Emily
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Feb 2004
Location: West Kill, NY
Posts: 2047 |
I had one
that was a bad tree climber. He even climbed while trailing. I made it worse the first time I saw it happening by laughing my head off. We were in an abandannoned apple orchard and he went up one tree, out the end of a limb, dropped off just like a coon, then on to the next one through half the orchard before I leashed him up. He did not shut up long while he was climbing, but he did use his mouth to hoist himself up to the next branch. Within a year, he was shimmying up trees with no branches. Not much discouraged him. I saw him picking his route down from a good 35 feet up and he never hurt himself, although he was put down before the age of 3 for other reasons--he chewed up my husband. One thing that helped with the shimmying up bare trunks--keep his dewclaws short, or remove them. Those are what he used to climb branchless trunks.
Sounds to me like you need to teach that hound that the coon is yours, not his. He needs to learn to depend on you to get to the tree and shoot it out. This is just my thinking, not from experience, but it might help if he knows you are coming in. Shout "i'm on my way" or something like that every minute or so on the way in. I am slow in the woods, and when training a hound, shout every few minutes to let him know I am making progress coming in. I find that this is a considerable help in getting a hound to stay put. It might stop him from being impatient about you getting there. If he figures out that he will get the coon (or at least a lot of praise)if you get there before he climbs, but not if he's already up the tree.
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10-03-2006 02:51 AM
