EP. 224 Tales From The Holler Ethan Young

In this episode of Tales from the Holler, with Raymond Plummer, we have on Ethan Young! Covering lots of dog and wounded deer recovery knowledge this is one you don't wanna miss!

Ethan's FB: https://www.facebook.com/ethan.young.89338

Hunt Dog: https://huntdog.org/?fbclid=IwY2xjawSEZYlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFGcVB2ZUxjdWFRTVRoQzlnc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHlIu3hAxj4fyU9jR8KyVh8bMlZiiW1yTw-Fzf5kX4qp7uJWrlrwbwwaZgYK-_aem_d9Am-57D_21fF98g2F6ZIg

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, everybody. Dixie Doggers podcast coming to you again. I got Mr. Raymond Plummer on the line. He's got a guest with him tonight. Um, and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kick it over to Mr. Raymond and he's gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_06 0:13

Okay. Hey folks, uh this is Raymond Plummer with Plummer Catahoos and and uh fail from the haller, and I've got a guest tonight by the name of Ethan Young. Uh he has a a company where he trains blood trailing dogs. And Ethan is a young man.

unknown 0:32

He he really understands a dog, a dog's behavior, how to train a dog.

SPEAKER_05 0:38

He he's one of the best dog trainers I know.

SPEAKER_06 0:40

And he he does a really good job, and I I'd be excited to share get him to share his knowledge with you guys tonight. Here we go. Ethan, introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, I'm Ethan Young. I'm down here in South Arkansas, and like Raymond said, that's just what I do for a living now, it's train uh trailing dogs for wounded dame recovery. We've got a few out there finding elk, mule deer, we've had some bear recoveries, all kinds of stuff. Um and uh we've got a location in Alabama as well, over in the Gaston area. Uh gentleman by the name of Dustin King trains with us, and we've been doing that for the public for three years now. I enjoy the heck out of it. And I enjoy having those plumber dogs out here. That's why we became friends is he sends me those dogs and then they make me look really good. And so I try and try and make Mr. Raymond here happy so we keep getting plumber dogs.

SPEAKER_05 1:37

Well, you know, I tell you what, Ethan, uh that's tip for tap, brother. You make me look good too.

SPEAKER_06 1:43

You know, uh I you know, I feel people all oftentimes when they buy a get a hood from me. The worst thing about me selling a dog to them or a buck to them is I can't go home with them. And uh, you know, so it's up to them once they get the dog, and and and it doesn't matter if you've got the best genetic dog in the world, red dog in the world, if you don't put him to test, he'll be absolutely zero. He he'll he'll just produce nothing. And uh and a lot of people, you know, they may want to know how to train a dog, but they just don't understand the mechanics of it, and they don't understand dog psychology. And one thing about Ethan Young, and and I say it often, and I don't mean it as an insult, Ethan Young thinks like a dog. And and so he he understands their behavior, how to how to morph it into what he wants, and if the dog has got the mechanics and the put together to be able to do the job, Ethan Young can polish them. And uh Ethan, give me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Uh yeah, I um I guess real quickly as I got into this, I realized most of my own issues had to do with uh just motivating the dog, uh, and you know, trying to convince him to do obviously what I wanted them to do and not do what I didn't want them to do. And that just kind of boiled into me, just spending a ton of time and and money learning all kinds of stuff about dog behavior, uh how dogs learn, and so on and so forth. That's really, I guess, probably my strong suit for the most part. Dogs there we'll still get a dog that'll fool us every now and then, but for the most part, we're able to motivate them to be very enthusiastic for our training and able to take just about every dog we get out here to a pretty dang high level uh of work. They all have their own little quirks and tendencies, but uh we get quite a bit out of almost every dog out here.

SPEAKER_06 3:48

Well well, you know, each each dog breed brings a little something different to the table, you know, from your hounds to your cur dogs and and and eat every breed involved in each one of them. Each has its different idiosyncrasies that you've got to deal with. And then you've got your personality of individual dogs, you know. And uh and Ethan is is very adept at quickly adapting uh to what the dog thinks, what the dog's capable of, and being able to get it to go to work. And uh and I I'm I've just been super thrilled to watch him work these dogs and and and really as I say bring all the water out of the rag, you know, he can he can get that dog if if he's got the possibility to be able to work, he's the youngest young man that is able to get that out of.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

Yeah, I'll beat my head against the wall.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah, I look at I look at motivation and again motivation to to do the task we're doing. Uh I I kind of think of it as having three levers. Uh the first being the hunt drive, like the dogs uh kind of tapping into their natural expression of how they like hunting. You know, all dogs will have elements of that, some express them differently. Like you see, terriers like to bite and shake and tear stuff, uh, shove their heads in holes. You see bird dogs like to catch around and win, hound dogs like to just put their nose down and trail stuff, find new odors, so on and so forth. Labradors, they like to pick up stuff and bring it back to you. Um and that first lever, you know, trying to figure out how to make the task itself, the way we set up these trails as motivating as possible within kind of that framework of that uh that hunt drive for each individual dog. That's where learning those, I guess, genetic differences between the breeds comes in really handy. But the second lever, um, which I call reward acquisition, you know, kind of what's in it at the end of doing this, um we we use what we call reward events. So a lot of folks when they're trailing training trailing dogs, they put like a hoof at the end or something, which I think is fine, but they uh they kind of see getting to the end as like what our training job is done. We got through the trail. But I kind of see the reward at the end as the start of your next training track. Um or trying to convince that dog, hey, I want you to do this again tomorrow or the next time we do it. Yeah, we break that down into other drivers of the dogs, whether that be their food motivation, at play, motivation, praise, things like that. And really try and key in early on while the dog's here. We try and key in on what makes that dog tick from that standpoint and make sure we have a really solid relationship with them right out of the gate. Like I've got uh, well, here's two plumber dogs. I've got mine, uh, and a lot of the others I've had out here. They have a big uh big drive to play pub. They're all about that. You know, they'll they'll chase a hide or a leg or what have you and wrestle with you. You can rough house them, you can stick them around and stuff, and they're just like, oh man, this is awesome. Their eyes will be all the way dilated, you'll have a big tongue, you can play play cuts and they give themselves a heat stroke. Uh, but then I got another clever dog out here that uh she she hunts well, and then when you're done, I'm like, that's a good girl. And if I started trying to play with her like that, she would probably see that as pretty aversive. She's like, Oh, this guy's trying to kill me. Um, so so me and that dog, I'll just get on the ground and love on her for five or six minutes. She'll just she'll just plop that head right on my chest, and you just kind of slow pan her withers and stuff, and she'll she'll just melt in your hands. She'll work on extra that. Um and then uh I guess the last lever, I kind of call it conflict prevention, you know, making sure you're not doing anything with your relationship that might interfere with their ability to go out and hunt or their ability to enjoy the reward at the end. You know, things like if you have a bad relationship with a dog, they'll get stuck to your feet a lot of times. Um things like uh if they're not in good shape, you know, you might be beating your head against the wall thinking you have a training issue, but your dog's just getting really fatigued really fast or got, you know, a joint issue, or you know, just other things that are kind of interfering with them, being able to just go freely hunt, uh, freely enjoy themselves and so on. So those are kind of my three little levers there, if you will.

SPEAKER_06 8:25

You know, I'll tell you what, uh you know, Ethan has touched on several different things, and now now folks, with me, I mean, I I love dogs, I love working dogs, I love to train dogs, and and I think, you know, I do well enough for me, you know, on my dog. But I will say this, you know, even in the in the hog dog world, say, uh, I think really people drop the ball a lot in their hog dog training. You know, a lot of people just buy a dog and they think, well, it's uh it's a yellow black mouth, or it's uh, you know, I don't care if it's uh uh a Ketahoo, a yellow black mouth, or or whatever breed of dog that they've decided to go with, they think that it's pre-wired and ready to go. And it may be genetically disposed for that, but you've got to it it it helps to bring that out of the dog and reward him for that. And, you know, really uh I've had my eyes opened since this this blood trailing business has really come to life. And it it it is probably right now where a few years ago the fastest uh rising dog hunting sport was hog hunting.

SPEAKER_07 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:40

Uh I think we may have plateaued a little bit in that right now. And the and the deer blood trailing is is went nuclear. I mean, the the guys are jumping on the bandwagon right, left, and sideways, since these uh State Game and Fish Departments, DNRs and all, have allowed some states, you know, you have to run on lead, some you can run off. But one thing that these deer blood trailing guys, and I and I don't mean to insult Ethan in his job at all, but one of the easiest jobs I believe for one of my dogs to do would be to blood trail a deer. I mean, that's so that's not for me. I mean, I I may be missing it by a mile, but but it it seems to be a little more easy for a dog to do that than some of the other things that I'm gonna ask him to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

But you're talking about your dogs. Oh, yes, that's what I'm saying. You're talking about your dog, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:34

Oh, yes, sir. Well, and Ethan has had several, several of my dogs go through his classes down there and his and his uh system down there, and he's actually got a dog that that he named Moose, that's a plumber-bred Katahood. And before Moose was a year old, he had already blood trailed successfully and found more deer before he was a year old in that season than any other dog in the state of Arkansas. Hey, Moose, uh, Joey, has got more Facebook fans than me and you put together.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

I don't doubt that, but that listen, that don't take much for me because everybody nobody likes me anyway.

SPEAKER_06 11:16

Oh, well, hey, you you know, when you when you talk about cockroach topics from time to time, you know, you get people on both sides of the fence there, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

There's about 20,000 people that don't really know me. I can tell you that. I mean followers.

SPEAKER_05 11:29

Oh, hey, well, you're you're doing awesome.

SPEAKER_06 11:34

I've probably got a whole bunch more than that to talk on me. But one thing that I've noticed with these, like like Ethan, and he's not the only one out there, I'll give credit to like Randall the Ball down Louisiana and some others, and they're not the only two. There's there's people out there training these foot drumming dogs. And I actually made a, of course, Randall the Ball, I kind of made a stand with him one time. He had bought a dog or two from me and and and was training them and and pitching them to some of his customers down there. And I I said on the phone to him one day, and he ain't talked to me much since then. I hope I didn't offend him, but uh I said, I said, Randall, I don't know what you're who's doing these guys with, but these these bummer bred dogs you're buying will blood trail a deer without any training. And then you're you're putting them through this training process and caught and charging people for that. I said, I'm not, I mean, that's okay with me. You can buy all the you want to do that with. But you know, but I really played down his part, and I probably shouldn't have done that. Because these these guys that that do this blood trailing uh and they this training, like Ethan's doing. Now, Ethan even knows the science of it, do we? I mean, I'm not gonna hack and swag on your intelligence, but I will on mine. He can leave me behind in the science of this deal pretty quick. I mean he's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

That's something I learned the the science well, I don't know it, but I've learned that I thought it was a lot easier than it really is because I had a couple of dogs that would blood trail until I got to a three-day old sphere that my dog wouldn't even mess with, and then another guy coming there and brought the dog and just make it like it wouldn't mess. Well uh okay. And you know, and the thing about these uh the dogs that I messed with most of them, they're they're gonna take two carriers and the five terriers that got good notes on them, uh and they got a lot of drive to them. But once it gets to uh to a certain level, they kind of if if it gets to work real, real hard, I noticed they'll break off on something else and run off. It's harder to kind of keep them steady on their track breaking, whatever you want to call it. On some of the terriers. Yeah. No, well, a thousand percent.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

And I think that's where the fun really starts is like when you start challenging them with super old, super complex uh setups and maybe also challenging their, you know, fitness and conditioning and then challenging them with other things that are motivating in the woods, and can you convince that dog to stay on path and persist when they're tired and thirsty in the sense you know, humidity is real low, or thermals are flipping their booty, or all kinds of those things. Man, that's that's the fun stuff to me.

