00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I am speaking with meat Eaters very own Brent Reeves about how to pick the perfect puppy. So this is going to be kind of a cool new thing we're trying out here. We've been messing around doing a little bit of interview based podcasts and it's time to go pretty deep with some guests who have a lot of cool stuff to stay. 00:00:28 Speaker 2: So today I've got the host. 00:00:31 Speaker 1: Of this country life meat Eaters, Brent Reeves, huge into dogs, He's trained retrievers in the past, been a duck guide, and he is ate up with raccoon hunting, a hound guy. Just really interesting perspective, and he has a cool story to tell about getting his current puppy, which is what we're going to get into. But we're going to do a heck of a lot more than that. We're going to talk about really what everyone should consider when they're in the market for a puppy and how do you go find that perfect puff for you. This episode of Foundations is brought to you by Shields, an employee owned outdoor powerhouse where you can get a new set of golf clubs, a high end fishing rod, and of course dog training supplies. You know, whether you're in the market for a new crate, maybe an e caller, or maybe just a fresh set of training bumpers. 00:01:24 Speaker 2: Shields has you covered. 00:01:25 Speaker 1: Check out their offerings at Shields dot com. Brent Reeves, Yes, sir, I have never been more excited to talk to a guest. 00:01:36 Speaker 2: In my life. Really well, I must be your first one. 00:01:40 Speaker 1: No, I have done hundreds of these. We're sitting down here in Arkansas at Duck Camp. Man, it feels like the kind of place where we should be talking about dogs. You've got a couple of them out there in the kennel and your world. You know, we've spent a couple of nights running around the Arkansas woods with head lamps with your buddy Michael, looking for some raccoons and watching these hounds. And you have two dogs here, Whaling and Jesse, and Whaling is the man. Oh yeah, And the story of Jesse, the pup starts with him, actually starts before him. So let's get into that, like where did where did you get this dog? And how'd that come to be? 00:02:18 Speaker 3: You know, I coon hunted as a child, and grew. It's been in my family, and then my careers in law enforcement did not allow me the time to dedicate to it. So I was without a dog for a long time during my professional career, and towards the end of it, I was working in a place and in a position where I had a lot more time to dedicate to it. So I started looking. You know, I told my wife Alexis we're getting a dog. I'm gonna get another coon dog or going to get a coon dog and start coon hunting again. So I started looking, and I looked on the internet. I looked. I talked to people that coon hunted, my friends at coon hunting. All this this time I had coon hunted with them, you know, but I was just going with folks that had dogs, and it just really built that fire. So the guys that I hunted with, I talked to them about, man, if you hear of a dog, you know, I'm looking. 00:03:13 Speaker 2: I'm looking. 00:03:14 Speaker 3: So that went on for six months. I called people on the phone, I answered, I looked at ads and hunting magazines, and I wound up seeing. I talked to I don't know fifty people during that six months and looked at pictures of different dogs, but none of them ever just popped out to me, nothing said this is the dog for me, this is the bloodline that's for me, This is the puppy that I'm looking at, or the started dog that I'm looking at that interested me. And I was waiting for that just one that one feature that piqued my interest to take the next step. 00:03:52 Speaker 1: So hold on, when you say that, are you talking some kind of intangible where you're like, I just needed to see something that just clicked with me. 00:03:59 Speaker 3: Something that jumped out to you know, I'm looking at beautiful puppies, that proven dogs, proven bloodlines of dogs, but it just wasn't the thing that clicked that made me go, I want to look at that dog right there. 00:04:13 Speaker 2: So what makes a what does that for you? I will describe it. I can't. 00:04:17 Speaker 3: I can't because I could save myself. And if I could tell somebody how to look at something that's gonna trigger the dog that's gonna fit what they want, I'd be a millionaire man. You'd be paying me to talk to you right now, because if that is absolutely an intangible it is just you just can't. You just can't name it. 00:04:40 Speaker 1: I can't so when you when you talk about that, I think about that, Like, we were just listening to our mutual friend Hillary who's here with us, and she was playing a terrible fish song, but she loves it. Not our jam uh, but my current pup, my four year old, I call her my pup. 00:04:56 Speaker 2: She's the younger dog. I know exactly what you mean. I would. 00:05:00 Speaker 1: I was doing some stuff with Tom dowk and and he had a couple of Lee and Tiffany Lakowski's dogs, and one of those dogs when they let her out of the crate the way she ran a lap and showed up to work, I was like, Oh, there's something there that you know. And you're surrounded by amazing dogs, right, they're all super well trained, good blood. But there was something about that dog where I was like, Tom, we need to make a note of that, because when I want a puppy, that's what I want. 00:05:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:05:28 Speaker 3: Well, you know, they have personalities just like people do. And you're attracted to people that and dogs in the same way that appeal to your sensibilities. And to me, it all starts when I'm looking at something that's looking back at me. Now, I said, I looked for six months I didn't. I looked on through phone calls, text messages, and pictures and I finally saw something of all things Facebook Marketplace and I saw a video some is. 00:06:00 Speaker 2: Selling a coon dog. 00:06:01 Speaker 3: It just popped up on my feed and I looked at this video and there was this a young a six month old puppy a tree and walker puppy barking at a coon in a cage. 00:06:11 Speaker 2: And I've said it before. 00:06:12 Speaker 3: You know, you can any kind of dog will bark at a coon in a cage. You know, you show it to them, they're going to bark because they don't know what it is. There's no it's just instinct. They're just barking at something. So it doesn't tell you anything other than the dog will bark, you know. So I mean that's step number one. You got to be able to hear him. But something about the way that dog looked it just I said, I'm gonna, you know, check further into it. So I called the number. And I've told this story of my podcast before, but maybe not in this great detail. But when I called the folks, they their address was like forty five minutes away from me, and they were very motivated and selling that. You know, I think they they were kind of in a financial bind and couldn't really take care of the dog like it should be, and they needed some money. So I said, I'm going to come look at it tomorrow. So I get there and look at it, and the the dog. The conditions the dog were in were not part with what it was part with what they could afford. But you know, the dog just needed some help. So I thought, well, you know, they want two hundred and fifty dollars for this dog. I'm going to get it. If nothing else, I can get my money back at it, because it's a good looking hound. 00:07:24 Speaker 2: Right. 00:07:25 Speaker 3: So I'm talking to the to the lady there, and she was not She didn't want to You could tell that she had to sell the dog. She didn't want to sell the dog. So that that made me think, you know, it had some value. There's a possibility that this dog is worth something. And then when she told me his name, I said, what's his name? She said, his name is Whaling. It's like some old singer or something. Well that was. 00:07:50 Speaker 2: Just some random old say, some old, random old singer, you know. 00:07:53 Speaker 3: Well that that had a nerve with me right there, because he has been my favorite forever, and I said, okay, I'll take him and bought him and I took that dog home and from the minute I got him home, my wife and my daughter just fell in love with him. Which is a risk you take because if if Whalen has no idea of what his just because he's a coon a coon hound, that don't make him a coon dog. 00:08:20 Speaker 2: There's always a difference in that. 00:08:22 Speaker 3: You know, there's there's football players and then there's people that play football. You know, there's a difference, and that's that's the analogy that's always used. So you run the risk of bringing a puppy into a family where immediately the affection of how a dog looks and how they act and interact in him come on as puppies. 00:08:40 Speaker 2: You know. 00:08:42 Speaker 3: And it was just very fortuitive that he worked out to be the caliber dog he is because he is. 00:08:49 Speaker 2: He is a very solid. 00:08:51 Speaker 1: Coon down And what you're saying there without saying it, is that you know, this is a this culture of hounds. I feel like anyway, it's different than you know, the the upland Waterfall world that I live in, where you go get that lab pupp or you go get that GSP. