Hello Fred,
Thanks for taking the time to write me. Your question is basically
you have a young dog that bays in the pen, but could care less about
it out in the woods. What do I do?
Well, you have already gotten some pretty good advice from what you
said. You mentioned he has a good blood line. If you were here in
person, I would ask you about that bloodline. If they were show,
pen, or hog dogs. Ive written before that not all pen trained dogs
will make woods dogs, just as all woods dogs wont bay in a pen. But,
I try and always give the dog the benefit of the doubt and I try real
hard to give him the patience needed instead of having a rash
decision on culling. Believe me when I tell you, its hard not to
cull them after you have tried them a few times. But "I TRY" and
be
patient.
This is my suggestion. Dont put him in the pen anymore for the
time being with hogs. It wouldnt hurt to tie him out away from the
pen when working other dogs, but dont put him in there no matter how
fired up he is. Next time you go hunting and take him, dont turn
him loose at all unless yall have a hog bayed up... No matter what!
When you do bay up a hog, turn him to the bay with another dog if you
have one, if you dont, take him to the bay and let him get fired up
on the action.
I would do this procedure NO LESS, THAN FOR 10 HUNTS. You can go
more but no less than 10.
Whats the purpose of all this? Well, not letting him bay in the pen
no matter what and basically teasing him by not letting him in there
on the hog will hopefully MAKE HIM WANT TO GET AT THE HOG.
Not letting him go hunting (which evidently hes not doing) and only
letting him go to the hog when hes bayed for AT LEAST 10 HUNTS will
hopefully make him WANT TO get to the barking dogs and also if you
only turn him loose and he gets to get on a hog, it will make his
brain start to thinking (hopefully) "any time i get turned loose, Im
going to get to bark at one of those furry looking hogs I like so
much".
What your doing is the old attage of "dangling a carrot in front of
him". If after you do all this, and he still doesnt work, you
can
eiether keep trying or get you another dog. Theres just too many
dogs out there that WILL DO IT, than to put a year of two in to one
trying to make him want to do it.
Culling is a hard thing to do for some, especially if you paid money
for the dog, but if a person is going to raise hunting dogs, its
necessary to have good ones.
One last suggestion: never give away or pawn off a cull, It will come
back to haunt you in the future. And surely, dont ever breed him/her
to another dog expecting good working pups. The law of averages just
doesnt work that way.
Breed good hunting dogs to good hunting dogs and your chances are
alot higher than breeding a good one to a sorry one.
Hope things work out for ya on the dog.
Jim