SPEAKER_06 14:23

Well, see, and what he but what he's talking about is fun to him, guys. You know, people get a dog and they think he's pre-packaged to go. Well, if if the hog dog people would take a lesson from these blood trailing guys that are really up and coming, wow, we would have so much bet so many more and better hog dogs today than than what we've got right now. Because a lot of them are called because they they were never really trained to go, you know, and and to go conjure and go track and go hunting and and and to let the dog know that that is their job is to go and go track and use that nose on the end of their snout and go find something.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Most of them want to get a hog and stick it right in front of them. And say, here it is. They don't want them to hunt first, they want to show them the hog. I'm like, boys.

SPEAKER_06 15:25

That's it. That's it. It's the wrong way. They back, they go into it backwards, and there's a lesson to be learned and really a study, a case study for these hog doggers, if they would pay attention to what these blood trail guys are doing and apply that to their hog dogs, wow, wow, we can really, you know, when when you and Ethan are talking about running, you know, 48-hour old tracks and stuff like that, and you're saying, well, you know, after you get past that, you had tears kind of fall off and go chase a rabbit or tree a squirrel or whatever, because it's easier, you know. But but, you know, the hog dog guys, by and large, they never even got to that point of a 48-hour old track. They're they're running into the thing backwards, they're showing them the hog like you talked about, and then expecting them to go find the hog. And and if we run into a cold cold track, like Ethan, Ethan, what are some of the oldest tracks?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Uh, the oldest recovery that we had that our dogs legitimately tracked, they didn't just win sent the carcass, uh, was 96 plus hours.

SPEAKER_06 16:31

96 hours.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

I'm sorry. Pretty friendly conditions. Oh, no, I just it was it was a pretty friendly time. I mean, it was a good cool few days, pretty human, pretty warm.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Now, so I I've had guys argue well, uh I've been cooked a lot.

SPEAKER_05 16:51

Uh and it's gonna cut it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Well, well, it's on Facebook or keyboard. Uh, I've got to talk about cartels. But a carbon a curve that can take a four to six-hour old track. I don't I don't think where that's an anomaly. Like about 96 plus hours. Of course, it's a whole different deal. It's completely different.

SPEAKER_06 18:10

Hey, now Ethan, what kind of dog was it you run that 96 hour old track with?

SPEAKER_02 18:15

He was a mountain curve, pit board, no stripbow nix.

SPEAKER_05 18:21

You didn't say cur dog, did you?

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah. Ain't that something? Well, I tell you this, we've we've had multiple cur dogs out here, and at minimum, we're making sure they get over the 24-hour mark. And most of the time we can get there in a couple weeks. Yeah. Um, it's not too crazy. Now, kind of like Raymond said, I think there are elements of what we do that are easier. Like there's not multiple wounded animal smells where we're trying to ask them to start a threat.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Yeah. It's a completely different deal. It's uh it's a it's a more refined uh scent that's gonna be sticking out, other than all the other stuff, of course, but it still has to be able to smell it.

unknown 18:58

For sure.

SPEAKER_06 19:01

Well, now, guys, another thing, and and again, I'm I'm gonna speak a lot to the hog dog guys out there, and I I'd really hope a lot of people pay attention here. Okay, because you know, when Ethan is teaching a dog in a couple of weeks that he's able to take a 24-hour old track or or even go even further on up to 48 hours and stuff, you know, uh, then and what we do on the regular as a hog dog world, you know, and and I'm speaking across the board in generalities, I'm not poking any bear any particular, but but I know guys, I've hunted with a lot of guys, and they'll, you know, they'll see a uh a video cam of hogs at the feeder, and they won't take their dogs and put right on that hot feeder and and let them dogs go. And then if they, you know, if they hunt the world where I hunt, we actually I I I got a phrase I tell people, we call it hunting instead of killing for a reason. You know, we actually got a hunt for hogs, you know. And uh, and so when I'm down, say in South Arkansas, where I'm at right now, and and these guys down here, we got these paper company roads, and and they'll take a wheeler or a side by side and they'll run 40 miles an hour down that road and their dog run hanging back to their shoulder, eating gravel and sand, trying to keep up with the wheel. And and then, you know, they get to where they see a sign where a hog crossed the road, and they'll whoom, they'll set them wheelers down and they'll look at it, and they'll if it's anywhere past muddy, muddy water where the hog just run across, well, boom, they're gone again. And I'll stop right there and they'll say, Come on, plumber, we'll go get a hot one. I said, No, boys, I don't, we got a hog right here that we can work on. And and I'm gonna cast my dogs right here. And a lot of times I'm training young dogs, so I want to take and teach them all them young dogs to run an older track. Well, you know, any dog, if he's got the opportunity to run a hot track or a cold track, he's gonna take the hot track, all right? But I'm gonna put him on them cold tracks and I'm gonna catch him right there and tell him, check, check. And if he can't, now Ethan, this may be different than what you do, but this is what I do. Yeah, I'll tell him to check, and it he'll come look, and oftentimes, now I'm pretty good at reading sign, I can tell you within reason how old that sign is when I'm looking at it, most of the time. All right, and so I'm not gonna get on a two-week-old bus of sign and think my dog's gonna track that up, okay? But but if it's fresh enough that I think a good cold-nosed dog ought to be able to take that track, I'll start walking that sign out and I'll get down in a little ways further, and I'll tell him to check in. And I'll do that several times until finally that pup or that young dog says, Whoa, wait a minute, and off he goes. And when he finds fur on the end of that track, well, then something clicks that that was the original track that they didn't want to take to start with, and then they'll mess around. And and they'll go on, and I can start working colder and older tracks, which in my part of the world, oftentimes that's all you have. You know, so you want that dog to be able to do that, you know. And uh, so anyway, Ethan, what's your thoughts on that, Joey?

SPEAKER_01 22:15

I mean, that's uh that's the way our tracks are too, Raymond. I I mean I have to agree with it on everything pretty much you said on that. Uh I know I sound like I'm real agreeable, but we don't have a lot of hogs and we live in the hills. Uh and most of our tracks we're if if a hog just run across the road, I'm not even gonna turn out on him. I'm gonna I'm gonna ride around a little while, give it time to you know, let the track settle down. What I tell them, it's like, well, let's give them a little time, then we'll come back 30 minutes to an hour later and put that on it. Right. You know, or or we might go run something else and then come back a couple of hours later. I have come back at the end of the day and get that hog up and running. Right. But I don't know. I mean, how's what's your look on that, Ethan?

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Well, we we have the advantage of so if you're just kind of training your dogs by field experience, I mean, do you know when the deer was shot and where? So you can be real meticulous with what age you're wanting to introduce it to. Or if in my case, if you're training it uh in the off season, we have deer parks we use. So I can precisely control the age of it. So I mean, by the time they've done a 24-hour track, they've already done an overnight track, an eight-hour track, a four-hour, so on and so forth. I can make sure there's a whole lot of clarity of their job before we start introducing those other kind of odor profiles uh that come with age. So I got you. Probably not as difficult on that front on my end as just kind of precasting them or or bringing them to an area with a little less information and and encouraging them to work from that.

SPEAKER_06 23:51

Well now, Joey, you're probably like me. You might leave that track and come back at the end of the day, but really that's not a very old track. No, now you're you or me either one is probably not gonna drive off and say we'll come back in about three days and see if we can work that track.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

No, we're our track, our track, an old track for us is gonna be probably six hours. You know what I mean? Like like Raymond said, if I drive off, if I ride by there that morning, and like I said, if if if a hog runs across the road and and and I've got a group with me, and generally it's you know, if I'm gonna take somebody out hunting, I want them, I want to take them hunting. You know, we can we can go catch a hog in the trap if we're gonna do all that. You know, so we'll we'll we'll go on and go hunt, and then I'll come back later on, but generally it's four to six hours and we'll come back and and we'll run them. Uh now I I can't guarantee we're gonna stop him. That's up to the dogs and up to the hog. But I can put them in their place and and put them where it's at and they'll take the track.

SPEAKER_06 24:48

But but you know, Joey, when we're gonna be in the hog world. In the hog dog world though, and I'm I'm I'm trying to to to mill the right.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

You're right, right.

SPEAKER_06 24:59

But when we come back in six hours, we have barely tapped the ability of that dog. I mean, he can he can smell a track way, way older than that.

SPEAKER_07 25:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 25:14

And and one thing that I would say is if and and this is I'm gonna I'm gonna bring in the subject matter that Ethan has got an online video series that he has put together. Ethan, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Uh yeah, so I mean, I basically took the approach I take to training the dogs and videoed myself going through it with a plumber dog, uh, teaching both the trailing and the obedience of it. Pretty much I have this dog named Moose, he's a little plumber dog, plumber outcross, and every time I did any kind of formal training with him, I just turned on the video camera and videoed it, explained it. I have kind of two programs. One is kind of more of an academic side of my approach and some of how dogs learn, how dogs mature, uh information about their old-fashioned system and scent, how it ages and degrades and disperses.