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: You're not You're not washing that sucker out at oh yah. 00:09:11 Speaker 1: You know, whatever time in its life that dog and and there are people to do that, you know that are trialing or doing hont tests or whatever. But general population, that puppy comes into your house and it stays until it's it's done. But you're talking about you can't know with those dogs, these type of dogs until you really get down the road a little ways with them to see what they actually have, right, and it's way more common to wash them out, sell them, find somebody else for them, and keep looking till you find the right one. 00:09:40 Speaker 3: Well, I mean you, I was pretty lucky guy. I got that dog home, like I got his papers. I'm looking at his papers. I've been out of that game so long. None of the names on this and this registry meant anything to me. I had no history with any of it. It was only you know, a two or three generation paper there. So I really don't know what this dog is, what his bloodline is. I just know that something triggered me to like him, and I brought him home. And once I got him home, there he is, and I was I had had him maybe a week and he's just in the backyard running around, and I'm in my driveway. I'm cleaning out a guy bought a new dog box to haul him in, and I'm cleaning it out and a guy pulls up in my yard. He says, man, I've been driving by your house for a while, he said, and today I drive out and I see that you're you got a dog box in the back of your truck and I'm like yeah. He said, are you a coon hunter or a duck hunter? And I said, well, I'm both, but I got this for a coon dog. Do you coon hunt? And he said yeah, what kind of dog you got? And I said, it's a tree and walker. He said, I said, you want to see him? And I don't know this guy from Adam. It's turned out to be a great friend of mine, Rex Whiting. So we walked in the back door and he said, man, that dog. Look he does this pretty puppy. Let me see the papers. I show me the papers. He goes, oh, bone collector. He's a bone collector pup And I said, is that good? He said, uh, that's that's pretty good. And turns out his grandfather he was he was out of Willie Whalen's mama's name was Bella and his daddy's name was Willie, and Bone Collector was the father to both of them, so it was linebred back to him, so he had a common grandfather. It was this bone Collector dog who was extremely successful one upwards above seventy thousand dollars in competition winnings, back when winnings were not near what they are today. So I mean it was very successful. And he said, you know, these dogs have a lot of natural ability. So which was he was the absolute perfect storm, Tony, because I'm more or less just started hunting that dog and giving him the opportunity to do what came naturally to him. And I just kind of if he was if he had a fault, if he started doing something I didn't want him to do, I corrected that. I did not train that dog how to tree coons. We just focused on keeping him from doing the things that I didn't want him to do, and that narrative focus on what he was supposed to do and didn't naturally, and it just made it worked out. 00:12:23 Speaker 1: So you you kind of luck into a oh very a bargain. Yes, good dog. Uh, you get back into the coon thing hard that Whalen's what's six now. 00:12:35 Speaker 2: He's sick. He'll be six August the fifteenth. 00:12:37 Speaker 3: All right, don't ask me my anniversary date, but Whalen's birthday is August the fifteenth. 00:12:41 Speaker 1: So we go, we go from that to now, what a year ago? When when do you start thinking, you're like, I need another. 00:12:49 Speaker 3: Michael tells me, Michael, my friend Michael Roseman, who we've been hunting with, who makes our lives that we hunt with. He says, Man's only got so many good dogs in him. He said, Brentier, in your late fifties, you probably got two more dogs left than you. You need to start hunting, hunting a dog. So Whalen now is like I said, he's coming six years old this year, and I think, you know, to hunt those dogs. And I'm not a competition hunter, but we hunt a lot. You know, it gets rich rough on them, you know, and coming six, you know, by the time he's eight or nine, you know, he's probably he's at the zenith of his hunting right now. But he still got two and a half three years left. That's where he's good shape, you know, and can go a lot. But then from after that, it's it's going to start going down. So if I'm gonna, you know, keep that going, I got to get another dog. So we started looking and Michael called me one afternoon and said, Doug Compton, who was a friend of ours, who was the original owner of Bone Collector, whaling grandfather has got a litter of puppies who were AI pupps, artificial insemination puppies out of Bone Collector. So Jesse I got, I said Michael. I said, I'm in. I want a female. So we get two females. He got one and I got one. And so Whalen's grandpa is this dog's father, so it's I guess an aunt and you know, a nephew there. So but it's that bloodline, and you were talking earlier about picking out a pup. That bloodline is what I like, right, The quality and the and the characteristics that are natural to that, to that set of dogs, that line of dogs is something that appeals to me. 00:14:49 Speaker 2: That that is. 00:14:52 Speaker 3: Type of hunting and the kind of dog that I like, And so I wanted to continue with that. And it's a gamble whether or not. I mean, it's not one hundred percent right, but you know that if you're starting off with those genetics and that baseline of where you're working, that you've got a pretty good chance of going in the right direction or the direction. 00:15:10 Speaker 2: That you want to go. It's the best you're going to do. 00:15:12 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's the safest bet you can make, but it's still a bet. 00:15:17 Speaker 2: When you were looking for Whaling, were you looking specifically for a male? Yep? 00:15:22 Speaker 1: Okay, So with then why switch? Why did you want a female for the next one? 00:15:25 Speaker 3: Because I want to I want to have a set of puppies out of out of them Whaling and this dog. 00:15:31 Speaker 2: It should be a good cross. 00:15:33 Speaker 3: And I've used this analogy, you know, one hundred times, and you said one similar earlier. But you know, Jim Kelly, the Hall of Fame football player, is a friend of mine and I've gotten to hunt with him several times on filming some stuff with him. But he had like four or five brothers. They are all good athletes. Only one of those guys was in the Hall of Fame, you know, And that's that's kind of the gamble that you that you that you go at or that you're looking at when you're doing that. So I wanted a male, I mean, had I initially had a male, then I got a female. So I'm going to try to recreate some of that magic. And sometimes it doesn't happen, and but you know, sometimes it does, and when it does happen, it's really worth the effort, right. 00:16:20 Speaker 1: And I think that I think it's important to look at this here. You know, everybody, everybody who goes and gets some kind of sporting dog, hunting dog, you know, falls in love with that dog, has the best dog ever. Yeah, And when that dog starts to age out or it passes away, they're like, I want that exact same dog, So they go back to the breeder. A lot of times that happens anyway, but you're like, you know, this might be twelve years later, yeah, and you know, just just going to the same breeder might not mean anything. No, you know, like you don't understand what's in the blood there. You don't understand what things have changed. And I know the way that you're looking at that, to me, that that is that is like definitely one lane to pick where you're like, I know this line, this line works for me, and I'm going to keep this going. A lot of people that I talk to are like, you know, I used to hunt pheasants a lot, or I used to do this, or now I do this, and I have this dog and I always have loved this dog. And I'm like, well, you you might want to take a look at your life today. 