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Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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