it for this week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support everyone here at meat Eater. We truly appreciate it.
We are nothing without you, guys, so thank you for that.
(16:11):
If you want some more hunting content, I'm talking Western,
big game, white tails, whatever the meadeater dot com has
you covered. We literally drop new content every single day.
We have really cool stuff coming out as far as films,
we have a whole podcast network that is huge. Maybe
(16:33):
you're sick of listening to Me talk or cal Talk.
You can head on over to the Bear Grease podcast
and listen to Clay teach you something about the history
of the US as it relates to coon dogs or something.
Or you can check out Brent Reeves This Country Life podcast,
which is one of my fight favorites because I love
Brent and I could listen to that dude's tell stories
all day. Maybe you just need a recipe, maybe you
(16:55):
need an article on something I don't know. I do
know that there is a health of information over at
the mediator dot com. Go check it out and thank
you again.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
H m hm
Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about road trips
in search of hunting adventure with our four legged counterparts.
How to make them go smoothly because sometimes they don't.
Tis the season to load up the pups and point
your truck somewhere wild and birdy. This month, all kinds
(00:24):
of upland and waterfall seasons will open up, and a
hell of a lot of us will head out somewhere
for a little feathery adventure. Some of us won't have
a good time, though, and that might be because of just
like little issues, or it might be because something goes
catastrophically wrong, which is obviously no bueno. But a lot
of what goes wrong could be preemptively avoided. You have
(00:46):
to know how. That's what I'm going to talk about
right now. There are two things that I've done a
lot for my writing career. Done a lot of traveling.
I've done a lot of camping, often together, as you
can imagine, since I wasn't just chilling in my backyard
in a tent. I don't know how to frame this
(01:08):
up any other way, but to highlight what a lot
means to me. In the context of camping and traveling,
I'll say this, I average driving about twenty five thousand
miles a year, and since I work from home, there
is no work commute in the mix. It's mostly miles
for some kind of over the road trip on the
camping front, which has thankfully slowed down a lot in
recent years. I might spend anywhere from about ten to
(01:31):
twenty twenty five days in a tent, but it used
to be around forty to fifty for quite a few years.
And let me tell you that the novelty of tent
life wears off pretty quickly when you start hitting some
big numbers there. Now, in case you're wondering, none of
that was glamping Kardashian style.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
All of that is.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
To say that I feel like I'm well equipped to
talk about the pitfalls of travel in many forms, and
quite a bit of my over the road time involves
taking my dog somewhere, you know, which is track with
an asterisk. You might be thinking about this very thing
right now, considering that upland and waterfall seasons are opening
up like crazy, and sometimes travel is not just a
(02:09):
means to a unique experience, but a true coping mechanism
to facilitate hunting that you can no longer get close
to home for some reason.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
There are a lot of.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Reasons to head out on the road. So let's start
with something that needs to be said. Do you need
to travel with your dog to shoot some birds?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Probably not. A lot of people have no desire. And
that's great.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Some people, and I know this to be true because
they reach out to me a lot love the idea
of traveling somewhere to hunt some birds, but are hung
up on actually making it happen. There is nothing to
say to them, but either you know, get over it
or don't. But it's best to get over it and
just take the plunge. I think a good way to
look at life, and you know, in this particular instance
(02:48):
life with a dog is to think about if your
dog could talk, and if it could and you said, hey, buddy,
you want to head over to Kansas to try to
shoot some roosters and quail. What do you think that
dog would say? You think that dog would go? I
don't know what if the truck breaks down, or the
weather sucks, or the birds just start as thick as
we like them, you know, And we drive all the
(03:08):
way for roosters, and we could just buy them at
the game farm down the road.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
No, your dog's not gonna say that.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Your dog is going to say hell yes and then
run straight through the wall like the kool aid Man.