00:17:22 Speaker 2: And you know, if in our. 00:17:24 Speaker 1: World you have so many labs to choose from, you have so many German short hairs, you know, the German other German breeds have come on way strong. I'm like, you have a lot of options instead of just defaulting to what you had, or you know, even kind of what you think you had. It's like, at least do that due diligence a little bit, like you were talking where you spent six months looking around, like what where's the thing that speaks to me? Where's that one that just hums at my frequency? I think a lot of people, if they looked at that a little bit differently, gave themselves some time to find the right bloodline, would end up with you know, they're always going to end up with good dogs. But that's how you get those dogs where you're like this one is this one changed me? 00:18:04 Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, and. 00:18:06 Speaker 3: We are all products of our environment and our hounds are to our dogs are too. You know where you made me think of something there. You've got a dog that you've had now for eight or nine years, and you're looking to replace something with that. You need to go back and look at how you develop that dog to that point too, because they are one hundred percent a product of their environment, how they're treated, and how how the focus you put on them on their care, not only their training, their opportunities to do what you want to do, but just the everyday life of that dog. Because it absolutely they have said it before. They all have personalities, they're all different, they all respond to stimulus in different ways. Some dogs you can get onto. Some of them that you have to take a switch to just to make some racket to get their attention, to scare them. Whaling, I think you could beat him with a tire tool and he's just here. I Am just got to explain what it is that you want him to do. Other dogs you can look at sternly and they're just done for the day. It's that temperament and stuff that you're looking for. So it's it's not only them, it's you, and it's how you look at that dog and each one of them has to be an individual there. They're not a tool and a drawer. They're not a hammer that you go out and get and when I don't need it, I stick it back in. 00:19:30 Speaker 2: It's something you work on it every day. Right. 00:19:40 Speaker 1: You bring up something that's that's pretty important there. You know, people have their preferences like I like a hardheaded male, I like a soft female. 00:19:46 Speaker 2: Whatever. 00:19:47 Speaker 1: But when you when you talk about that with whaling that kind of dog, you know that that personality of being like, I'm I don't care what happens, I'm mission focused. That people will look at that and go. You know, if you took that in like the Uplander the Waterfall world, you'd be like, Okay, that's the dog that's going to go hard no matter what, and that's the dog I want. It's like you're kind of filling in the blanks there, and you're you're potentially taking on a dog. Depending on your training experience, that might be just more difficult for you, Like you might be able to get away with harsher corrections or whatever, but it. 00:20:20 Speaker 2: Might not be. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: It might not be what you need as a trainer. And if you own a dog, you're a trainer, and you know if people will look at that and go, well, what if I if I get that little female and she's real soft, I raise my voice and she lays down on her back. I don't want that because what if she doesn't pick up a goose? And I'm like, man, the drive is different from that temperament, you know, like that, and that can matter so much when you're training though. 00:20:43 Speaker 3: You know, the one thing that is always when I and I can go back to Wilin to use him at nauseum. Here is when when Rex and I started hunting together and we started training Wilin and I use training in air quotes because I didn't really train him. I just give him the opportunity to do things. And he's the first time we could cut him loose. Rex is with me and he started barking with an old dog that Rex had and they were running a deer. I said, man, I think they're running a deer. He said, I know he is. And I said, well, I need to stop him. He said, no, let him run him plumb out of the country if that's what he wants to do. I said, if he's got he said, if he's got the drive to go and chase and smell something and get after Like that's what you're wanting him to do. We can teach him not to smell deer and when he gets rewarded for when he eventually runs across a coon, you know, that's I can. He said, you can. There's a million things you can teach a dog to do, but drive ain't one of them. So that's the first thing that we were looking at, and he had that from the get go. 00:21:51 Speaker 2: He wanted to pursue. 00:21:52 Speaker 3: He wanted to chase that natural prey instinct, that that genetic code that they can't fight that if it's in there in the right spot, they're going to go when you cut them loose. 00:22:01 Speaker 2: And he did that from the very beginning. 00:22:04 Speaker 3: It was an absolute lottery win for me, yep, because it was the easiest thing I. 00:22:08 Speaker 2: Ever did, was just get out there and let him go. 00:22:11 Speaker 3: And that was that was a lesson that that I learned from Rex from the get go that I've heard everybody says since and then I will testify to it as well, is that if a dog has desire, then you can there's something that. 00:22:24 Speaker 2: You can work with. Yeah, drives real important, Yeah, but you also talk. 00:22:28 Speaker 1: I kind of want to clear this up because you kind of you kind of joke about like not really training him, just sort of facilitating the environments in which he goes and haunts and develops himself. 00:22:39 Speaker 2: But there's also a million things that you have trained him on. 00:22:41 Speaker 1: Ohy, that that dog gets into a crate here or there. That dog does a lot of stuff. And this is this is something that you know, especially people who aren't like they're kind of getting into hunting dogs or maybe haven't run through a few of them. It's like, I got to teach this dog to hunt. Like you don't have to teach that dog to You have to teach that dog how to behave when you're hunting. There you go because they you know, you take you take my pups, and that first exposure to a wing, they lose their minds. I mean, it's just in them. And you know we've all seen that and that dog. You put that dog into the crp and a pheasant ran in front of it, It's most likely going that direction till that bird comes up. But you don't need it four hundred yards out, you know, three hundred and eighty yards pass where you can shoot whatever you need that dog, the recall, the you know, coursing, the ranging, all that stuff. You're training it to behave in a way that's kind of unnatural while it's doing the most natural thing in the world, which is hunting. 00:23:41 Speaker 3: You know, and I say this forever. It's prey drive that that you're taking advantage of on a coon dog. And the last thing pray a predator wants to do when it's chasing prey is make noise. But you look for the characteristics and a dog while he's chasing that his prey to make racket, which is you know, if predators make racket when they're chasing prey, they don't go, they don't eat that night. So you're taking advantage of something and adding actually a fault. There's a fault in there that you're taking advantage of. And this predator making noise while he's chasing the prey, and if he does that correctly, you can keep up with him. This is before trackers, you know, and satellite collars and all that kind of stuff. You're having to listen to this dog go down through the woods and he's barking, and then when he gets to a tree, he changes over to a locate bark, a big long bark or a series of chops, something that will let you know. It's called a locate bark because he is letting you know, this is where I'm at, this is my location. I've got him up a tree, you know, come over here, and then that dog will set there and bark until you get there. And when you get there, he's don't get to eat the coon. He doesn't get the eat what he has instinctively ran through the woods to try to catch. And all he's there for is your praise and affection of you did a good job. Now let's go get another one. So there's there is a lot of training that goes in there. It's just exacerbated and a whole lot easier if you just take advantage of the natural ability. 00:25:21 Speaker 1: Right well, and that's I mean acknowledging that I mean, and that's puppy stage on is you know, I think a really easy way to frame that up is you you are asking this creature to do something unnatural. So one of the things that you know, we've talked about, recall you and I've been talking about it this whole this whole trip, because you're you're cutting these dogs loose and they might be seven hundred yards out. You might need to get them back for some reason. And recall and steadiness with hunting dogs, big problem, right, because that dog naturally doesn't want to come back to you when it's out doing the thing that it lives for. No, just like a dog naturally doesn't want to sit in a duck blind when the duck's fall is yeah, right next to you, waiting for somebody else to give it permission to do the thing it is dying to do. But those are the things that make a good bird dog, you know. I mean, as long as as long as that drives there, and as long as the natural tendency is there, then you're like, Okay, now I have to ask this thing that I can't. I can communicate with, but I can't just say, hey, I need you to do this. I need you to do something very unnatural, and I need you to do it over and over and over and over again, no matter how many guns go off, no matter how many green heads hit the water, no matter what. And that's a that's hard, like, that's a hard thing to train in and that takes time. 00:26:42 Speaker 2: Well, yes, that's what I'm talking about. 