SPEAKER_06 26:17

But the old-fashioned system is their old factory glands, that's their nose, people. That's how they smell.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 26:24

Now go ahead and go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's we we keep talking about the scent side of it, but there's also the dog side of it as well, and it has to be kind of firing on all cylinders to be doing its job. You know, if your nose gets too dry, it's got to have some moisture for some of those little particles, I assume, to on, to the jump that stuff in there so it can send information to the brain. And we can often, it's pretty common for folks to early season down here talk about kind of a scent burning up real fast, block hot and dry. Uh, and what I've just found definitely, I mean, hot and dry is gonna degrade faster, but I found no issue with age really. Uh, more so what I run into is the dog gets really hot, really tired, really dehydrated quicker when they're when they're working in those conditions. And if you are giving them rest and keeping them conditioned to that, uh it's it's nothing to bang out old stuff still. And we did a we did last year, we did a 40-something hour old track second week of both season, early October. It was cooler. I mean, it was in the night, obviously that's more friendly, but uh you do that with moose. Yeah. Oh, I did it 90% with moose. You'll make fun of me here, but I I had that issue where I was like, uh I got because I worked with him in the off-season, I knew my dog had this propensity to like when he hits a road, he's gonna switch to those eyeballs for a second. And um I uh he started doing that, and I was like, you know what? We've been at this for like two hours. You know, we were a ways into it. It was slow going, you know, I don't know if every now I assume it happens with hogs for for whatever reason they just kind of make this slow spaghetti-like progress. Uh when you're kind of looking at it on the garment handheld or whatever you use. Sometimes it's a nice neat line, and sometimes it's you know slow and just looks like little loops and what have you. It was one of those, and finally the road he hit and ran up a couple hundred yards, kind of just eyeball hunting, was close closer to the truck, and I was like, the heck is this, I'm gonna go get my good dog. And then uh, you know, the good dog went just a little ways past that and found it. So I kind of I kind of robbed uh uh a recovery from Moose there. But um it happens, but that that's been my experience with the early season is the it's the dog side of the equation that gets kind of degraded faster in that hot and dry uh uh environment.

SPEAKER_06 28:59

But um Let me ask you this. How old was Moose when you worked the first 48-hour track with you?

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Uh you mean that specific track?

SPEAKER_06 29:10

Well, it doesn't have to be that specific one. How old how old was his earliest age when you worked at an older track like 48 hours or old? How old was it?

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Oh man, we were uh I don't know, five, six months old probably. I mean, we we know. I mean we agree.

SPEAKER_06 29:31

Ethan, I just heard a bunch of brains exploding right then. You know, uh you've got a five or six month-old pup that's running 48-hour old tracks. Now, here's the deal, the very same methodology that Ethan's using to track deer will absolutely transfer to home. And if people choose, slow down, and use the this methodology that these blood trailers like Ethan are using to train their hog dogs, our hog dog quality would go through the roof.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yep. And I I gotta I gotta preach in on that for a minute. I carried a couple of guys that are that are blood trailers. Uh I I carried them, I I don't know, a couple years ago. We went out on a hunt and I and I listened and we talked and we talked and talked. And that's right when I was really switching over these cur dogs. Well, either I'm the luckiest person in the world ever with dogs, or maybe I've done something different than a lot of other people do. Well, so all these little cur dogs that I got, I got them, I I've got these running walkers, and I got air deal, I got all these different breeds of dogs. But I took these little cur dogs, and they will run with any of these running walkers or fly hounds or any hounds. And people are like, they that's not normal. And and a lot of them are thinking it's exactly where I got the dog from. Yes, but you've got to have something good to start with. But at six months old, every one of my puppies out here will take a track if it's old as my five-year-old dog. And they'll run it. But like we were talking about earlier, so I don't go to two and feed right off the bat. I got to find a few factors. And then each dog is different. Well, saying earlier, the reward factor. Everybody said a thing like a dog wants to feed. That's not necessarily the reward that they're after. Like you said, I got one that wants to ride up front through. I got the dog ride up front through the city. But every dog is different, too. You you got to apply something different than just throwing a bunch of dogs out there barking at a hog and then take them over here on a feeder and dump 20 of them out and expect them all to be superstars. There's got to be some methodology to it.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

And if you think about that reinforcement, if the approach is start with really fresh sign, and your dog's first impressions of this work are you take them to where to start, and they don't have to work entirely hard to have this really high arousal activity at the end of it. Um, and then you want them to later on have a more you know committed search for you know older traps or what have you. Uh, you started kind of by saying, like, you know, this is what the job is, super easy, super exciting. And then you're like, now try this boring thing, and they're like, uh, actually, can we go find some of the super exciting stuff? And that's one of the cool things I think about what we're able to what when you when you train kind of the way we do, is we haven't really introduced the really exciting stuff to our dogs until they've learned to persist through a lot of difficulty and complexity. And then we start showing them, you know, broken legged deer in the swamp and things that are just like, you know, make their eyes roll back in their head. So we've we've really kind of, I guess, set the expectation from the get-go that this work is entirely on their shoulders. Um, from finding where the track starts to sticking with the old boring stuff, even though there's other exciting things all around you, and so on and so forth. And kind of making me think that the you know, your example rant of the folks riding on the sign by side until they see super press sign. You know, they're they're not even asking the dog to search for where the track starts, and that is right, let alone asking it to work something really hot or something really cold. A lot of people they're doing the job for the dog. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

That's the way I mean that's the way I'm looking at it. I'm not I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but that's the way it works. I mean, it's the way it happens a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

Well, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

I mean, you got a bunch of kids now that can't change tires because dad or mom did. You know, same thing. Um, I think I think that's one of the things that that happens in our world as well. Folks are in a hurry to get to the end. They want their dog to know there's something at the end. So, you know, thinking like, well, if he learns that this smell equals that, he'll want to work harder. And that's true. But in doing so, they get in a hurry, like when their dogs kind of stumble around and struggling to orient itself and figure out direction of travel and all this, they'll go ahead and start helping it down the trail. And right out of the gate, they kind of handicap some of that dog's ownership of the problem solving side of it. Whereas I'll I'll stand and stand and stand. As long as they're on task, I'm not gonna interfere with it. I'll let them. We had uh this schedule yesterday. We were like 300 yards into the track, and he I had a I do a little turn at him. He went past it and did a little loop and somehow got himself to where he was trailing the thing backwards. I looked all the way back to the four-wheeler, and he just kind of like got there and looked around, like, we've already been here, and I was like, Yep, you know, you got us here. And uh finally kind of got him back going the other way and all the way back down the trail, then he sorted out the turn. And then he had two more turns after that, and he he crushed those. But I don't think he would have got better if I'd have stopped him from kind of self-discovering that. I mean, he might have, but not not as quickly in my experience.

SPEAKER_06 35:22

Well, you know, there's there's there's there's a huge amount of intelligence. If your dog, and again, again, guys, I ain't taken away from the fact that if you don't have a good plumber dog, you're in trouble. No, I'm I'm kidding. The uh any any good genetic dog is bred for that purpose, and he's you know, he's he's got all the the the building blocks to make a dog. Uh, you know, you he he's more intelligent than most people give him credit for, you know. And and like at my place, I may have hogs, wild hogs in the pen, but I don't want my if I'm raising a pup, that pup may not see a real hog, but once or twice before he's a year old in a pen. And the only reason that I would ever take him to a pen, and and people bathe their dogs way too much before they ever got hung. What I want out of that dog is I want him to know only this, three things. I want him to know what a hog looks like, I want him to know what a hog smells like, and what a hog sounds like.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Do you generally do that the first first time? How many times do you do it total?

SPEAKER_06 36:32

Um Well, in a year, in a year, no kidding, I might let a pup see a hog three times.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

That that's amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_06 36:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

I usually do it at about 12 weeks and then about six or eight months old. And and generally that's about it. Some of them need mu some of them might need one more time. But I but I don't let them I don't let them interact with it really, you know. But I don't know. I don't either.

SPEAKER_06 36:57

I want I just want him to I don't want him to lay that hole for 30 minutes and get worked up and all that. That's not what we're doing. No. And and where you're saying, you know, uh six months is the end. Well, you know, and by the time my books are six months, they're sitting they're single band hogs in the woods by themselves. Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. Some of them might take a little longer.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

And and that's and that's me. I used to, I didn't haul anything until it was at least a year old. But now it's you know, I'm like, well, some of these dogs are they they want to start. I let the dog tell me when he wants to start. And when he tells when he tells me he's ready, that's when we're gonna go. And but I'm not gonna go out here, I'm gonna let him be a puppy first. I I'm I'm not picking to go out there and force-feed him a pig and a fence. I just ain't doing it.

SPEAKER_06 37:42

Right, right, right, yeah. And I, you know, and I and another thing, and and it's amazing to bring this, you know, he can iron this out to a whole lot of different, you know, uh really good subject topics out of this, but but the reward when we start these dogs, especially like it like Ethan, he's mock tracking these pups and starting them off. Uh, the reward, a lot of guys that start mock tracking their dogs, they they really fail because, for one thing, the dog is advancing in age and intelligence, okay? And that happens really quickly in a in a puppy as he's coming up, okay? A dog that's three months older than another dog is light years ahead of him in and what he should be able to do if they're if all things are equal genetically, okay? But but the reward at the end has to be worth the effort that the dog puts in. And if it's not, well the dog's out. It's no fun for him. And and like when I train canine police dogs, the the dog, you know, we're where we if you're training a lab, you know, he likes a ball. He likes a tennis ball. Give him the ball, he's oh his his dopamine rises, his endorphins fire, he's he's good. All right. Uh on a canine police dog, it doesn't matter whether it's a Roddy or a or a Duck Shepherd or a uh John Shepherd or a Noby or whatever it is. His reward is to get the bite. Bite that sleeve. It's not that you're giving him kibble after he finds the convict or the culprit. That's not it at all. He he gets to bite something. And when he bites something and the mines roll back, oh, that that does it for him. Ain't no amount of petting him on the side that's gonna even get close to that. That he gets to bite something. All right. Well, when you're when you're claying these dogs from puppies on up, the reward, now I don't know exactly how Ethan does that, but I know how I do it, and the reward has to increase as the dog progresses up. And and and so a lot of times, too, the track, and I I give people this example. All right, if you've got a child, uh, say that's three, three, four years old, and they bring you a puzzle that that it's a child's puzzle, and it's got six big pieces, and and it says right on the puzzle, ages three and up. Okay, and they they bring that to you, and they climb up in your lap and say, Daddy, help me work this puzzle. Well, you can enjoy helping your child work that puzzle, but you're not gonna go out tomorrow and buy a dozen of them and say, Man, I had such a good time helping Junior work this little three-year-old puzzle, I'm gonna just spend the rest of my day doing it. No. Grown people work puzzles that they challenge on, they could get wrong, like Seduco or Crossword or something like that, if they're gonna work the puzzle. So as you increase with your dog, the puzzle has to increase as well. So the length of the track, the time the track's been down, the twists and the turns, the terrain needs to change, all these things need to grow as you train your dog. You can't start mock tracking a dog and put a bowl of kebab at the end of it and expect that to be his reward forever because it it simply will not work. Ethan, talk to me.

SPEAKER_03 41:00

Yes, no, I um I agree with most that.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

I mean, when you say the puzzle, that's kind of harkening back to what I said about the hunt drive. Like the way you configure that trail that they have to solve is inherently motivating if you do it well, or it's boring if you don't. Um, like we don't we don't get ice cream after putting a puzzle together. We just putting the puzzle together is the fun of putting the puzzle together. Um, some dogs, that's kind of the primary uh, I guess, reinforcer for them working. That's why our dogs, that's why we all say we like trashy dogs, is because like they're just showing you that they just like hunt and stuff. You know, they they're awesome. They they're like, this makes all my hassy juices go off in my head. Kind of like we can equate this as humans to that little uh feeling when we find a drop of blood after we've been lunching for a while and up town. We're hardwired or when we make little progress like that, little chemical release that tells us, hey, that was good, you should eat doing what never made that happen. Um and I think folks are raining point, they say too easy way to challenge the dog or uh the reward is enticing enough relatives. I would put three-year-old puzzles together all day long if you gave me a hundred bucks for every one of my nids.