The biggest hang up that hunters usually have when they
hit this contemplation stage is an obvious one. Where should
I hunt? The thing about this is we always try
to default to what should be easy, what should be
(03:35):
you know, a sure thing for success? That lodge in
South Dakota that promises pheasant limits without hardly burning a calorie,
Or the quail hunt in the southeast somewhere where the
covees all contain familiar birds, and the whole thing isn't
a foregone conclusion, but is so close you might not
be able to tell the difference. Should you do those hunts? Honestly,
I don't care you do you boo? I just think
(03:57):
that a lot of people don't want to do those
hunts for a variety of reasons. I'll tell you a
few of mine, since no one asked. I don't want
to hunt with strangers ever, not even a little bit.
In fact, if you said you have to hunt pheasants
with two strangers for an hour, or choose option B,
which is a cattle prod to your junk pile for
(04:17):
an hour while we shoot you with paintballs. I'd have
to seriously consider it. There is also the cost factor,
which can't be ignored, and of course the reality that
some people just want to forge their own path and
spend time walking behind their dog and letting the whole
thing play out without outside influence. Count me in that camp,
and if you are too, you're still going to be like, well,
(04:38):
where the hell should I hunt now? I'm not going
to break this down as granular as I could, but
let me say this, there are a hell of a
lot of birds out there on public land in the
hell of a lot of different states. If you understand
the basics about what birds should need as far as
cover and food, and you have on X on your phone,
you're pretty close to where you need to be already,
well sort of. I guess what a lot of people
(05:00):
don't get as this, especially you know if they're used
to hunting private land or have years of experience on
properties that they know close to their house, is this
is going to take some work to get on the
birds on the road.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It just will. But that's okay. That's the best part
for a lot of.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Folks, because when your dog does flush some sharpies or
woodcock or whatever in an unfamiliar environment, that feeling is
pretty damn sweet. But you have to get over the
intimidation factor. How I did it was by being too
stubborn and stupid to not believe what I would eventually
find something. No matter where I traveled with my dogs,
you know what, it almost always worked, even on trips.
(05:36):
It took a while to get the old engine turned over,
it eventually did, and some birds hit the ground and
things turned positive after enough miles and enough head scratching.
The main thing here is that you will hear a
lot of people say that traveling to wherever isn't worth
it because there aren't any birds left on public land
here or there or whatever. Those people are probably woefully misinformed,
(05:57):
even if they speak with a lot of confidence. I
see this constantly with birds. I see it with deer
in Western game and fishing opportunities and everything. Most people
are either just lying to gatekeeping opportunity or they genuinely
don't know. I guess the main thing that puts me
on birds in these situations. Besides, just going is not
believing what I hear from people or what I read
(06:19):
on forms or whatever. A lot of hunters aren't all
that into putting in real work to find birds, and
a lot of those hunters think they know what's going on,
but they don't, and if you listen to them, you're
gonna get a false read on the situation. You got
to believe that the birds are out there for you,
because they are, and if you can't find them.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
You just got to switch things up.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
This is mostly a matter of doing what other hunters
don't or won't, and that might mean hiking farther huntings,
thicker cover, hunting during the week and not the weekends.
There are many ways to skin the old cat here.
Now there's another aspect of e scouting that you should
consider as well. Before you head into new ground. Pay
attention to the property and whether it borders a busy
(07:00):
road on the backside, which could be a potential danger,
and look for homesteads around it where your dog might
grab the attention of a farm dog that doesn't take
too kindly to a stranger coming into his territory. We
get focused on identifying the most birdy looking spots, but
it's also a good idea to pay attention to the
danger zones you can identify and then plan your routes accordingly.
(07:21):
This is just a small warning, but the important part
is to understand that you can find good hunting spots
on your phone, and if you do, you'll have a
pattern to run wherever you are, which is a pre
fricking suite. So okay, that hype song is played out.
(07:45):
Now you might be thinking about what could go wrong
on your trip, and.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
There is a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You could get a flat tire, which means you should
have some fix a flat and a workable spare, and
of course the knowledge on how to change a tire.
I guess all simple easy preparation stuff there that sort
of that's the tone for this whole thing. But what
about this? Your dog could get sick? This one is calmon.
It's almost always due to a couple of different things.