00:26:44 Speaker 3: The time that it takes to go from bringing that dog in the house to your petting them under the tree for treeing a coon, or bringing that pup into the house to the point that he or she brings you back and sits besides you until you take that duck away from its mouth. There's a long and winding road between start and stop, and really there's no stop, there's no finish wailing is I'm training him or correcting him every time we go, I mean every time from it all began with feeding him on at the in the yard, getting him to come to me when I wanted him to come to me, putting him on the tailgate, getting him to go in the box when I commanded him to go in there, wait till I tell him to come out. There's so many things that go before having a dog that is getting the reward and you petting him when he's standing under that tree and there's a coon up there. It's a whole lot goes into it, and it's just a repetition every day of the of the things that he gets the reward for. Within the reward is you know, a pet on the head or a rub on his ribs. 00:27:57 Speaker 1: Right and it's impossible, it's really impossible to sit here and talk about it and contextualize it in a way that makes sense when you're talking about you know, really really intensive training for a couple of years with a lot of dogs and then sort of maintenance, kind of keep it polished, work the rest of their lives. But when you go back to you know, not only picking a pup based on seeing something that you just like and it works with you, you know, getting into the bloodlines, getting into the pedigree, you're literally looking for a dog not only that's going to have those that prey drive to the nth degree, but you're also looking for lines of dogs that know how to solve problems, lines of dogs that have proven they can work with somebody in a way where they're worth bringing back to the table and getting another litter out of. And I think, you know, I think that that's kind of a hard thing for people. We sort of look at you know, we'll look at German short hairs and we're. 00:28:56 Speaker 2: Like, well, they're all like this. 00:28:58 Speaker 1: They love birds, they love to point their hygh dry, they're fun, they're goofy whatever, and it's like, man, they're individuals, and you could have one just like kids that really struggles to learn, really struggles to build confidence, whatever, and just has a tougher go of it just generally, or you can go find that bloodline where it's like there's a reason these dogs have been bred. You know this dog to this dog, this dog to this dog, this litter whatever. And a huge component of it we don't talk about a lot is intelligence and problem solving, and those things make that journey we're talking about not only just easier, which is great, that would be reason enough, but it makes it a hell of a lot more fun when you have something that that's you know, pretty quick to learn and pretty quick to pick up on stuff where you go to that new environment and they're like, okay, well I know this drill, but I've never done it here, and they just like work through it. It's like, okay, we got that one, boss, what's next. That kind of dog is a huge reason why those bloodlines and understanding those petters are so important. 00:30:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we every I'm not a competition hunter. I support competition hunting. Michael is pretty successful in it. He's had some really good dogs in it before. He's got one now that's doing really well. But as a pleasure hunter and all the pleasure hunters, I know, where do we get our dogs from? 00:30:20 Speaker 2: The competition guys, right. 00:30:21 Speaker 3: So it's everything that is that is selected and selectively bred to produce the dogs that we have today or all the. 00:30:30 Speaker 2: Even the pleasure hunters. That's where we get them from, right. 00:30:34 Speaker 3: And you know, over the last one hundred and fifty years, coon dogs have gone from pack animals to independent dogs. And you know, wolves hunting a pack where all our dogs came from now, So that's something that has been bred away from them. Like I talked about finding a fault to begin with, a dog that would hunt by itself back in the day was no good, you know, but that has been taking advantage of because now you know, hunting for food, you're hunting it at food. 00:31:02 Speaker 2: Really, So. 00:31:06 Speaker 3: Regardless of your end goal, whether it's to be a world champion coon hunter or just a world champion weekend guy, we're all getting those dogs from the same pool. And understanding what each dog does, what each bloodline, the characteristics it carries over one and another, is going to be a lot easier to find a dog that's gambling, you know, or would have a higher percentage of fitting what fits you, right, And that's research and talking to people, you know. 00:31:41 Speaker 2: And I mean these folks are doing it for a business. 00:31:43 Speaker 3: And I have found no easier people to talk to than dog people, because I can be a policeman or carpenter or astronaut, whatever, but we've all got that. 00:31:55 Speaker 2: Common thing about dog. 00:31:56 Speaker 3: And when you're talking back and forth to people, I've found that the large majority of them, they'll tell you exactly what it is what a dog's looking at, and give you the opportunity to see for yourself, right. 00:32:07 Speaker 1: And that's very important for me, big time. And you brought up a really good point there. But the competition thing, you know, I mean, I'm certain a lot of people listening to this had no idea there was raccoon coon hunt and competition. Yeah, And on kind of my side of this thing are the field trialers and the hunt test and crowd, which I don't have. I think it's cool. I have no interest in competing in it. But our dogs are coming from those lines too, or my dogs are. And you know, people will say I don't need a field trial dog. I mean it's essentially to a lot of you know, a lot of people, that's like a signal that you're going to get a dog it's unmanageable, way too high drive. There's there's sort of a stigma attached to it, and it's like, but those those are the lines that have proven not not only what they can do and what they're capable of in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing. But that's like ahead your bet kind of thing when you don't know as much as a pro trainer, you don't know as much about somebody who's training one up to the level to run it through the field trial circuit or whatever, and you also have an undeniable aspect of health there. And so people will say, you know, well, I'm gonna get this dog because it's AKC or it's peer bread and you're like, that doesn't I know that. For a long time we kind of use that as sort of a standard, right, like that that means something. Now, what it means is it's just a peer bread dog. And if you need a purpose bread dog, now you can get a Golden Retriever that has nothing there hardly you know, or you can go get a field bread golden that will hunt just like the best lab just like whatever. There's still golden retrievers, there's still peer bread, you can AKC register them yep. And so there's a there's sort of a maybe a knowledge gap. There maybe some misconceptions about it where, yeah, you don't need a dog that comes out of uh, you know, a line where they got a million ribbons stacked up and they've won field trials all across the country, national champions whatever. But at the same time, those dogs that come out of those lines and are bred from those dogs are going to be They're they're generally going to. 00:34:16 Speaker 3: Be You're pretty good. You're kind of heads in your bed, right do that? You know, because it's an investment, and it's a long term investment. It's a gamble that that you're paying for right now that it's not if you're getting a puppy, it's not going to pay. 00:34:31 Speaker 2: Off as far as the coon hunting goes. 00:34:34 Speaker 3: I'm getting him at eight weeks old, and I'm looking at months maybe a year before. 00:34:41 Speaker 2: He used to be two years old. 00:34:42 Speaker 3: Back back in the day when my dad was a kid. It was my first coon dog I got. He said, you know, son, you're you're getting a puppy or we can work. You can work and save up your money and buy a dog. Somebody's already got started, he said, because that dog is going to be eighteen months old before you find not whether he's going to be good or not. And that used to be the standard. But you know, things change now. You know people are good or bad. They're treeing earlier now and they're getting more pressure putting on them. But they're bread to do that. But going back to what I was saying, you pay six hundred dollars for a coon dog puppy, which is very easy to do, plus twice that or more. You're hedging your bet because of the value of a dog's value from the historical standpoint to know that when you get to that ten, eleven, twelve, and fourteen month old stage, that you've got something there, a good, good thing to start working with. And it goes back to you talk about health. You know, they're trying to breathe these dogs to like for hips, you know, good hips, the same thing with coon dogs without. They want them to be independent, you know, healthy, quick learners, you know has some sense. 