SPEAKER_05 42:20

Uh rewards got enough. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I'll do mundane stuff at the rewards stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Yeah, yeah, because we can get dogs to sit over and over and over and over and over and over. And that's not challenging to them. I mean, that time is because they don't want to be just sitting, they don't want to be moving and doing stuff, but we can get them to sit with just like a piece of table or just you know pat on the shoulder or what have you, because that reward is you know adequate relative to the effort they have to produce. So I think both of those things have to be in place for it to be good. And and not every dog's the same. I mean, I have dogs that literally the satisfaction of finding where the source of that odor came from is all they seem to care about. Like a lot of the hounds I found, like, you know, like you can leave nothing but the hooves there. They don't even care to chew on them or anything. They're just like, oh, there it is. I can go, I can relax now. You know, I've satisfied that thing. You know, that's for a hound, just finding where the thing went itself can be the same as a lab just chasing the tent ball, picking it up, and carrying it around. You know, you may not even want to bring it back or anything, you just carry the tenth. Something something internal tells me this is good. Um and you know, some of the some of the other dogs, like you just have to challenge different areas of motivation for them. And that's why I kind of look at it through the three levers, all the dogs have some elements of each of those. Um and you really have to download which one expressed the most, or you know, they might be equal as well. Yeah, to make sure you're you're kind of looking at your approach through each of those lenses, if you will. It's like a really sensitive dog, even though they might be a dog that gets a lot of reinforcement just from trailing itself. And they might also really enjoy queuing on a piece of hide at the end. If they're a really handler-sensitive dog and you're not accounting for that, you may be thinking like, well, this dog sucks as a hunting dog, but really they just don't feel comfortable around you yet. And you're you're how do I make this more fun? How do I put something more exciting at it? All these things. But really, the dog's like, man, the way you talk to me and trying to push me down this trail is really stressful, so I don't want to do it. My my best dog is a pretty soft dog. He would probably have gotten pulled by a lot of people because he'll he'll cower and all kinds of stuff, but he's a monster that like he's caught pigs and stuff, he almost gets himself killed every year. He's kind of nuts. But as far as his sensitivity around people, he's real nervous. And if I weren't to account for that side of the things as well, he would probably get washed out. Or maybe that maybe that's where he came from, because I trapped him on the side of the road, or a neighbor trapped him and gave him to me. He was just starving on the side of the road for a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_06 45:15

Now, hey, hey, folks, pay attention right here. Ethan just trapped a stray dog that uh starved mud on the side of the road and turned him into a rock star.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Okay. Imagine what you can do. Imagine what he can do with some good stuff now.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

Well, that plumber dog still ain't earned his spot yet. He's looking good. He's looking good though, but I still got too much. They have a lot more experience.

SPEAKER_06 45:41

Well, hey, hey, you can't beat experience, buddy. That's you know, he's younger. He's half he's less than half the age of them dogs. So when he gets to where they're at, he will be the rock star, I have no doubt. You know. Hey, and I reiterate the point that before he was a year old, he had already recovered more deer than any dog in the state of Arkansas. So that's during that season. So, you know, he he may not be, you know, to the point of being your best dog yet, but he is hey. He ain't bad. Yeah, he's all my money.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

Yeah, he's on a good trajectory. And it is interesting to see the things that made me bring out the other dog oftentimes were just that seemingly puffy attention span. You know, if we were working something long and hard for a while, and maybe it was his seventh or eighth track of the day, and three of them he had the bay, you know, that stuff will wear him down. And they only have so much kind of battery and attention span still at that age. He would, there's a couple times and I would call Raymond and be like, Man, think that'll go away?

SPEAKER_05 46:48

He's like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

I was like, Okay. But there's a couple times where you know he'd be going, he'd trail something 1300 1400 yards, and if it was one of those slow roll ones, he might just stop and kind of hang out with me for a while, and I'd be like, Well, that's not gonna work, you know. This is not good. I mean, go, go let, go.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Um, you know, about the puppy stuff. I I was I was kind of I was won't ask you on that, you know. We're doing the hog dogs and and stuff like that, you know, we deal with a lot of the puppy stuff um when they're out in the woods and when they're on track. Um what what what kind of progression, you know, go go through that with at like at the age, like months. You know, what what what are you looking at at like six months and eight or a year old and stuff like that? How how much progression are you getting? Are they making leaps and bounds through your program or is it really just dog specific? You know, or or how's that work?

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Yeah, it sure seems like the majority of everything important can happen seemingly once they're kind of past teething, it seems like, and when they're kind of physically mature enough to meet the demands of some of that serious work. Um, you know, I think I think the rest of that kind of maturity and experience is gonna kind of fill in that last you know, 10 or 15% that make them really great or or ruin them. But as far as putting all the important pieces together, I think it can be done. I I typically take dogs at six months or older. Um, some that seems to be they're not quite mature enough still. Some we could be probably done with our program by the time they're four or five months. However, there are, especially with male dogs, biological things that I want to make sure I want to make sure their nuts have dropped, you know, so we can tr train working through uh like chattering and barking and stuff like that. Because, you know, something I did with Moose, I trained him pretty young. And uh we really he wasn't really being a boy dog until deer season. And then, you know, everybody and their mama has a a dog that they go try and find their deer with. And if if a female dog in heat was out there working and they gave up, excuse me, my dog might get to that spot and all of a sudden something that he's experienced on the training grounds out here with me, but he wasn't uh he didn't care. You know, like when you're seven years old, you'd rather go watch monster trucks on TV than you know read like a sports illustrated swimsuit edition. But that changes when you're 14.

SPEAKER_05 49:34

I was a little younger on that one.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

But uh yeah, I think getting past teething, because I I'm I'm big in play, if I can get a dog to play, I I really want to get that reinforcement from all angles. And I think play is a really big one, and a lot of play involves stuff with their mouth. And if their teeth are uncomfortable or loose or what have you, you know, you could really damage that play drive. And then same with same with the male dogs and probably the female dogs as well. But when they go through some of that maturity, uh their headspace is gonna be different, their attention is gonna be different. And you know, when they're puppies, everything you show them is super interesting to them. They're just driven by like, oh, my owner's here. He told me to sniff this, and hey, this is new, so I'm gonna follow it. And you'll be like, my dog's the next LeBron James at trailing, because he trailed this 100-yard track that was four hours old. But puppies will do everything great when they're that age. They'll sit, they'll down, they'll stay, they'll go into the crate, you can potty train them. I mean, they're super learners right there, but uh the road kind of meets the road when they hit that age, like adolescent age where they start realizing they can make their own decisions and like, well, yeah, trailing's cool, but where does this smell of raccoon go? Or I want to chase this beer through the woods and not do what you want me to do. And I uh I hope any of that uh in incoherent rambling was answering your question. No, it's a minute.

SPEAKER_06 51:08

Let me let me define what you just said. You you kind of blew holes in the old timer's theory of never pet your hunting dog.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Oh yeah. Yeah, mine live in the house with me. My best dog does sleep on a bed with me sometimes. They all uh walk on a leash loose.

SPEAKER_06 51:24

Uh, Ethan, I have I have all my life, you know, I've heard that people say, and I know people that say it still today. As a matter of fact, the majority of people don't pet your hunting dog. You keep it separate, you know, a hunting dog and your and your buddy. But I have found, much like your training program, if that dog knows you're invested in him emotionally, he will work for you harder. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

And uh I think so, yeah.

unknown 51:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

And I think, yeah, those I think also maybe some of that is a blanket used for saying, like, don't try to put much of a handle on your hunting dog, or don't teach them a bunch of obedience because it'll it'll ruin some of their drive or their range or their independence, what have you. But I think maybe a lot of that probably stems from uh poorly, poorly done obedience to where going back to creating conflict, like if in your attempts to get your dog to sit on a place bed or or or load up on their own on the tailgate or whatever that obedience behavior you're working on is, if it's done poorly and in a confusing way or unclear way or with a lot of pressure, maybe that damages your dog's relationship with you and they all of a sudden don't feel as good around you. Whereas if you had left them alone and their only experience is like, you know, kind of how we grew up, like they were in their pen or they were out running deer, there was no mistake in what their job was. There was no relationship for them to worry about us. You know, we put wheat eater string on them because we couldn't catch them. It was just like they're they're either in their kennel or they're hunting deer. Um, since we didn't invest any time trying to teach them anything else, there was no opportunity to confuse them, I guess, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

Um, you know, over the years, I've I've talked to a lot of different guys and they have had some phenomenal dogs. But I know a couple right now that have the same same bloodline of dogs I've got. I mean bloodmates. And their dog would not hunt like the one I've got. Uh and the reason is they put a handle on their dog. Well, I got a handle on mine too. But uh, they pride themselves on how durable and how tough their dogs are because they uh use a different method uh than what I use or what a lot of us use. They beat it into the means, you know. I I'm definitely not gonna uh you know I'm gonna I'm gonna do it out of fear besides doing it for for pleasing. So, like you said, uh people can can do it. You can have a handle on your hunting dog, no doubt, but it's the way that you do it. I think you're 100% on that.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Yeah, I would probably get made fun of if people knew more about some of my training approach, which like I use like clicker and treat instead for my dog, and they'll I'll click or treat them for sit down, recall, we'll work on our leash stuff in a real friendly way, just like real, mostly positive stuff. I mean, I'll punish a dog if I want them to stop doing something for sure. Um, but you know, clicker treat cookies at the same time they're in the swamps chewing on a deer's guts while it's bellering at them, uh, you know, 400,000 yards away from me, whatever. Uh doesn't really suppress their hunt instincts if you do it well.

SPEAKER_06 54:51

Well, there you know, I I I was actually talking to Shay Stevens yesterday about you know track training and and that kind of thing. Uh and you know, there are times I believe, now I may, you know, I may get a lot of naysayers on this, there is times that you have to give a dog a negative response to get the product that you want out of the dog. And and even with Ethan and Moose, when he got Moose uh from me, how old was Moose when he first started showing aggression, uh, Ethan?