Your dog could, for example, drink some water that doesn't
(08:10):
agree with it, which if you've ever gotten Manazuma's revenge
in Mexico, you understand I did once back in my
drinking days. And let me tell you something. When it
hits and you're sleeping, You're going to wake up real
fast and you'll be real happy that your hotel room
has tile floors and that your wife is a heavy sleeper. Anyway,
they might also you eat something on the road that
(08:32):
makes your dog sick too, roadkill or three day old
sandwich in the alley behind the hotel.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You just never know.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And if you've ever eaten anything that gave you food poisoning,
like maybe at a Christmas party for your work in college,
and then you know the next day you have a
very embarrassing situation happen in a larger grocery store, you
know what I mean. But the main reason for dogs
getting sick on the road is just stress. Sometimes you
can't avoid the water or the road killed that it
finds or whatever, but stress is a big one. Some
(09:00):
dogs travel well, some don't. The first key to this,
to avoiding it anyway, is just to have a healthy
dog going into the journey, one that is fit, well fed,
well hydrated, and just generally doing pretty well health wise.
That's a good state to keep your dogs in anyway,
but can really be an asset when you decide to
(09:21):
put five hundred miles in the rearview mirror and hunt
with them for four or five days. There is another
aspect of taking dogs down the road that we don't
often think of, but we probably should. That ties into
health sleep. I'd say my number one issue with my
personal travel is that there are very few trips I
take where I'll sleep better on the road than I
would at home. The motel life or the tent life
(09:42):
or the lodge life is generally not conducive to totally
restorative sleep for us. Now imagine it from your dog's perspective.
They don't know where they're going. They will usually be
hyped to the max because that's their default mode, but
that comes at a cost. I kept my older lab
in pretty good shaper whole life, but one thing I
could never figure out was how to get her to
relax when we took off on our trips. This only
(10:05):
got worse. So she started to figure out that we
might be going on a bird hunting trip. She'd watch
me pack and then be anxious, panting, pacing all night long.
Part of that was anticipation of a hunt, I think,
but part of it was her watching me pack for
a trip she might not get to go on, which
happened a lot and stressed her out more than anything else,
(10:26):
you know, the old separation anxiety. I ended up having
to pack either the morning of the trip or figure
out a way to keep it a secret from her.
I'm sure there are trainers who will listen to that,
who will slap their foreheads in disgust. But by the
time I figured out what was going on, it felt
like it was too late to untie that knot.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So I did the best I could.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I do know that if Luna had not a great
night of sleep, you know she was all keyed up,
or you know, on that drive hours and hours where
she was just running a little bit hotter because she
knew where we were going, that I would eventually see
her energy level flo flag not too deep into the trip.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Add in motel rooms or the tent life that not
only keeps us restless and awake, but keeps a dog
restless and awake, and you have the recipe for a
dog that gases out way too early on a trip. Now,
this is where our beliefs about dogs often don't jive
with reality. They are athletes in a way that's hard
for us to understand, but they're also living, breathing creatures
(11:25):
that have similar biological needs like we do. One of
the things I learned after starting to work out a
lot is that a bad night of sleep for me
won't affect me much the day after, but two days
later it definitely will. I don't know if that's standard
or unique to me, but I know that I feel
it at the gym or during a run. It's palpable.