00:36:08 Speaker 2: You know a dog. 00:36:10 Speaker 3: There's always been an old misconception. You see cartoons of gold coon hounds laying out in the yard, you know, and they're lazy and they don't appear to have much sense. And I've seen some of these dogs could be trained to paint a barn if you just give my paint brushing and open the can for them. So you're looking for that from these breeders that are that are breeding these dogs to be superior. They're just always trying to graduate up, up, up up up, and in doing so you may lose something here and lose something there, but the vast majority of it, in my experience, is seeing is the betterment of the breed, and to be able to manip to manipulate, you know, this dog that I may want to hunt this way, and you can get one out of the litter and train it to hunt the way you won't, you know, And just to be able. 00:37:02 Speaker 2: To specialize that dog to fit. 00:37:05 Speaker 1: The needs and the way you hunt right well right, And when you're talking about that, one of the things I thought about was, you know, I'm really not familiar with the hound world all that. 00:37:16 Speaker 2: Well, like what and I'm. 00:37:19 Speaker 1: Going somewhere with this, Okay, it seems like there's a low I haven't heard you guys talk about looks a whole lot like appearance. It seems like this crowd, at least your crowd is like very tuned into what's under the hood and why that matters when you get into a lot of upland up upland especially but waterfowl dogs is some extent too. It's like, I want a red lab. Yeah, I want a chocolate man, and that's priority. 00:37:51 Speaker 2: I know exactly where you're going. 00:37:52 Speaker 3: Some of these hounds look like homemade soap. They don't favor a drink of water now. But it's very important to me. But it's also, like I said before, one man's trash is another man's treasure. But the shape and the color is important to me. Some folks like a lot of white on their hounds. And there there's a line of dogs that have a lot of white that look more like bird they're colored up, more like you know, pointers than hounds. And you know, trycolored dogs. I like them with the red or orange head, you know. And Jesse, you see out there now, she's got black ears, but every day that hair is turning red and will eventually she'll have a red head, just like Whalingville out there. 00:38:35 Speaker 2: And that's what appeals to me. But other folks, I know, they'll have a dog. 00:38:40 Speaker 3: They'll pull out of a dog boxing, like, holy cow, you know, I need some glasses. 00:38:44 Speaker 2: That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. 00:38:46 Speaker 3: Then you cut them loose and there are three trees ahead of everybody. So a lot of folks that's it's just you know, it's a difference in forge and chevrolets. Right, it's if looks are important or performance. And you know, I'll show my wife a prime example. She's so biased about whaling. I said, I'm going hunting with so and sod them, and she's like, what kind of dog they have? 00:39:11 Speaker 2: And I'll show a picture of them. She's they're not as cute as. 00:39:14 Speaker 3: Whaling, you know, but that that's very important to her that her dog looks the prettiest of all out there. You know, he may not be the best coon dog out there, which is important to me. But I see it more lean towards having a dog that will they can cut loose and tree a. 00:39:33 Speaker 2: Coon rather than win. You know, a bench show. 00:39:36 Speaker 3: And there's a big there's a big bench show following a big that's a big part of of coon. But the folks that I run with you know, they'd rather have look at a coon in a tree than than a pretty dog on the tailgate. 00:39:49 Speaker 1: Well, and I mean, that's what I want to talk about, is you're not buying You have your preference like everybody does. But you're not buying a dog because it looks good. You're not You're not buying a dog because of the of its hair, Like you're buying a dog because of what's underneath the hood. 00:40:04 Speaker 2: And it's an easy thing. And I hear. 00:40:08 Speaker 1: This, This is probably the the thing I hear about more than anything when people talk to me about puppies or why they got a certain dogs, Like I just like the way they look. I like the way that you know, these wire hairs, beards look. I like, you know, the way a red lab looks. And it's like, you know, whatever, personal choice. But if you're shopping on color or sthetics first, like you said, it's it's like when you go go to buy a new truck, are you like, I just want a red one? Like, oh, Dodge Chevy, what do you want? V eight V six just gotta be red? And it's like that's you have to understand, you know, like you have a kid, you're not like, I hope this kid looks good. You're like, I hope it's healthy. You know, I hope it's smart and healthy and compassion and all this stuff. You're not like, I hope it's pretty, you know. But with our dogs we can kind of order up something. And there's there's you know, we have access to so much information now where you can be exposed to different dogs. And you know, we've been talking, we've been making a bunch of jokes about French bulldogs here and how how nuts over them people are. And it's like, man, if you if you need a performance driven dogs, if you're listening to this, you need a dog that has a job. It's working dogs. Forty dog, it's going to have a job. You know, the color might matter later, it might be like a you know, seventh down the list. 00:41:35 Speaker 3: There is an old saying in coon Hunt. You know, I like tree and walkers. Clay Newcomb likes plots for some unknown reason who knows, but that that right there is a prime example. The old saying is if it's a good a good coon dog, the color has never mattered on a good coon dog, right And it's so it's the end goal is what you're after first, before the esthetics, and if you can have what you like and it'd be good, that's just a bonus. 00:42:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know this reminds me so three dogs ago, I had a golden I had to put down at six years old. 00:42:22 Speaker 2: Taught me a real valuable lesson. 00:42:24 Speaker 1: And at the time I had a year and a half old daughters, two of them plural. So my wife was like, do not get a dog. Don't bring a puppy. This is not a situation. We need another dependent. And she had offhandedly said to me at some point in that whole process, when I knew lux was going downhill, like I think chocolate Lab puppies are the cutest puppies ever. So I had to put my dog down and I was talking to Doc on the phone. I said, you know, she likes chocolate Lab puppies and he's like, if you want me to find you a puppy, I can find you a puppy. And he said it probably won't be brown, it'll probably be black, but it won't matter. And I just impulsively said, find me a pup here's what I want. 00:43:10 Speaker 2: And then I. 00:43:11 Speaker 1: Walked on eggshells in that house because my wife was like, do not, don't do this to us. You know, people are listening to this and they're like, oh, I had babies that you know. I had a five and three year old at the same time. And I'm like, you have no concept of what you're talking about. You shut your mouth right now, because people do that to you all the time. Oh, I basically raised twins. My kids are four years apart. I'm like, you have I'm gonna hand you to newborn babies. 00:43:36 Speaker 2: Twins are different and your world's gonna what gaff I can say. 00:43:39 Speaker 3: It's like having kids, like drowning, somebody handing you a glass of water. 00:43:43 Speaker 2: Yep, having twins and be about the same thing. 00:43:47 Speaker 1: It's a heavy lift when they're young, young, young. But I needed a dog and it was April. So I was like, if I get one now, I can train it up and at least late seasons start getting it out there, you know. But the window was closing. If I waited too long, I was going to miss a season without a dog. And so through this whole thing, my wife knew. She's like, don't, don't do it, Like, don't don't freaking do it, buddy. And Tom's calling me and he's like, I think your dog's in Kentucky. 00:44:16 Speaker 2: I think your dog's here. And I'm like, oh shit, now I'm gonna have to drive. 00:44:19 Speaker 1: A thousand miles, pay pay up for a dog because it's going to be a good one. And he called me and he said, your dog is in East Bethel, which was twenty minutes away from me. And he said there's a litter there. It's blacks and chocolates. You're not gonna get one of the chocolates. 00:44:36 Speaker 2: Whatever. 00:44:37 Speaker 1: I needed a female or I wanted a female. He's take your take your wife and your daughter's up there. Go show him this litter. And he said you'll be fine. Oh yeah, that's and so I brought them there. Dude, I brought those little girls up. They could barely walk and there were I can't I think there were ten pups in that litter. And as soon as that happened, my wife wasn't even really that mad at me. And I was like, this was just I just threw the needle on this one. But it was at that point to get a dog. I was like, I'll get a brown one. I don't care. I just need one. And Tom knew better and he's like the color will not matter when when the litter's right and the litter was awesome. 