SPEAKER_02 55:24

He wa he had almost been at my house for a week, and I picked him up at six weeks old, so less than seven weeks old. And I remember I remember posting a video in your group and I was watching him. He was a monster, and I was just kind of like, Well, that's funny. And then it dawned on me, I was like, that's gonna be a problem if I don't if I don't get on that now. I mean, he was bullying grown dogs out here. He was a psychopath. Um, he had found a little deer leg in the woods while we were just out walking around and other dogs came to check out what he was messing with, and he just started guarding that thing and attacking us. It was wild, but I uh yeah, I just I always tell folks, kind of like Yellowstone, if you've seen that, like if if you want to fight on the ranch, you gotta fight rip. Yep. I I kind of play that. I kind of play that role, you know. Do what you want with that.

SPEAKER_06 56:14

Well, you know, with with that, you know, and there are dogs out there that, you know, they'll have little issues with maybe aggression or it's something else. And if you don't shut that down, that will grow into a monster problem. And could it have end up being a reject in your dog if you don't cure that? And you're not gonna cure an aggression issue by petting. Oh no, no. I'm just I hate you know, I hate to tell folks that, but that's that's the truth of the matter. You're gonna have to bring a little negative response to me on what he's doing to cure that. And and so when that happened with Moose, Ethan called me and he said, Look, we're uh I'm having what what you know, he's got this aggression thing that's growing and it's it could blackmail be a real problem. Can I cure that? And I said, Absolutely can. And I told him how, and he did. And and today, you would never know that that young dog, that book, had ever had that kind of issue. It wouldn't know it at all.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Oh no, I agree on that. There's a time and a place you have to, you you might have and and each dog is different, Steel. And you've got to be driven with some of them. You know, what I was talking about was more like the comp here and the fit and the state, and you know, like the I don't do that. You know, that's that's that's what I'm talking about. But it's it's you know, anybody go it, you know, if we let it go one or two times, and he's like, well, hell, I got away with it then. I'll do it when I'm mad. No, we can't. You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_06 58:47

I sold a uh I sold a pup to a guy in uh Iowa one time. Don't take it back, it's Illinois, Illinois. And uh it was a wing, just a winged pup, little female, and uh when he got he already had two Catahoods, and they were both nine months old, out of different bloodlines, and we won't discuss what they're out of, but they're out of different bloodlines. And uh and he called me and he said, Mr. Plummer, he said, I I I run cows. And he said, My my running hounds will run a cow down but they don't have enough grip to kill the cow. He said, I I want to get some Kellehood dogs put together that I can put with my hounds, run a cow down, and then kill the cow at the end. And uh and I said, Well, I can help you out. And then he said, I'd like to have a female, and so I I seen the little female. And now, boys, I'm talking about just off the pit, still got milk on their lips, wing puppy. All right, he calls me about a week later, and he says, Mr. Plumber, he said, That's the meanest dog I've ever seen in my life. He said, I've raised pit boys and wolf hybrids, and he said, I ain't never seen a dog this mean. And I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Are we talking about that wing puppy that you just got for me? He said, Yes, sir. He said, Oh my god, she's mean. She'll bite you. He said, I said, pop her on the end of the nose. He said, I have it. He said, It just makes her matter. I said, Well, you ain't popped her hard enough, son. I said, and and he kind of really, I mean, now guys, I ain't never had to buy one back, but I fixed it by that back. I said, Look, if you can't handle her at at eight weeks old, you ain't no way you get feet wrong. I said, so uh, and I said, and if them other two Katahula dogs you got didn't behave the way she did at a very young age, I'd be highly concerned they wasn't no good. And uh, so anyway, he I kind of scolded him bad enough that he did. He he you know, he got uh in front of the deal and got her stopped, and he sends me pictures and stuff on the regular now and says that is the best dog he's ever owned in his life. Well, boys, if he hadn't uh got ahead of that behavior, it would not have been the best dog. It would have been the nightmare of his life instead of the best dog he ever had. That's right. You know, uh so we do, you know, even as puppies, you know, there's certain behaviors and they've got no old sharp teeth, you know, and they're just practicing to be grown and they'll do what you'll let them get away with. And and as you know, let the old pup bite. One of the first things I do with a a new puppy off the tits is I'll put the dog food down in a in a pan and I'll put my fingers and hand down in that pan and I'll go push it on that puppy's head. Like another puppy, you know, it'll get after about feet. And I'll push her plum around that bowl until finally it growls at me. And when it does, I'll pop it on the other note. Well, it'll back out that feet and it'll probably come back. It might have its feelings hurt. If it does, I pick the feet up and we'll feed again that afternoon. When I put that feed down, that butt comes up there. I and if it won't work for me pushing it around the bowl, I'll be like a horse fly on its head. I'll I'll haze it until it growls at me. I want it to growl at me because I want the puppy to know that we do not tolerate food aggression. And we're gonna we're gonna stop that early on. And so then after we have a little lesson of that or two, I got grown dogs, boys, that that'll straight up kill a hog. And I can reach in while they're eating and roll kibble out of their mouth, buddy. They ain't biting me. They know daddy from back when they was a pussy. So we ain't, you know, that's something we're not gonna do, you know. And uh, and so yeah, I mean there's there's certain things that, you know, I'm sure I'm a I'm a positive reinforcement guy as much as I possibly can be, but there's certain times and certain specific instances where you have to teach that dog that that's a no-no. We don't do that, you know. And then, you know, like like fight aggression or or aggression toward people, so I I can take it out of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:49

That's right. A hundred percent. Yeah, you have both sides of that coin. I mean, when you're teaching uh desirable hate behaviors, you want reinforcement. Uh reinforcement means whatever happened after they did that is gonna make them more likely to do it again. So, like, shit. I reinforce it by saying, like, good dog and pet no more. Absolutely, absolutely. But you can't, yeah, to your point, Raymond, if it's a behavior you want less of, it has to be punishment in the scientific terms, you know, not like retribution or anything, just like the consequence that follows him growling at you uh made him realize, well, growling at you is not in my best interest. I'll actually choose to do less of that next time. You know, touching the stone was unpleasant, so I'm gonna do less of that next time.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:38

Right, right, right. Hey, let's get back on that tracking just a little bit, Ethan. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, or wanted you to talk to Radio Land after about is like when you're going to run a uh a deer track for somebody that's got an injured deer, and they've called you, and I know this has happened because it's happened to me. Uh, and and you're not their first call. Matter of fact, you're probably the third call, or maybe the fourth call. And they've had dogs and people and trucks and and everything stomping all over that track out there. Tell me how you handle that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

Well, first off, I am their first call. I'm just kidding. No, uh, yeah, almost I would wager almost half the tracks we went on have had another dog on it now. I just think with social media, folks can see the natural aptitude of all these dogs, so they're like, heck with it, let's try it. You know, a lot of times there's some success with it, but uh yeah, almost every track has some human contamination. Meaning they've gone out there and kicked up ground disturbance and left their odor everywhere and possibly, you know, disrupted a little of the actual odor we're after.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:56

Just hold put a put a post in that right there. When you're talking about ground disturbance, you think you know, you think, well, that you know, how much could that be, you know, broken vegetation and that kind of thing. Now, think about when you go to a fresh-cut field of hay, what that smells like. Okay? That is the you know, that's the disturbance that these dogs are having to smell when they're going across broken vegetation. Now, their old factory sensors are way, way more pronounced than ours are. So if we can smell a fresh-cut field of hay or fresh mowed lawn or whatever, that dog is smelling that that somebody has tromped all over going down that track.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:43

Now go ahead, well, I'll I'll keep going off of that. A lot of times, here's another downside of not kind of really clarifying the actual odor your dog needs to be keying in on. If you're constantly Putting them on hot stuff, they might be generalizing the ground disturbance more so than the actual odor profile of an animal that's dying. Or in your instance, uh the hog itself. They might be like you show them something real fresh, and they're like, okay, I got some hog smell in here, I got some urine smell, I got some crushed vegetation, I got some disturbed earth. And if that disturbed earth, crushed vegetation is, I mean, it's super pronounced to dogs early on, it degrades and dissipates faster, it sure seems like, than the other stuff. But if you're constantly showing them that hot stuff, they're gonna assign more importance to that than the actual thing you're after. And you might have a dog that's real quick to be like, well, now this is hotter after we've been tracking this, and hotter is better. You know, this is this has more of the relevant information that I've that I've been using. Um, so all all that to say is I I find that to be a real important part of our training is to help help them understand what is the actual odor picture that we're after. And sometimes ground disturbance is there. I mean, I'm sure it's always there in some degree, unless you're stressing out those times a ton, but it's not the thing that is uh like a decision factor. Use it if it also smells like a wounded animal, but ignore it if it doesn't. And that's kind of you talk about multiple people out there and dogs and all kinds of other things. We work really hard to teach our dogs to discriminate between that ground disturbance to human contamination, you know, the the human odor, the the other dogs, and so on and so forth. That's kind of one of the benefits I have out here of having a bunch of dogs is I can use them as distraction odors and what have you. Um but uh usually we don't have much of an issue going through that stuff. Um, folks that don't train for it, their dogs a lot of times will default to feeling like that stuff is really important to work through because it's hot and they're hunting dogs and they're gonna want to hunt that hot stuff, it'll trip that biological trigger that says, I need to go pursue this, because remember, I like putting puzzles together, and this is a real exciting puzzle, smells hot, and their dog will sit and work and work and work and work through that stuff, and they'll perceive it as a lot of times hey, this hunter has spread all the deer skin around everywhere, and so my dog's having to figure out where the real trail is. But really, I found in most cases it's just a discrimination issue, and you haven't really clarified to your dog that that's an irrelevant odor, uh, and you need to stick with this certain profile, if that makes any sense. All that's to say is we we move through that stuff pretty quick almost every time. Uh okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:50

Well now let me let me uh take that odor differentiation and and raise it a level. These dogs can smell the difference between an injured deer and a non-injured deer. Now let me give let me give you folks uh an example of that. I went down to one of Ethan's uh gatherings. What do you what do you call that down there?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

Uh Members Weekend. That's uh little event we have for all our clients right before deer season.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:23

