Hello Mr. Deckert,

   I thank you so much for writing your question.  I also thank you very much for your kind words in reguards to my article I write.  I try real hard and spend a good bit of time thinking about my articles an answers before I type a word.   Ive always tried to write about my experiences no matter what I write about.  Over the years, Ive had some dogs that I trained and am pleased to call mine, but Ive also had my share of failures to.   So what I try to do, is steer folks away from my short comings in training so maybe they wont have so many.   Thanks again for your kind words.

 

Your question, how to get a dog to go out hunting and not stay under your feet.   Ive written several times on this in the past both here and other places.   This is my basic answer.   I feel I can train most any dog I raise to bay a hog and maybe even track one.  But the hardest thing for me to train a dog to do is GO OUT FROM UNDER MY FEET.   

 

   It seems you have already tried the first suggestion I would normally give you and that would be to let him go with the other dogs.

Next, Im having to assume something from your words.   You say "I got a couple of young DOGS".   >From this, I assuming that you are trying to get more than one young dog to go out with the others at a time.  If my assumption is right, this could be part of the problem.   When ever I train young dogs, I usually dont take but one at a time.  The reason is because to me they are puppies until they are over a year old.   Its kinda like going hiking in the woods with a couple of two or three adults but two kids are along.   The kids will hang together and the adults will hang together.   In training a hunting dog, we as hunters want our puppies to hunt like adults.  So Im not going to bring any other non trained dogs along or young non trained dogs along.  I dont want the untrained ones hanging together,  I want my untrained hanging with my trained.  I sometimes even put the ones Im wanting to train in the same pen with the trained dogs so they can become buddies hopefully and WANT TO hang together.    I hope you understand what I trying to say.  

 

Another suggestion, was one I recently wrote about to another question.   I basically told him to have a  hog in the woods somewhere tied out our in a small pen and start letting your dogs go to the hog close and then over time turn him loose to the hog farther and farther away until you are up to several hundred yards.  When hes going the distance your wanting him to go, move/drag the hog to another location, turn the dog loose, let him go to where he knows the hog is, and at that time when he finally figures out hes not there, he will have to use his nose to find him.

 

I guess the thing I would do that I have found works the best is to simply not turn the young dogs loose AT ALL until the hog is bayed up.  You can also turn more than one young one loose at a time doing this because of the excitement it gives them.   Do this LOTS OF TIMES before you ever turn them to try and find one.    If they have the desire as you said they do in the pen, this one might just work.   Most hunters I know dont have eiether the time or the patience to train a dog.  What they normally do is simply go hunting, turn the find dogs loose and the young dogs to go with them.   The young dogs are out for a couple of minutes and come back.   They eiether hollar at the dogs for coming back, throw something at them and tell them to get out of here, put them back in the truck or worse yet, simply let them run around under their feet and cuss them and tell them they are gonna get a bullet, like they really understand english.  And after a couple two or three hunts, they dont like the dog anymore and eiether keep taking them along forever, sell them to someone else or cull them.   Does this sound familiar to me? yes it does, i use to do the same thing.   But then I found/figured  out it wasnt nessarily the dog, it was me and my training methods.. 

 

   If a hunter wants a dog to go out with the other dogs or go out and hunt, we have to figure out how to make the dog WANT TO GO OUT.  Threatning wont work, scaring wont work, shocking wont work, THE DOG HAS TO WANT TO!!!   The method I told you about of holding the dogs back until the hog is bayed or the method of sending him to a pen from increasing distances WILL MAKE THE DOG WANT TO go and do something.    Will it work with all dogs?  Nope.  Some dogs will go out on the very first day, some will never go out at all.   Thats where I feel the breeding comes in.  

 

  I am faced with this basic same delima every year when I coach football.   I usually get 60-75 players who want to pay football.  None are kin at all normally.   But each child is unique in his own way.   I train each and every one of them the exact same way on how to deliver a form tackle on a player by putting his face mask on his chest, bending his knees, wrapping up his opponent, extending his hips forward with excelleration and putting the other player on his butt.    We start this practice in early August and practice it daily up until November along with regular practice daily and the games.   And what my conclusion is,   Is some players no matter how much I try and coach or teach them,  or how much they practice or how hard they try, JUST CANT LAY A LICK ON ANOTHER PLAYER LIKE THE GOOD TACKLERS can.  I can get any child to tackle, but to get them to do it like I want a 1st Team player to hit, I just cant do it for all them.  I guess what the bottom line is, the  individual dog has got to have it in him to go out and hunt and WANT TO DO IT!!!

 

  I usually start my young dogs in a pen,   but I dont do it every day, maybe once a week.  And once they start showing the ability I put them up until they are a year old.  

 

  There are 5 sences that we and other creatures including dogs have   SIGHT, SOUND, SMELL, TASTE AND TOUCH.   I feel if a dogs is trained strickly in a bay pen,  that hones the dogs sences down to I feel basically 80% sight, with just a dash of the remaining 20% to the other 4 sences.   This is why some bay pen dogs cant make the change to the woods.  This is also why out of the 17 dogs I have outside, I DONT HAVE BUT ONE of them that I FEEL could possibly win in a bay pen.   Does that mean the others I have wont bay hogs?  Nope, it just means they are woods dogs and not pen dogs.        I had a friend one time that I wont mention his name had one of the best pen baying dogs I had ever seen.  He/she was in there face, slobbering on them,  back and forth like a cutting horse, if the hog broke, he/she would grab hold of his back leg and shut em down.   There was lots and lots of money and trophys won with this dog.  Anytime I went to a baying and there was a calcutta, I tried my hardest to buy he/she.  So a great baypen dogs he/she was, but a woods dog he/she wasnt.   The dog would not find a thing, stayed under your feet, was basically worthless in the woods.   If the dog was sent to the bay, the hog would break because of the pressure.   

 

 Give your dogs the benifit of the doubt, and try just sending them to the bay so they will want to go out.   But be patient, it wont happen over night if its going to happen at all.

 

Good luck with your dogs,

 

Jim