00:45:15 Speaker 2: I mean, she was. 00:45:16 Speaker 1: She was the dog I needed at that point. Like she she was. And I don't know if Tom knew this. I don't know if Tom kind of instinctively understood this about the kind of dog I needed. But she was the kind of dog that didn't need tons of attention, tons of love. She needed to work and so she needed she needed to train, and I just, you know, between having the girls and just a heavy travel schedule, that dog got a tenth of the love that my current four year old dog was getting at that age. But she never really she was very independent and she was like if you were if you picked up a bumper, she was like, we are, We're just going And she was the right thing. 00:46:00 Speaker 2: And I guess something that you need to absolutely because. 00:46:03 Speaker 1: I didn't have I needed to get a lot out of that dog with a limited amount of time I had. And I don't know if that was just I'm just revisionous history here and I'm filling in the blanks, or if that's really like something that he kind of instinctively knew. 00:46:17 Speaker 2: But it just worked out. But it was. 00:46:20 Speaker 1: It was an experience and it really kind of taught me like, I don't I don't care what they look like. Really, I care about what they're bringing to the table because I I just want something that is going to turn out in spite of me, you know, like I want something that is going like I would have to try hard to screw that dog up. Beyond some of the things, you know, the gunfirewater introduction that you could screw up and really ruin them, just the general development of that dog. That dog is going to develop through all of my mistakes. 00:46:49 Speaker 3: Man, I've said that forever about Whitelum, that he might he turned into a really good coon dog despite all of my efforts. You know, he really did it, and he It's interesting you said about getting a dog at the right time. The day I went and picked up that dog was March the thirteenth of twenty twenty. The next day is when all everything broke loose and they shut the school down. Bailey was in the second grade and we were there at home and we had this new dog, and that filled such a huge gap. But it also was kind of intimidating because I know this dog is here forever. You know, I'm either going to be having to get another coon dog and just feeding this clown with it, or you know, we're gonna all bets are off. 00:47:38 Speaker 2: We're just going to focus on making this thing the right way. 00:47:41 Speaker 3: And it was just such a perfect fit that he turned into what he did. 00:47:47 Speaker 2: I through a lot of effort in a lot of miles. You know. It was. 00:47:52 Speaker 3: Bailey was home, Alexis was working from home, I was working from home. So at night they'd go to bed. Nearly every night we'd hit the woods, and it just got to be that routine. It may not be for an hour, two hours, it might be three hours, but it was repetition all the time. And last October, Austin Clever at Old Chili works at Me either came down here and we did a podcast down here, and I took him coon hunting for the first time. And it is he and he and I and Michael were hunting and his first coonhut and Chili had ever been on. And we knocked the coon out, bring back the skin it and he's like, man, he said, these coons are cool. I get it, I get why, or I see this is fun. You know what y'all are doing from start to finish. He said, but what is the deal with the coons? Why is the coon such a focus for you guys down here? And Michael just immediately, just like that, he said, Man, it ain't about the coon. 00:48:56 Speaker 2: It's about those dogs. 00:48:58 Speaker 3: And you kind of see the light and I had never really thought of it that way, but as one hundred percent the light. 00:49:04 Speaker 2: Bulb went above off above my. 00:49:06 Speaker 3: Head, just like it did Chili's when he said that, and he's and he said, oh, I get it. And Michael said, you know, it could be a bobcat, could be a fox. He could be a possum. But it is the relationship that you build with this dog that when you feel confident when you get to where you're going. I never go anywhere that I turn my dog loose and I'm not confident he has the best chance of anything to triger coon before I get back. And you do the same thing with you when you cut your dogs loose for pheasants. You're not gonna turn it loose without thinking. If he's out there, this dog will find it right, you know. And that is such a bond. And when they do it, it just it's just such a bond. It just strengthened that bond, strengthens that bond, and it's just there ain't a better feeling to me than doing that and sharing that with somebody. 00:49:53 Speaker 1: Right, And that's you bring up a really good point there. So I've been thinking about this a lot down here, because you know my interest. I've been on some coon hunts in the past, and I've been around hounds, not a lot, but some, and it is not I was thinking about it. I'm like, it doesn't appeal to me the same way as you know, chasing grosse, woodcock whatever, ducks, any birds. But I was thinking about this last night when we were leaving the woods and riding that side by side listen to Michael talk, and I thought, you know, if the quail population here was like it was sixty years ago, some of these guys would be running pointers and they'd be doing a They would be going just as hard but in a different direction. And then I thought, if I lived here, I'd have to have a dog doing something. So then I was like, I'd be a coon hunter, or i'd you know, ducks whatever. There would be something where the location I was in would just kind of dictate what kind of dog and what kind of direction I went. And then you know, I thought about it, and I was like, well, the whole reason I started duck hunting was because I had a bird dog, had a retriever, and I was living in the suburbs of the Twin Cities for the first time in my life, and I'm like, I have no access to any wild birds. I figured out the woodcock thing a little bit later when they migrated through, but trying to find places to hunt deer, you know, on chunks of public land up there where we got a lot of water, and I'd be, you know, out there glassing and I'm like, okay, there's you know, make no to wood ducks on the pond or whatever. Never really hunted ducks ever. And then you sit there and think about it and go, well, this is what I have and I never I had always to that point it intentionally avoided duck hunting because I'm the kind of guy who I'm like, if I go, if I start duck hunting, I might be like a duck hunter, like that might be it, you know, and I'm like, I don't have the I don't have the bandwidth for that, you know. I was the bow hunting thing ate up so much of my time. But when you're sitting there, you're like, oh, I I could probably figure this out a little bit. And for several years with that dog, most of the bird hunting I did was you know, kind of small water ducks, figuring it out with her because that's what I had. And I'll tell you what, I didn't feel like I was missing a whole lot, you know, I always missed the pheasant thing a little bit or whatever. But I was like, oh, this is this is just what I'm going to do because I have this kind of dog and this kind of opportunity, you know, and I think, you know, I did a podcast. I did a Foundation's episode about this where it's like you kind of got to take a snapshot. 00:52:21 Speaker 2: Of your life where you're at and go. 00:52:22 Speaker 1: You know, I grew up grouse hunting with my grandpa up in the you know, the big Woods. But now I have four kids in sports, and I live six hours away from real grouse territory, but I have access to these kind of birds, and so, you know, buying a dog off of memories or buying a dog off of hopes that you're going to be doing this thing, you know, whatever, like, it's your choice. But where are you at now? What can you get to? And again, a lot of a lot of this. You know, you guys live in a place where you facilitate this and you have big chunks of land to do this. A lot of people are like, well, I do the you know, the South Dakota thing. You know, five days a year, I bring my dog out and I hunt pheasants. Well, okay, then three hundred and sixty days a year. Your dog's a house dog. So what do you need out of that? And what would be fair to that dog or the kind of dog you could get. It's not just about that one five day window. It's about what's the relationship going to be and how how much can you give that dog instead of just what can that dog give you? 00:53:20 Speaker 2: When you're looking for a puppy? 