Okay, so we go down there and there's a whole host of people down there, right? And and Ethan uh Dustin King, I believe it was, lay a track, and I believe it was 48 hours old or something. I don't know. He had laid a track, mock track, for Moose and Ethan to run, and Ethan was going to run this track with Moose as a demonstration to the people there of what a dog should do and shouldn't do on a track like this. And and we gathered up down there. This it looks like the Oklahoma land race. There were so many people down there, all right? And and at the beginning of this, you know, and Ethan didn't know the exact track that Dustin had made. Dustin told him where to go. He came, he comes down. There's a there's a piece of flagging tied on a limb there where the track started, okay? That's what Ethan knew. All right, so Ethan pulls up. We're already all there, all right. Before Ethan pulls up, as we encroach upon this track, a little old fork and horn buck was laying right at the beginning of that track. And he jumps up, and where does he run? Right down that track. All right, and then he breaks off out there a little ways to the left, and everybody says, Oh my god, oh my god, we gotta tell Ethan. It's run, it's run. I said, No, y'all shut your mouth. I said, I want to see how Ethan and Moose, as a puppy, handle that track. And so everybody shuts up. All right. Ethan pulls up, he gets out, he pulls his hide out, he plays with Moose just a little bit with that hide. Now we're talking about a pup, guys. This this pup, I don't know, he might have been eight, nine months older. All right, and and he's playing with him there, and the dog acts like we're not this this huge crowd of people standing there is not even there. I mean, he is focused on Ethan and the job attack. All right. So Ethan takes him and he tells him to find the key and Moose takes off down this track and he does exactly what me and everybody there thought he would do. He jumped that fork-horn buck and away he went. All right? Well he didn't go, but about a hundred, hundred and fifty yards, the puck figured out that that was not the deer that he should be tracking. Ethan figured out that that was something that was bad wrong. This was not right. So they went back to the track, and that moose puck ran that track almost at a run with the Oklahoma land race going through the woods behind him, and he never looked back. I mean, he crossed streets, went up hills, through the over hills and dales, and and went right to this this sign that they had laid for him. I mean, it was phenomenal. It was absolutely awful to see that puppy and Ethan work that track.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

Yeah, that that deer, uh you could tell, you know, you you learn the behavior, you know, what their tendencies are gonna be like on an old track versus a hot track. They're gonna see way, way more arousal on a really hot track most of the time. Um and uh yeah, he was just like hammering and choking himself to death on the leash and then just like fizzled out. And I was like, well, okay. Yeah, he was on my training class, and I was like, well, now they're gonna realize I'm an idiot, you know. Uh but yeah, he was.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:50

What they realized was quite the opposite because you and the pup and came back and went right to task and did it right in front of God and everything. It was a mess. And the pup had never, to my knowledge, been exposed to that many people, especially trudging through the woods behind him, and he could care less. He never looked back. He never the only person he was focused on was Ethan, which was the handler and the task at hand, and that's what the puppy does. You know. Uh hey, they did a phenomenal job. Phenomenal job. And uh so anyway, but yes, Ethan, talk to us a little bit about how these dogs can differentiate between an injured animal and a non-injured animal.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:35

All right, well, I I won't get too scientific here because I don't know, but we know there's dogs out there that seemingly can tell when somebody's well, they can tell if somebody's about to have a seizure or if someone's blood sugar is too high or too low, and so on and so forth. So uh as living beings, we're all the time in different kinds of uh states of health, you know, good, bad, otherwise, what have you. And the chemicals we give off, they're dog, the dogs are really sensitive to. So just the same way they can tell when a dog is in heat, I assume there's something there that they can tell that this animal is wounded, and this animal is severely wounded, or this animal is only superficially wounded, or or this animal's, you know, whatever, totally healthy, some startled, so on and so forth. The whole deer is this whole deer is gonna smell different. Um, you know, because all these dogs seemingly can generalize from animal to animal. Once they understand trail wounded animals, seems like you can go to a bear, you can go to an elk, you can go to a mule deer, you can go to an out, whatever. And some of those have glands between their toes, some of them don't, so on and so forth. Uh the the animal smells wounded. Some of that, like metabolic changes are happening. Uh, some of it has to do with uh, I assume some adrenaline or some cortisol, all kinds of junk are going on. And once you kind of help a dog key in on a dead animal or a wounded animal, they can put those pieces together. And I don't think it's just the track itself that they're following. Um, you know, a lot of folks I think uh they they think it's like they're they're primarily trailing that gland between their toes. However, you know, all our dogs will wind the carcass uh from really far away. And I and I choose to be out there wending the gland. A lot of our dogs will uh you know look, they'll sniff contact scent on vegetation or fences or things like that that are up in the air. They're clearly like the deer's not broadcasting his interdigital glands up on that vine, more than likely. Um so that that's that's my very uneducated take. Uh their whole system is so disrupted that it is abundantly obvious to the dog that this is uh something worth pursuing. And they can seemingly differentiate between wound severity as well, if you're kind of playing your your timelines well. Again, thinking back to the way our vegetation disturbance, disturbed earth, so on and so forth, how it might dissipate faster than the other odors that we want them to trail. If we're trailing everything really quickly, they're going to probably place a higher emphasis on that part of the odor picture, which isn't necessarily indicative of the deer's health status. And if you let stuff age a little longer and you really honor when the dog starts hesitating and finally kind of refusing to track more, uh, your dog can develop a pretty sharp, uh, like almost detection aspect to it, where they'll you know persist and commit to an odor profile that says, hey, this deer is severely crippled or it's fatally wounded, they'll stick with that and they'll run it down. Or if it's just something superficial and maybe bleeding like a stuck hog, but it's just something that's not gonna kill the deer, they can start to put those pieces together and say, hey, this one's not gonna die. Or this one was a clean mist, it just looks startled, uh, and so on and so forth. And you can you can play with age and and really letting your dog dictate if it wants to pursue or not, and really refine a detection aspect. So I I'm assuming enough stuff is disrupted there that they can gather quite a bit of information about the health status of the deer. Um, just the same way they can, you know, detect cancers or seizures, high blood sugar, low blood sugars, menstruation, whatever. Uh when when we're in a different state of health, we probably smell different to those dogs in uh a gabillion different ways, if I had to guess. So those who are ignorant in South Arkansas uh perspective.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:29

I don't think they're ignorant at all. You're gonna think you're you're really spot on, uh, you know, and and there is a di uh, you know, even even myself, now I've worked with enough men out in in hot weather that some people have a little different odor about them. I mean, I don't I don't have the nose of a dog and I can tell that, you know. So so these dogs having an elevated sense of smell, then they can easily smell the difference in a wounded deer and a non-wounded deer, a deer that's got blood, a deer that doesn't have blood, you know, and like you're talking about the olfactory uh or the uh interdigital uh gland between the toes, you know, not being, you know, four feet high on on vines and and vegetation, you know. Uh let's let's talk a little bit about a dog's ability to win, you know. Uh I had a I had a guy down in South Louisiana that had bought a pump from me and uh and he's blood tracking with the dog and and it's about four months old, and he sends me his Garmin tracks where he had laid the mock track and then he he put the pump on the track and the pump run the entire track about 35 to 40 yards off of the track that he had laid. And he called me and he shows me the Garmin picture of that, and he says, What's your what's your take on that, Mr. Bummer? And I said, Well, the pump's winding the track. You know, the the track had drifted up and over, and the dog was picking that track up in the wind at, you know, at his head height where he didn't have to put his nose on the ground and could run that track 35 to 45 yards off of where the actual track was laid. And still went straight to the end of it and found the the prize at the end, you know. So talk talk to us a little bit about the wind in the million dollars and and what you do with some of that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:21

Well, yeah. I um I mean when when I kind of named uh my outfit here, I guess, hunt dog, some of that stems from uh the fact that I I'm a I'm a big believer in not necessarily focusing on the track or the trail itself. You know, I'm I'm not really trying to tell them what tools to use, you know, unless the way they operate is just so self-sabotaging that they're not productive. But that hunt to me, uh hunt dog is kind of a uh uh indicative of what I want them to do, which really we're we're we're not trailing wounded animals or tracking only wounded animals, we're hunting wounded animals. And I want them to use kind of whatever God gave them, and oftentimes uh that involves wending things, and you know, we know that the scent wherever it gets broadcasted isn't necessarily where it stays. Um it might there might also be some there, and there might also be some some of it, 10 yards, 20 yards, 30 yards, 50 yards, 200 yards from from where the carcass is or where it was broadcast uh from the animal. And uh that's just something interesting you see is their ability to still be working that animal, uh hunting it, but they're not they're not following step for step where the animal went. Some some seem to work better out in the you know what you call like the plume or the cone of the scent or the you know the edges, if you will, whatever. Uh some do better staying really glued to the track. But yeah, I mean some of those bird dogs we have out here, you gotta you gotta five, six hundred yards and under is fair game. You gotta be mindful of where you're setting the end of your track out, or they'll they'll bust it and skip the whole track and go straight to it.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:14

Um it's what they do what I call the waffle and snuff. They'll they'll stick your nose in the air and and check the wind blow to it, you know. And uh, you know, that that I everybody laughs at me about that. That comes from Dr. Seuss, but it is, you know, I've seen too many of my dogs do that. That that, you know, when they stick when they stop and throw that nose straight in the air, you better pay attention. Because they're gonna cut that track. Matter of fact, uh I sent a uh Kentahuna dog named Savage Sam, and he was named that region for a per or that thing for a purpose reason. But anyway, I sent him over to Jerome McDonnell. And uh Jerome's a well, he's been on the podcast with me before, and Jerome is a uh he's a hunter. He's he's you know, he's all intelligent about game and hunting and how to get to it and process and hold he he he's a good dog man. And uh and I sent this uh this this plumber bred cattahoo where named Savage Sam and and he he was a a really good winding dog. And and I told Jerome that when he got him. I said, now look, if old Sam sticks his nose up in the air and and winds up, you better pay attention because he's gonna do what Ethan somebody's burnt dog doing, he's gonna cut the track and he's gonna go straight to whatever it is. Well, Jerome had a couple of F1 cross Ketahoo red bone dogs that he knew very well. They were good home dogs. Well, he was down probably close to your part of the world down there, Ethan. He was down at uh what it was, uh oh my god, what was the name of that place? Anyway, uh he's escaping me. But anyway, down close to you. And he was in a uh look, kind of the foothills of the the wash dogs over there, I think. And he was coming down a ridge, and he said, Plumber, and this was the first time he had taken Sam and Sam out with him, and he said, Oh, oh Sam stopped in the middle of that ridge and throwed his nose in the air, and and he said, I remembered what you said. And that dog broke right and down the ridge he went. Well, about the same time, them two F1 Cross Redbone Katahoo dogs broke left and off down the ridge they went that way. And drones got dogs split down, and he said, Hmm, well, I don't know that that savvy Sam dog, but I know them two F1 Cross dogs or hog dogs. So he he went to the left and followed them, and they hit the track and they worked that track all the way down and around the end of that point and right back to Sam that had the hog already. He said, Plumber, I I walked a lot of you know, a lot of distance following them than F1 Cross. When if I'd have just trusted, like you said, fell off with O'Sand, we'd have had the hog right off the bat. You know, so anyway, Joey, I know you probably experienced some of that yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:09

Oh, yeah. I mean it's I went, I went, I'll tell you that I went to uh the terrier trials out in Texas. And we we did a track and trailing event, right? In a control phase, and we have control phase, and it's tracking. Yeah, that I I like the I like a dog that can use his note like it though in some scenarios.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:22