Your dog might only get, you know, eighty percent or
(11:46):
fifty percent of the sleep it's used to getting at home,
and that's going to change things. Then it comes down
to realistic energy management and trying to find ways to
facilitate better sleep. Little things like a noise machine app
on your phone to override the noise of other people
in your hotel opening and closing doors and talking in
the hallways. And if you're in a place with a
lot of hunters other dogs barking.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
That can help a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
If you can feed them on the same schedule you
feed them at home and let them out for a
pee break at the same times, that can help. Structure
is good for dogs, and sticking to the routine as
much as possible, you know, as long as it's reasonable
on the road just helps, but it's also just our
responsibility to read our dogs too. If on day four
you're exhausted, think about them. Maybe you don't need to
(12:33):
go from start to finish that day, burning it up
during every minute illegal shooting hours. Instead, maybe you should
just sleep in and keep it relaxed and head out
at noon or want. I've started doing this when my
dogs are burned up, and it's an absolute game changer
for pheasant hunting. Instead of getting a couple hours of
energy and then a lot of hours of a slow burn,
I can get a smaller window of really good energy
(12:55):
out of my dogs when I want it the most
in the afternoon and not continually burn my dogs to
the ground. Look, it's not ideal because a lot of
us don't really want to waste time not hunting when
we're on a hunting trip. But it's also not fair
to ask too much of them because they generally will
try to deliver and they'll generally fail, as we all
would if the roles were reversed.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Well.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Lastly, it pays to remember that your dog will feed
off of your energy on these trips. This might sound
like woo woo bullshit, but I don't think it is,
and they neither do a lot of people who have
way more experience working with dogs. If you're stressed, they
know it. If you're frantically trying to walk out the
seventh slew of the day because you don't have a
limit yet, it's going to affect your dogs. This is
(13:39):
supposed to be a fun adventure, and it can be
exactly that, or it can be a stress filled grind
where you go into terminator mode on the fear that
you'll have to return to work on Monday and tell
your co workers that you drove all the way out
there to only kill a cup a quail or a
praier of chickens or whatever. A relaxed, calm hunter is
a hunter who will shoot more birds if for no
(14:00):
other reason than the dogs will recognize that vibe and
match it to the best of their ability. I've said
this a lot, but if you spend enough time with
dog trainers who really know their stuff, you rarely encounter
an edgy, nervous, over the top energy vibe from them. Yeah,
almost always get the opposite. They are generally pretty calm,
pretty confident, and just even keel. This is an accident
(14:24):
and it's not an act now. I honestly don't know
if it's because those types of people are drawn to
the profession or the profession molds those types of people
and weeds out the people who can't get there. Doesn't
really matter either way, but it is something we can
try to emulate when we are in a highly dynamic
environment with our dogs and everything is humming at a
little higher frequency. This is important to remember because it
(14:45):
will literally flavor your entire trip and can make it
awesome or a total suckfest, not only for you but
for your dogs. So have some fun with it. Take
your time, slow down, plan out your routes, and try
to learn from what you know the land and the
it's going to show you. It's also a good idea
to keep an open mind, especially if you go someplace
where you might be able to shoot more than one
(15:06):
species of bird. For example, I don't know how many
times I've had woodcock save a tough grouse hunt, or
how fun it has been to realize that our peasant
plans might not pan out, but that prairie chickens are
far more available than we planned. Options are good and
twitching from one bird to the other might not seem
appealing when you're planning a trip, but in the moment
(15:26):
it certainly can be. And I can promise you this.
Your dog won't care if you're having fun. They are
having fun, and there are a lot of ways to
ensure that happens. So consider this stuff if you're heading
out for a road trip this fall, and definitely consider
this if you're not heading out on a road trip
this fall, because it might be entirely possible to make
one happen. And if you do, and you anticipate some
(15:49):
of the bigger hurdles, you'll have the kind of trip
that makes you want to take more trips, and that's
good for you and your dogs. That's it for this week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support everyone here at meat Eater. We truly appreciate it.
We are nothing without you, guys, so thank you for that.
(16:11):
If you want some more hunting content, I'm talking Western,
big game, white tails, whatever the meadeater dot com has
you covered. We literally drop new content every single day.
We have really cool stuff coming out as far as films,
we have a whole podcast network that is huge. Maybe
(16:33):
you're sick of listening to Me talk or cal Talk.
You can head on over to the Bear Grease podcast
and listen to Clay teach you something about the history
of the US as it relates to coon dogs or something.
Or you can check out Brent Reeves This Country Life podcast,
which is one of my fight favorites because I love
Brent and I could listen to that dude's tell stories
all day. Maybe you just need a recipe, maybe you
(16:55):
need an article on something I don't know. I do
know that there is a health of information over at
the mediator dot com. Go check it out and thank
you again.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
H m hm
Host
Cal Callaghan
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