00:53:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that that is so important and it's something that a lot of people don't think about. You know, there was a I've heard this more than once from a guy long several years ago. We had black and tan puppies and would sell them for one hundred dollars apiece and with a guarantee that if the folks got tired of them, he'd give them their money back after a year. Well, folks were behind these puppies up and after a year they're like, ah, I wasn't going to coon hunt, so I can get my money back on this dog. 00:53:57 Speaker 2: But what this guy was doing was farming. Puppies have to be raised by people for a year. 00:54:03 Speaker 3: He'd get them back and he would start training them and sell them. 00:54:06 Speaker 2: So hold on. 00:54:07 Speaker 1: So he was like, hey, you take the VAT bill, you socialization, you take the terrorist stage of the six month old puppy. 00:54:16 Speaker 2: You tell me that guy wasn't thinking. 00:54:17 Speaker 3: Now, that guy was thinking, this's happened in the state next just east of us here. But it was an absolute genius plan of how he did that. 00:54:28 Speaker 2: But you. 00:54:31 Speaker 3: There's there's so much to be considered when you bring one of those dogs home, the not only the care that you had to give them. Because now, if you know, my daughter's fixing them, she's twelve, almost thirteen, and she's a competition dancer. So a lot of our weekends we're gone, well, guess what, Whaling and Jesse, they're not going with us. So I've either got to boredom or I've got to have somebody come and take care of them, and there is there's no greater responsibility you have than another living creature dependent upon you and you got that's that's tier one. You got to take care of that. That's just the way it is. There's if you if that's not your primary focus when you walk out the door, is this dog? But these dogs going to be fine when I when I leave the house, then you don't deserve them to begin with. So that's there's so many things to think about. It is a limiting factor on your life and something that should be considered before you ever start looking for one. Am I going to have the term to do this? Am I going to have the resource to take up the slack when I'm not here? Because I mean I can't think of anybody's kids that don't. They're not involved in either dancing or travel ball or whatever. You know, they're going somewhere doing something a lot. So there's there's just so much to be considered in the welfare of when you're not there taken care of, not to mention the things that can happen to them once you get them out in the woods. 00:56:06 Speaker 2: Right well, I like to think of it. 00:56:09 Speaker 1: I mean, for me, when we got married, and I moved from a town of two thousand people southeastern Minnesota, little dairy farming community to the suburbs of the Twin Cities. 00:56:18 Speaker 2: I mean, I was miserable. Miserable. That's a bunch of folks who live there. 00:56:23 Speaker 1: There are way too many, way too many. But for me, it was like, I just need to be in the I need to be away from people. I need to be in the woods. I need to be on the water. That's just what I need. Like that's I'm not. I don't do very well if you keep that away from me for too long. And I'm sure that a lot of people listening to this are like that. And if not, you have other needs. 00:56:45 Speaker 2: Right. 00:56:46 Speaker 1: We look at a dog and go, I'm gonna find this puppy. This puppy is gonna be awesome at this and awesome at this, and it's gonna give me all of this stuff, like it's going to do for me a ton of stuff. 00:56:57 Speaker 2: That's good. 00:56:59 Speaker 1: But what am I doing for that dog? And if I get this kind of dog, is my lifestyle conducive to giving that kind of dog, not only that breed, but that that individual dog that litter, you know, the high drive. Whatever whatever they bring to the table, am I going to be able to get that dog what it needs? And so you see this a lot, and I'm sure there are a lot of veterinarians listening to this who've dealt with a lot of you know, dogs that have been given way too many treats because people equate that to love or you know, we do a lot, we play a lot of games. You see this a lot where it's like, well, I take my dog. I take my German short hair that's eight months old. I take it for a walk every day for a mile and a half. And that's like almost doing nothing when that dog because of what it needs, you know. And so we can kind of, if we want to, we can convince ourselves that we're doing the best for that dog because the dog is going to be happy, like I'll do. You know who the humor calumnists Dave Barry is, Oh yeah, yeah, he wrote you know, he's written ton and tons of stuff. But I'll never forget. He wrote a line one time about they were doing an experiment. I think it was on the International Space Station, but it might have just been a man mission up. 00:58:09 Speaker 2: Into space a long time ago. 00:58:11 Speaker 1: And they brought a frog up there to test how like distressed a frog would be. And the whole thing was about, like, how would you tell if a frog was distressed? Right, Like, if you could pick one critter that's like pretty stoic, it's a frog, right, And I always think about that. I'm like, yeah, if you go get a dog and you like, you can watch it when we walk up to your dogs in the kennel here, their tails are going nuts. They're like, he's coming. He's the best thing that's going to happen to me. Then you take that dog out and you let it go off the side by side at night, and now that dog's like, this is the best thing that happened to me. And then you feed these dogs whatever. It's like we can we can convince ourselves that we're giving them everything they need because of just what they are, why they're so special. But to be honest about that and go, you know, I live in this little apartment in the city. Maybe that you know, uh drought or that wire hair. It's not the best choice for me just because I like a dog that has a beard and a you know, as a cool temperament or whatever. Like we have to be fair to the dogs too. And that starts way before you find that litter. That starts when you're like, you know what, maybe I'm not this breed. Maybe this breed isn't it anymore. Maybe I need something like this because of X Y Z and the dance schedule and where I live and where my job takes me and all of a sudden the travel. You got to be fair to them too. 00:59:33 Speaker 2: Or maybe you just don't need one. 00:59:34 Speaker 3: There are sections of it, you know, Like during that twenty plus years of my career, I didn't have a coon dog because I couldn't justify having that dog set in the back in the in the pan back there and me not hunting. 00:59:47 Speaker 2: That's just not that, ain't That's no bueno. That ain't the way to go. Did you have house dogs at all? No? No, until you got married. Not until I got married. 00:59:57 Speaker 3: Then you had house Now we got row see the jack Russell whose only job is to crop dust hair from one room to the other. But you know, growing up, we didn't on the farm. We didn't have any dogs that weren't serving a purpose for something, right, you know, cow dogs, good or bad or at whatever level they were, they were if they were if they were eating food at our house, they were they were serving a purpose of course, coon, I mean hunting dogs out the wazoo, but there was no house dogs there. But you know that's but that was a sacrifice that I made because of my commitment to having to treating the dog the way they're supposed to be. You know, I don't treat them as humans. You know, they're I don't think they're people, and they shouldn't be treated like people. They are animals. But they are our responsibility to take care of. And I take that very to heart. You know that that that it is my responsibility to take care of me and Whalen, who's never aged a day until we brought this puppy home. And I can look at him now and I can start seeing the gray in his face. You know, he'll have a home at my house and until he leaves this world for sure. 01:01:12 Speaker 2: I mean that's a stressful. 01:01:15 Speaker 1: My older dog, when we brought that pup home, she was not super excited about it, you know, but that's just how it goes. 01:01:24 Speaker 2: They figure it out. Yeah, they play together now. 01:01:26 Speaker 3: I mean he has always been Michael has always called him a big puppy. 01:01:31 Speaker 2: He's like a five year old puppy. 01:01:32 Speaker 3: That's way Rex refers to him, just because he's just so full of energy and just the way I mean, you can he can jump up on you and you pop him on the head and he's. 01:01:44 Speaker 2: Just hih, you know, he's ready for more of it. Just he's just a. 01:01:47 Speaker 3: Lovable toddler really is what he is, is his temperament. But the first few days he was like, what. 01:01:56 Speaker 2: Is going on? Why is this creature here? 01:01:58 Speaker 3: You know, I'm the baby, the I'm I'm the one who's supposed to be sitting in Mama's lap, you know, in the lown furniture out back. But they get used to it. And the way you do that as you treat them both the same, you know, and and we did that. But it's a it's a fun journey. To me, there's nothing any more fun or any more pleasurable than seeing a dog figure out what their purpose is, why they're there. And what I'm wanting them to do is when they figure it out is like I mean, they literally look back at you and like this is outstanding, you know, And not only is this fun for me, but you're happy that I'm happy, right, and you just you can see it if you pay attention, you can absolutely see the expression on that dog's face and in their temperament that that. 01:02:46 Speaker 2: They like it too. 01:02:47 Speaker 1: Ye, I mean it's I can see that, you know. I mean when you I spent quite a bit of time with Michael, and he talks a lot about when that. When that dude talks, you're like, they're here is so much knowledge, Oh, hitting me upside the head, you know, in such a soft, very just like modest delivery. He's not trying to impress you. He's just saying, this is just what it is. And you can see that where it's like it's a for him. He's doing that for the dog. He's doing so much that's just for the dogs, but it's for him at the same time, even you know, like his motivation isn't I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this for the dogs. But because of that, it's just a different thing. 