Right. Well, you know, in one sense, and you know, and I understand what you did and why you did it, but in an in one sense, and by definition, he did run the track. The track was just in the wind. You know, and and talking about scent and and that kind of thing, and Ethan you can hone in on this at any time, but track, you know, scent sticks different to different substrates, whether it's sand or rock or mud, you know, yeah, how much moisture's there, how much is not there, what kind of vegetation it sticks to different you know, vegetation heat, wind, uh the airmatic pressure, making it rise. You know, all these things, wind, all that plays into that sin. You know, and these dogs have got to learn to navigate that all at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:14

Yeah, they they definitely gotta learn it.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:17

Yeah. Did we lose any joy?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:23

I don't know. I think we might. I hadn't heard you. Yeah, I hear we hear you now. What would you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

When Raymond starts talking, he's like we're probably talking about a catahul.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:46

There you go.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:47

If we're gonna talk about an A plus athlete, hey, there you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:52

That's right.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:53

Hey, let me let me go ahead and I'm gonna give everybody right here. Ethan, what what dog breed have you found to be the best to run track down there in your training program?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:08

Um that's a loaded question.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:15

Well, you know, some in all fairness, some places you have to be on lead, some places you're not allowed to dispatch. Uh some people are on lead and athletic and mobile, some people are on lead and maybe older and need to be able to.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:31

You're watering this down, Ethan. You're watering this down.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:34

What's your I'll tell you my favorite dogs to train have been Labradors.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:41

Um you see how many I run though.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:49

Um, as far as like getting to work and trailing and and you know, having good noses, and I mean they can run some old stuff that would probably surprise you. Um and they can work hard and so on. But for for my needs where we can run off lead and we like to get the crippled deer that would probably otherwise get eaten alive by predators, uh, you you need a uh a dog that can kind of go get them. Um I like a personally like any dog that can trail and has independence and range and will get way ahead of me in the hunting party. Uh so that way we're not really putting the deer on alert that we're pursuing them. And I like a solo dog typically that will put a really appropriate bay on a deer and not cause them to start running. And I can take take my entire time as much as needed to slip in there and just put a dip fat shot on them and not cause a lot of ruckus.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:45

Are you running for mayor down there in Stevens? Because that really sounds political.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:50

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:51

It does.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:54

We went a long way around not answering the question right there.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:57

Well, I'm I tell you, I tell you, I I tell a lot of folks um if if you're running off lead and you want a dog that's probably going to be pretty resilient to your if you're a newer person and some of your earlier handling mistakes. I'm I'm very can of new living currents often.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:13

Um, we're working here.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:20

I this is no guys I've talked to. Um and that I personally know here. I I've tried to give them a hard time. You know, I got a lot of yellow dollars. And most of them are like you run a black mouth curve. Yellow, and uh, anyway, and I'll get it. I got a feature.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:42

It was storming here, but I believe the cloud is part.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:46

There's gonna be a lot of people. We're gonna get some fan mail, and I'm gonna get some hate mail too, probably, right? You know what it takes.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:54

Oh hey, but listen here, guys. Really, no, no kidding. You know, uh what Ethan's saying about a lab, a lab is a highly intelligent dog. Yes, they are. They are you can you can train one to to track and do it very successfully, but most of the time, and I and now there's never any absolute in this, most of the time your labs just don't have, well, let me just get back to some southern vernacular. Uh, they don't have the cojones to dispatch a deer when they get there. Or they take a whole bunch of or that kind of thing. So a lot of these guys, they want a uh a dog that will take and put teeth in the fur of that deer, you know. And then, you know, and and I'm I'm carrying on a lot, guys, y'all know that. But see ya, but but a Catahula does, he's not the only breed. He's absolutely not. But he he he will, if you've got a good red one. He will, you know, they've got again the kind of that intelligence to know when to take a hold of that deer and when not to. Uh and and if if in case need be, they can take a deer down and oftentimes will, you know. So you don't have to continue to pursue because your dog won't put teeth on the deer. And and and belate the the issue of the deer, you know, if he's mortally injured, but he's just gonna keep going and you're gonna end up with a track that's way longer because you ain't got a dog that'll stop you, you know. And uh and sometimes you could even lose him, you know, if he gets in the water or something like that, and then you if you've got a dog that doesn't, you know, that doesn't take a hold of that deer, well you you've lost him. You don't even know where it went. He just disappeared.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:29

You know, this this may be foreign to you hog guys, but they also might get on property. We can't go on and in Arkansas. We just have to stop. Uh we're we're not allowed to go unless you can get documented permission from someone. Uh so to me it's important to have a dog that if that deer decides to go, he's gonna be quick to try and you know jerk him back to the ground or whatever. I don't I don't want yeah, I don't want them to default to trying to catch. I I much prefer them to when they can kind of tell they're within proximity of that deer, that they start maybe going into a little more stalk mode and then when they they spot it, they can start baying kind of whatever pressure that deer needs. Yeah. Uh well, yeah, I want them to grab 'em.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:12

You know, and and and if you want to talk about noses in a dog, I mean, a hound, you know, will track up.

unknown 1:35:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:25

Hang on, guys. Are you still there? Yeah. Uh anyway, a hound will track up here, no problem, but impossible, not impossible.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:40

I don't know, I just heard I'm back again.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:44

So we're stuck here.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:48

Yeah, we got I think that storm that comes through, y'all. I think it's hitting us right now. Or it's about here. It's starting to rain pretty hard and thundering and carrying on. So if anything happens, we get disconnected or whatever.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:00

Okay, well, anyway, a hound, you know, no doubt will track up a blood a bloody deer, uh injured deer. But oftentimes, like Ethan was talking about earlier in the podcast, a lot of hounds, their reward is just the track itself. And when they get to the deer, it's like, well, there he is, you know. And and where you if you've got, you know, a a dog breed, and of course I am a fan of the Cetahouda dog, but you know, a dog that will actually, when he gets to that, he's got intelligence enough to say, Well, I need to stop that deer, or I or I can bathe the deer, or I can, you know, whatever, but not let that deer continue on, you know. When it when in fact he could be stopped, you know, and if you've got the right dog at the right time and he's got the intelligence between his ears to do it, he can at in certain applications stop that deer for you, you know, uh, where some of these dog breeds just won't do that. First by and large, the most part, you know. So uh so anyway, yeah, I you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:58

I call that sensibility in a dog.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:01

Well, and that's you know, really, uh, Joey, when I'm breeding these Cattahooha dogs, that's one of the things, and that is my number one thing. I want intelligence. Yeah, I think, well, you gotta work the problem out. They gotta be able to tell you. Yeah. He's gotta have, you know, people say, Well, he's gotta have instinct first. No, not necessarily. You can take a very intelligent dog and go light years with him, uh, where a lot of times you've got a dog with instinct, but he ain't got no intelligence about him, and and he's like a uh running foxhound. When you put him on the ground, he throws dirt in your face, and that's the last you're involved in the whole deal. He leaves. He's doing he's doing what he's doing for him, for him, not you, you know. And and I want I want my dog to know that I'm a part of the play here. I'm I'm part of the team. And he's he's he's actually helping me, and I'm helping him with the problem, you know. And so we go at it kind of that way, and and the dog has to have some intelligence to understand that, you know. But anyway, hey Ethan, I know we're getting pretty deep in this podcast. We went through some storms and kind of had some ups and downs on the on the volume and the and and in and out on the phone, but I'd like you to tell people uh about your program that you've got for sale and what it costs and how they can get it and that kind of stuff. Because it takes Ethan and and hog doggers, listen up, because you can take this program that Ethan's got, that he's working with deer, but you can absolutely put it over on your hog dog. You can put it on any kind of hunt dog that you want to put it on, and he starts from a puppy that knows nothing and goes to a finished dog in these programs. So, Ethan, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:42

Well, I ain't never trained a hog dog. I don't I don't but uh a lot of the principles are are you know just dogs, how dogs learn, how scent works, how their dogs' old-fashioned system works, and so on. So, you know, the the first program I have is called the handler's toolbox. Um it's it's that stuff, that that might be something that some some hog folks find a lot of value in. It's obviously there's the theme of you know wounded game recovery in it, but there's some nuggets um as well. But uh I have two out right now. Um one the the handler's toolbox, the other the complete trailing dog. And the handler's toolbox is kind of like uh text and video. It's it's real informational. It's it's dense and breaking down the science of some things, some speculation of other things that maybe I can't put my finger on. You know, there's there's not people out there researching, you know, lamp shot deer behavior, you know, or anything like that. But um that one, that one might be interesting. Both of them are priced at $2.99. Um, and I have buy now, pay later. Um, there's a cool little Facebook group of folks that are in it as well. Um the second one, the complete trailing dog, that's me and Moose. And there's some other examples of other dogs in there scattered around.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:13

Well, you and you and the you and that plumber dog, right? Okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:18

We got Moose. I can think of somebody's gonna be upset at you for skipping his name on this.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:25

Oh, I I can too. Hey, hey, Jay Folk, buddy, Jay Folk. Oh Leroy dog, yeah. I will not leave you out, Jay.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:34

I love you to be crossed out on my mama that that he has got. So anyway, yeah. And that is we go one step deeper. That that dog that he that uh that that uh Jay Folk has got, Leroy, he he blood trails with that dog. He is a top shelf working dog working at the top of his game, and that is a Mike Lee bred dog. He is an excellent dog by any stretch of vaccination. If he wouldn't, I never would have let him come to my black mama beach. Okay. Jay Foltz, and I do not want to leave him out of there. Jay, love you peace and please. All right, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:18

Yeah, we gotta give credit where credits do you. Now, I will say somebody told me most of the good stuff comes from the mama dog. Do what you want with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:28

That brought to you by Plummer Catahoous.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:39

But um no, that that second one is just me training that moose dog um from where I started him to where I am now. I'm I'm still training him. I uh have full plans of videoing my entire deer season this year as much as I can. I get to do in a gabillion tracks sometimes. Probably won't feel like it or won't have batteries for it. But um yeah, he's I don't know, there's forty or fifty training tracks in there set up from all kinds of things, from just your basic helping them to learn how to search for and acquire the start of a track to turn, to discriminating between that and rutting buck smell and dough and heat smell and your your standard lives, deer, rackage, what are all kinds of other distraction odors? Uh how to work through contamination, uh, how to spot uh and manage like if your dog's uh like they've they're getting overworked or overheated and how to how to diagnose that while you're going and manage them on the track, tooling them down a lot of times will make your dog's accuracy shoot right back up. Um and I mean we've I've got him doing old stuff, long stuff, really complex stuff. And one thing that I think is really cool about it is uh it's ugly at times. And and there's times where it just totally uh always have a fall apart, you know, because he's a dog and will surprise you, and I'm a human, and you get to see my mistakes, his mistakes, and the power of just consistently having a nice clear approach and doing it regularly and how that just makes a dog better over time. Fortunately, these dogs get better even if we're you know idiots attached to them.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:31