01:03:39 Speaker 2: Man. 01:03:39 Speaker 3: He's been such a I could not have had a better coach than this guy. Then Reck when I first started out with Rex, he's very knowledgeable. And then Michael, who we hunt together all the time and he's never like you need to do this, you should do that. I'm like, I wonder why he's doing that, and Michael said, well, could be it. 01:04:01 Speaker 2: Or I'll say should I do this? No, you should do this. 01:04:05 Speaker 3: He's always waiting and that has been so important and been a big factor in Whalen's development of like should I be doing this or should I just let him figure it out himself? Like Rex told me, you know at the beginning, you know, if he'll chase whatever he's chasing, we can. As long as he'll chase something, we can get him pointed in the right direction. Well, Michael has been a great steward in that and allowing me to let that dog develop naturally and me correct him when I needed to correct him. And his knowledge comes from he does this every day. Coon hunting is this man's life. I mean, he's making these lights for coon hunters. So every day he's talking about this. Every day he's dealing with and we hunt together all the time. He's so analytical about it. There's so much more to it than just cutting the dog loose and waiting for him to start barking. And it's he has been It's been such a blessing to me to have that knowledge to be able to pick and call him on the phone like, man, this is what's going on. I've called him before. I've been out in the field but hunting by myself. Well, what's what's happening? What did he do? What did you do? Okay, you messed up? It ain't the dog you made up. You made an error. Ye, And it's just pointed me in the way to go to direction. And all that comes from paying attention to years and years of data that he's been logging in his head, which has started with me. Now I've got five years of data on this dog. I can, I can. Last night we were watching on that garment. I said, okay, Hillary, look right here the last time he barked when he made this track right here, And this garment is a screen and this track and wailing and showing his track on the satellite view of where he's going, and he ain't made a peep, but I can see he's making a circle. And when he gets back to that spot right there, he's probably going to bark again. And Sam, as soon as he got there, he did. And it's just from knowing and paying attention to the tendencies that that dog has and kind of understanding what he's doing while he's out there. And those tools have been beneficial, and well, the number one, they keep hunters from having to spend the night in the woods. Like when I was a kid, my coon dog didn't come back. I'm laying down there in the woods the last place I saw him and waiting for him to come back, or I'm leaving a coach there and going home and coming back to next morning anybody, yeah, to come back to get him. And that has totally eliminated that. But it's also shown how these dogs work. The bird dogs the same way. You can actually physically see how they're working a piece of terrain and like, well, you know by now, he's probably got this covered, he's got that cover, and you look on there and he was one hundred yards from where you actually thought he was. You know, so but that day to reinforcing all that stuff and keeping a journal. I've got a journal when I first started hunting whaling, and I keep it and I go back to it now. I look at the things that I was thinking that then, about where I thought this dog was going and why he was doing that. And I was either right on spot or I was totally wrong, but it's it's very important, and Michael has that knowledge of keeping up with stuff. Well, man, we'll be going down through there and he's say, you remember when Whaling treed this coon right over here, And I'm like, uh. 01:07:27 Speaker 2: No, I don't. He said, yeah, that was that night. 01:07:30 Speaker 3: He'll finally remind me of some I'm like, yeah, I remember, it's hunting that night. Well, you tread three coons, and heck treed five and. 01:07:37 Speaker 2: We did it here here, here, here, and there. 01:07:39 Speaker 3: I'm like, sweet Jesus, Michael, I can't remember what I have for breakfast this morning. But he's such a student of it. And that's what it takes to be consistently good. And that's why he always has good dog. 01:07:49 Speaker 1: Right well, And that's I mean, maybe that's a good point to kind of end this sucker on is when we talk about you know, you talk a lot about getting whaling, getting other dogs whatever, and getting out there and getting those reps in over and over and letting that dog develop those skills. Because some of those raccoons go up there and they sit in the first four of the tree, some of them getting those logs like we saw last night. So some of them swim across the water for a long ways. But when you do that, not only are you allowing that dog to figure it out, he's learning his job out there in a dynamic environment with a critter that's trying real hard to get away to get away, but also you're learning how to work that dog. And so when we talk about that commitment of like, well it's to develop your dog, you want to give that bird dog two years of training every single day, working on the foundational level stuff, getting up into the upper level stuff the hand signals, a long distance work whatever. You're also learning how to train that specific dog and work together with them. And it's the same thing, you know, I see. It's kind of my nightmare when somebody's like, hey, I want to go pheasant hunting with you, Like, I don't want to. I got a few people I want to hunt with, but mostly I want to go solo. But when I do hunt with somebody who doesn't get out there a lot, their connection to that dog and the dog's connection to them is different because they just haven't got the reps together and so they're not working the same way, like they're not just in tune, and it's like a kind of an intangible thing that's like hard to recognize until you watch somebody who has that relationship and they're always like, that dog is amazing, and they're not wrong, But that relationship to that that person has with that dog is what's amazing about it too. 01:09:34 Speaker 3: I'm so anxious to see how Jesse responds to to when we start hunting, because I have to be able to adapt to her. 01:09:42 Speaker 2: She should not have to adapt to me. 01:09:44 Speaker 3: She's going to have to adapt to me to do the things that I want her to do or to not do the things that I don't want her to do. But I've got to go at the speed of her learning curve. Well, Whylon it was pretty easy. 01:09:55 Speaker 2: You know. She may be a different category altogether. 01:09:59 Speaker 3: But if I tried to train her or to teach her the way that I did with Whaling, that's my fault. 01:10:05 Speaker 2: If she don't get it. 01:10:06 Speaker 3: I've got to go the way that she learns and the way that is best suited for her at whatever speed that is. 01:10:12 Speaker 2: She may be faster, who knows. 01:10:14 Speaker 3: I hope she is, but that's one thing to consider, you know, on that second dog or third dog or whatever, and it may be the reason why the others the first dog you got after the one that was so good didn't work out, They're they're different and you got to look that way. 01:10:31 Speaker 1: Always, Brent. It's always so much fun talking to you. Really appreciate you having us down here, showing us your life out here in the Arkansas coon woods. Where can everybody find you? All of your stuff you're making. 01:10:45 Speaker 3: Oh, this country life is on the Beargrease feed, on the Mediator podcast anywhere you get a podcast, you just type that in there and whip it up. We would have some stuff coming out on the Meet the Clips and I've got some some hunts and stuff that will you on the main medi Eater channel. 01:11:02 Speaker 1: And they might even be able to go to that media clips channel and see you, uh teaching how to how to work with dogs a little bit and do some stuff and figure out figure out a few skills that you might want your dog to have. 01:11:13 Speaker 3: Here it comes, man, I'm excited. I'm looking really looking forward to seeing what we can do this. 01:11:17 Speaker 2: Thanks brother, thank you. Mm hmmm