Well now, Ethan, what do you get for that for that longer version that you've got? What's the price on that? Both of those are two ninety nine each. Wow, wow. Folks, that's hey. If you buy a dog, and a lot of times if you're buying a decent blooded dog, you'll give way more than that for a puppy. Mm-hmm. And it would be it would be if you it you know, some people understand how to train a dog and they don't need that. But some people, you know, they tried and failed and tried and failed, and they're passing dogs and trading dogs when in fact it's the process. Now, Ethan has he he he's talked to me a lot about, you know, I I've told you guys on this on this very podcast that a dog learns off a repetitive response. So when you teach them something over and over and you do it the same way, it it solidifies that instruction to that dog. And Ethan, and I know you had you just talk about your your products that you got for sale for people, and I do want you to tell them how to get those things, but also tell us about your process when you go to get your dog, you load him in, you know, you load him in the box, you put those collars on it, everything you do, structure. Tell tell me just a little bit about that before we get off here.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:52

Yeah, well, I I'm a big believer that uh well dogs are non-verbal, you know, they're they're not born speaking English, so we have to show them kind of what their job is. And a lot of the folks that I deal with, these are not just a working dog to them. They're their family companions. So, you know, growing up, our Beagle dogs were in their channel or they were hunting. There was there was no no real work to try and help them understand what we might be doing at any given moment. Um, and so one of the best ways I've found that we can early on uh show them a lot of clarity of our expectations and their tasks, and we can kind of secretly build a little enthusiasm when you get into some of these uh Yvonne Pavlov responses, um, is with a with a nice repeatable routine at the beginning uh of our work. Uh I you know that can be a double-edged sword. You can have such a routine that if one component of that is missing, that your dog totally falls apart. So it's also important to generalize certain things. But I I'm very, very structured in training early on to show them like uh like before I let them out of the box, like I I'm only gonna let a calm dog out of the box. Um I'm I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna give them a little precursory physical examination. I'm gonna check their feet, their eyes, their ears, their toes, their fist, you know, just just just helping calm them down and also kind of reminding myself I'm working with a dog that eats its own food, you know. It's easy to get frustrated out there. Um, but then I uh will throw a leash on them and walk them to an area and wait for them to go to the bathroom. After a handful of times, they'll start doing that almost on cue. Um then I put them back in my box around the tailgate and then uh put their collar on and uh don't wrestle them. I'll wait for them to let me do it calmly. Um I don't want them busting away as soon as they can tell that buckles down, and then some dogs uh I I acclimate them to vests and stuff as well or or harnesses. Um because I do I do a lot of my training on lead. But uh I uh I uh will put all that gear on, and that gear is unique, that gear in that process is unique to that task, and I'm showing them, hey, I'm the kind of handler that does this the same way, and I'm the kind of handler that holds you accountable. I'm not gonna let you explode out of the dog box and push me out of the way. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna let you go to work if you have some sprain or a big cut on your pet. I'm I'm gonna take care of you as well. Just I'm showing them I'm consistent and they're kind of putting the pieces together very quickly that I'm I'm a predictable, fair, valuable handler, and that we're very clearly about to do this same job. I always kind of equate it to they're they're gonna be learning those patterns regardless. So you might as well install the kind of behaviors you want to see. And the easiest way to think about this is like our dogs learn the pattern of going to the vet. So like they they they can understand that, but they don't always like it. Some dogs have a bad experience, so they're like, okay, we're going to the vet. I can tell now. Now I hate everything. And we can inadvertently, if we're out there training and building a lot of frustration trying to, you know, do our training, we can inadvertently condition a state of emotion or mind that's counterproductive to us working. Uh the same thing, grabbing our leash to go for a walk. Uh, your dog is like, oh, you're getting a lease, we're going for a walk. I understand what that means. And they have a really exciting response, but they're a total nutcase and destroy your house and everything. I want the dog for trailing that is very excited, uh, but but their arousal state is is very manageable. Um what what we need for trailing is for for the hard part in my opinion, is a more like a very enthusiastic dog, but a lower state of arousal in general. Some dogs need a little pumping up, you know, but most of the time, if you're dealing with a quality working dog, uh they don't need to be in that nutcase frame of mind. And I'll use that kind of free track routine uh to help establish that. Once I get them out of the box and we walk to the area that I'm gonna start them, which is not the beginning of the track. From day one, I make them find where it starts. I uh I don't start by saying, here it is, dog, now go find it. Um I say, all right, now start hunting for this deer, and you gotta you gotta find where where where the track actually starts. Uh and I just do things that same exact way over time, and they just get in that routine. There's little moments built in there that uh we're able to create really good associations with, and they get reinforcement from doing all those things. I kind of treat the trail itself or the work as as a reward for that good behavior. Um, of let me let me give you a little physical examination, let me put your harness on with Frest and all those things. Um, and then before we even hit the woods, I've said. Them and I'm someone that holds them accountable to you know acting like you got some sense, walking well on a leash, and so on and so forth. So that that way when it comes time to try and do some of the clarifying parts of this, um, such as you know, what folks might call critter break-in or trash breaking or what have you. The the stuff where we're actually trying to give them a consequence for some of these behaviors. Uh, I've got a lot of deposits in my bank where they're like, this guy's cool, this guy always takes care of me. This guy says what he means. You know, I've told them no and closed the door on the dog box a hundred times before I ever say no on a track. So I'm not I'm not surprising them with a new approach to telling them when the behavior's right or wrong. And so um I think I think going through that process, they're talking about I see that's what you're talking about. My gosh, I've been rambling a while. But going through that process.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:54

Going through that process really reinforces that what kind of handler you are as well. And then when it comes time to uh showing them the things they can't do while you're working, uh you already have a leg to stand on there, and you're not gonna actually create shutdown behaviors just because you you know applied some kind of consequence to committing to an off-cast behavior. That's something really important to me with these hunting dogs. You can't just passively reset them when they start trailing something hotter because they're already getting their kind of internal reinforcement from just trailing itself. Going back to the puzzle, sometimes we are asking them to do a three-year-old puzzle. And all of a sudden a 14-year-old puzzle comes across the trail, and we have to convince them that she's the boring thing in this moment. Um, and if we let them do it, and then we just kind of passively stop them and bring them back to work, maybe we can manage them, meaning when it happens, I can stop them and put them back to work. But I don't I don't want a dog that I have to manage, I want a dog that's reliable. When it is faced with a decision to, you know, go critter on something else or stay on task. It knows that I'm the kind of handler that holds them accountable. And it's just like, I better not, and it just keeps going. And over time with those reps, it won't be so much a uh a decision where they're like, uh you know, Ethan's back there to hold me accountable. It'll be a I've done this task so much that just about every component of it is deeply uh rewarding. We've we've kind of made them little track addicts, if you will.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:33

Well, I hope that answered your question. No, no, that's exactly what I wanted to talk to people about. And uh also give them your your their place where they can buy your products that you've got. Uh, you know, a lot of guys can I know Ethan, I know can absolutely use this product that you've got because it's step by step. And one thing that you do in those videos is you don't edit the bad stuff out. If the dog makes a mistake, it's there for everybody to see. If you make a mistake, it's there for everybody to see, you know. So, you know, because whether it's you, me, or or Joey or somebody else, we're we're we're gonna make mistakes. We're gonna we're gonna do things wrong, and then we're gonna get back to the truck and think, God, I shouldn't have done that, you know. Uh and and so, you know, we're all human and the dogs are dogs, and and and and hey, back to Mike Lee and Jay Foltz. Mike Lee is a great, great dog breeder and raiser, and and Jay Foltz is a great hammer, but we all make mistakes, man. We all do. And and every dog, if you brag on a dog, just wait till he'll show you. I mean, that it's gonna make a fool out of you because just about the time you start bragging on him is when he's gonna just show you how much dog he really is, you know. But but nevertheless, uh give people your address, your your e you know, whatever they've got to do to get you funded.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:57

Yeah, the easiest place is just Ethan Young on Facebook. I got my links in my little bio, but also huntdog.org. Uh, there's a little tab there on that website for train your own dog, and I've got a little couple little articles. Me and Dustin have written just some of our ramblings about training dogs, as well as the all the links for what I call hunt DIY. Um, kind of do it yourself. Uh both are there. Pretty easy to find. Um but yeah, all the all the ugly stuff is there too. It's it's it's embarrassing at times.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:33

But it's the truth. Yeah, and that that's that's what holds everything back or right. That's that's what operates back because when people get these other videos or or or DL programs, all that is. You can help them of the ability to run a track motor. Uh you know, you could guide them into what you want them to do as far with their nodes. And you could uh the person could understand what how the nodes work and how the tent trailing and the factors like that work as well. Because a lot of us are ignorant to it and we don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:39

So how how can we have a percent? And and a lot of it, yeah, that that first program where it really deep dives into the science of how dogs learn and how scent works and all that, that can help because some of the things my dog is going to naturally excel at, or some of the things that are gonna motivate my dog, uh, are they might be different than some of the things say a bloodhound uh will excel at or be motivating thinking of them and so on. But I've I've included in there all the ways dogs, uh again, just how dogs learn in principles and how some of those genetic tendencies express. So the idea there with the first course is giving you the tools to kind of think like a dog trainer, because even though I show you probably a ton of helpful stuff, you're gonna be in the woods and something totally new, something totally unique to your situation is gonna happen. And if you're armed with the tools of like understanding and intrinsic reinforcement or associative learning, you know, like I can pair a reward with this behavior, whatever, uh you you've got something to work with and experiment with, and and you understand maybe better where you are in in kind of that dog's phase of learning and what to expect. Because it's definitely not one step forward over and over again. Sometimes it's ten steps backwards and then one step forward uh with some dogs.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:04

But well, another type of jokes that that that Ethan does and with these videos is he educates you. And and I've I've trained dogs and I've trained dogs for people, and I promise you I spend more time training the people than I do the dogs. And and that's just a given fact, okay? So if you want to educate yourself and elevate up in how you understand your dogs and and want to make your hunting better, this is a very, very good product to get. And I and I got, hey, guys, I don't own part of the company, I get nothing for this. I just does a really good job. And uh another thing that Ethan does is he has these member weekends, and he'll have some educated speaker come down, or he he will do part of it. But there's training in these member weekends where you bring your dog uh to these member weekends and you put them through the routes and the roots and all this stuff, and and it's a really, really good thing. So anyway, I wanted to I wanted to bring Ethan Young in to to the Tales of the Holler today. We didn't tell a whole lot of hunting stories today and that kind of thing, but I really think we got some meat and potatoes on the plate today, guys. And uh, you know, so anyway, that's that if unless anybody else has got anything, that's that's pretty much what we've got.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:29

I'm good. I'm good on it. No, we we appreciate you, brother.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:36

Thank you, Ethan, for coming on. You you're always very, very knowledgeable. Thank you, Joey, for having us. And uh and guys, we'll we'll talk to you next time. I appreciate y'all. Y'all have a good one.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:48

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:49

All right, see y'all.